Where has your girth gone?

Where did your size escape to?

You crawled over mountains.

Even mountains were pebbles before you

-Anonymous

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The snow got everywhere.

Old as he was, the man with the graying hair thought he would’ve been used to the constant snow and the way it got in bed covers, in pots and pants, and in one’s clothing. He’d been quite wrong.

Exiting the sturdy wooden house armed with a pot and a heavy coat, he tossed the freezing water out into the snow, shaking it to make sure the majority of the droplets were gone before lidding it.

Shivering, he began to head back inside, then noticed something.

Staring up the mountain looming over the appropriately named town of Snowbury, he put a hand to his face. Even through the screeching fury of the perpetual blizzard, he could see a massive cloud of white mist gradually descending towards them.

His eyes widened, and he went over to the edge of the hill his house was on. “Garen’s coming down!” He bellowed, his thunderous voice rising over the howl of the wind. “Tell Greta to nab her kid!”

Message delivered, he headed inside and tossed his coat on the bench just past the door. Tossing his boots aside, he lightly jogged into his bedroom. Throwing on a much nicer outfit, he checked himself with a small mirror. Nodding approvingly, he seized an intricate rapier, slid it into the sheath on his belt, and went back outside.

The fog cloud was getting closer, and he couldn’t help but fidget. Garen wouldn’t care about his outfit, of course, but the man had little else by now but his pride.

After a few minutes, the cloud had approached closer. A woman came up next to him, cradling an infant in her arms. She was of generous proportions, and her cheeks were flushed red from the cold.

“Good afternoon, Reld. Do you know why he’s coming down?”

Reld shook his head. “Afraid not, but it’ll be much-needed warmth, and fire doesn’t do as good a job to warm a kid.”

Greta conceded the point. “Fair ‘nuff, but aren’t you worried he’ll…” She rested the baby on one arm, slicing a thumb across her neck in a universal gesture.

Reld shook his head again. “Don’t think he’s that sort of person.”

“It’s a bad move, calling Garen a person,” She warily said. “Don’t forget, he doesn’t think anything like us. He doesn’t have the same rules.”

He thought about it, shifting from one foot to the other in an attempt to stave off the cold. “Maybe not, but everyone’s got rules. He hasn’t killed anyone in a long while, far as I know.”

Greta sighed. “A long while to us is a blink to him. Rules can change.”

Reld fell silent as the cloud approached, rolling over the two of them. The temperature rapidly rose as they waited, and only seconds later, the snow and mist turned into slush.

Garen calmly walked towards them in the center of a small circle of sodden dirt, dirt which dried and cracked as his bare feet crossed it. Six people were stacked on one arm, and a battered paladin was tucked under his arm. It was difficult to tell whether they were dead or alive.

The baby’s breathing slowed as the humid heat washed over all of them, rolling in its swaddles. Greta’s face cracked in a barely visible smile, one that faded as Garen came closer. The immortal radiated heat, although whether it was intentional or otherwise was unclear. Either way, it was much-needed heat for a young child.

He paused in front of them, gracelessly dropping the men on the ground and tossing the paladin aside. “They attacked my castle. They’re not dead.”

He went to the point as brutally as anybody Reld had known. It was helpful in some ways and discomforting in others. In this case, Reld breathed a silent sigh of relief. “You have my thanks for not slaying them, sir.”

Garen’s crimson eyes narrowed infinitesimally. “Garen.”

Reld didn’t flinch, to his own surprise. “My name is Reld.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

Bending slightly, Reld tried to avoid throwing his back out as he bowed. “My apologies… Garen. Once again, you have my gratitude for leaving them alive.”

“Why?”

Reld blinked. “Why wouldn’t I? The loss of any life would be just that; a loss.”

“I doubt you knew them before I dropped them in front of you,” Garen pointed out, his voice as level as a pond on a windless day. “You would feel no sympathy towards their corpses if you were unaware of their demise.”

“Perhaps,” Reld replied with some heat. “But their families would mourn their deaths. Their pets, if they had any, would grieve in their own way. Even their companions would weep for them, even as they celebrated the lives they had led.”

Greta cut in. “I’ve known many a good man and woman who died before they should’ve.”

They both recognized that they were treading on thin ice. Neither of them had any idea what Garen was like. They’d barely heard him say a hundred words in the thirty-odd years they’d been in Snowbury, not that he’d visited often. To talk to someone like Garen was a rare, if not incomparably dangerous, opportunity.

Garen seemed to consider the point, and for a brief moment, the heat enveloping the two adults and the corner of Reld’s house intensified. The ring of melted snow expanded with the increase in temperature, and Reld felt sweat begin to form on his forehead.

“Would it make a difference?” He said, indicating one of the unconscious men. “If I slew him, you would be unable to avenge him. You wouldn’t know what his name was. Regardless of his age, he would be dead. If it happened now or in a few hundred years, he would have made little impact to the world as a whole.” He pointed at the baby in Greta’s arms. “Children die all the time. Their impact is even less.”

