Today, the council removed Kellan Andrews from troubleshooter duties. The frantic expression that crossed his face concerns me, but I'm more fearful of what would happen if he remained active. We'd hoped that since he'd refused help, he'd work his way through this on his own, however, that didn't happen. Worse, he's taken dangerous risks with his life on many of his assignments. We can no longer enable his death wish.
As council leader, I've access to information that most do not and I've read and re-read the decision of the ceannards that placed Kel as a troubleshooter. It wasn't an easy choice for them. With his high scores on empathy and healing talent, he could have been a formidable healer.
The difficulty was that not only is he magically strong, he also scored high in the talents required to be a troubleshooter, and the Gineal have plenty of healers. I've perused the transcripts of the debate, understood the arguments for each side in the discussion, but at the end of the day, it came down to numbers. We needed troubleshooters. We still need troubleshooters. I can't help but wonder, though, how different Kel's life might have been had the earlier council decided he should be a healer.
It might not have mattered at all.
What happened had nothing to do with his job, with any assignment, and might easily have occurred anyway. The only thing that would have been different was Kellan wouldn't have been able to dare fate. But still, would it have affected him as strongly if he was a healer?
Now, all I can do is wait. And hope he can come around. If the council has read the portents right, we'll need him at full strength. We'll need all our troubleshooters at full strength. I pray we're wrong.
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In the Darkest Night releases March 30th! To find out more, visit the Darkest Night Page.
