We were perpetually at risk of attack from our legendary enemies.
We had the promise of food.
The bulwarks were nowhere near completion, nor most any other defense.
The trust-bonds between us frayed and strained with the weight of circumstance.
We had no real source of hope, no real font of information or learning.
Any rational mind would concur with the thinking that we were doomed.
Yet it should be remembered that it is not necessarily rational minds that occupy this castle.
The joke was that even if one failed out of the school of assassins, at least they had learned to play a musical instrument. Even as I had turned away from the darkness inside, pushing towards a brighter, lighter existence as a man of song, I knew that should time and circumstance allow, the darkness that had infected all my wounds -- body, mind, and heart -- could show itself again, lay claim to this soul.
I crouched in my hidden niche and waited for the cold rain to start weeping down on the blasted lands, the ruined empire.
I swore then that the time had come to become hard, unyielding... unfeeling.
I fondled the dagger hidden in my belt.
Bring the storm.
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