Fog drifted low across the floor of the palace bathhouse. Designed around natural hot springs, soothing natural aromas filled the air as the princess disrobed. Her platinum blonde hair flowed over her shoulders like so many ribbons of silk as she shot daggers at her brother with her golden eyes.

“What you did was wrong”

The young prince swatted at her gaze with a limp hand.

“Oh please, so what if a few peasants died in the sticks, it is all for a greater purpose”

The princess dipped her toe into the water and stepped deeper into the pool until the fresh mountain water lapped gently against her shoulders.

“It doesn’t sit well with me that you speak so dismissively of people’s lives brother”

“We are royalty Alyssa, we deal in life and death every day, whether it be a policy about sewage flow beneath the city or the enactment of new tariffs, all of these things lead to death and suffering, there is no way around it”

Alyssa carefully drew hair behind her ears and stared into the water’s depths.

“It isn’t all the same, why insist it is? Are you trying to make me lessen your crime from murder to insensitivity? Is that your aim brother”

The prince disrobed to reveal a pallid complexion, his eyes golden and his hair platinum blonde like that of his sister he glared back at her.

“How else would you have me take the throne from our maniac brother, you know as well as I do, if he takes the throne he will go to war with all the twelve kingdoms. He has talked about nothing else since he was a child”

“So you stab a dagger into the heart of the treaty between kingdoms, perhaps stirring another war, to stop our brother? What makes you so different”

“I have a heart my sister, I would not see these kingdoms come to ruin for greed and reckless ambition”

“And yet you go along with their plan to leave the Elmvale port lawless. You know they only suggested it because it supports their expansion in the East and West”

“We need the royal houses on our side sister if we are to have Rainal cede the throne”

Alyssa pulled herself up onto a rock in the middle of the pool, pressing her bust against the warm stone.

“I feel bad for them brother. Our magisters said they saw a group of thousands of villagers leaving the vale as refugees and entering into the red wastes of Darlan. You know the western empire despises outsiders. They won’t help them”

“What does it matter, why are you so stuck on this, frankly it is making me feel nauseous. You take charity far too seriously, it is a flaw of yours, always has been”

“Better the flaw of being too charitable, than to have blood on my hands as you do brother”

“It is on your hands too! You were the one who told me to seek out the support of the houses, and now you chide me in response to doing as you instructed. Maybe it is you who are trying to have it both ways, not I”

A maid entered the chamber and lowered her head.

“Princess, the mages have finished their reconstruction of events at the vale, they have instructed me that you may come and see it”

Alyssa waded over to the edge of the pool and drew herself from it.

“Oh my lady, let me get your robe for you”

She held out her fingertips and waited for her robe to slip over her delicate skin as it steamed in the cool air. She wrapped herself up and quickly changed into ceremonial vestments in the side room before swiftly making her way down the halls.

She broke open the large doors of the court of masters and slipped into the room.

“I was told you have reconstructed the battle”

An elderly elven man blinked and nodded at her before lifting his crooked fingers and pointing them in the direction of a chair placed in front of the round table at the center of the room.

She hurried her way to the seat and plopped herself down while fiddling with her hair and straining it of water.

“Come on then, show me”

The master of the tower flicked his fingertips casting blue light until it filled the room and formed into shapes upon the table. The blue light flickered and shifted in color until it displayed true to life color and form of a young boy fighting the monstrous worm.

“Who is this? One of the count’s men?”

The mage stepped forwards and shook his head, “No, this one is a young boy from the village that was destroyed by the monster. He fights fiercely simply to protect his home”

“Are you telling me that an untrained boy was the reason we almost lost the vale? You told me it was the count, that he may have held knights in reserve to stay and fight”

The images shifted and changed to the image of four young knights driving their swords into the belly of the beast.

“Four inexperienced knights did come to aid in the battle, and proved instrumental in defeating the creature. But alone they were not a serious threat to the plan”

The image shifted again to Mirio diving from the back of his horse onto the roof of the Spurs tavern and slashing the creatures tentacles from its body before diving out of reach of its grasp.

The mage then twisted his hand and drew time back further to the point where Mirio first heard the call of the Sawtooth Queen and ran towards it to find the monster hunters.

“Why is a boy so confident as to stand against a hunter?”

The images of the melee flicker until Beran had him pinned to the ground. Mirio then flashed behind him and slit his throat.

“Oh my…”

The images then quickly rushed forwards as Mirio was chased from the trees, and then ran through town helping people to escape, only to be chased by the hunters.

“How is it he is a magic user and a warrior?”

“Such cases are rare, but not unheard of, this child has a talent for magic and the heart of a warrior”

The images rushed forwards to the battle between Mirio and Talon. Alyssa held up her hand as Mirio was stabbed through the knee.

“Why doesn’t she finish him? What are they saying?”

“We are still working on that princess, but it appears they knew each other”

Alyssa drew her hand to her lips and began to tremble as Mirio fell to the grass.

“This is so much more than I expected. The poor boy”

The old mage nodded his head and waved his hand to dispel the magical image.

“As we speak, the child is leading the villagers through the wastes”

A tear welled in the corner of Alyssa’s eye. And she whispered under her breath the words of her father.

“All things have their price, choices about who we become are no different…”

She clenched her hand into a fist and smacked it onto the table with a thud.

“Damn it brother! Do you not care to remember our father at all...”

…

As the cool air of the night mixed with dawn’s first warmth, the wind rustled through the red rock of the Darlan wastes.

Mirio, who had once felt so sure about everything in life, was now locked in battle with the uneasiness of his own thoughts. He ran a wet cloth over the edge of his blade as he rooted out the last specks of blood from the groove at the blades center. He pulled over the axe that had once belonged to the monster hunter Beran and held his fingers over the rune stone. With a gentle pop the hexagonal stone slid into his fingertips. He sat down on a boulder and laid the sword across his lap, gently placing the rune stone into a slot in his sword.

The metal buzzed with red energy before settling down.

“Why destroy so many lives for the sake of your own… What compels people to this kind of act. Why do they turn their gaze away from it. Are they really that twisted up inside that they cannot spare a moment to think for themselves…”

He sighed and remembered the face of his father.

His father often spoke of the necessity of cruelty in the world, that it was the only way the underdog could fight the powers above him.

Was it true? Would a smaller cruelty have been able to have stopped these events from happening in the first place? Or was that philosophy a crock of shit, used to excuse weakness of character?

Mirio sighed and stared at his own reflection within the blade, his face split into two halves. He didn’t know anymore what was right, or what was wrong, all he knew was that the ability to fight on its own, undirected, would always fall short.

If he wanted to have a real impact on the world, he could not sit within the comfortable illusions he wrapped himself within as a child. The world around him was murky, distrustful, and full of lies and deceit. Further, forces of the void stood behind everything, pulling levers in silence, for reasons unknown.

Mirio grit his teeth, and gently slid his sword away in its sheath.

“As much as I love to fight, I can’t keep relying on that. This world needs warriors, sure, but not the kind that draw their sword. I need to become more”