Terror Povos: The Flight of Lithos

Lithos walked stoically into the darkness. Amergin and Archibald were still with Vinnie, still going to meet with Gorm, but he just couldn't. Not after... everything. 

He hadn't ever wanted to be the villain. He didn't want to now. He didn't know how to think of himself as the kind of person who would tell a demilich to go and murder a century of prisoners and guards just so that he and his family could finally get out of that damned prison. That wasn't who he was. 

Or at least, that wasn't who he was supposed to be. 

They'd tried so hard, too. The disease, the sick guards... it was supposed to be a bloodless escape. But Vinnie, who was supposed to be their contact on the inside, had withheld all but the smallest and most useless sorts of magical help, and since the sleep gas only affected certain areas there was no way out without fighting -- and killing. Their carefully-engineered escape had turned into a prison riot, and then a battle between them and the most powerful of the guards, and then between them and the warden, who was a ridiculously strong fighter for someone who should have been a useless administrator. Then, when the warden finally fallen, they still had to find out a way to get out past the rioting prisoners and the guards who manned the ballistae at the gate.

That was when Lithos had snapped, when he'd suggested to Vinnie the Demilich that he go use the Gas lever. They'd been framed and sent to this ridiculous prison; Vinnie -- and Gorm -- had set them up so there was no way to escape without killing people and further tarnishing their names. If there was no way to avoid becoming villains, Lithos had reasoned, they might as well just get on with it. 

And he had. 

And in the aftermath of all that death? Vinnie had taunted them with the knowledge that he'd been the one to murder the senator and get them sentenced to prison. He'd called Lithos a shitty wizard, and even though Lithos knew that he was young and inexperienced and nowhere near the level of mastery he aspired to... it still hurt. Not because Vinnie was right -- he was, but it was a stupid complaint to level at somebody who hadn't had the time to put in the work to be any better -- but because Vinnie was the only one in his life who'd ever really tried to build him up as a wizard. That accursed skull was the only one who'd ever tried to make Lithos feel better about being a wizard instead of a fighter, a goblin instead of a dwarf.

And the whole thing had been bullshit. He'd just been stringing Lithos along, and Lithos -- being an idiot -- had eaten it up. 

Vengeful? Defeated? Remorseful? Lost? Ashamed and furious at the same time? Lithos didn't know. All he knew was that Whisper and James had left in the night, vanished, and that he couldn't stay either. Not after all that. Master Windborne would repudiate him, and rightly so, if he knew that his student still lived. His parents would be heartbroken. His brothers and sisters... he'd driven them off, and made everything so much worse for them. 

No, there was nothing left for him back there. A new place, a new name... He'd watched Whisper and James leave, but he'd made no attempt to join them. Whisper's judgement hurt, and hurt more -- he thought -- for being correct. He was a fallen thing, a broken thing, a traitor to everything his parents had taught them. He didn't deserve to live, but he was going to do it anyway. Unless Whisper comes after me, or Vinnie does. If Whisper tries to kill me, in all fairness I'll just have to let him. If Vinnie tries to kill me... I won't be able to stop him. 

He knew, though, that Vinnie wouldn't come after him. He wasn't that important. He never had been. 

So he kept walking, not bothering to cover his trail, pack heavy upon his back.