Revenge?

The "geezer" sits down tiredly on a creaky crate once they get inside the abandoned house. "Why're you stopping here, kid?" Haalfrin asked.

"I can't just leave you behind, right? You looked like you were about to pass out."

Seeing the old man get embarrassed, the boy changes the subject, "Anyway, how'd you learn to fight like that?"

This appears to be the right move; the old man suddenly forgets all about his back pain, and he opens his mouth, "Oh, my clan was a long line of proud warriors. We'd spent many generations perfecting our fighting arts… In fact, and many of our clan heads over the years were actual sword mages!"

"Really!?" the boy exclaims, "Did they have secrets about becoming a mage?"

"It's not much of a secret, kid," Haalfrin replies, unenthused, "Everyone obviously has a soul, and it's divided up into layers – each section being behind a locked Gate. In order to become a mage, you just have to learn how to unlock these Gates."

The young master sits on another rotted crate and remarks, "My great-grandfather is a mage, but I never get to talk to him; he's been off fighting wars for the king ever since he became a mage when before I was born. None of my relatives want to tell me how to become a mage, though."

Haalfrin points at the kid with a loose stick he found next to him and says, "There's a good reason for that. You'd get shipped off to war the moment you get magic, kid."

He then pokes the boy in the chest, as if to emphasize a point. "They just want to keep you safe and close. Besides, a soul isn't usually developed enough to gain magic until your mid-twenties at least. You're too young to worry about that stuff."

"Will you at least tell me how to unlock a Gate?"

'Well, I got nothing else to do...,' he wonders as his mind wanders to the wall - lost in thought.

Behind Haalfrin's cloudy eyes are memories of his middle-aged self. He was at the age when his clan brothers were slowly convincing him to go on fewer raids - saying he was getting too old, or something, and that he might hurt his back.

The only reason his brothers were able to keep him ashore is because the Clan leader appointed him as the main fighting instructor for all the young boys. Those boys were so full of energy, yet they were too young to strap on armor; they needed SOMETHING to do while the men were away.

Haalfrin closes his eyes and smiles. Those were some of the fondest memories of his life. Feeling like a mentor and being looked up to by the young ones filled some void in his heart for never having kids of his own.

...

"You there, old man?" the boy waves his hand in front of Haalfrins' face worriedly.

"Huh? Oh, yes. Sorry." The old man scratches his head. "Well, I'll tell you what I know."

Haalfrin straightens his back and begins teaching...

"Well, kid, I can speak from experience. I mean, I've tried to become a mage before. Though I failed, I still know how the process works."

The old "teacher" holds up his stick like a baton. "Your soul is the inner truth of WHO you are as a person, and what you are to the world. The gates to your soul are unlocked by learning your soul's Names."

"Now, souls come in 2 flavors – black and white souls," Haalfrin explains, "If you have a black soul, then you unlock your Names by proving your worth to the gods."

"For example, you might know you're a warrior at heart, but you only unlock your Names when you do something to prove yourself, like surviving a battle for the first time. You might have WANTED to be a warrior, but that doesn't mean you ARE a warrior."

Just the same way, everyone has some ideal version of themselves, yet very few people ever achieve that ideal. Everyone has a treasure in their souls, yet very few people manage to use it."

"In short, you won't become a mage until you fulfill your inner ambitions."

The kid reels back. "That seems pretty vague, right old man?"

"Well," Haalfrin answers patiently, "Your soul is everything that you are – your looks, body, health, personality, future, lifespan, mentality… everything that is YOU and YOURS is your soul. Black souls have a vision of themselves, and there's a certain magic that comes with walking the walk instead of just thinking about it. An artist isn't really an artist until he learns to draw, after all."

"So," the boy asks, "there's no set way of becoming a mage, since everyone's different?"

"Yeah, kid."

The boy then looks away, as if embarrassed to be wrong. "What about White souls? I'm a noble, so my parents had my soul tested when I was young. I've known I had a White soul for a long time, though I don't know what it means."

"Eh, me too kid. I got a White soul too," Haalfrin remarks. "Anyway, White souls often feel lost in life – not quite sure of who they are or what they really want. They can open their gates through something we like to call 'Enlightenment' – through understanding things about the world and about themselves. Well, the catch is that whatever they 'learn' has to be true."

Haalfrin leans back with a heavy sigh. "I'm not much of a deep thinker, so I never made it as a mage."

