41 - Temptation - Rating: PG

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It was exceedingly easy to get carried away when one was ruled by his emotions. It happened to Connor frequently. Maybe it was his sensitive musical nature, or the fact that he was raised by a race so different from his own, but it had always been that way. It didn’t usually have adverse effects; no one minded when the bard on stage got so emotionally involved in his own music. The problem however was trying not to give into the demands of his overactive id. Temptation was his biggest enemy.

It was temptation that had him eager to leave his hometown. Temptation that had him following the stranger, the wood elf, red-haired and mysterious, had him leaving home like he’d always wanted to, to explore everything beyond the tiny little town that was all we’d ever known.

Temptation led him to explore the pleasures of the flesh with no hesitation, had him yearning to learn, to touch, taste, sense, feel, anything and everything he could learn from Sadron Surion.

It had him acting without thinking making decisions that would later come back to haunt him, like dancing in the fair at Failmont, the dance that drew the unwanted and twisted attentions of Rhovanion Surion, Sadron’s own brother.

For a solid two months, temptation led Connor from one bad decision to another, and it was pure rationality that got him out of the hole he’d dug himself so deeply into.

And then temptation kicked in again. The temptation to help the stranger, the drow he saw on the roadside weeks later, while he was heading back home. The temptation to stay with him after rescuing him, to continue traveling rather than return home to a town full of I-told-you-so’s. The temptation to want to make the serious dark elf smile and laugh. And the temptation to teach him everything Connor had learned only months before.

This time, temptation led him right.