<div class="floatleft">(http://www.dfwd20.com/photopost/data/522/medium/Human_Fighter1.jpg)</div><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: edwardian;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 2.65em;">Alfreic Slate, Soldier</span></span><br/><em>With Ms. Windower and Anna, a distressed woman; HP 18 (Current 14)</em><br/></strong><hr/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote from: faeylin</div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">"Look! Look what they've done to me, Alfreic," cried the girl, ever-so-vulnerable. "I can still feel them, inside of me. I'm still slick and dirty with their predation. Save me. Save her. Save us both, my love, and make this all...all of it, go away. But you musn't let her go to live with her shame. It cannot be!" she pleaded with him.</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>Alfreic withstood the abuse, his countenance unwavering in its depiction of a singular emotion:  emptiness.  He withstood Ms. Windower's physical manifestations and her haunting deprivations.  He withstood the anguish that irony wrought.  Ms. Windower, lying before him, attempting to stir within him that same feeling he felt on that particular day.<br/><br/>"No," he said finally.   "It cannot be."<br/><br/>He lowered his eyes to the ground and hung his head in shame, kneeling there with a sense of forlorn.  Then he said it, with tears watering down his eyes, his hands wrought like twisted iron, as his anguish overtook him.<br/><br/>"I am so sorry, Colleen.  I am so sorry.  Please, forgive me, Colleen.  I shouldn't have..."<br/><br/>He glanced up into the clouds, and then looked down, to find himself transferred a million years ago, into the body of a younger self.  He had been ravaged by battle, and he  knelt beside a familiar figure.  Colleen Windower held unto his wrists as she died by suffocation, his own hands wrapped around that slender throat.  Oh, how he lamented during Colleen's last seconds.  How he hated what needed to be done...<br/><br/>It had been what Alfreic thought Colleen wanted.