[color=#1A1A3B][b][u][h1][sub][sub][sub]Farren[/sub][/sub][/sub][/h1][/u][/b][/color]		    almost missed a step as Ophelia’s response hit him and he blinked, finding his pace again in the moment immediately after–though he was in reality no less shaken. Perhaps it had been her tone, but no…no it was more than that. Farren’s brow knitted with concentration as he cast his gaze to the stone and occasional dirt of the road.

Ophelia was right…it could have been anybody and if it had been someone he’d known…cared for, would he still have done it? The hunter swallowed at that as the fact that he even had to consider the idea at all was telling in a way, even despite the fact that his mind rebelled at the thought. Surely he wouldn’t have…right? He knew that at least now he would not, but he was not the man he had been…though that man lived inside him, not like a spider in a living burrow, but like Farren had been constructed of his former self’s parts. Stitched together poorly, then the pieces joined by the heated frenzy of blood ministration, all melting together, muddying things.

Yet, before he could delve further, Gerlinde began to muse aloud. At first he listened, eyes still cast to ground as he kept pace with the others. As she went on, her words drew his eyes to her, though his frown remained. In a way her words made him feel better, if only barely, but despite them he couldn’t shake the sense that while they may no longer have been on strings, dancing to the will of unseen puppetmasters that still there was something guiding their actions beyond what they knew. [color=#1A1A3B][b]“Perhaps not…but we are still in this… [i]game[/i], pieces on someone else’s board…”[/b][/color] he hated saying it out loud, hated that it was likely true. It made his stomach turn, his blood boil, but he took a breath and calmed those instinctual reactions. That wasn’t what they needed right now, wasn’t really what he needed–though the bloodlust and rage and paranoia sometimes disabused him of that reality.

Farren straightened, though it was harder to tell with them jogging, and a steely look came into his azure eyes as he locked his gaze ahead of them–though his senses remained stretched to pick up any potential threats. [color=#1A1A3B][b]“No, you’re right Gerlinde. It doesn’t matter. The board might not be ours now, but this is not a game, not truly. Ego…and his ilk–enemies, allies, kin–they may see us as pieces to be maneuvered, but we can rebel, we can act against their designs, and I for one certainly intend to.”[/b][/color]

There was new vigor in his words and Farren seemed to believe them, a small smile touching his lips and the corners of his eyes. [color=#1A1A3B][b]“...we are not what we were, who we were, and we have all lost something in getting where we are now. Yet, the future remains for us to sculpt,”[/b][/color] he let those final words hang, falling silent as they jogged through the dark–moonlit streets of Yharnam, and he found that while he might not have fully believed those words when he began, that now he itched to make them fully true. He would bring them forth or he would die trying…then try again.

And again…and again.

Ego had broken him once, but a thing could only be warped or shattered so much.