On the Path

"Aren't you hot in that big bear coat?" she asked, not taking her eyes off the thin ledge the three of them were traversing. A pebble, carelessly kicked, tumbled away and fell the hundreds of feet down the side of the living mountain they were working their way across.

The squire clutched at the fur of his great coat absent-mindedly. "A little. But it reminds me of a time I was colder than cold, and that keeps me content." He replied, stepping with surety across the cracking path they were taking. He reached back, to help his compatriots across.

The first was a tiny young thief-girl. She deftly hopped the crevice, without even acknowledging the offer of assistance.

The other was a ranger, clearly out of place on the burning mountainside. With every roaring eruption she cast her glance upwards to the fiery explosions at the top. Her footing was sure and silent, as it always was, but her eyes moved constantly, betraying her discomfort with the stone and the fire that threatened to end them at any moment. The squire knew she must be truly worried when she took his hand without question or complaint. The Ranger was fiercely independent, and uniquely capable. She had refused every offer of assistance he had ever offered her.

But here, on the edge of the smoking mountain, she placed her hand in his without thinking. He helped her across, and when her surprisingly soft hand left his, the thought of it remained in his head.

He shook himself, and adjusted the sword and shield he bore under his coat, hustling to catch up to the Thief.

"Do you think it's really a Demon?" the Thief called back as she nimbly picked her way over the rocks. The path was becoming increasingly treacherous as the mountain shifted and cracked. A thunderous roar erupted from the top, and a new collection of magma was thrust into the air, carried to the other side of the mountain by the winds. The Squire quietly praised Bahamut for his protection and grace.

"Hopefully it's nothing, Fa'ar." the Squire replied. But he gripped the handle of his sword, remembering the testimony of the townsfolk. They had spoken of a demon that had wandered into the town, crackling with arcane energy. It wailed and wandered, destroying everything it touched, until the faithful of the town were able to drive it out towards the mountain. They had thought themselves finished, until the mountain woke.

Could be a coincidence.

Could be a demon.

The Squire set his jaw, and carried on.

"But what if it IS a Demon?" Fa'ar continued inquisitively.

"Then we do our duty." the Ranger answered, with a finality that Fa'ar understood.

Silence fell, and the three of them worked their way up the increasingly unstable pass, to the mouth of the mountain.

Not So Hard A Thing

"What, what in the nine hells do you think you are doing?" Saiyo hustled over, shouting at the girl with the knife.

"I'm practicing, Doyen." She replied, indicating the target dummy. It had been hacked to pieces, with straw poking out everywhere. Her face was a beaming beacon of pride.

"Practicing what, exactly, child? How to ruin a perfectly good training tool?" he ran his hands over the ruined dummy, pulling straw out of one of the slashes in the burlap. "Not to mention a knife.." he snatched the blade from her hands, and held it up to his eyes. It was full of notches and scratches. To be fair, most of them had been there when she got her hands on it. But he wasn't about to give her the satisfaction.

"No, I was practicing my fighting." She stubbornly replied. Her face was no longer beaming but instead scowling. Everyone else had been practicing knifework, and she'd been stuck doing pickpocketing all day. Again.

The Doyen looked at her, and sighed.  He shouldn't be surprised. She was young still, too young he had thought to teach about the blade. But, alas, it seems that too is beyond his control. Children.

"Okay child. Pretend this is a man." He indicated to the dummy. "How is he now that you have hacked at him like a mad cook?"

The girl squinted at the Doyen, expecting a trap.

"He's dead."

"Yes, precisely." The Doyen clapped. "Now... why have you made him dead?"

The girl was thoroughly perplexed.

"Becuase he was... evil?" She ventured.

"What is evil?" The Doyen immediately asked.

"It's... very bad. People who are terrible and do terrible things."

"Like killers?"

"Yes!" She agreed.

"But you have just killed this man."

The girl opened her mouth, and her mind caught up.

She closed her mouth.

"So you see this is a problem, little one. But, you are fortunate! You are learning from the Doyen. Take this." He offered her the blade, handle first. She took it gingerly, still thinking about the verbal trap she'd been caught in. "What have you in your hand child?"

Now she was really wary. But, alas, she could not see where he was headed, so on she moved.

"A knife?"

"Yes, good, top marks child! And lucky again you are, that you have a knife. For a knife is not some clumsy weapon like an axe, or heavens forbid a sword. No!" He moved around behind the dummy while he spoke, letting an arm drape across what would be its shoulders genially.

"No, no, this is a knife! A subtle blade, a tool not a weapon. With this you can be careful, you can be sure of your work. You can be quick, you can be precise!" And he produced a knife seemingly from nowhere, and with a strike like a snake he pierced the side of the dummy. He pulled his hand away slowly, leaving the knife buried in its side.

She looked back and forth, from him to the blade.

"This is a place that will not kill a man. Right away." The Doyen indicated. He took her hand, and put it on the handle of the knife sticking out. "Feel it's place. Memorize it. A knife that enters here, will bring a man great pain and much suffering, but he will live. And often, that is enough."

She nodded, and focused on the blade. She felt its place in relation to her arm, and her arm in relation to her legs. Every part of her she commited to memory. She would know how to strike here again.

"If you steal something child, you can always give it back. We are thieves, not gods. We make mistakes. It is known. So be careful, always, with what you take. If it is a life, which to take is not so hard a thing, you cannot give it back." He smiled at the little girl, and she nodded. Good.

Perhaps she will not be a killer like me, thought the Doyen.