Back when Haalfrin was a young man studying to be a mage, he'd cursed the heavens day and night for not being born with a black soul. Black souls are "doers", and white souls are "thinkers" - warriors and scholars.

Young Haalfrin had vehemently believed that if he'd been a black soul instead, he'd have long become a mage by now, given his unthinking way of throwing himself in battles.

Not liking to think about his failures in the past, Haalfrin changes the subject, "You know, the ancestors of my clan were such great mages at one point that one of them actually fought off a bear with only his fists – I'm talking about the grizzly kind, not the puny black ones."

"Oh," the boy leans in with interest on his face, "Tell me about your clan."

"Well," Haalfrin begins, eager to pass on a bit of his expiring life to another, "with all our fighting, it would be strange to live till old age because the men & sometimes women would fight, fight, fight all year long."

The boy grew up in a very boring stretch of the kingdom, and he thirsts for interesting stories. So, he pressures Haalfrin for more stories.

And so, Haalfrin tells the boy about his own life. He gets reminiscent of the times he'd tell his clanmates stories over a campfire. The more fantastically he stretches the truth, the more the boy enraptured the boy is by Haalfrin.

---------------------

After Haalfrin grows tired of speaking, the boy pulls out his coin purse and sorts out 100 copper coins. "Here. You beat the guard up and helped me out."

While Haalfrin is pocketing the coins, the boy looks down and offers, "I can give you the rest of the coins if you train me to use a sword."

Haalfrin looks up and wonders what he'd need money for… He's too old to worry about having a savings wallet...

'Even still, making use of yourself is the only reason to live, right? Rather, what's the point of a person if they're not of use to anything? What's the point of me if I'M not doing something?'

And so, Haalfrin nods his head. He takes the purse and empties out the contents. Several shiny things fall out… the last of which is a small ring bearing the baron's insignia.

Haalfrin sees the ring and feels like slapping himself on the forehead. 'I must be getting addled,' he thinks, 'I should have realized with all the signs...'

The old man asks about the ring cautiously, and the boy gets an embarrassed look on his face. "Yeah, I'm the baron's son. The guards were chasing me because I was trying to run away. There's a war up north that needs me, right?"

Haalfrin looks out through the cracks of the broken walls and notes, "It'll be dark soon. You should get some wood to make a fire since it'll be cold tonight."

The boy wears a confused look on his face and stands there for a second. Haalfrin glances over and thinks, 'He's a spoiled noble's son; he definitely never done menial labor before.'

Haalfrin then snaps his twig on the crate he was sitting on and barks, "If you can't do anything even as mildly uncomfortable as picking up sticks with your young, endurable body, then you're not cut out for learning anything hard."

This gets the boy running about collecting sticks. Haalfrin watches the boy try to pry the broken crate pieces off, fail, then go outside to look. This gives the old one time to think.

---------------------

"I'm alone with the boy right now," Haalfrin realizes, "If I wanted revenge, now would be the best time. If the boy is attacked out here, nobody can do anything about it."

He then looks down with dark eyes. 'The baron took away my family. If they had just killed the raiders, I'd have nothing to quibble about… However, they went back to my home and killed even the women and children too.'

He thinks of Reeda's glowing face, then he pictures her bloody and vandalized; her dress WAS found torn to pieces.

Just thinking about what happened to that young girl makes him feel a familiar sense of blind madness, and his muscles light on fire with adrenaline.

He then looks out the door, where he sees the boy picking up twigs from the forest. 'Wouldn't killing the child the baron cares about be the perfect revenge? He killed the child I care about the most, after all.'

This thought sends an uncomfortable shiver down his spine – not uncomfortable because it was unpleasant, but because he knows he shouldn't be having that thought.

'But why shouldn't I be having that thought?' Haalfrin think - puzzled. 'I was a raider most of my life; I've killed plenty of innocent people for less. What makes this any different?'

He doesn't have to spell it out, since he already knows.

'It's because the boy trusts me. I mean, betrayal just doesn't sit right with me.'

Still, another part of Haalfrin is thinking darker thoughts.

'But so what if it's wrong? Morals are for people who have a future. Good people do good things because they have people they care about, or gods they want to please. Perhaps they just want to save their own souls, or not be punished by the law.'

'No… this boy seems to trust me very much, and killing him would feel wrong… However, imagining the baron's heart bleeding with guilt, rage, grief, and helplessness...'