[Story] Inquisitor Island
Lyral stood tall for his age, a young Quel'dorei boy with an olive complexion, glowing blue eyes, and shoulder length silken black hair with a sheen almost iridescent. He frequently wore his brows in a furrow, his shoulders tense, and carried his little fists balled at his sides. He tried to be happy like his peers but it was difficult with trouble at home.
His mother had a temper problem. She got angry with his father and at Lyral; she yelled at him, "You were a mistake!" He cried. Lyral was an accidental pregnancy and his mother planned to give him away, but his father would not have it. Lyral's father wanted him, not his mother, and his father was kind where his mother was cold and showed the boy a distinct lack of love.
One day, Lyral's father had enough of Lyral's mother and left. Lyral's mother told him that his dad was away on business for a few days. Days turned into months and Lyral sobbed and became a hermit in his room. Lyral's father did return to collect Lyral, but the boy's mother turned him away. They fought a legal battle and his mother won. Lyral never knew.
To Lyral, his mother lied, said he'd return and he never did. The boy's life was full of lies and devoid of nurture and kindness that a healthy child experiences, he was very much alone inside even if he was not physically alone. Still, he had shelter, and food, and the things that children have outside of parental warmth. He was broken.
Soon, Lyral's mother found a new man and this man became Lyral's stepfather. Life went from bad to worse as Lyral's stepfather was an alcoholic, he enjoyed drugs, both thistle and harder substances. His mother indulged as well, and sometimes they would fight even more often than she had fought with his real dad. Their finances dwindled and they suffered hardships. Lyral's family stopped paying for his schooling, there was not always enough food to eat, or enough fuel for the fire. Lyral spent many a night hungry and cold.
Years passed, a tall and lithe teenaged Lyral, with little education and no hope of gainful employment ran away from home and did the only thing he could—he joined the clergy. The teenager was envious of his peers, who continued with their education when he could not, he was angry with his parents; he had met enough other people in his life to know that what happened to him was not normal or healthy. The young man cast off his surname and replaced it with the surname Sunfall.
The teenager transmuted his rage, his sadness, and his jealousy into ambition. He thrived among the clergy; he became a voracious reader with a broad range of interests, which he researched on his own outside of his education. The books were his friends, they would never yell at him, leave him, or lie to him. He took comfort in their leather-bound pages. He really only had one possession—his mind.
As he entered full adulthood, Lyral was an attractive young man; his raven-like black hair reached the small of his back. He'd gained reputation of a good honest hard working man, an intelligent man free of vices and a gifted empath. He was an eligible bachelor, someone who would go places in life, thus people attempted to court the priest. While he knew they were trying, he felt no attraction to any of them. He let them down gently, buried himself in his studies, and became a trainee among the Inquisition—mind priests that deal with criminals and bring justice.
One day, years later he used his Inquisition clearances to access citizen records and looked up what became of his father, the only one who had shown him love during his childhood, the one who abandoned him and left a gaping wound in his heart. Maybe his dad missed him too. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Lyral discovered the records center in the spire and from that, that his father lived in the city.
Lyral went to observe his dad from afar. He learned his father remarried a lovely blonde woman and had three happy adult children and two younger children that all lived in a large house with a courtyard in the city. Lyral watched his dad show them a warmth that Lyral only saw a fraction of in his youth, he watched them have a relationship with his father that he himself only ever had a fraction of. Lyral felt a burning jealous disdain for the children because he could see they had something that he did not, something he only had in his dreams, their parents, this woman and his father, actually loved them whole-heartedly. His empathic abilities made it so he could feel how happy they were and amplified it a hundred fold and it made himself awful. His own emotions threatened to tear him apart so Lyral focused at numbing the pain; he gave up on ever talking to his father and on having a relationship with him again. He returned to his studies.
When the Scourge came, Lyral did the right thing and went to his father’s house to try to save them. Even if his father replaced him, even if his father did not want him, the man was still his father, and those other children were his half-siblings. Lyral found one living survivor, a fifth child, a blonde talkative teenage girl who he took to safety. Lyral detested this girl and wanted to leave her with other survivors of the zombie apocalypse, but the girl saw how much Lyral resembled her father. She knew, so she refused to let him leave without her; she called him brother, and every time she did, it stung the Inquisitor's heart. He gave in and let her travel with him.
He traveled on foot to his mother's estate and, much to his dismay, the wrought iron fencing around the dilapidated building still stood strong against the ravaging undead. Lyral found that his mother was still alive, she and his stepfather stood just beyond the gate. They'd had dispatched the few Scourge that made it to the gate of the remote estate, which lie well off the beaten path. The argument raged at the open gates as Lyral and the girl approached. A loud bang rang from the gates.
Lyral burst broke into a run and found his stepfather over his mom’s body with a rifle. His stepfather aimed the weapon at Lyral but the priest threw up a shield. Protected, he entered his stepfather's mind, with utmost brutality, ripped his stepfather's mind apart. In a matter of seconds, Lyral reduced the man to a pathetic gibbering ball of elf on the ground.
Lyral's half-sister ran up just in time to see Lyral take the gun from his stepfather and shoot it repeatedly into his stepfather's head at point-blank range, in cold blood. She looked upon Lyral with absolute horror as he left the scene. She hesitated but followed him and remained at his side even after what she had seen because he was the only thing she had left, but she was terrified of him and he knew it.
Lyral knew that loose lips sink ships, and that his half-sister could tell someone about him murdering his stepfather. Lyral also knew that he could never truly love or care for his little half-sister of his. He decided it would be best if she did not remember any of it, so while she slept, Lyral entered her mind and destroyed her memories of that night and of him. Remorseful, he picked her up and delivered her to other survivors capable of caring for her.
As Quel'thalas recovered and life returned to some vague semblance of normal, Lyral became his half-sister's mysterious anonymous benefactor. Lyral assured she had food, shelter, and education while he kept his distance, he could not love her, but, she was now alone like he was, and he could give her better than what he had.
One day his half-sister disappeared without a trace. Peacekeepers found her body several years later in the apartment of a dead elderly magister, frozen by a stasis spell after having undergone a transformation into a creature not quite elven anymore—with blue skin, horns, and golden plumed wings. She had been brutalized, bruised, beaten, and broken, then frozen in stasis in lieu of receiving much needed medical attention. When released from the spell, her body died. Those that discovered her did not try a resurrection spell. Who would want to revive a monster? In reality, no amount of resuscitation could have brought her back, her soul left her body a long ago, and her suffering had ended.
In the end, Lyral gave her everything but the one thing she needed, the protection of another person in her life. He blamed himself. Completely numb, he buried his memories of the scene, of her, and his own emotions deep within himself, feeling only the emotions of others, which he used to read people as an Inquisitor.
As the years went by, he gained many promotions and clearances, a levelheaded pragmatist with no emotions, no attractions, no love, and no vices he became a high-ranking Inquisitor. He is a man with a deep sense of justice, a need to do the right thing always, with a desire to protect the innocents or avenge them if nothing else.
Lyral became an island.