Watched

I couldn’t take it anymore. The creeping fear, the encompassing paranoia, it was too much, overwhelming in its intensity. I needed to get out. I needed to talk to someone.

I needed Ida.

To say I scrambled out of my dorm like a wild animal would be an understatement. Put simply, I jumped at the ever so slight movement of my own shadow as the gaslight lamp in my room flickered precariously for a moment. Everything went downhill from there.

I dragged my set of armor out from the case underneath my bed, threw on my lightforged breastplate, hastily fastening the leather straps around my abdomen, over my school robes, before literally smashing through my wooden dorm door with a burst of holy power, shattering it into smoking splinters as I sprinted down the hallway, swinging my Truesilver champion (a longsword given to me by Tirion  himself) wildly as the blade burst into holy flames.

In hindsight, I think I might have overreacted.

Regardless, what’s done is done, and while I can’t say my actions were … appropriate, I can say that they were necessary. Indeed, while I was barreling down the halls of the academy in a paranoia induced frenzy, I smashed straight into something, sending me reeling backwards, my grasp on my sword slipping as the righteous flames surrounding the blade fizzled out.

I hit the ground with a terrible metallic clatter, getting tangled up in in the hastily fastened leather straps of my breastplate, and the flowing robe of my casual schoolwear. It took me a second to recover, but as I lifted myself off the ground, my vision still blurry and out of focus from the crash, I managed to catch a glimpse of something moving in the shadows off to my left.

It was only there for a moment, and my blurred vision didn’t make seeing it any easier, but I am one hundred percent certain I saw a shadowy silhouette shimmer and meld into the darkness. Even in my feverish, paranoid state, I knew exactly what was going on the moment I witnessed that smoky figure meld into the shadows.

I was being watched.

No wonder I had felt so schizophrenic the past few days; I was being observed by a rogue the entire time. I was in no rush to get after him, or her perhaps, though. There was no use in trying to chase down a rogue after they had vanished into thin air – very few people had the preternatural ability to detect them, and even if you could track them, it was more often than not a dangerous waste of time that would end with a set of daggers in your back.

I’d known of the enchanted cloaks and mastery of shadow magic rogues possessed allowing them to hide in plain sight, but never in all my life, even during a brief skirmish in Northrend where I was forced to confront one in single combat, had I ever felt this kind of creeping madness, this gnawing feeling of doubt and fear.

Something else had to be at play here. I hate when I have to make myself out to be somehow better than others, but paladins, by their very nature and through the kinds of training we endure, are more sturdy of mind than most others.

Its true, mages, priests, and even warlocks tend to possess the capacity for greater mental acuteness, pushing the boundaries of what is possible within the realms of the mind; but while their minds are like great, looming towers, reaching up into the heavens to pierce the sky, the minds of paladins are more akin to sprawling, impregnable fortresses. One of the many mantras of us paladins is as follows.

An open mind is like a fortress with it’s gate unbarred, and unguarded.

In this regard, it’s very apparent to me now that I had failed in keeping my mind secure, allowing these terrible, crippling thoughts to seep in. At the time, in my still deluded state, I couldn’t help but think of this mantra.

As I got up from the floor, rubbing my eyes to try and make sure I was seeing things correctly, my mind wandered back to Ida, and now, instead of being overjoyed at the thought of talking to her, I was now much more apathetic about it.

The sentiment didn’t last very long. The more I mulled on what was happening to me, the more I thought about the mantra I had learned and repeated so many times over the course of my life, the more I realized that it might be Ida’s fault.

I had opened up my mind to the idea that warlocks were good people too, against everything I’d been taught to believe, and in opening up my mind to such an idea, I’d allowed other, more heinous thoughts to cloud my judgement.

At the same time, I really did believe Ida’s heart was in the right place, even if her methods were less than socially acceptable. As I recovered from my stupor, gathering up my extinguished sword and readjusting my crooked breastplate, I pressed on decisively towards Ida’s quarters. I didn’t know if I was angry at her, didn’t know if I wanted to hug her or reprimand her for compromising my mental integrity, but one thing was clear.

We needed to have a talk.