Rancorr's Tales: Comeuppance, part 3

Rancorr's Tales
Comeuppance, Part 3.

My search for the Blood Chalice was not to be a short one. Though my thirst for revenge never waned, it was a long time before I found even the slightest piece of useful information. Many knew of the Blood Chalice, their skullduggerous exploits were no secret, but their whereabouts were. Some said their lair was deep in a wild forest, others thought it lay within the depths of a city's underworld, and some even said it was in the Abyss itself. There was no end to the rumours but little in the way of facts. All I really had to show for my search was a collection of hearsay, and a signet ring that once belonged to a member of the Blood Chalice.

Ten years.

It took ten years to find one little scrap of hard knowledge. In time I had learned many things, many -- skills. These things were all, in some way, tools for my personal campaign against the brigands who had taken my father from me. And I had sworn, ten years before, I would avenge his death. Then, my whole purpose for being, my reason for living, was shattered by one piece of welcome news.

He was alive.

He was alive! A man, who had traded with my father years before, told me he had seen him recently. I was dumbfounded. For an entire decade, I'd spoken to the spirit of my father, anguished over his death, and sworn an oath to avenge him. I had been angered at the events, then saddened, then forlorn, then motivated to seek out his killers and make them regret their actions. I would see them all die for killing my father. It drove me to live my life as I had for those long ten years. And now it was all different. My father was alive! It took me a few days to comprehend the change such knowledge had caused in me. For that time, I felt as though I'd been tossed in a violent sea of emotions. Eventually, I came to terms with the news, and pressed on.

My father's trading associate told me he'd last seen my father in the company of a man named Fenol, a year earlier, in the capital city of the Kingdom of Araxas -- Agothodaemon. So there it was; a name, a place and a time. I began my search anew, with a different goal. No longer would I avenge my father, instead I would save him. Yet some things did not change. I promised myself I would still see the Blood Chalice destroyed. And, I would still see that loathesome war ogre, Gruman, dead.

There was no turning back from that promise. I would ask no quarter, and I would give none. It was no longer within my capacity to forgive. All I had hungered for, searched for and fought for would be resolved -- in Agothodaemon...

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