The stars adorned the night sky like gemstones as Mirio rested his arm on the windowsill. Rose nestled up close to his side and closed her eyes to feel the gentle touch of the breeze. She knew that moments of respite never lasted forever.

“Should we take a walk along the riverside” Rose asked.

“Sure”

Rose sat up out from under his arm and picked up her fur coat. She shuffled it on and tied up her waist belt before handing Mirio the pair of pants she had bought him at the festival hall. Their fingertips touched briefly in the exchange and Mirio nodded solemnly before slipping into each leg.

“Alright”

…

“What you doing heading north kid?” a sailor said as stripping off his gloves and stretching out his grip.

“Wasn’t the war down south?” the boy with the wolf shield replied.

“Course, there is that, but if it was your reason, why head north after its over”

“Call it an instinct, I choose to look where other eyes might not”

“Look? For what”

The boy turned his gaze toward the sailor and tightened his lips, “Just the truth”

“And you’ll find that up north?” the sailor replied mockingly.

The boy turned back to the rolling course ahead of the ship, disinterested now in the conversation to be had with the sailor who didn’t seem to care much for his real point.

“Right then, leave you to it”

The boy’s gaze drifted past the horizon with a sense of maturity that was beyond his years, and filled with a purpose few would ever understand, holding a secret that held together the fate of countless worlds.

He knit his brow, and peeled back his lips to reveal a sharp canine. It wasn’t easy to hold what he was holding inside, but neither would he let it hold sway over what had to be done.

…

Mirio knelt down by the riverside and traced his fingertips along the obsidian. Ladon’s burden and pain still lingered in his mind, a woman trapped in that monstrous place. Not the abyss, no, worse was the hold her responsibility held on her mind and soul. Such things are not made of evil, or glorious calls to destiny, they are the twisted mirror of a search for meaning and purpose in a world where you fear there is none.

After the cataclysm, the pain the people of the realms must have felt at the realization that all they had ever known had been replaced by chaos and uncertainty. This scar in the earth was no doubt connected to it, connected to how terrible that first mix of the worlds must have been.

Mirio’s fingers withdrew from the stone as he tried to shut out the pain he sensed in the stone.

“It’s sad isn’t it” Rose said as she looked up along the river, “How she had put so much faith in hope, and had it used against her”

“Sadder perhaps that she thought dragon fire might seal the wound”

Rose nodded, “I think that’s probably true”

She turned and picked up a stone and tossed it at Mirio’s foot, “Forgot to get you shoes, why didn’t you remind me”

“Its fine, I’m used to it at this point” he chuckled.

“Yeah yeah, my feet don’t scar easily Mirio” she mocked and winked, “Pity your face can’t say the same”

“Haha, what?” he said as he grabbed for her arm.

Rose was quick to spin out of the way and let out a goofy smile.

“You’ll have to be faster than that to catch a girl like me”

“Yeah, you are right,” he smirked.

“What is it like to leave everything behind?” she asked stoicly.

Mirio gazed at her for a while, noticing the way the ambient light cast across the river’s surface and lit up her eyes.

“I couldn’t really say. I don’t completely remember what it was like to be a child. My memory, is fractured…”

“What do you mean, fractured?”

“I remember being in my mother, her shame for being with my father. I remember being inspired by a paladin who visited my town during the harvest festival. I remember training with my comrades in the guard. And I remember waking up on the hilltop in the aftermath of a terrible battle, feeling nothing that they were dead. Like a hand had gripped itself deep into my mind and cut the connection between me and what had made me… That invisible hand stole from me the chance to grieve… But I didn’t want it… And I left all those who would have raged at my innocence lost to die in the silence… Because I feared what it meant to remember them”

Rose swallowed down hard, but felt deep down that it was important to dig a bit further, “I don’t want to be insensitive, but, it was your choice to leave wasn’t it?”

“I could have returned to Gimly to wage a lone crusade against the bandits, to free my mother and father. I could have fought every day to better the lot of the people of the Vale. I could have become a knight and pledged myself to the good of the realm. Or even become a monster hunter and sought fame and fortune in the victory it would win me. But, I did nothing…”

“I drifted for a time, just trying to figure out what it meant to be me… All of the paths the world offered felt to me like I was trying to bring back to life something that had never really lived in the first place”

“The sad truth is, my origin wasn’t an act of destiny, or designed for some great purpose. I am just a selfish and petty child who wants something impossible from the world. Just like anyone else”

“My parents were together because it was the best they could find, my mother shy, my father an asshole, not much of a choice”

“What kind of hero is born like that?”

“I’m just some stupid kid from the sticks, dragged into a war that I had no business being a part of”

“Maybe I’m powerful, maybe I see things others don’t want to, maybe I face hardship with the courage it demands… But…”

“I’m so weak”

“And the only thing I really and truly cared about were simple things. I just didn’t want to stand by as the innocent were sacrificed, or savages sought to destroy what people found hope in. Some hero I am. Some super being. No… I’m nothing really. Just did what was right in the arena most convenient to me” his breath shuddered as he admitted the truth of it all.

