Later that night in my dormitory room, I sit alone, thinking about what happened today. I remembered how I felt myself freeze over inside, and how I wished for blood loss to judge the mercenary’s fate, specters of the exact kind of thing I wanted to escape; it was a part of me that I didn’t want to see again.

  I went to splash water on my face-maybe that would calm my nerves. I pull my head up and I look in the mirror, and find something behind me. The figure looked like Lariat, but it unmistakably had my own eyes. It didn’t speak, didn’t need to, because I know already what it was saying.

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  ‘You only did what had to be done. Weakness is not in your nature.’

  I sighed. “I know, but I’m not proud of it.”

  I walked back into my living room and sat down, caught between what had happened and how I felt about it. It was the exact same kind of feeling I had on the fateful night before I ran away to Halych, the feeling that opened the door to that terrifying part of me that I simply didn’t want to be reminded of, like the rest of my past. I can’t explain what it really is, except that it’s ruthless, cynical, and uncaring. In short, everything I didn’t really want to be.

  The question of how close it really was to my true nature was a question that grated at me, so I decided to drink some Black Flag to take the anxiety off-and hopefully just forget about what happened today. About half the bottle is gone before I finally go to sleep.