Sairona

It had been quite a peaceful little morning in the town of Towerglan. Home to the mercenary company known as 'The Bloody Dawn', and many of its forces. All was quiet, and serene. Birds happily floated their way across the valley, shifting from branch to branch in their usual daily routine. Lovely chirps being heard, as the sun rose over the nearby hills, beating down upon a picturesque village. And then, accompanying the gentle rush of water from the nearby waterfall, was a bang. Followed by another. Steady beats of metal ringing out through the valley.

Blood. Dagramir had seen plenty of it, but there was something melancholy about the way this particular taboo liquid spurted out of the neck he had just drove his dagger through. Not his own, oh no, he had seen quite enough of his own blood in recent times to warrant at least a break from blood expulsion. No, the blood that now dripped down the ancient wall of stone before him belonged to the middle-aged local whom he held clamped in his grasp.

I don't think I've ever felt like this. Not truly. Not even with Tailia. My own fucking wife could not evoke such disdain, such hate. Yet this woman did. This fucking woman. Who the fuck is she? Was anything ever real? I doubt it. She made her decision. After everything we shared, after everything that I did, and gave up, for her...

I have failed you, father.

They were the hardest words that Varani had ever uttered.

For ten years you've been denied a life of your own, doomed to follow me around Arda like a good little bloodhound. And for what?

It feels peculiar to have shorn hair once again. The fire is burning to keep out the winter chill. I do not know why I rode into town the nights past. Only so long you can pace the confines of your study. What to occupy myself with I wonder. There's only so long you can do the books and I would hardly proclaim crossing the i's and dotting the t's and toiling over pages brimming with numbers my idea of leisure. No, I needed to get out of there.