The Vagrant's Tale - Ch. 11

“It’s over, Stalson; we’ve given unto that godless butcher from hell all that he was owed, and more! Our homeland is safe once again - so don’t worry yourself anymore, my friend. All you have need of focusing upon now is resting until we can summon a replacement physician to help aid you in getting properly back to your feet.”

“Oh, Jysalef, don’t be such an ignorant fool like that! It really does not suit you at all to delude yourself with such a naïve farce, especially when you know full well that it would matter not - with wounds like these - even if our company’s physician had not fallen previously.”

“But, Stalson, surely so long as you do not give up on faith we can…”

“Jysalef, for once in your life, just shut firmly that mouth of yours; I am not long to remain upon the world of Theria, and we both are very aware it! Listen to me well, this world has not once been a peaceful place since the day I was born into it from my mother, and I truly do not see it becoming one within our children’s lifetime either. Therefore, you must promise me to see to it – after your conscription ends - that my son Terus is properly equipped to be able to survive, such that he may eventually have children of his own. So that maybe, perhaps one day, their grandchildren will see the end of all this…”

“Stalson, of course I promise to… Stalson?! … Stalson!!!”

Chapter 11: “Not Nearly Enough”

The path that lead between the town of Elpsiod, and the city of Kyosem, carried - with the traversing of it - a journey that would extend on for about the better half of a week. Actual individual travel times for those that chose to partake of this trip would, naturally, vary greatly in relation to exactly how willing – or, sometimes, unwilling – those involved were to go out of their way to reach the end as quickly as one possibly could. Despite the mentionings previously made upon the possibility of future pending demonic revivals, as handed forth by the Sage Miran Via, Jysalef Soresh was – at the moment – firmly of the opinion that there was going to be little profit to be had from reaching the sage’s student in an utterly exhausted physical state.

Normally the desire for good food was, for Jysalef and Terus, incentive enough to hoof it to the next place of lodging whenever the climate permitted. However, as chance would have it, it was discovered by Jysalef and his ward – during this period of transit – that the girl ordered to accompany them - by Miran Via - was actually an accomplished chef in her own right. Naturally, such ability had evolved as a necessity from her many years spent in service to the famous sage, during which time she aided him with the operating of the orphanage that he began after the stalemated end of the holy war between Skrande and Corsinthia.

On the day before they would expect to at last have reached the walls that surrounded the city of Kyosem, Terus Kyreon finally found within himself the mental resolve to bring to his instructor’s attention a question which had been weighing upon his mind ever since their altercation in Elpsiod with the trio of Skrandonese Assassins. “Master Soresh, Sir, back in Elpsiod – whilst we were immersed in the thick of battle with those heathens – they seemed very keen upon making it known that you were some sort of great defiler that I should be ashamed of deigning to keep company with. Sir, what exactly transpired back during the great war, such that they would now chase you with such fervor?”

Jysalef, whom had only moments before been pondering in silence all of what he would tell Tallus Osmaard, as part of his proof to the man that his interpretations were lacking, folded his arms as he looked emptily up towards the sky above, “Those godless heathens have left Skrande, to come all this distance into the lands of Corsinthia, just to extract their revenge upon me for how I chose to dispose of the disgusting trash we referred to back then as the Death Hawk.”

A most menacing glare taking home across Jysalef’s face, with a comfort that seemed almost as if to suggest it had been there all along, took place as he continued to speak of days gone by for the benefit of Terus, “Nyawc Draezooh, a man that was rightfully a demon by merit of his abominable deeds, was tasked by the Skrandonese Nation’s command to break through our front lines over into Corsinthia herself. Once there, he was to do all that was within his means to bring about a pronouncedly rapid degradation upon the moral of our resolve to bring the light of truth to those godless heathens, and this was an assignment that the Death Hawk was all too eager to carry out. It was like some sort of perverse comedy to see him rape the countryside of Corsinthia’s borders, one unfortunate city of innocents at a time, all the while hearing that inhuman scum as he went on about how his grotesque sins were being done in the name of some sort of enlightened Goddess.”

