[phantax]

'I reached out for your sun, blinded by expectation,

Only to recognize the falsehoods of believing

in the light when it's storming'

--

Among the rubble of the House of Wonders a chest is pulled. Two workers promised pay to retrieve it do as they were bid, and soon it arrives in a far more secure location. The men are given their coin and sent off on their way while the recipient takes the small box up to her room. There she brushes the ash off of it, and with careful hands, she opens the box. Within are her letters, those that have yet to be sent and those that she has received. They are counted once, then twice, for she couldn't abide the chance that she might have lost one. Once she is certain they are all there, a new letter is drafted and soon to be sealed with the same mark as all of the others; a black wax V that bears the promise that the message will only be read by a single individual.


Dear Father,

I have played my first hand. Despite all that happened, I found myself shaking afterward. I couldn't quite understand why. I think you would say it was a weakness to find something that actually made me... pause? I wasn't nervous, never, nor was I afraid. It could have been the excitement at seeing the plan come together, but then again, something didn't feel quite right. There was a failure, a part that went wrong. You told me to plan for such things, you said that nothing will ever truly follow some organized list of events and outcomes. You always reminded me that it did not matter how, it only mattered that at the end my enemies were dead.

Well they are, quite a few of them at least, but I don't think they knew they were my enemies. As I write this, I believe that has something to do with these trembling hands. I so despise my days of wearing a mask. I despise the days of lying and hiding. You never had to hide, YOU never had to play nice with politicians. Luckily I believe such a time is coming to an end.

Our attack must have cost us our cover, but I don't see that as an expense that will be missed. Instead, new opportunities have come before me. Doors soon to be opened beckon me forward, and so I will continue on to find what I've ventured this far to discover within myself. There are secrets here I intend to unearth and power that I will come to understand.

They can run to the edge of their shores or into the peaks of their mountains,
I know that the hunt only ends when we decide it's over.

Your sunshine,
VV