Isaac's breaths were short but heavy. He was on his knees and suddenly felt ill, shakily rising to his feet. That was when realization fully hit him and hit him so hard that he leaned against a wall for support. "I just killed someone." He thought, horrified. "Even at this very moment his blood coats my hands like another skin." It was the blood of someone Isaac once considered to be almost like family. The youth thought that the Templar gave tough love, but that it still had been love. "He was the closest thing I had to a father. He was correct. If not for him, I might have starved out there." Isaac's mind felt foggy as he tried to remember the day he met the newly deceased man. He had been quite young at the time and lacked memories of his biological father and mother. For as long as he could recall, he had lived with that Templar Knight. That Knight who was laying on the ground, dead, and soaked in his own blood. Isaac had been diverting his eyes from the body, but he then looked directly at the corpse. He tilted his head with intrigue. "How could such a violent act feel so justified? My own consideration of the actions hardly cause anything resembling remorse." He replayed it several times and as he did, it continued to seem right.
Isaac had acted in self-defense. What was the man's reason for attacking him? Seeing him trying to help him find books and learn how to help him? "He claimed to believe I was stealing." Isaac thought, bitterly, "After all these years, he should have known I am no thief." The man spoke so often of the art of forgemastery. He always said how a forgemaster could do so much good in the world. One could lift the dead from Hell and have them make up for their crimes on the Earth. It was clear to Isaac that the Knight was incapable of being a forgemaster, himself. He would spend long nights trying and would always fail to bring anyone back to life. Sometimes Isaac saw people being brought to the man only to be killed and then experimented on to see if they could be resurrected.
An instinctual chill went down Isaac's spine as he thought of their pleads to be spared and the sounds of bone-crushing and slicing which consistently followed. "It all seemed fine. Like their mild suffering would benefit the greater good. And yet, I must contemplate what would have happened had I just stepped in then. Are innocent lives destined to be taken by the cruelty of this world?" Isaac glared at the corpse. "Why did you believe you had the right to end so many lives with potential? Why fool yourself into thinking our lives were for you to control? What reason did you even have to be so infuriated just now?" Isaac wondered. The only motive he could come up with was jealousy. Isaac had been down there looking in the books and read how forgemasters need to use tools specific in order bring the dead back to life. It said that simply by holding a tool or weapon and chanting the printed words while near a corpse would awaken the forgemaster's dormant abilities. Isaac saw an impressive-looking knife by one of the bodies and held it firmly in both hands. He was nervous as he read off the words for the incantation, but he read them. Once he had finished, the knife began to glow red. That was when the Templar entered.
The man snatched the blade away and slashed him in the back. Before Isaac could even explain what his intentions were, he was being forced on the ground and his wrists were tied together. "I had actually sought so much to help that his rage hurt more than the wounds he inflicted." Isaac scoffed at himself. How could he have let a deranged person have that much control over him? That would be the last time anything like that happened. "No longer will my fate be at the whims of vile people and no longer will I allow something as foolish as love to cloud my judgment." Isaac went and washed the blood off his hands and back. He did not even wince as the open cuts met the icy water.
"I cannot stay here." Isaac realized, "People will come, expecting to see him. It would be best for my departure to be prior to their discovery of his death." An idea came to mind and the youth smiled. "Of course, this does not mean that I should leave empty-handed." Isaac went to the Templar's room and got some clothes. They did not necessarily fit him, but they were improvements to his usual single garment. Feeling bold, Isaac went back down to the lower floor and confidently strode past the corpse. With more than a little spite, he collected the books which he had been studying. "I believe I might be able to find use for these, Templar." He told the body, "I am sure you will not miss them." A soft chuckle rose in him as he left. Some of Isaac was nervous because he had not been out of the Knight's home since before they had met; however, more of Isaac was excited. There was a whole world out there for him to experience and no one was going to prevent him from doing that. When Isaac took his first steps beyond the boundary of the home, a feeling of liberation surged through him. He did not know where he would go, but he could sense that he had quite the life ahead of him now. He unraveled a map he had seen the Templar looking at before and spotted a town nearby. Determined, he set off for his next adventure.