Tarnished Rose - Part One

Observations


They say I'm not much like my old self, these days. Well I'm damned if I care for what they think of me, now or then. When you've seen the things that I have...there's something wrong with you if you haven't changed.

It was the damned curiosity that did it for me, you know. Huh, I guess you could call it a stereotype, but I poked my nose in one too many places, and these days I consider myself lucky to still have the thing attached to my face. War and death changes you; makes you hard, makes you tough. And we need to be tough, because those battles aren't going away for a long time.

My first battle was on the Tarnished Coast. The undead were massing along the shore, and we fought them back. I'd seen fighting before, many times in fact, but this was my first time up close; my first time claiming lives. The cut and thrust of their onslaught was brutal, or so the others said, but I was more curious, you might say. These creatures were not alive, not sentient, and their borrowed bodies made interesting sounds as the combatants shot and hit and mauled them to a final oblivion.

It was the aftermath that was hard, really. Most of the remains were indeed undead, but people had fallen on the field as well, and there they lay, the life gone from them. Some had eyes closed, others eyes open, but all had a look of horror upon their faces, one which echoed in my mind for many weeks. But as I say, I was different then. Weaker, I suppose.

I get some strange looks now and then, too. Mostly from the people who shake their heads and tell me I've changed. Well, once you've changed there's no going back, so I don't see why they keep going on about it. And so what if I smoke, and drink, and take risks? There's nothing like that big hit when you pull off something big, something risky, and for a moment, you feel something good.

But those people don't see that. They just see me sat in the corner of whatever dive I've rolled up at, my boots all dusty and my trousers worn. They see the guns at my hips and the long leather coat at my back and well. I guess I just don't fit the picture someone put in their head of what a sylvari should look like. Because you know, they sure don't give the other hard folk sitting nearby the same kind of look as they give me.

And you know, sometimes I get tired of it all, of all the standards and expectations these people have of each other when out there they all die just the same. A bullet to the head and they'll drop, be they flesh or plant. Maybe you just have to see the bodies on the pyre a few more times, and look at the ashes left behind. Because when all's said and done, when we're gone, that's all that's left these days. Dust, not too different to the stuff on my heel.