Editing Game-Summaries:7/27/2018 Recollections (section)

==Recollections by Ci==

I am sure, my dear friend will have, by now, regaled us all with the tale of the defeat of his nemesis, but I find myself quite unbalanced by my experience on this quest. I find I must get my own thoughts down on parchment to try to regain some harmony. I had answered our Paladin's call for assistance (though he would never admit needing it) without hesitation. Indeed I had not bothered to inquire about our final destination. As the days wore on, I was surprised to find us on much the same way that I had traveled on my road from the [[Temple of Shan Sua]] to [[Solace]]. I could hear my friend's florid descriptions of the bitter loss of the rest his squad so many years ago, but I found it hard to concentrate on his words. I was lost in my own reveries of my first trip down from the mountains so many months ago, and then of the even more distant memories of my first trip into those same mountains in the arms of a kindly Monk.... with such meditations, some pleasant and some less so, the trip passed quite quickly, and before I knew it we found ourselves at the very lair of the beast my friend had sought for so long. The sheer scale of the signs we could find of the creature, sobered us all. This creature was obviously vast and powerful. 

With blind confidence as our example, however, we steeled our will for what was sure to be a desperate fight. We were not disappointed. The beast first chose to  show us its talent for cunning and deceit, however. As we moved through it's lair we found we must face simulacrum, not only of my friend's long dead squad, but also of our very selves. And these copies were not mere empty shells, however. They had the memories, and the seeming emotions of the originals. None of us were completely unaffected by these shadows, but we managed to persevere. We also began to hear the voice of the beast in our heads... taunting us with knowledge it could not have, and promises it could not possibly keep. It alluded to recognizing not only my friend and survivor, but also another member of our party. Not for one moment, even with my mind so recently pondering the vague memories of my own terrible night, did I imagine it could mean me. And yet, as we neared what must be the location of the beast's deep lair, I was beset with a sight out both my wildest dreams, and my darkest nightmares... My parents. Of the night I lost my parents, I had not yet spoken to any of my companions. Indeed even faced with the abomination of their living forms before me, I found it difficult to do so. I must have some memory of Tomas and Annika Aarden in this life, for I recognized them immediately. The forms before me, however, are not the ones that visit me in my dreams and meditations. What I remember as clearly as the day I experienced it almost 20 years ago, is the sight my parents bodies, broken and lifeless, torn asunder and cast aside almost as if by casual afterthought. Yet here before me were the very image of my mother and father, hale and healthy and speaking a name I had not heard in many many years... Jan. 

I knew it to be my name, though it felt strange and foreign to my ear. I had chosen the name Ci when I was finally accepted to monastery as an Apprentice, after 7 years a Novice. I had chosen the name they had jeered me with - Ci means "Angry" in the tongue of [[Yanji]] - but for its other meaning. A meaning I had earned by defeating all those who had once jeered me. A meaning earned by the long practice, and the stings and cuts I brought my tormentors. A meaning bought with dedication and pain that led to superior mastery of fist, and spear, and bow. You see, in the words of [[Yanji|The Study]], Ci also means "Sharp Thorn." And so I had become a dangerous protector of beauty and good... a thing to strike at anyone who would seek to mar that beauty... a weapon of nature, and at one with it... a thing of pain for those who would do harm.

And so on that day... at the young age of 12, Jan was dead, and Ci was born. And so I have been on every day since. And yet... to hear my old name... in the voice of my mother... from the very image of her own mouth. I must admit that my soul was not "the calm still lake" of [[Yanji|The Study]], but a seething tempest of emotions. In that maelstrom however one thought crystallized - my brother. If this beast knew my parents forms, their being, indeed seemingly even their thoughts - it might know my brother's fate. He was not there on that morning I awoke to find my parents slaughtered. I have no memory of the night before, and no idea what befell him. Though my memories of him are even dimmer than those of my parents, I have always felt the loss of him as I imagine the loss of a limb - sometimes I can almost feel him near me, and others I feel the absence of him so keenly it brings me to weep. If this thing could help me find him...

But it was not so. These shadows were meant only to deceive and to torture, not to enlighten. I was forced by this thing to witness my parents broken bodies a second time... only now, by a fate too cruel to be fiction, they lay broken by my own hand. This beast would pay for this violation... for the sacrilege of both my friend's memories and mine. In truth, I remember little of the fight with the thing itself. I have a memory of white hot fury burning at my center... of a sense of the enormity of the beast... a memory of falling and rising again... and finally a memory of the slain thing, now pitiful and impotent despite its bulk. 

In fact it is that memory on which I now ponder. [[Yanji]] teaches us that all life has meaning. That all life has value. The fact that I feel more satisfaction at its death than in its life, would shock my masters. [[Master Fēng]] perhaps would understand... I will have to speak to him of this to understand what this might mean. I spent the rest of our journey pondering this question. Indeed I may spend a great deal more time trying to answer it.