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Disclaimer: I own nothing but my overactive imagination which keeps me up at night (the mirror! The mirror!).
Not like you needed to know that. So you can go ahead and forget it now. Okay?
...You're forgetting, right? Good.
I'm thinking that Geddoe knew the Fire Hero, right? But what's the story behind that?
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My name is Geddoe.
I prefer to think that no one would like to know any more than that, but I'm afraid that's not the case anymore. Sometimes I regret ever having bothered to rise up at the challenge to find a True Rune. Joining the Fire Bringer at Budehuc under the Karayan boy's banner.
Deciding to take up the True Lightning Rune in my hand that moment so many years ago.
Maybe if I had just laid low with my unit—went scouring off in the mountains on some dinghy merchant's money or just hung around home base for a while...
But I suppose that option wasn't available to me. Not with my having the True Lightning Rune stuck in my palm.
Not with my acquaintance with him—
No. More than a mere acquaintance. Not like someone you nod to down the lane who you see everyday or someone whose name you know just because you work in the same place.
Nah.
The original Fire Hero and I were friends. Traveling with a person for the number of years we have been...well, you'd either have formed a bond with him or helped him off the nearest cliff when he wasn't looking.
I hadn't opted for the latter.
I was much tempted to, though. At the beginning, at least.
Ace and Joker, two loud and ale-loving members of my mercenary unit, haven't traveled with each other that long, but listening to them rattle off at each other, you'd think they've traveled twice as long. They haven't gotten around to the second option as of yet—unless there was something they've been hiding from me—so I believe that some sort of inexplicable bond exists between the two.
Somewhat.
So yes, the Fire Hero and I were friends.
You wouldn't have thought it like that, had you seen us so many years ago. He was, as his Rune suggested, explosive, impulsive and horrendously cheerful most of the time. Nothing could bring him down, save perhaps a well-placed twig in his path.
I needed to do that a lot.
Sometimes I used my foot, for lack of any vegetation in the immediate vicinity.
He was awfully proud of himself. He needed a bit of humiliation every now and then. Something had to let out all the hot air storing up inside him (lest it send him soaring into the atmosphere to pop on the finger of a star).
I ignored him a lot at the beginning—he was inhumanly chatty, and I was used to traveling alone by then. He nearly drove me crazy with his constant prattling. I believe that the first few years with him had me on the brink of insanity. But I don't think he noticed.
Or maybe he did. He was smart, when he bothered to be.
Of course, what with his explosive attitude and rash impulses to do whatever came first to his mind without considering the consequences, he didn't bother much. He lived for life.
I wasn't much like my Lightning Rune. I could name several others who move with more alacrity than I do, and nothing I do is really sudden. Just unobtrusive. You don't notice it.
You'd notice lightning, though. Even without the crack of thunder. Especially if it happened to land right next to you. Then you would notice it, whether you were blind, deaf, or both.
I believe that he was made for the Fire Rune. Everything about him had the aspects of fire. At times, he made one think either of raging flames in a forest or a mellow little campfire in the middle of a dark sleepy night. But most of the time, you'd see him as a lantern.
Mind you, a lantern that never lost its light, even when you dumped him in an ice-cold river.
He was like that, lighting up our path all the time with his good-natured humor or his brash jokes and horrid puns, whether I was in the mood to listen or not.
Most usually, or not.
But there were some times when he seemed to dim. Not in the literal sense, of course—nothing can put out the True Fire rune—but in the personal sense. He was young when the Rune took him as its own, starting out his new life traveling away from the Grasslands.
The responsibility of bearing the True Rune weighed heavily on him—more so than me, I believe. I was well into my thirties or forties when I took up the Lightning Rune and as a freelance mercenary, I had no bonds with anyone or anything but money. Nothing that I would mourn to leave behind when time stepped in and took it away.
He came from Chisha, a Grassland tribe. And as it was in every Grassland clan, everyone knew everyone, from the oldest hermit to the brattiest little monster. He had friends, family. People he would have to leave behind when immortality kept him from the dwindling shore that was Life. Death.
There were times when his eyes seemed heavy with age, far away and so tired. Sometimes he seemed older than even me. He was wise during those moments, and his voice seemed to carry with him much sadness.
That was the Fire Hero, my many-faceted friend. Sometimes happy, sometimes angry. Sad, too, in a way. He was a young man with bright ideals and opinions he never hesitated to shoot off, whether anyone was interested or not.
I'm sorry that I never understood him. That I never bothered to. I guess his childish demeanor made me believe that he was a child as well. I misjudged him most of the time, and it frustrated him. I never took the time to consider his ideals or understand why he did the things he did, much to his dismay.
I guess I was too used to being alone then. I hadn't cared much.
I'm glad that he lived his life the way he wanted to, with that girl from Chisha. He sacrificed a lot to live with Sana, but I'd like to think that his end was happy. He followed his heart and I remember that he always believed in doing that. He kind of reminds me of the new Fire Hero. That Karayan punk.
He'd have been proud to see the kid in his place, I think. Hugo did a good job saving the known world. He would have been thrilled to know that the Grasslands were safe again, if not by his hand, then by another one of his kin, no matter that he wasn't around to see it happen. He died well, Sana told me.
I remember him with the fond—if not amused, tiring and exasperating—memories.
He was a man. A childish boy. A dreamer. A poet. A talkative goofball. An arrogant pain in the neck on more than one occasion.
And at one brief and brilliant time, he was a hero.
He was the Fire Hero.
I knew him back then.
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My...Geddoe is certainly chatty, isn't he? Maybe these are his thoughts. Or someone clobbered him over the head and stuck a mask connected to a tank of laughing gas to his face.
Oh, and does anyone have any suggestions for the Fire Hero's name? I don't know anything that would suit that sizzling—uh, that...guy...yeah.
Okay.