While re-playing Baten Kaitos Origins something caught my attention –again- and I couldn't help but sit and write about it. I can write about angst from all the BK material I have. Maybe I'll do some Kalas and Fee later...
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Follow the leader
Once, there was a boy. There was a boy, and he loved a girl.
This is how all stories begin. Since the dawn of time this is how stories have begun, and it will continue to be until the day the last man and woman fade from the earth and return to the dirt from whence they came. There was a young man, and he loved a girl. He loved her like a drug; she was sun and moon and stars rippling on water to the boy and he would have done anything for her.
And then he lost the girl.
This too is an integral part of storytelling, as old as cave paintings on the wall. The boy loved the girl, and she loved him until she died. Forces beyond the power of either intervened into their puny mortal affairs, and the girl died because of them. The gods had spoken, and what must be came to pass. There was no arguing with the will of the gods.
There would be no story here if the Hero had just given up. Heroes are never that easily deterred, you see. They are sick men, warped and twisted in the head with obsessions uncounted. So it was with the young hero of our story.
The day she died, his sanity died with her.
Seph had been brought up since he was small to be a leader – ever since his parents had died and his siblings were left alone in the cold by the rest - and to always protect everyone. He wasn't going to abandon anyone, not like they had done to him. They were weak and he was strong and there was nothing to do but keep protecting them. If he did so- or so the boy was told – he would always live a long, peaceful life.
Indeed, Seph was the favorite and they could all rely on him. He couldn't be weak for he had to be strong – if not for him, at least for his brothers and sister – and keep thinking the big picture. Always he did this, and unsurprisingly he led a lucky and pleasant life, marred by no major misfortune or tragedy. No-one doubted him. No-one thoughts Heroes had weaknesses and if they did, they would only be reveal at the end of the story.
If it had not been for an old fairy story, a folk-tale of the area, the hero would have never begun on his journey. It was a tale told to little children around campfires late at night, but the hero knew that ever story, no matter how far-fetched, has a seed of truth planted deep within it.
He wasted no time in putting his brooding plan to motion. So he took his siblings with him and set-off to find them.
His siblings were not warriors. They weren't fighters, but he knew that they were not cowards either. They had never used their weapons for nothing but hunting wild animals and strangely this does not worry him. What if one of them can't perform magic at all? They will all fight, they will all fight and and they will win. They must deafeat Wiseman and bring peace.
And if they doubt him, he simply uses guilt and broken-promises to keep them going. For a moment, he thinks about his own words, but then something whispers impatiently in his head and he forgets to care what he said.
Surely nothing is more important than killing Wiseman. Nothing is more important than setting his world right again.
(x)(X)(x)
He freezes, and burns, and freezes again as he traverses this desolate dreamscape, all the wonder its splendors once instilled in him long since dead and turned to ash. The landscape is not important. The voice in the back of his mind, his magic and the people following him– these things are important. These things are real, and true, in a world that seems to fade a little further into hazy unreality every day.
He thinks that when the world finally falls away there will still be the girl, the gods, and the group of siblings ready to serve him.
(x)(X)(x)
As the beast's heads falls to the ground he finds it's a struggle to push himself to his feet, and the way his breath has begun to rattle in his chest would surely concern him if it weren't so unimportant. What is important is that they had proven they could fight even the Gods.
"Do not be arrogant. They price is everything and everything is what must you give."
He is not too surprised to heard his siblings accept one by one. He cracks a twisted smile. They were all a Brethen, too.
If he were acting like the old Seph, he would have noticed one of his siblings looking at him strangely.
As they leave he thinks he hears his brother whisper as he walks pass by "Are you doing this for peace or for her?" He stands there, confused at first, but then shakes his head of such thoughts. He's waiting for an answer
Marno doesn't know anything! He, along with Ven, stayed behind when they went hunting. He wanted to think it was because his brother was just weak. He wasn't a leader, he thought, he would have never thought of fighting Wiseman and would've turned his head and ignore all.
He looks at his younger brother and smiles. Marno has his back turned, waiting for an answer. His brother was not the favorite. He was not the natural-born leader.
"What's important now, Marno, is to kill Wiseman."
He says nothing in return. Marno was always the quiet one of the group and when he thought of something no-one dared to say otherwise. He rarely did so and just settled in following him like the rest. Seph may be the natural-born leader but Marno was part of something greater than him.
For a second Marno turned to him, and through a smile whispered simple, haunting words.
"It looks like the devils got you, too."
(x)(X)(x)
The whole atmosphere was haunting; his breathing was too heavy and heartbeat too fast. He barely needed to think, and so he wondered if his body was slowly giving in. He slayed people as if he were born to do it. Marno's eyes were stained red and he had this twisted smile as he cut off their heads.
Sure, they were all touch by the breathe of God but they didn't lose themselves completely...did they? Was all this for peace? Was this his fault?
"M-marno...?"
The fear never left him, though.
(x)(X)(x)
He falls as his throat is cut open, he mutters her name like a mantra even as he bleeds, he can hear their cries as they die. And the girl. The girl is real. Even now he knows her face, her name. Quis.
He expects to die quickly and be led into ever-lasting darkness. He hope he can at least catch a glimpse of her before he disappears but he feels a gaze burning through his skull.
He opens his eyes again and he sees his brother looking at him.
His face was stoic, and those who saw him called him cold-hearted, not seeing what billowed just below the surface. Where were his tears, his grief? Why was his face made of stone when his family lay there dying?
If the Gods had seen that face, they might have rightfully worried. Was he always this cold? Did he always had those stained red eyes? Even as he falls, he still holds that sick smile and dares to laugh about his own death. Seph bleeds and bleeds and as he closes his eyes, to let darkness take him, he thinks of one thing.
This is not the price he expected to have to pay for being the leader.