(Alright, folks, we're into Part 5, which is gonna be structured a bit differently from previous parts! Double update this week, so look for another chapter coming Friday. After that, we''ll release every two weeks, but sometimes with more content like today's. Please check out quickascanbe dot com and follow me on Facebook and Twitter if you're looking for more)
Part 5: In The Name of Love
The Tale of Beowulf: Seed of Daravon
It is so terribly easy to corrupt a child.
This is not the child's fault. A child is not made to be corrupted: if a child is anything at all, they are much like a seed from a tree. The child cannot change what kind of seed it is (as an acorn cannot choose to become a walnut, or a walnut a seed pod, or a seed pod an apple): nor can it choose where it is planted, or how it is pruned, directed, cared for, or neglected. There is so much that can be done to warp the substance of the child, so their roots are loose in the soil, their bark weak and soft, their branches gnarled and their leaves dead, and the only fruit that sprouts from their twisted limbs poison to any who might taste it.
It is so easy to corrupt a child. It is so much harder to make that child grow right. To recognize the kind of seed they are, plant them, not only in the right soil, but in the right place: shelter them from the harshest elements, and make sure they grow into their proper shape. But it would be 15 years before Beowulf Daravon had any inkling of these complexities. Because Beowulf Daravon, seed of a Military Instructor of no small repute, planted in the fertile ground of Gariland's many academies and tended warmly by his father's kindly (if eccentric) care, always felt himself to be exactly the right person, in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time.
As a babe, his crying could only be quieted by the high tales of bravery his father would tell him. Legends of the Zodiac Braves; of Firion and the resistance that had laid an evil emperor low; of the air pirates who had lived wild and free on the Ydorans borders, and a thousand others besides. When he grew old enough to speak, he demanded such tales from any who would share them, from any era: from the height of the Ydorans, from pagan Ivalice, or from the heroes of the 50 Years' War.
He would count himself among that number. When his time on Earth was done, Beowulf Daravon was going to be one of the legends of Ivalice. Of that, he had no doubt at all.