Forgive Me

Katheryne,

I hope this note finds you well. Further, I truly hope that my sudden disappearance has not left you in need of a properly brutish figure for your nightly services to the Cat Goddess…

Ok, sorry, I can’t butter you up like this and it is below us for me to prevaricate. I was there when they brought you in, eight years old and terrified about what would be expected of you. Like every other street kid you’d heard terrible stories about Kat’s Dungeon and the monstrous troll that they kept there.

I remember how terrified you were of me when I’d first appeared in the entryway, hunched over double just so I would fit.

Do you still remember that day? I understand if you don’t considering that you still went by your birth name at that point, and the previous Katharyne hadn’t given you your working name yet. She hadn’t even started grooming you to take over at that point. Thirty years seems like such a long time to a young human, but it was barely a flash for me.

I remind you of where you came from, not for sympathy, because it is a tool like any other we wield in our jobs. I remind you because I want you to remember that little girl I comforted when events out of her control brought her into my circle.

Keep that little girl in your mind while you read my following statements.

When a goddess, even if it isn’t your own, appears and tells you to stick your hand in a fire, you do so. Bennu did that to me just hours ago. Even now, I don’t fully know why she did it, since she would not answer any of my questions, though I assume I have been called to CrIsis. Yes, _that_ CrIsis.

Don’t get me wrong, Kat. I am honored to be chosen of the gods, but I’d always assumed, working in one of Bast’s places of worship, that I was already chosen of the gods. And before you ask, yes, that Priest is still here. I can’t believe I’m going to have to play nice with him while the entire time I’m going to be thinking of the long conversations we’ve had about him over a bottle of wine. I’m sure that he can’t be as bad as the books have made him seem, but I’m going to have to play a role the entire time I’m with them.

I’m afraid.

Not for myself, of course, but for everyone in this world. Recently CrIsis has been going through heroes at a prodigious rate, and it terrifies me that such a fragile group should be tasked with the future of Palladium. I don’t fear death. I will stand tall in the light and push back the darkness.

So, back to the reason that I am sending this. Rainbows and ponies and such…

If you could delay sending out a notice of escape on me for a while, I would very much appreciate it. I’m not really a runaway slave. I never chose to leave the dungeon. If you could second me out to Xer’xses, you know, loan me to him as a personal slave, then it would solve a lot of problems. I’d like to be able to show my face in the Empire without a slave chaser slapping me in irons and dragging me back to Caer Itom.

Yours in life,
Grignak

Image from Misguided