The monks of the Fist of Dawn are sworn to serve the Warriors of Light in their quest to restore power to the crystals and stave off the calamity. Trained in mind and body to think not of themselves but the greater good, they are instilled with a strong focus on helping others and pushing beyond their own comfort.
When the calamity began, the monks were deployed to every corner of the world in search of any way they might aid the Warriors of Light. Some gathered information and spread rumors to plant breadcrumbs for the heroes. Others hunted monsters to clear the way. A select few set their sights on the territory immediately surrounding Cornelia, the promised meeting place of the Warriors of Light.
A young man named Sancho is one such traveler. He set out for a small fishing village not located on any map, Poft, across the water north of Cornelia. It is not such a place one would expect any tangible results, but perhaps just a nugget of information to lead the monks to the chosen ones.
Sancho never expected this trip to bear fruit so quickly.
Chapter 3: Poft
The monk arrives in town, checks himself into an inn, and then makes his way to a tavern for a warm meal. Mere minutes after seating himself at the bar and putting in an order, he crushes a peanut between his knuckles. A commotion brews behind him.
A low, animated voice: "It ain't real and you know it!"
A young man slurring his words: "I don't know anything! But it's real all right! It came straight from an art-of-icer's mouth."
"There ain't no artificers in Poft!"
"Yeah, I know! This was back in Pruffffoka!" Again, all slurred.
"Pravoka? Whadda ya mean Pravoka?"
"Itza port city in the northeast!"
"I know what it is! But there ain't no way you brought a crystal of light to Pravoka and left in one piece!" Sancho's ears perk up.
"Pravoka's where I got it." The drunken crystal bearer is dressed in unpolished, no, fake armor. To the untrained eye, it would merely seem dirty; to a monk trained in many forms of martial arts, it is evident that this armor is for little more than show.
"Wot?! You mean to tell me that you got a real crystal of light out of Pravoka?! That's right rubbish if I ever heard it!"
"It's the truth! You are looking at a real Warrior of Light, thank you very much."
"Arright 'Warrior of Light,' what's a legendary hero doing in Poft? Ain't it your job to be in Cornelia?"
"Itzonly one night. I needalil something before I go."
"Only one night? You've been doin' this at every tavern in town all week! I ain't the first person to hear about a Warrior of Light running around town asking for free drinks."
"Maybe there's another one here. There're four." He takes a swig from his bottle.
"There ain't no one of the sort! Get out of here with all that!"
"Juss one drink."
"Ask me one more time for a drink." At this point, Sancho rises from his seat and approaches. The grifter claiming to be a Warrior of Light is a tall, thin man with dark brown hair with some sort of product that gives it just enough lift to hang down about an inch from his face.
"Can Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii… have… a… drr-rink?"
"Why you—" The skeptic, a taller, wider man in shabby work clothes, reaches out and grabs the smaller man by an exposed shirt collar.
"Easy, easy," says Sancho, jumping in between the two with calming hands raised. "I think we're getting a little worked up."
The 'Warrior of Light' protests, "Not me. I'm great."
"We're in the middle of a bloody calamity and he's out here tryin' ta con a drink off every working man enters the tavern! Some Warrior of Light he claims to be."
"You aren't wrong," Sancho tells him. "It's a scam."
"Deserves an ass-kicking."
"Maybe so. But let's cool down and talk this out." The larger man seems to consider it.
"Alright," he says. "What good's a beating to a man who can't even half feel it?"
"Good man," Sancho says. He turns to the drunken conman. "As for you. I think we'd best leave."
The drunk clotheslines the worker and knocks him clean off his feet. The worker collapses onto and then through a wooden table behind himself.
"What are you doing?!" Sancho shouts at him.
"He never saw it coming."
"Let's go," Sancho says. He grabs the man by the arm and begins to drag him away. The conman digs his heels in and pulls back.
"Let go of me," he says. Sancho wordlessly tugs with more force. The man lunges forward to strike Sancho. The monk catches his arm and pivots it aside, striking the man dead center with an open palm and shattering the armor like porcelain. A shabby brown tunic hides underneath.
"I am a monk of the Fist of Dawn," Sancho tells him. "I have training you cannot begin to imagine. And I do not take any pleasure from doing this."
"I didn't mean anything by it," the conman says, hands on his knees to catch his breath. Sancho relaxes his stance.
Then he gets smacked in the face with an empty tankard and knocked to the ground. He is briefly dazed, but still catches himself with his hands and launches himself back onto his feet with an elegant shove.
Sancho kicks high, hitting the man in the chin, then low, catching him in the stomach. He tumbles backwards and clutches his gut.
"Had enough?" Sancho asks. The man groans. Sancho, feeling the blood rolling from his temple, is hesitant to let his guard down again. He watches intently as the man moves slowly, purposefully, hand going from his stomach towards his pocket.
Sancho catches the shuriken out of midair and finishes the fight with a swift kick to the groin.
Pocketing the shuriken, he turns to the man laying in the smashed remains of the table. He helps him to his feet. They share a silence that can only be described as awe by one party and humility by the other. Sancho then leaves a few pieces of gil on the bar, packs up his food, and returns to the conman. He slings the man over his shoulder and walks out the door and into the cold of night.
The man throws up over Sancho's shoulder a couple of times as he passes over a short bridge and through the town grass, but otherwise the trip to the inn is uneventful.