The enraged demeanor upon the ex-soldier’s visage, as he continued onwards through his tale of days gone by, then began to noticeably shift towards a surprisingly more melancholic state, “Your father, Stalson Kyreon, and myself were dispatched back to Corsinthia – with a complete contingent of our land’s finest – to hunt down and stop the Death Hawk permanently. Although we quickly caught up with him, as we had merely but to follow the all too obvious trail of fire and screams, we were utterly unprepared for how the Death Hawk seemed to not feel pain at all when in the midst of his twisted orgy of devastation. Because of the heathen’s unholy advantage that he enjoyed during his ungodly fetish trance, our forces were taken completely by surprise when we surrounded the Death Hawk - and his men - in what we thought would surely be a simple success. A sizable portion of our comrades fell that day before we removed from the Death Hawk, and as many of his men as we could, the flame of life which they were so absolutely without a deserving of. Sadly, amongst those of us who did not have access to the fortune necessary to see past that contemptibly bloodstained affair was your father.”

Then, with a most alarming suddenness, an unnerving sense of glee – such as was unlike anything Terus had ever seen come out of his instructor before – began to take root within Jysalef as he continued to push forward with his history lesson, “When Stalson went down, a determination - even greater than that of the heathen’s sadistic passion for suffering - welled up throughout my entire body; and I henceforth pulled down the Death Hawk to the blood and soot painted dirt with my own hands, from which I then made most thoroughly sure that the debase sinner did not ever raise up from again. But, as I sat there upon the Death Hawk’s extremely lifeless corpse, I rapidly became aware of the fact that merely death itself was not nearly enough for this thing which did not truly deserve the title of man. So, partly for the viewing benefit of the heathens present – who, by assisting this man in his fetish for the mass slaughter of the innocent, went beyond godlessness itself - I began to dispose of the body in a manner which, according to their beliefs, made it unfit in the eyes of their supposed goddess.”

Jysalef then, still once more shifting emotional gears, concluded his speech upon the incident of the Death Hawk affair with a wholly matter-of-fact denouement, “So, Terus, as you can clearly see: those godless assassins we had the displeasure of bumping into, back there in Elpsiod, are here now because they fail to understand that is not actually I who condemned their foul leader to burn forever in hell. Even ignoring the all important fact that he worshipped a false god, that he derived such sadistic pleasure from slaughtering entire cities of innocents would have earned him a place in the eternal blaze long before we ever caught up with him.”

Terus, as he listened to the totality of Jysalef’s recounting of the last battle he fought together with his father, became filled with a confusing cocktail mixture of conflicting emotions. There was, on the one hand, a skin crawling sensation of abject horror caused by the disturbing way in which his instructor had relished in recounting the part wherein he had creatively disposed of the Death Hawk’s corpse at the end of the battle. Yet, on the other hand, there was an equal feeling of justice being experienced that was in part spurred forth by the encounter with the Skrandonese - back in Elpsiod - where they had willingly executed those not involved in the confrontation merely because they had laid witness to it.

But – perhaps - worst of all for Jysalef’s apprentice was that, betwixt the sea of clashing pride and disgust he was currently unable to decide where he wanted to be in, there was a complete aura of guilt crushing down on him from above as well. This guilt overhead came raining down upon Terus from out of the fact that he feared that his feeling any disgust at all was a betrayal of his mother’s memory. After all, it was this vile butcher known as Nyawc Draezooh that had taken dad from them; and surely if that had not happened, then mom would not have fallen headfirst into a sullen lethargy wherein she laid down upon her bed just so that she could will herself to death. Did not the person who put mom through all of that - and in turn he himself through deprivation of both his parents in short order, by way of one contemptible fell swoop – deserve not only all that Master Jysalef surely must have done unto him, but also more as well?

However, for Latte there were no great conundrums as to how she should feel about all that been declared by Jysalef just now. The green expression of her face did little to hide her apt realization that the particulars of Jysalef Soresh’s most recent war story were most assuredly going to become the stuff of nightmares later that night for her when she finally went to sleep.