Requiem - Conlaeth

They looked to me first. Not Leo, or Thackaray, or anyone else who still held an official rank. I probably shouldn't have found that as satisfying as I did. Dragon’s Watch kept to themselves, but then that was no surprise. They had Leo to keep them grounded. But the soldiers, the corsairs, the sunspears… The ones accustomed to the hierarchy, to following orders. They looked to the Commander to tell them what was next. So I told them what they wanted to hear. That all was not lost, that we would regroup, consider our options, and we would try again. That this was an obstacle but not a failure. That Kralkatorrik could still be stopped. "It's good what you're doing," Leo told me, and when I looked to him for clarification he added, "keeping their spirits up. Morale is important, especially now." I just laughed, but there was no more humor in the sound than in our situation. "If they start losing hope they'll be useless when we finally start moving again," I said. "I'd rather have a lot of soldiers filled with false hope than a lot of dead weight." Leo didn't say anything after that, but I could tell by the way the fur bristled along his neck that he didn't like my answer. But what else could I do? Better that they still thought we had a chance, even if I didn't. A thought had been running through my head since the moment I first saw the body, and no matter how hard I tried to turn my attention to something, anything else, it kept echoing in my mind. It didn't used to be like this. It never used to feel like I could lose. Like one major setback meant the whole game was over. It used to be I could just dust myself off, count the dead, send the letters to their families, and figure out our next move. Painless. Easy. Effective. Wasn't that was why they wanted me, once? That was why they handed me the title, the power, the authority. //Pact Commander.// Because I was [[effective.]]

When I was a year-old sapling looking out over the harbor of Lion's Arch for the first time, I never would have imagined I'd be leading the charge in defence of Claw Island once, much less twice. Yet there we stood, the stench of rot hanging heavy in the air and the sounds of battle slowly fading, settling into an uncertain, hopeful silence. Then a cheer rose up somewhere in the courtyard. And another. And another, building into a chorus of celebration. Of triumph. And it was then that I finally grasped what exactly I had just accomplished. The three orders, finally united under a common goal. //My idea.// Zhaitan's champion and the swarm of minions it brought with it, defeated. //My assignment.// Claw Island liberated, Lion's Arch safe and secure for another day. //My achievement.// So when I stood before Trahearne and the order representatives, still breathless from the battle and gore still clinging to my boots and my blade, and they told me we were calling ourselves the Pact now, and that I was to stand at the head of it alongside Trahearne, a leader in my own right, I knew it was my reward. I earned it. I //deserved// it. And as soon as we had collectively caught our breath, counted our dead, separated the allies to be buried from the enemies to be burned, [[I put that new power to good use.]]

No one had ever killed an elder dragon before, but I had resolved to be the first one way or another. We were in new waters, with a clear destination but no charted route, and no matter what we did, whether we won or lost, the cost would be high. But I had accepted that from the start, and decided that the ends would always justify the means. I assumed the rest of them understood that, and that was why they put me in command. No one likes to make those decisions but someone has to. And so we began our campaign. [[I already knew the terrain,]] and now I had near-limitless resources at my disposal. Weaponry, magic, intel, and a host of soldiers, scholars, and spies ready to lay down their lives at a word from me. Easy. I set my sights on Zhaitan and I wielded the Pact with confidence and abandon, with no regard for the cost of our war so long as we were still gaining ground. And in the end… We did it. We won. All the struggles, worthwhile. All the lives lost, justified. As I stood on the deck of our flagship and I watched Zhaitan's corpse plunge into the Sea of Sorrows below, I was once again struck by the gravity of the moment. I had just made history. I brought down an elder dragon. And I wondered if I could [[do it again.]]

I hadn't been at sea for long, but somehow it felt like the most natural place for me to be. Open, free. Endless possibilities, if you were adventurious and enterprising enough. I decided I wanted the //Splitblade// almost as soon as I understood how to sail. A lightning-quick Krytan schooner, she could keep pace with most vessels in the Sea of Sorrows and easily out-maneuver almost any of them. I never did learn how she came to be the home of the Blade warband, but I knew one way or another, she was going to be mine. It would take three years and two untimely deaths for me to get my chance. Tydus Splitblade was a good captain, but in true charr fashion he was an over-eager warrior, and he fell to a risen blade in defense of his crew. Amidst the uncertainty of that loss we instinctively turned to his most trusted attendant to lead us. Forrest Kincaid got us back to Lion’s Arch safely enough, but as time went on, as the coffers got lighter and the rations thinner, it became clear that he had no real talent for business or for leadership. As first mate I did the best I could to make up for his weakness, but when he slipped on the rain-slicked deck and fell into the storm-tossed waters below, well… Maybe I was in shock. Maybe I hesitated. By the time I called for help it was too late. But the greatest obstacle standing in my way wasn’t Tydus or Forrest. [[It was the quartermaster.]]