Sancho makes his way to his room and sets the man down on the bed with care. Then he begins to rifle through his pockets: a couple more shurikens, a dagger, and then, a blue crystal. And not just any crystal. A monk would know it anywhere; this is without question the water crystal, to be given to one of the four prophesized Warriors of Light, in the hands of a common thief using it for clout to pawn drinks off of hard-working people.
He looks over to the man, ready to ask him how he came upon such a stone. But the man is in no shape to answer any questions; he's down for the count and won't be up until well after sunrise. Sancho places the food on the table next to the bed along with a waterskin, then wraps the crystal and the weapons in a bundle. He takes a spare blanket from beneath the bed. He spreads it in front of the door. Then he slides the bundle beneath the blanket, sits, and uses his body to obstruct the conman from taking the crystal or the weapons or from leaving the room. Finally, he allows himself to fall asleep there in the floor.
Sancho helps himself to a great deal of shut-eye throughout the night, knowing it could be well into the middle of the day before he can get any answers out of the crystal-bearer. He occasionally darts awake to cast a glance at the man tossing and turning in the comfort of the bed and sheets, but then relaxes and goes back under quickly. It's rare for the monk to get much sleep at all while he travels, so he makes sure to take every minute he can get knowing it may be a long time yet before such an opportunity presents itself again.
When the conman stirs late in the morning, the sun is shining through a window at the foot of the bed. When he kicks the cover off himself, Sancho stiffens and peeks up at the stranger with squinted eyes. The man lifts himself slowly on his arms as if sleepwalking. Seated upright in bed, he moves with little more than head movements to take in the room around him. He looks down at Sancho, thinks briefly, remembers. He noticeably feels the throbbing of a long night in his head. Sancho does not stir; it occurs to him that the bundle of weapons is still under the blanket he lays on. He has the upper hand. Yet he continues the observe the crystal-bearer who reaches for the waterskin first. He doesn't hesitate to drink it, but he does make sure to do so quietly so as not to rouse the monk. Then he reaches for the food wrapped in paper and undoes the string on top with caution, pulling the paper away slowly it doesn't scratch against itself noisily. He eats the bacon first, finishing both pieces before he starts on the bread. He finishes the bread before he touches the cheese. Then he downs the last of the water without any regard for the sipping sounds he makes. It then becomes unproductive to keep up the charade; Sancho opens his eyes as if the drinking wakes him.
"You're awake," Sancho says.
The conman shrugs. "As are you." He is hoarse, but noticeably more present than the night before.
"Are we cool right now?" the monk asks. "I didn't want to hurt you."
"Doesn't look like I have much choice." He begins rubbing his thigh. "Where are my things?"
"I have them," Sancho says. "I'd like to know how you got the crystal."
"What difference does it make?"
"You claimed to be a Warrior of Light. That is not a claim I take lightly."
"Well, it's true," the crystal-bearer says.
"Then where'd you get it? You said Pravoka last night."
"Yeah."
"Can you be a little more specific?"
The man rolls his eyes. "A friend I used to run with gave it to me as part of a haul."
"A haul?"
"Yeah."
Silence.
"We were thieves," the crystal-bearer adds.
"I see. And you're supposed to be a legendary hero?"
"I know what it sounds like. But in Pravoka, that's survival. People in Poft can work to get by, but out there, who you are is everything. And I chose to be someone who can take care of himself."
Sancho stops to consider this. "Sorry. That was judgmental of me. Alright, so you got it from a haul. Do you know who the haul came from originally?"
"He didn't say."
"How can you be sure the original owner wasn't the real Warrior of Light?" Sancho asks.
"Fat chance. We only stole from the upper class. They're the ones that had good stuff. Plus, they kind of deserved it since they wouldn't hire anybody with the right blood. Not even one of them knows how to fight."
The monk stops to consider again, then nods. "OK. I believe you."
"Why are you asking me this? You're not expecting me to give the crystal to you, are you?"
"I don't want the crystal." He lifts the blanket, revealing the bundle beneath. The man leaps up and attempts to snatch it. Sancho catches his wrist. Their eyes meet. The monk relaxes his grip, lets the thief take the bundle back. He sets it down on the bed and unrolls it. Sancho stands as the thief puts away his shurikens and daggers, then takes the crystal and looks at it in the sunbeam. Convinced it's unblemished, he pockets it as well.
"Why'd you bring me here then?" the thief finally asks.
"I'm with the Fist of Dawn. We're an order of monks sworn to guide the Warriors of Light on their journey to defeat Chaos."
"Right. OK, well, guide me and I'll be on my way then."
"Not that simple," Sancho says. "I intend to escort you to Cornelia, or at the very least until the Warriors of Light are united."
"Do I get a say?"
"As a prophesized legendary hero? Not really."
"Alright," replies the thief. "Get me to Cornelia then. Are you at least going to tell me your name?"
The monk says, "Sancho. And you?"
The thief replies, "Tormund."
Sancho begins to gather his few belongings and put the room back together.
"Alright Tormund. Do you have any things to pick up before we leave?" he asks.
"This is everything I have," Tormund replies.
"OK." The monk opens the door. "Let's get moving then."
The pair sets off towards Cornelia, southbound. They know this journey will take about a week. What they don't know is that the first of the Warriors of Light has already left Cornelia and begun his journey north and east to the port city of Pravoka, and by the time they reach Cornelia themselves, the other Warriors of Light they're looking for will be on the trail of the first.
It should go without saying that Sancho's part in all this doesn't stop at getting Tormund to Cornelia.