“Would you kill an infant?” Greta asked, trying to keep her shaking voice even. Garen’s tone was neither casual nor interrogative. It was if he were discussing a particularly interesting behavior as opposed to cold murder.

“It depends,” Garen replied calmly. “Your species is susceptible to a number of diseases and corruptions. If you deemed the man who decided to keep an orphaned child an uncaring murderer, intending to raise the infant in much the same way, would you allow the infant to reach adolescence and end more lives? Or would you rather they die immediately, sparing the future victims?”

“That’s incredibly specific,” Reld protested. “And I don’t think Greta wasn’t asking what we would do. Would you kill a child?”

“It doesn’t matter. My point was that you bend your own rules depending on the context.” Garen stated. “I find subjective morality interesting. What you would choose to do and what another man would decide will be different from the other. Do you slay a man breaking into your house, knowing he is willing to slay you?”

“Of course. At that point he’s decided that my belongings are worth more-” Reld froze as he realized what Garen had been implying, and the immortal raised a hairless eyebrow.

“You’re quite the hypocrite.” He said calmly. “You thanked me for sparing the lives of the men who intended to end my life, hopeless a task as that might be. And yet, on level ground with a mortal thief, you wouldn’t hesitate to kill them. By your own logic, I should end their lives right here.” Garen leaned down to the paladin, and Reld took a step forward. Before he could take another, the immortal flicked the cracked dirt next to the unconscious paladin’s head. The ground shattered in a narrow crater, dirt flying upward. A hole was left behind, a small circle punched too far into the ground to see the bottom of. “I decide not to kill based solely on my own mood. Moral quandaries are based on limited information and biases built from childhood and reinforced through adolescence and adulthood. These particular invaders were being used as a dull weapon by the machinations of politics and a corrupt king. If they want someone dead, let them slip the blade between these men’s ribs on their own. I see little purpose in complying with their demands.”

Straightening, Garen finished, “Whether you understand or agree doesn’t matter. Someone with a different moral standard than yourself will be all too happy to kill you, even if you don’t feel the same way about them. I suppose you might say in this case that I refused to kill the invaders out of spite to the cowards who sent them.”

“Isn’t that a bit childish?” Reld dared to ask, and Garen paused. “To decide the paths of their lives based on spite?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Garen responded. “They knew my strength well before they tried to come in. Should stupidity be rewarded?”

Reld stared at Garen for a long moment, eyes narrowed. Nervous, Greta held the infant close to her and left the swirling dome of snow.

Turning, Garen began walking back up the mountain. “More bodies will be coming down.Based on your hypocrisy, you’ll probably take care of them, even though they won’t repay you and most likely won’t thank you.”

Reld took a deep breath, knowing it might be his last. “I would like to strike you.”

Garen looked over his shoulder, the barest hint of curiosity in his eyes. “Really.”

“I used to be quite the warrior,” Reld said, drawing his rapier partly out of its sheath. “I believe I could lay at least a scratch on you.”

“I doubt it.”

“If you doubt it, you have nothing to fear.”

Garen faced him, his expression as apathetic as ever. “A jibe is effective solely if the opponent believes it possesses some truth. I fear you as much as a sword fears flesh. Pride is one thing, simple truth another.”

Reld winced, but held his ground. “May I strike?”

“Of course.” Garen said bluntly.

Drawing his rapier, Reld took a deep breath. Garen remained serene as the old man pulled mana from deep inside him, tapping into a well that hadn’t been used in a long time.

Lightning crackled along the length of the blade, kissing Reld’s skin and reflecting back into the rapier. Taking another deep breath, Reld took a step forward and nearly vanished from the speed of his lunge.

The rapier sped unwavering towards Garen, the full force of Reld’s leg, back and shoulder driving it onward with enough force to punch through steel.

It struck Garen’s left eye.

The blade bent. Reld could feel it tremble as the deceptively resilient sword nearly broke. With his momentum carrying him forward, only an enormous effort allowed him to pull backward and save his precious rapier. Stumbling and off-balance, he fell to the hard ground.

Garen stared down at him impassively. “You thought that would succeed?”

Reld stared at his sword. It had faithfully served him through a decade and a half of adventures and tales too tall to be believed, pushing the old man into near-legend.

It was one thing to hear about Garen, to know him from clouded mythology. It was another entirely to feel the impossibility of fighting him.

Garen shook his head as he began going back up his lonely mountain, leaving Reld sprawled in the dirt. “Fight something on your own level. A dragon, perhaps.”

The blizzard slammed into Reld at full force as the heat that accompanied Garen left with him. Reld stared after the cloud of fog and mist as it ascended.

After a minute, he got to his feet, expression inscrutable. Finally, he cracked an involuntary smile. “A dragon, eh?”

Hurrying to the unconscious men, he started pulling them into his house, still chuckling. “On my own level…”

His mood ended up much better than he’d thought.