The Woman

At the heart of every story there is a conflict.  At the center of every great conflict there is a cause worth fighting for.  I find I am not prone to the machinations of others.  I am rarely a follower by belief.  Perhaps all men say this before they truly realize how far they have been manipulated in their path.  However in spite of such a truth I believe my path to be my own and therefore my travails are my own.  In my youth I fought in many battles, for reasons both fallacious and true.  It is easy to be an idealist when you are young.  Every outrage to be met with force. Now I find that there are few things in this world that I allow to stir my sympathies.  A weakness to some, a trait I have long heralded as a strength.  There is none who can have leverage over me.  I will not be manipulated.  I will not be threatened.  I will scorch the earth beneath me rather than yield.  I had thought no cause was worth my soul.

The Woman
How many great men have been undone by the affections of a woman?  So many that it is a truth.  A hard logical fact that underpins this world.  Whatever your ambitions, whatever your path, when you start down that road, you will end up somewhere completely different.  I am weak, as men frequently are in these matters, but I like to think it took an extraordinary woman to break me.  It's not simply a matter of beauty, of which she possess more than her fair share.  Nor can I attribute it only to her brilliance.  Trained as a Mage in their arcane sigils and numbers, ideas and theories the like of which I have no hope of deciphering, she has turned to alchemy now in an attempt to fuse her previous training with that of the natural world.  While I very much enjoy having someone of a similar background for lively discourse, it is her spirit that draws me in.   Much as a moth to a flame, it is an unquenchable fire that will surely burn me and yet I can't turn away.  She shrugs off her hardships with a smile, her gaze is both commanding and reassuring in one pass.  The wits of a mage, the resolve of a warrior, she is an army in herself.  Traits that have won her many friends but have also gained her powerful enemies.  Enemies we now share.  A few among those that I once counted as companions.