Fairyland Chronicles - Character Side Stories

[Aaronock]

OOC: Holy crap did I have to fit in SO much in my range of 1k-1.2k words. I hope I have done this some level of justice...
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The letter to Catherine McWren was long overdue. The days kind of blurred for Ezekiel. He couldn’t quite ascertain how many days exactly he should have written the said letter. However, he decided, it needed writing, tonight. Not that he had any desire to draft the damned thing after another stressful day of dealing with gods, dead little sisters, and plot thickening twists.

A groan slowly crawled its way out of Ezekiel’s throat. Prolonging the inevitable only made the impending words he had to write further challenging to make. An elbow went on the table and his head tilted to quickly rest on his upraised hand. Another cup of tea waited near the other side, but he didn’t have the strength to bother picking it up. He believed himself unworthy of the reward.

The world needed to make sense to Ezekiel again. When he took the job to subdue Lucretia, it exploded far beyond his usual cut and dry work. Not even the fairy herself complicated it any longer. Fellow men and women with selfish desires at play worked hard to complicate the job far more than necessary. The only payments received for all this stress came through Pixie, and only of meager worth to him. He had no fear of going poor, or hungry, but this man chose not to work on the cheap. A price his clients paid for his honed use with a dagger, the skills he spent half his lifetime to acquire, and a reputation that he built alone with hard work and sweat.

With that, the letter could not write itself. With his other hand not on his head, he grabbed the paper and pen, and began to jot the exhaustively long note.

Catherine McWren,

This letter probably arrives long overdue. However, just so you know, I do not personally care all that much. No, instead, think of this as an update to all the things Kotori and myself have seen. We two probably seen every wonder you could imagine in just one week’s, no, one day’s time. How do I even begin? Let me just write a list of what occurred to us this last evening instead…

We met with Odin first. The man seemed interested in testing us just as he stated in his announcements. However, just as we were to begin, Surtur found a way to break through his seal in Muspelheim. After much fighting, with Odin at charge, we defeated the bugger. The god also came to harm, and after a warning of plots and being in brown, disappeared. As expected, you can’t rely on a God’s power after all.

Next we met with the lord of Payon. The Professor Nikki Sixx and High Priest Sacerdos helped us to gain audience with the man in the castle. Earlier, I had stopped Lucretia from obtaining the treasure she wanted to find inside. Apparently the lord informed us that he held a replica of the Moonlight Bell. We went to go gather the thing to protect on our own. However, after arriving to the secret location of the bell, Ciar just simply leaves a suggestion to the professor to ring the bell, and the doofy professor does it without question! For the man’s foolishness, we had to fight his own dead sister, while he stood there in slumber beneath a curse.

The man’s lucky however, that we could easily cure him with the help of Prontera’s clergy. Afterwards, we attempt to get the bell from Nikki himself, but find it suddenly gone. I quickly pieced together that Ciar was up to something, but nobody would let me intimidate the man to the truth. It became a waste of time however, as Galoo went in secret, holding the bell, to Niflheim. This gave Ciar a chance to take the bell from her at her hidden location, and summoned the old spirit of Jin. The raised man told us of someone's supposed betrayal towards Lucretia, and the information matched perfectly to Cynbel.

Far too many of you people chase ghosts…

He paused a moment. Deciding to leave out the details of Cynbel’s possible betrayal. The evidence seemed to match, but then the reasoning made little sense itself. The stories he’d heard from each party still didn’t match up, how could he write a proper series of events to it? Catherine would come to her own conclusions once she returned anyway. Said conclusions most likely would not match his own. What could happen due to that, he chose not to think about in this moment. He did however, have one more order of business to attend to in the letter.

Regarding Kotori, she stays safe with me currently. She’s mainly self-sufficient, might even become fully so if she keeps up with her current training regimen. But about that… I’ve taken care of the girl for a full week now, and think that about covers the cost of the 2 million zeny you threw on the ground for me awhile back.

As the rogue wrote those words, he began to tap his pen on the table. Now this suddenly got complicated. No way did Catherine exude any sort of ability to further pay him. However, how does he tell a silly sage girl he no longer had him at her beck and call? His head turned upward towards the ceiling, as he sat deep in thought. A simple compromise came as he realized he could give time for Catherine’s response before taking further action. His face turned back downward as he began to write the final sentence.

Let’s discuss payment the next time we meet.

-Ezekiel Stalker

With the letter finished, he looked out the window next to the bed. Lucretia wanted a world without humans, and in this moment, he truly wanted the same. A natural world that contained only the fae and forest, without human malice and selfishness mixed in. That world might still hold some level of chaos, but the problems of that world where only green grew brought some level of peace to the rogue. But could he tell the others this very thought? No, and that just strangely hurt him inside. They didn’t know the real him, nor did he hold the desire to open his heart to them. He believed they’d take advantage of his weakness…

And he realized that’s exactly how Lucretia felt.