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.

[0 petals fell]