Challenge 24 Response (original) (raw)

Title: I to G on the way to Herrota
Author: smeddley
Challenge #: Challenge 24
Rating: G

I really wish it hadn’t come to this. Just ask anyone - I didn’t have a choice. Killing him was the last resort; it saved other lives at the cost of one. Lives that had been entrusted to me. Me, a minor priestess in the lowest temple of the House of Illia. No one would talk about why I was chosen, but I knew. Out of the twenty of us that were available, I was the only one they thought could kill if need be. Perhaps that had been the only reason they had accepted me to begin with; I had been brash and outspoken. Quite the opposite of most of the prospective priestesses. Rather than give me the boot, though, they had not only accepted me, they had accelerated my training. Soon I was as proficient with a sword as I was with poison. They had groomed me to be an assassin. Used me, however you looked at it. Very well, I had danced as their puppet, but now my duty was discharged. We’d be in the next village by sundown. Xeronia would take over care of the initiates, and I’d sneak off to… You know, I don’t know where I’d go. Zero responsibility means I don’t have to make plans. A leaf on the wind, going wherever it blows me. Behind me are the days of ferreting out spies, foiling plots, and never again would I kill in the name of the House. Certainly I’d be able to find work. Didn’t every town need an apothecary or two? Every town I’d been to had needed one, it wasn’t training you could get most places and well-trained apothecaries were in short supply. Fortunate, then, that training as an assassin would have such practical purposes. Good could still come of my life, starting tomorrow…