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"I cannot..I don't expect you to understand about my vow, Bryony." I stood in bare passion before the man of my dreams... begging for a crumb of him, and Warrick receded into his shell right before my eyes. And this after the Necromancer had whispered the clothes right off me, for I could not deny his fingers nor his wish to see what of me lay beneath the dress.

I had a strong curiosity to see Warrick without clothes. I didn't try to hide it, but he stopped before he had disposed of one articile of clothing and all for her. Alexandra. Once again the memory of a dead woman is thrust between him and I. He had made a promise to her and right before he went all the way in breaking it, he dumped this vow in my lap. "Would you make a liar out of me, Bryony?"

As if.. I had drug him kicking and screaming to this moment? As if I had flaunted myself, tempting him sorely like some slattern? He was hiding behind me! Denying what he felt.. denying us. Warrick wants me, same as I want him. Why by Jeskei's creation would he be in Carver's Outpost if not in wish of me, need of me? I was furious.

I told him to fuck his vow.

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My memory of the several deaths in Carver's Outpost is like a antique scarf, moth bitten and riddled with holes. I awoke laying in one of the village streets, my smarting cheek pressed to a muddy rut. I hurt all over but that couldn't explain why some demon picked up my crumbled body and carried me away. I couldn't fend him off.

At least at first I believed it was some infernal henchman whom bore me hence, for the creature's face was a conglomerate of black and red flesh and his eyes were a bestial yellow. He took me directly to Warrick however, laying me down alongside what appeared to be a dead body. So who was he? What.. was he?

The Necromancer was a sight for sore eyes. Golden. Beautiful. Unpeterbed in the light of death and dismemberment. It couldn't be more than obvious why he was here, in Carver's Outpost. For me. For me. I think I love that man. I know I want to love him.. I wonder if he will allow me to.

I will defend my failure to ask him this pertinent question for he recited a smattering of his foreign tongue, breathing out a rhymthic chant and the next summit in my consciousness was a swirling darkness, broken only by a never-ending snarl.

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It is those little measly fucks who did this to me! TO US!!! I wouldn't have had to bury daddy in a hole in the ground if not for them. I wouldn't have had to protect Lara if not for them. I FUCKING hate them all. Seedy, backwards minded hateful little no accounts! Burn down my house? Try to hurt my father? Threaten my friends house? THEY ALL DESERVE TO BLEED OUT THEIR EYES, TO HOLD PIECES OF THEIR EYES IN THEIR GREEDY PALMS. I HATE THEM. I DON'T HAVE TO BE NICE anymore. I don't have to turn the other cheek anymore. They never loved me. Never thought of anyone but themselves but tonight.. I WILL RID THIS REALM OF THEIR PATHETIC WASTED LIVES. I will bathe in their blood. I will wear their skin. THEY WILL REMEMBER ME ALWAYS! THEY WILL RUN FROM... US!!!!

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My caveat.. my entire reasoning for agreeing to my father's death as sacrifice to Taltos was I knew I can cheat death. I would bury my father in the sacred glade deep in the hearth of the Amberleaf Weald. The hallowed soil would rekindle his life, a life which wouldn't have been spared if the Briar King should ever break lose.

But the doing it.. the act itself was so much more than logic could encompass. I struggled to do it, you see. Every pore of me wept to be thrust in a world which required a blood payment so dear to my heart.

When I cut off his head, I did so with the sharpest blade in my reach, Lara's. And after.. I remember naught but a blinding grief, unhinging my every inner tie.. and I did scream to the unanswering night's sky, as much as my throat and lungs could manage. There is no reprieve for how I feel.. abominable no matter that I buried my dearest father so he might live. I want to believe that is my motive. I need to believe it.

What have I done? Can you not tell me, explain to me.. what have I done?

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I had carried out my plans. My father lay in a sombulent heap at my feet and a still warm but very dead Alistar was carried off by the tree blights for Asmodeus' cold pleasure. And suddenly the isolation I had counted on collapsed in on itself from two coinciding directions.

A briskly insistant knock on the front door. A woman whom had been spying through the window. These were the sabatoes thrown in the gears of my hopes, bringing everything to a screeching halt. Lara, the spy, did not attack me in an attempt to save my obviously incompacitated father but the three men at the door who demanded to see him.. were more of a pickle.

I had to refuse their late-night demands, citing my father as so sick I worried their very nearness to our home put them in jeopardy of contagion. They believed me, turning ghastly pale and hieing off to whatever rock they'd crawled out from under.

I didn't think a bluff of rampant disease would stall their intentions for long, and so I left in a hurry.. while oddly the femme fatale I had scarcely met, offered to help carry my father out the back door. Before we ever entered the concealing timber, my childhood home was ablaze.. a veritible bon fire beneath the vault of Auvyrnon sky.

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