But when I got my next chance it nearly killed me. It might as well have. Mordremoth went down but it didn't go down without a fight, and it took the stability of the Pact, the reputation of my entire race, and the future of my career with it. Trahearne and I had had our differences up to that point. We didn't agree on most things, and I never did think he was well suited to the position he had been thrust into. That said, I didn't kill him out of malice. I didn't kill him so I could take his place as Marshal. I killed him because, after everything we'd witnessed and endured, after dragging ourselves through a jungle that was quite literally trying to kill us at every turn, we were too late to save him. He begged me to kill him, and I obliged. But I //should// have taken his place. It's what I deserved. Instead they questioned my report, doubted my motives, dredged up my past as justification. It wasn't enough that I had brought down my second dragon, suddenly they had concerns about my methods. My reputation. And when I tried to make my case they told me I could step down willingly or I could have my name dragged through the mud on my way out. I took the first option. I told people I had retired, and hoped they didn't see the resentment in my eyes every time I said it. Maybe I would have gotten over it, gotten used to the freedom again. Maybe I would have bought another ship, gone back to my old life. Maybe it would have been fine. If Tyria hadn't [[gone up in flames]] once again.

Balthazar complicated things. I really thought I'd get to kill another dragon when Primordus started moving. I didn't care that they were getting stronger, and by the time we realized the repercussions of killing them, that Tyria was on the brink of being cast into oblivion… I didn't particularly care about that either. Maybe I wasn't the Commander anymore, but I could still be the Dragonslayer. Somehow that made sense to me, and I ignored the fact that if I succeeded, there might be no one left alive to remember what I had accomplished. If Balthazar hadn't taken center stage, become the enemy we all had to band together to stop, I wonder sometimes if it wouldn't have been me instead. The once-great Pact Commander, succumbed to bloodstone and madness. In the end I lost an arm and gained a daunting understanding of my own fallibility, and that was about it. But in the calm between one storm and the next, [[I had a lot of time to think.]]

I wanted Zhaitan dead as revenge. I wanted Mordremoth dead for the satisfaction of it. It was never about anyone else. Not really. I didn’t have a reason to fight Balthazar, or Joko, or Kralkatorrik, except that they were threatening Tyria, and for some reason Tyria was still turning to me. The Commander. The Dragonslayer. Titles that clung to me even after they’d been drained of all their meaning and their power. Titles that had started feeling more like condemnations than accolades. But maybe… maybe it was enough that they were turning to me. They were looking for a hero, and I knew deep down that I had never been one, but I had played the part well enough to convince the people around me. I could convince myself too. If I couldn’t change the past, make amends for my actions, maybe I could be better now. So I fought for the defenseless, the frightened and the powerless. For the ones who had already decided I was their savior. I fought alongside the valiant, the noble and self-sacrificing, valued their devotion to the cause instead of exploiting it. I fought because it was the right thing to do. When the Herald burned a defenseless village as a demonstration of force, cut down refugees instead of fighting me directly, we saved who we could. When Vlast sacrificed himself to protect me before we ever even knew him, we scrambled to salvage even the slightest advantage. When we destroyed the Dragonsblood spear, when the human gods refused to help us, I chose to believe we still had other options. When Balthazar captured Aurene, I believed we could save her. When I died, I found my way back. Because the fight wasn’t over yet. And when we finally struck down Balthazar, I barely gave myself time to breath. Because [[the fight wasn’t over yet.]]

Amnoon was decimated by the Branded just as I was starting to think of it as home. A simple jailbreak turned into a bloodbath because I wanted to help the Sunspears. Taimi was captured, tortured, very nearly killed, because Joko knew she was our ally. The Olmakhan were attacked, lost one of their elders, because we rescued their people from the Inquest. Leo was imprisoned, experimented on, because everything we had survived together had turned him into a novelty to be studied. Blish was lost to the lifeless uncertainty of the Mists, because he believed in our cause more than his own survival. And Aurene… We bolstered her, encouraged her, filled her with purpose. And it killed her. [[This is exhausting.]]

It’s a lot more work to care about the people you’re fighting for. To see civilians instead of collateral damage. Allies instead of assets. And to what end? They still suffer. They still die. When you let yourself start to think of them as individuals, start counting losses instead of casualties, how do you stop the guilt from eating you alive? It used to be painless. Easy. [[Honest.]]

//Fear not, the world will not forget you. The scars you've gouged into it spell out your name for all to see.// I still hear Joko’s words in my mind sometimes, in those increasingly rare moments of quiet and solitude. I’d been reassured time and again that he was wrong. That I wasn’t a monster, that I was better than Palawa Joko. I had grown. I had changed. I was //better.// I’m tired of kidding myself. When we killed Balthazar I celebrated with the people of Elona not because I was glad for their freedom, but because I liked the way //Godkiller// rolled off the tongue. When we ended Joko, I didn’t even care that half the region thought it was the wrong choice. They would never forget who rallied the army and broke down the gate. I’ve defeated a god, a lich, and two elder dragons. [[I can kill another.]]

If we don’t stop Kralkatorrik, Tyria falls into ruin. But if we do, it will be because of me. I don’t know what it’s going to take, what astronomical price we’ll have to pay. But I don’t care. No one likes to make those decisions, but someone has to. And when the dust settles, they’ll remember it was me who was leading the charge. They’ll remember my name. And that’s all I ever really cared about.

