Part 2... __________________________ <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CNate%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CNate%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CNate%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><style>  </style> From the Journal of Vincent Lois November the 23rd, in the year 707, Cristos Reckoning Today the weather was finally clear enough for me to get out and about once more. For the first time in what seems like a millennium, I was able to wander the streets of this keep. It is so much different now than it was before, and the Curse is not all that has worked to make it so. The people I once knew in this keep are mostly gone. Some left before the storm hit, escaping the wrath of the Curse altogether by moving to the south. Others died in that same battle, fighting to the last breath to keep this keep in the right hands. One, I am told, went insane after being Cursed, and spent the last four years of his life acting as though he had been born a horse. Others have fallen in subsequent battles, and some few have died peacefully, a rarity among people in such a violently contested area as the keep. Of the few that survive, many bear little resemblance to the people I once knew, although their personalities are clearly the same. The craftsmen I once knew are almost all gone, either dead, having lost their place of business to the effects of war, or no longer having a form that allows them to ply their craft. Of those, only one seems to have adjusted well. Instead of leaving his craft altogether, he has taken on a student, who seems to have learned very well at the hooves of her master. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the one thing I spent my most time with is still as I left it. The library seems to have changed very little apart from the forms of its inhabitants. The books are still there, black ink scrawled across yellowing paper… Still just as I remember them. Besides that, only the stones of the keep itself seem to have remained unchanged, and even they show signs of wear. Nothing escapes the effects of time… Tomorrow I will see what might remain of the Deaf Mule. What I have seen of the rest of the keep does not give me much hope that it much resembles what it was those many years ago. Still, perhaps I may yet find that that one thing remains somewhat unchanged. One can only hope… Vincent Lois * * * * Lois closed his journal and sighed for a moment. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop beside the travel-worn book and glanced over at the single window in his room. He had made sure to get a room with an accessible window in it, even though it cost a little bit more, especially to ensure that it was a private room. Money had long ago ceased to be an object, however. He stood and walked over to the shuttered window, pulling it open so that he could see clearly beyond. The roofs of the nearby buildings had already shed most of the ice from the earlier freezing rain and only a few small streams of water remained visible, trickling between shingles and off slanted edges, sometimes into drains, sometimes simply landing on the street below. Lois reached out of his window and grabbed ahold of the exposed beams that held the roof solid. It felt rough, and seemed dry enough to ensure good grip… He returned inside only long enough to extinguish the flame in the lantern, and then he hefted himself up and out of the window and onto the roof. Lois didn’t sleep that night. He spent several hours sitting out on top of the inn’s roof, thinking. He likely got a good bit of rest there, in all honesty, but it was fitful and separated by lines of thought that led off into nothing. The decisions of his past always ran through his mind when he had any time to sit and reflect, although they were not just his own decisions that bothered him. He second guessed a lot of people he had known. Alternate possibilities had always intrigued him, so sometimes he tried to piece together what might have been if a few select people had chosen differently. Unfortunately, whenever he let his mind wander in that way, it would eventually lead back to the one person he could never reconcile in his ideas of what the world might have been. He had known his father only in his younger years, but it was not only a result of his life as an assassin that he had the gift to find things meant to be hidden from him. He had always had a knack for being in the right places to overhear things, and he had never passed up an opportunity. Through a long string of conversations he had managed to create a patchwork of evidence that led him to see the truth about his father. The boys in his home had always teased him about his lazy father, but Vincent Lois was nothing if not stiff-necked and stubborn. He refused to acknowledge any fault on his father’s part, even when the law of the land sent him to the manor to serve as incentive for his father to pull his weight. Through the long years of his stay in the manor, Lois never missed an opportunity to go back and see the man. He was always sitting somewhere with a full view of his ever-empty fields, delighting himself in nothing but sunrises, sunsets, and the maxims and “wise sayings” that he had collected over years of listening to foreign travelers. Lois hadn’t much cared for the sayings, although they had a natural effect of rubbing off on him whether he paid much attention or not. As the years grew on, and the pieces of conversation slowly filled in the empty pieces, Lois had begun to realize that the claims of his childhood tormentors and the gossip about the manor were the only logical explanation for the strange behavior of his father. Lois had never worked up the courage to confront his father about his idleness. All he had known at that time was that, idle or not, he wanted to be able to live with his father again. His strong work ethic was directly a result of that fact, but even the diligence on his part was not enough to make up the amount of good cropland that had been wasted by his father as each year passed. And then Lois’ father had died. Lois hadn’t accepted it when he first heard it. He had simply run off, disregarding any orders to the contrary, until he stood beside his father’s bed. He was the only one there besides his mother to shed a tear for the man, and the same was true of the funeral. Vincent should have been working at the manor during the small affair, but he couldn’t find it within himself to not be present. By that time he was old enough to realize what was happening and, idle or not, good father or not, he felt it was his responsibility to be there for his father. It still brought no satisfaction, no ease for the pain. He had hoped that the dirt would bury his own sorrow as it did his father, but it only deepened his grief. Lois had still never understood his connection to the man. His father, by all rights, had only ever spoken to him. Whenever he needed anything, he would call Vincent or his mother to provide for that need, yet the young man had always felt a deep, abiding sense of loyalty to his father. It was such a frustratingly illogical thing; no one else in his life had generated that sort of attachment, and, although the man’s flaws were obvious, no one he had ever met had defied his second guessing so thoroughly. What if his father had been a diligent worker? The question had occurred to Lois more than once, but he could never reconcile the rest of reality with that one change. Regardless of the hundreds of possibilities he could think of for what may have happened if any minute detail had been different elsewhere, the fact that his father was an idle man whose life’s work was worth less than the cost of the food he ate was a constant, not a variable. Nothing frustrated Lois more than something outside of nature that remained constant. Change, or at least the possibility of change, was something that simply had to be there. With his father, however, there was no such possibility. Lois finally caught himself short in his frustrated cycle of thoughts sometime just before dawn. He sighed to release some tension, but that wasn’t quite enough. Lois stood up on the inn’s roof, stretching as he did. He knew one thing that would release that tension, and so he started off at a jog, lightly letting his feet fall along the shingles of the roof, following the slant of the roof without allowing it to affect his footing or balance. He jogged a lap around the rooftop to make sure his footing before taking off with a rush, changing rooftops smoothly and without breaking stride. !DSPAM:4c5a38aa272691459720162!