My name is Morchandir and I’m the World’s Darkest Assassin.
Or I will be, one day.
I should lead off by saying this isn’t how I write and not really how I speak, as a rule. I didn’t get a proper education as a child and my reading and writing isn’t what you would call scholarly. I do have old friends who are scholars, however, who can put these into proper words. Ásný and Reginn are the two married scholars who raised me. I owe them more than I could ever possibly repay.
You see, this shouldn’t have been my life. I shouldn’t still be a burglar and murderer for hire. Morchandir isn’t my real name. My father was a Gondorian soldier and my mother was his beautiful wife. He died when I was around five or six, that I remember, and my mother had to choose between herself and me when times got rough. She chose herself after we moved from our farmstead and left me to the street. I grew up learning to survive that way until I could hide on a caravan heading out of the city. They found me, of course, but at least I jumped from one caravan to another until I could reach Lake-town. I know I was lucky that I never encountered anyone cruel enough to send a child into the wilderness along the way.
Lake-town was and is full of what might be considered less desirables. Or the people I fell in with were, at least. I knew I couldn’t live as a thief forever, though. I wanted something better for myself that didn’t consist of wondering where my next meal might come from. Unfortunately, I knew how to defend myself well and brutally, which caught the wrong attention. It let me learn to fight, though, and to wield weapons so that I didn’t wind up dead in a canal like other people I knew. I was eight when I first met Ásný and Reginn, Dalemen living in Lake-town, but it took another four years before they tamed me so that I could live with them all the time. They are the reason I can read and write as well as I do, though it’s nothing to brag about. They made me start dreaming of a normal life as a husband and father working in a job that didn’t threaten the law.
I suppose I was set for an apprenticeship somewhere once I grew into my gangly limbs. There would be no growing into my nose, though, and every other child my age never let me forget how hideous it made me. I didn’t have the makings of a scholar or a tailor, but I had options: farming, smithing, prospecting, even guarding work. Reginn knew some of the guards in Dale and sent me off to apprentice with them when I was fourteen. Bard’s men. “Learn well and strive to become a member of his guard,” Ásný told me the day I left. “It’s a land of plenty, now, and you won’t want for anything once you’ve established yourself as a captain.” I didn’t know if I wanted that route, though. Memories of my father’s death haunted me while I trained, and I found I wasn’t the best at taking orders snapped at me. But if I wanted that normal life, I would have to endure it until I was the one snapping orders and making better pay as an officer.
I was sixteen when I saw her, a cousin of one of the guardsmen training with me, come in from the countryside. Linhilde, the prettiest thing I remember having ever seen in my life. So pretty, in fact, that she had several suitors in the guard, including the lieutenant training me. Anyone doing so came under his scrutiny, bullied to the point of relenting on their claim, but that didn’t faze me the way he wanted. I courted her for a good two years before she chose me. By doing so, for reasons I still don’t understand, she sealed my fate. The lieutenant threw me out of the training before I could move past page status as a full soldier. I had no choice: I could either work as a caravan guard or go back to my work as a thief to support my new wife. When Linhilde told me she was carrying our first child soon after, I went for the safer job. Thieving might net me the occasional windfall, but most of the time, it couldn’t support me, let alone a family. I found, too, that I wanted to be more than a criminal in my future child’s eyes.
The job kept me away for long periods, but Linhilde always met me with joy when I returned. She grew rounder each time I saw her. When the midwife said that Linhilde would bear my first child within a fortnight, I made sure to stay home so that I would be there. I got to hold my son, Leith, and look into his angry little face after the midwives had cleaned him and tended to my wife. He calmed when I held him and only fussed in his mother’s arms so long as he wasn’t nursing. Leith isn’t a Dalish name, but it’s based in Dalish naming convention and takes my own birth-name into consideration. Once Linhilde could walk, I took a short guarding job that kept me away for a fortnight. I looked forward to my return home.
I found the house empty, the hearth cold, and a note from my wife that stated a local lordling had taken an interest in her. He offered her more than I ever could. She had left Leith on the neighbor’s doorstep if I wanted him, because she never had and wouldn’t be back for him. He wasn’t even a month old. I collected him in a panic without any idea of how to care for him and work at the same time.
I sold my home, packed things I wanted and needed, and took a wagon back to Lake-town. The only ones I knew who might help were Reginn and Ásný, and they offered their home to my son so that he could have a life that wouldn’t be like my own. He’s grown up educated, so far, and I return to him when I can. I don’t tell him what I do, but I had to go back to my old life. Guarding merchant caravans leaving and passing through Lake-town dried up once my one-time wife’s new lover found out that was how I made my money. Erasing me, and our son, from existence would only make Lindhilde happy to be with him. I swore my vengeance and swore that if I had to live this way, I would become the greatest burglar and assassin in the world to spite them. Leith allows me to keep some scrap of humanity and morality. I bring money to Reginn and Ásný to help with his upkeep whenever possible and bring little trinkets to my son from my travels. He’s always happy to see me and so are his guardians. They’re the only ones who seem to be. So be it. The three of them are the only ones whose opinions about me matter.
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