(Should be able to keep up a once-a-week pace, at least for the next few weeks)
The Tale of Beowulf: Corrupted
He wept in Reis' arms as she held him close beneath the endless grinding groan of the churning windmill. He wept at the pain of the wound that still troubled him, for all Reis' care. He wept for his defeat at Wiegraf's hands—the first real defeat Beowulf had ever tasted. He wept for Violet, his beloved chocobo, whose bloody body lay outside. And he wept, most of all, at his own boundless ignorance and stupidity. No, those words were too kind. He wept at his own evil.
He had killed so many men and women these last few months. He had not thought of any of them as people. He had not even known his own cruelty, until a true warrior had struck him down, and shown him just how feeble he was.
Beowulf Daravon had always wanted to be a legend. Gariland and its academies had always felt too small for him, but he needed to learn what they had to teach him, needed to refine himself for the moment when he could strike out on his own. And when the call had come—when Delita and Ramza were sent to guard duty at Igros, to join the war effort against the Death Corps rebellion setting Gallione ablaze—he had answered it.
He had roamed southern Gallione for months—first to save a kidnapped Marquis, and then to stop a terrible rebellion, and then to rescue his friend's dear sister. He had faced warriors of knowledge and ability, and had spoken with Prince Bestrald Larg himself. He had felt himself becoming one of the legends he had always hoped to be.
And Wiegraf Folles had shattered all of that, as he had shattered him. Because the men and women Beowulf Daravon had killed were not bit players in the story of Beowulf Daravon: not background dressing, to make him more impressive. They were men and women, with hopes and fears and ambitions just like Ramza, and just like Delita, and just like Teta, and just like Reis, and just like him. And Beowulf had cut them down with reckless abandon, never stopping to consider their own humanity, or his own cruelty.
Until he had wept for his fallen chocobo, and Wiegraf had laid bare his hypocrisy, and his cruelty, and his evil.
It is so very easy to corrupt a child. But no one had corrupted Beowulf. He had corrupted himself.