>>5727557You narrow your eyes. A very real part of you wants to reject this false dichotomy. You are the DRAGONBORN ANTIPALADIN! Surely by now you have proven that there is not reason you need to choose between victory and love? With true, virtuous, draconic GREED, you can seize and hold onto both, Dark Gods be damned!
…But no. No, this is obviously some test of worth from the Dark Divines, upon whose patronage and support you have so often relied. They fear you have gone soft and forgotten the True Faith. Well, you haven’t, and you’ll prove it!
“Victory,” you reply, “is my destiny.”
After all, what good is love in a state of loss? It is the strong, the victorious, who make the future. A New Age of Darkness can BE an Ahe of Love—you can MAKE it so! But first, and foremost, you must WIN. Victory, then, for your family and for your people.
“A good choice,” the Mother of Dragons says approvingly, laughing asynchronously in three voices—a chuckle, a rattle, and a chirrup.
“A curious choice,” notes the Master of the Insightful Eye.
“The ONLY choice!” asserts the Serpent Ascendant.
“Your mother’s choice,” the Lord of Endings notes.
You feel a chill pass through you, as the smoke swirls rapidly about the room, and the darkness which has enveloped you and hidden the bed and mirror seems to collapse in one itself, and upon you. You shut your eyes involuntarily, a flinch, and when you open them the Dark Gods are gone—except one, the flickering silhouette of a winged serpent in the flickering embers of the candle. Your patron.
“I am proud of the WISE decision which you made,” The God of Glory commends you, ‘as you should be. Youa re still a KNIGHT ASCENDANT, even if I had my doubts of your fealty to the RIGHTEOUS CAUSE.”
You bow your head low, and hold your tongue.
“Prince Rufos is hidden,” your Dark God tells you then, “retreated and sequestered, like the COWARD he is, in a naval fort, with his most loyal guards and with a Paladin of the Sacred Order.”
