Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-24736819-20141208164428/@comment-5583506-20150104220417

As another troop of foolish Apprentices and guards met their fate, she saw a silhouette slowly emerging amidst the chaos and destruction.

"Kashmira!"

A familiar voice echoed from beyond the hallways. She froze up. It was her old Master.

Ran'Jinro...

He looked more grizzled and fragile than he had ever done before in his entire life. At first she had expected his expression to be twisted in a grimace of anger and hate for what she had done, but instead she only saw what looked to be an expression of sadness and sympathy.

She gave him a cruel smile. "I have come home, Master."

"I am not your Master anymore, Kashmira", he replied somberly. "You seem to be your own Master now."

"That's right! The Vul have given me more power than what this place could ever teach me."

Ran'Jinro looked around at the massacre. "But this place taught you not to lay your hands on innocents, Kashmira."

"Innocents?!" she spat. "There are no innocents in this place! When I was brought up here as a girl people despised me! And for what reason?! For being my father's daughter?! Did I deserve to punished for that?! They talked shit behind my back! They treated me as I was nothing but a pile of dust. I trained so hard to prove them wrong! I trained until my knuckles started bleeding! I trained day and night until I forgot what it meant to have a childhood! I trained to become something they all believed I couldn't be, just to show them! But no one so much as ever payed any heed to me or the fact that I was the most devoted of us all! I used to believe that the Jun could do good, but I was met with disappointment time after time!"

Ran'Jinro couldn't help but feel sorry for her. He knew that what she said was true. She had been pushed to do this. It was indeed the Jun who had "created" this monster.

"When my father was betrayed and murdered in cold blood by one of our own, no one as much as raised a finger. Instead they all talked about how surprising it was to see that it was Gregorius who had killed him and not me! Can you imagine what it feels like to hear something like that coming from the very people you are supposed to call your friends and allies?"

He swallowed. She was winning this argument. He could only speak for himself and not for those who actually had been wrong.

"And when you replaced my father as my trainer and Master you knew!" she said angrily and pointed at him. "You knew that I was ready to become a Master, already at an early age! You saw my true potential! My skills! But when I was denied by the other Masters, what did you do, Ran'Jinro?! What did you do?!"

He was about to speak, but couldn't find the words for it.

"Nothing!" she filled in. "You did nothing! You always agreed to what all the other Masters said! Never an original opinion in your entire life!"

"That's not true!" he growled and slammed his sword so hard into the ground that the marble cracked.

She looked surprised to see his reaction... and his remarkable strength...

He sighed and began talking slowly. "When your father... was betrayed... the council wanted to put you on an orphanage. They deemed that you wouldn't be able to cope with your father's death and therefore saw it unfit that you should stay here with us. That's when I... spoke against it."

Kashmira slowly lowered her guard.

"I... tried... to raise you as Rashka should have raised you. Not with hard training and words of honour and glory, but with heart and fatherly feelings." He cried. "It breaks my heart to see you like this, Kashmira. It saddens me because I know now that you are not to blame for... this", he said and made a gesture to the massacre. "I am. I am to blame because I was too blind to see what life within the Sanctum would finally drive you to do."

"Keep your tears", hissed Kashmira. "I don't need anymore of them in my life. I have shed enough for my own sake. I don't need anyone else to weep for me."

"Right now, I am weeping for my own sake", said Ran'Jinro as he took a steady breath.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Because now I must destroy the girl I love as much as I would have my own daughter."

And with those words he came at her in mid-air with his sword raised...