Old, Vengeful Ashford

[Swgrclan 2682]

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8yaVSLJVLA ]

 

Gain the wolf.

 

Youth allows you to be caught up in the present. When you’re thrust into the world without knowing what it is, its cruelty shapes you. It bears down upon you like the weight of incrementally falling stones, one after another. It makes you learn, but it also makes you bitter. Get too bitter, and it becomes hard to grasp the flimsy silver linings which life allows the uninitiated. It’s hard to smile when you’ve suffered too much.

 

Conjure me as a child…

Slipping down a web side.

 

He loved life. Caught up with reading his books in the Old Country, it distracted him from the duller things, even when the books spoke of dull things. Eventually it came time to step out from the bubble his humane kin had cobbled up to justify themselves; time to step out from the isle, cross the seas, and meet those on the other side. He walked with God, as he was taught to, and bore a blissful, ignorant warmth in his heart, because he wanted to do good in his pilgrimage. Being warned of the brutality beyond his home didn’t put a crack in this; he was too pure in his youth.

 

Stretch up, I cannot reach him.

 

As far as he learned, the Four Races and the land they settled on, way back when, were godless. They weren’t warm, nor was their situation, whether or not they perpetuated it themselves. It became hard to find a way to find a reason in his pilgrimage - for what reason was there in scouring a realm of people so vicious, so poisonous, so empty? To find faith… no, of course not. It was to fix them, so with that interpretation, he tried.

 

Jumping up, they drag him from the water...

 

Tahariae’s cause was a good cause. He found solace in the lukewarm light of the Aengul, because its cause was a perpetuation of his beliefs. God was good, God was right. He was just, and though he was grim, his intentions were pure; this was how he saw Tahariae. So he followed it. He read its doctrines. He learned from its disciples. He even became one of Tahariae’s own, beaming with the truest of desires to make the world right and pure, even if his dream overshadowed a bitterness that blossomed in his chest like a poisonous flower.

 

I watched them march him into life.

 

The Aengul of Purity’s path was like trekking through a warzone. The longer he served, the more he hated the world he wanted to make better. Even seeking his kindred, the de Savoys, did little to help him along; he witnessed the decline of Olivier’s reign before his very eyes, and from a distance, and as more and more time passed, more of his brothers and sisters, far from the Old Country, perished as the nation they ruled with grand virtues and good intentions was struggled from their weak hold. He was an Ashford, and in a kingdom-made-empire where priests could stab a king in the back to pull a Dragon to its throne, he was not welcomed.

 

I watched them take him from the pale...

 

He learned to know love, even though it was wrong. Humans deigned to mingle with Elves, because their offspring were short-lived, unable to make heirs of their own -- whom, as it is, suffered the same two curses. It wasn’t right, but in the presence of this knife-eared woman who worked alongside him as an adherent of Tahariae, he felt the warmth thrum in his heart alongside his heartbeats; a blissful recollection to what he felt coming to that accursed, lost land. But his feelings were for naught; he was still too young, too distraught, caught up with his pilgrimage and desperations to travel afar in an effort to find some kind of purity, some bastion of sinlessness that would assure him that, even in the most unlikely places, good still lingered.

 

… into the sky for your eagle eye.

 

This betrayed him, of course. Every time he returned, she grew closer to another man bound to the Aengul of Souls. Every time he returned, he grew even more deranged from the mangling of that lovely warmth in his heart. Was he betrayed? No… he didn’t have the courage to take her hand. It wasn’t right to expect something from her, even if he wanted to. So when he returned a last time from his pointless travails to witness her finger wearing the band of marriage, he didn’t feel happy, he felted angry. Angry that he was a coward; angry that he was years late; angry that he was caught up in a mission he found to be depthlessly empty, pulling him from a fate that would have likely made him happy.

 

The sun seeds a sickle, and a scythe.

 

So when all was lost to him, he abandoned the virtues of Tahariae he clung to so firmly all this time. The only thing he looked to now was the sun-bearing crest that embodied his bloodline, his family’s history. The sun… the center of all warmth. There was always an appreciation for the sun from him, but now, it was the only warmth amid the desolate cold he knew, even if it touched his frail physical surface, and not his troubled soul within. When praising the sun like his forefathers was the only thing he confided in, he had his connection broken, sending him into a spiral; for when your unnatural binding to one beyond this earth is broken, it puts a crack in your soul. It let the culminated pain leak out. Praising the sun turned to screaming at the sun, because there wasn’t a path to follow, a horizon to dream of,  anyone to share his burdens with. The chances for that left him long ago, stolen away by the one who he called so spitefully… “Paleblood.”

 

Ridicule they won't allow,

Quench abuse and let love flower.

 

Gray hairs soon settled upon him. Whether it was the result of his fifties or his stressful isolation didn’t matter; he didn’t count the passing years angry and alone. Knowing too much to know the world could be correct, made pure, he fell into being enamored by those who did him wrong. Horens… for taking the throne of his kin. The Ascended… for taking away the one that plucked at his heartstrings and making her what they were. The Gods… for settling such a pale light on the world, promising they would fix it. They were all wrong, and he hated them.

 

Rip the cage out of your chest,

Let the chaos rule the rest

 

Raide Ashford stills peers out at the distance sometimes. Waiting, watching; determining if he should return to the civil lights beyond the forests he roamed, the caves he lived in. He still remembers the campaign of the Jackals, the remnant Ashfordians he joined in an effort to oust their Horenian betrayers. That last experience alongside his blood brothers resonated within his shambled soul. It reminded him that it was right to fight against those who wrong you. Watching the distant, flickering lights of cities and walls, he knew he’d return again. The beast has yet to hunt, and he hungers for retribution.

 

Gain the wolf.

Gain the wolf.

 

[Knox213 10]

Thomas Talbot screams in fear.

[GDPR 014 48]

A darkstalker whimpers.

[bumblefina 2766]

blood for ashford

[Tibertastic 107]

****, that makes you my grand-uncle and you'll also be a great-great grand father??