Eleeria Silverwing

Eleeria Silverwing
Eleeria Silverwing
@eleeria#95
2018-07-20 00:02:00

A Letter

The letter to Ashideena was perhaps longer than she had anticipated. Written on good quality paper, the handwriting was terrible — but legible. As if the author had taken great pains to try her best to make it so.


--


Five years ago, I was an assassin who was out of work due to an accident I walked into willingly. I had changed my name; most people thought I was dead, but really I was moping — trying to drown out the ghosts with any drug I could get my hands on. Unremarkable. I wouldn’t tell you this normally, but you don’t seem the type to give pity. Which is good, because I don’t want any.


Four years ago, my sister convinced me to join a paramilitary organization that served Quel’thalas’s interests. I agreed, partially because she made such a sad face, and partially because I craved being useful again. Even with one hand. Hilariously, she left much earlier than I did, bored of war and bored of soldiers. She’s a mage, so I forgive her for it.


Needless to say I was a very bad soldier -- having never followed rules or structure in my life aside from the times I learned the rules in order to get closer to a target. These are very different worlds. The killing is familiar, but the methods were not.


That is where I met the Knight-Lord Ethalarian Dawnstalker -- though at the time he was going by another name. Even pretending to be someone different, he was a Blood Knight through and through. I recognized him from the time right after the fall; I’ve always lived in the Row, and he was one of the pesky people who used to try and get us to stop being criminals. Largely ineffectual, but it made them feel good I imagine.


Why he asked me to join the Order is beyond me. Once he said he felt that I was a little bit lost, and very angry -- really I think he empathized. Why I said yes is equally beyond me. Sometimes I still wonder, and it’s a lot of what-ifs. I won’t bore you with them.


Last year I left.


Oh, the killing was fine and the wars were good, but I didn’t want to be an assassin any more in earnest, and they wanted me to stick to what I already knew. Among other reasons. There were a lot of them.


It was a roller coaster of a few months. I briefly joined my sister in a contingent of Argents, then left -- I wanted to be free, you know? I didn’t want to join another military so soon, the Argent Crusade and its worship and prayer made me feel awkward, itchy. Like something inside of me didn’t agree with the piousness. I get it now; I’ve always been a child of Quel’thalas, and though many of my friends loved their time with the Crusade, the way they use the Light just felt fundamentally wrong.


I left, with some friends, and we...did other things. A lot of things I don’t want to talk about. A lot of things I feel, for once in my life, rather bad about.


I don’t know if I’ll ever want to talk about it.


So, I came back around. Ethalarian came back to the Order in January, and I joined him; I’d officially been training under him for a year at that point, we just made it more formal. It was a pain and a half, and I still don’t know how he managed to convince them that I wasn’t a monumental waste of state resources, considering he had to charm at least three Inquisitors to get the clearance to let me in in the first place. Nothing like being a criminal in earnest to make every official thing you do incredibly difficult! No wonder most people just go back to what they were doing before as if they’d never been to jail at all.


Then he left! And I’ve been doing alright on my own, I think. I could have been doing a lot worse. And that’s kind of everything and not everything at the same time. You’re welcome.


E.

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