Words once given cannot be taken back.
"I will not write this with a smile."
Some of you will know me, some of you know of me, others have not a clue who I am. Good for you. I write a lot in my line of work, every day I send a thousand letters and receive a thousand more. I do not remember most, many are pointless, many more I push from my mind. But there are a few that stand out, a few I will never forget.
One day I sat in my office going through my letters, enjoying a drink as I neared the end of my work, when my squire ran in. He handed me a letter from Greygate, signed by one Erwin Braunschweiger. I knew Mr Braunschweiger but we are not regular correspondents, so I placed my whiskey down and read the letter.
That letter called me to Greygate, which I complied with. When I arrived I was brought into a room, with someone laying on a table before me with a cloth over them. When Mr Braunschweiger peeled back that large cloth, I realised it was a shroud, and beneath it lay my sister.
I had lost my father the week before, and now a sister I barely knew, but who I still loved as my blood was lost as well gone far before her time. I informed Mr Braunschweiger guardsmen would be along to bring her home and that I would be departing.
I often wonder what a young lady such as herself was doing out in the city, I wonder her reasons and what had led her there. She had always been recluse, with few friends in life, locked in her room writing or painting. Then I realise that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what she was doing it doesn't matter why she was doing it.
I think why, why would someone take her in her prime, snuff out a fire before it could even light. And then I realise, it doesn't matter. No one deserved the fate my sister got, no matter the crime, no matter their blood and no matter what they had done. To have your whole life robbed of you, it is beyond criminal.
My mother is old, she carries with her the pain of outliving a husband, and thanks to one man and his cronies, she carries with her the greatest pain of all. Outliving a child. I made my mother a promise, when she brought her darling daughter's body home. I promised her that I would bring the battered and broken body of the one who had done this to her daughter.
I would bring them alive, so that she may see them brought low, so that she may exact her own long and brutal vengeance upon them. I promised I would bury my hammer in their chest and haul them home in chains.
Now I have been robbed.
I do not write this as a Duke, I do not write this as the young lion, and I do not write this as a Knight, I write this as a brother. I write this as Alastair Mac Conall. I have been robbed of my vengeance upon the one known as Ayas, for the coward has died before I could get to him. He may have died alone, and in hiding fearing the very shadows he skulked in. But I do not care. My family has been robbed, my Mother has been robbed, I have been robbed.
But we will have our vengeance, so now I write this, this promise.
As a servant of the Empire
As the Duke of Dundarne.
As the Young Lion.
As a Knight.
And.
As a Brother.
By Hammer and by Blood.
I will have my Vengeance.
As a servant of the Empire
As the Duke of Dundarne.
As the Young Lion.
As a Knight.
And.
As a Brother.
By Hammer and by Blood.
I will have my Vengeance.