“That makes sense I guess” Rose said, unphased by the vulnerability of his sense of guilt and shame to be who he was.

“What does?” his curious gaze latching onto her.

“You didn’t feel like anything was really yours, so you turned responsibility aside they thrust on you, but when dangerous people came to destroy hope in their hearts you couldn’t help but empathize”

“Does it make me a bad person?”

“What does?”

“I turned away from the strength I have… I could have fought to make a better world. But all I did was fight for myself, and others only when I could…”

“I don’t think you have turned away from your strength, not really, it might just be that you are saving yourself first so that you aren’t lost in the mix”

“Saving myself?”

“I don’t know much about you, but I think you were born with a hurt in you. I think you want to heal that hurt before you decide where you stand on it all”

Mirio tucked away a stone in his palm and slipped it into his pocket, “If only the dragon had the chance to do the same, maybe she wouldn’t have burned such a rift in the earth”

“Well, maybe she was a dope too ya know?”

A glint of light shone in Mirio’s eyes as he chuckled. It was true of course, aren’t we all at least a little bit foolish, especially when we are trying our best to be noble.

“And what about you? Why do you want to leave Tier”

Rose lowered her chin and smiled at the irony of her answer, “I don’t. Not really. But sometimes like you, I want to find something that is just my own, you know?”

“So no great big hurt to heal?”

“Nope, just little me, looking up at the stars and dreaming silly things” she said as she gazed up into the night sky as the mist of the river flowed through her hair.

“Doesn’t sound silly”

“It isn’t, but no one is perfect, and I choose to embrace what makes me who I am”

Mirio nodded in awe of her modesty and sense of self, something he wished he possessed.

“How do you figure out who you are?”

“Well that is just it, no one really knows, you just have to do your best, right?”

Her answer stood on its own for a moment as Mirio struggled to take it into his depths. On the way to his heart he hit a roadblock. He wouldn’t normally trust anyone with his doubts, but in this moment, he decided to risk it.

“There is a monster in me” he said as he looked at the blackened rocks of the shore. The water lapping between every crack, “The abyss, the battle within the red mountain, the hilltop… No man is born with enough luck to survive these things. I have a bad feeling, that some part of me devours all it touches. That my fate is like that of my enemy, and that if I make just one mistake, I will be trapped to live out a life of torment”

“Hrmm?” Rose said with a curious look in her eye, not caught up at all in his locked gaze upon the shoreline, “All people destroy the things they control, its why you have to learn to let go, no one is wise enough to know everything, or to make every right choice. Its normal to doubt, and it only makes sense to feel emotions when you are going through choices that will affect your life”

“What if I can’t let go…”

“Hrmm” she thought for a moment before her eyes filled with laughter, “Then don’t and be a jerk instead. I mean if its the only option, become the bad guy”

“What?!” he laughed at the unexpectedness of it.

“Let yourself be whatever you are, and develop trust in yourself, that even there, you will make a not shitty choice”

Mirio nodded, she was right of course, lines of right and wrong aren’t easily defined, and all people bend. In a way, there could be no saving grace, no ultimate morality, it would be himself who would have to find a way amidst it all. If all choices were bad, he would have to spend the time to create a new way.

“How’d you figure out the right thing to say?” he said with a proud smirk.

“It was easy, my pa used to speak about these things. Being raised in tier, knowing the history of how people are changed by events, split by forces out of their control, you would be ignorant to turn a blind eye to it all”

“Here, in the struggle, wisdom is born… Its a lesson I should learn, something I will remember”

“You aren’t messed up just because you get confused, just make sure you don’t plan to stay there. Wounds might leave scars, but scars stop you bleeding, just move on. Be all you can, and embrace the special things you find out in the world”

Mirio wondered at how such powerful ideas came from a girl so subtle in stature, and from someone he had met by chance. Whatever the reason for it, it was beautiful to be sure.

…

“Land hoy!”

The boy ran his finger along the ornamental engravings of his retractable spear. Its power evened the odds against foes of greater skill than his own countless times. There were a few exceptions of course, but on the whole, they gave him confidence where otherwise he might have been overwhelmed and overcome.

The boat docked and the boardwalk locked into the pier.

“Is this the furthest north we can go?” he asked the captain.

“Only way further is over the northern range, but you wouldn’t want to do that”

“Why not?”

“Because then you are entering into the shadowland”

“The shadowland?”

“Yeah, scorched by the cataclysm, home to the nastiest sort of monsters”

“Ah, right, does anyone go there?”

“Only if they have a deathwish kid”

“Guess I’ll do my best to avoid it then” he said with a salute of his index finger as he disembarked.