Indira Sulaman had decided the moment we met that she didn’t like me and she didn’t trust me, and she had the loyalty of enough of the crew that if she resisted my bid for captain, I would lose. So I made her a promise. One chance. Her faith and cooperation for a single season. If she wasn’t satisfied with my performance by the end of it, I would step down without a fight. I never had any intention of keeping that promise, but I didn’t have to. Within five weeks I’d secured a safe route from Lion’s Arch to Rata Sum, and reliable fences at either end. In nine weeks I had our first clients, a prospective hideout in Southsun, and the port authority looking the other way. By the end of my allotted time we already had a reputation. If you wanted goods moved across the Sea of Sorrows unharmed and with no questions asked, the //Splitblade// could do it. Within four years we were sailing the flagship of a thriving smuggling ring. We knew the coasts of Orr like they were our homes, and we made a tidy sum from a steady supply of “salvaged” relics coming out of the ruins. Grave robbing, as it turns out, loses its taboo the more decades you put between you and the dead. We held our control over the trade routes through an even-handed application of firepower, blackmail, and bribery, until our message was well understood: friends of the //Splidblade// are well rewarded, and enemies don’t stay enemies for long. This was no longer one rogue pirate vessel harrying ships along the coast. This was a business endeavor. And it was a good life. [[Until it wasn’t.]]

We could have taken on the bone ship. I still believe that. But we weren’t ready for the dragon champion that came with it. We fought with everything we had but we were barely even given the chance to react before it had crushed the bow and snapped the mizzen mast in half, and even as the //Splitblade// was rapidly taking on water I would have stayed to beat it back myself, if Indira hadn’t dragged me from the burning deck. I walked away from that encounter with my life and twelve of my twenty-six crewmates. We hiked all the way from Conquest Marina to Brackwater before we got any real help making the rest of the journey back to Lion’s Arch. But even as we tried to settle back into our lives, find the familiar patterns and patch the conspicuous holes left by the fallen, some part of me was still on that ship, rotting beneath the Strait of Sacrilege. I filled that void with anger, and I directed that anger at Zhaitan, because the only other one I could blame was me. [[I didn’t expect it to eat at me the way it did.]]

“Do you hear yourself right now?” //”Yes,// Indira, my hearing is fine. Thank you,” I huffed, giving her a sharp look but not stopping my nervous circuit around the room. “Then you’ve finally lost your mind,” Indira shot back, throwing one of her arms over the back of the threadbare couch. “You can’t just… //kill// an elder dragon.” “And why not?” I mused, a practiced response from the dozens of times I’d had this same argument with myself. “Anything living can be killed, with the right application of force.” “This isn’t just a particularly big fish, Skipper. You’re talking about a force of nature.” She leaned forward then, crossing her forearms over her knees. “And let’s not forget, you’re talking about //fighting a force of nature.// Over a //ship.”// That stopped me in my tracks, and I fixed her with another glare as I felt my temper flaring in my chest. “Does that not sound insane to you? Would you fight a fire or a hurricane because it //wronged// you somehow?” “Wouldn’t //you,// if you could?” I insisted, not quite able to suppress an eager grin. “If you could personally take revenge on something that far outside our control, wouldn’t you?” Indira laughed. “No, I wouldn’t. Because it sounds insane to me.” I rolled my eyes, sighing my resignation. She didn’t need to agree with me, it wouldn’t change what I did next. “You don’t have to leave again, you know.” When I turned back to face her she was studying me thoughtfully. “I’ve kept most of your network intact while you were in the Reach, it wouldn’t be that hard to-” I cut her off with a curt shake of my head. “My life was on that ship, Indira,” I said--ignoring her when she pinched the bridge of her nose and muttered “no, it wasn’t…”-- “it represented everything I built, everything I earned. And I’m going to take my restitution for that out of Zhaitan’s //hide.”// A silent beat passed between us as Indira considered her next words. In the end all she did was smile, shrug, and say, “well if nothing else, [[I’m sure the Vigil will appreciate your enthusiasm.”]]

Going from a kingpin to a cog in the machine wasn’t an easy transition. I had to weigh my desire for revenge against my desire for authority, but eventually I realized if I played my hand right one could lead me to the other. So I kept my head down for as long as I had to. I learned to appreciate the hierarchy, the discipline, the simplicity of the Vigil’s lifestyle. I always knew what was expected of me and where my orders were coming from, and when I was finally the one giving orders, I made them good. I proved I could get results and I could get them fast, and if it cost me a few recruits or the safety of a fishing village now and then, well… we were in a war against a force of nature. I’d known that from the beginning. In due time I had my own squadron, dedicated to driving back the risen wherever they began to press their luck. It was a natural choice to send me to Claw Island when we knew it had become Zhaitan’s next target, and a natural choice to send me back once we had rallied the forces to retake it. [[It was a natural choice to put me at the forefront of the campaign, once everyone was finally taking it seriously.|I put that new power to good use.]]