September 25th, 1800
...
I should leave the city.
No warnings, no farewells, no ceremony, I need to leave this place. Soon.
Got to start a new life, become a new me. Out there somewhere, that is.
For many years, I've lived in Alexandria. I had nowhere else to go, the city, the kingdom, the state, all these prisons we came to accept as home at such a young age, they kept me from leaving. That, and the fear of going insane.
It's the "Mist poison" that kept me safe during all these years. A tale as old as time, one of the first things you hear as soon as you're able to listen to your old folks. Ma and pa, they told me that Mist is bad. Very bad. Breathe the country air, stay out of home for too long and you'll go insane, stuff like that.
Wars plagued this world because the soldiers fought in the Mist, but as I grew up, I learned that most of the soldiers didn't want to be there at all. I know because I was a soldier too, spent some time in the military. Actually, I was a Knight of Pluto, who, unlike a soldier, follows his duty within the kingdom. Fortunately, I was never called to any large-scale conflict, but some of my friends did and not all of them came back.
Well, some came back with a missing limb or two, but the visible wounds were nothing compared to the mental scars. To be in war is draining, both for the enemy and us, the enemy of our enemy. We were not so kind to them as much as they were not kind with us back.
You can't be kind when you're carrying a weapon. You know, with the slice of a sword, dreams end. Memories end. Life ends.
It's not an easy job. It never was. I remember when a great fire spread throughout Alexandria's vicinity in 1770. At the time, Alexandria was at war against Burmecia and it is not yet known who actually caused the fire, whether it was a random accident or if it was related to the conflict. It doesn't seem to matter for me, I was there to rescue people and I, alongside a few comrades, did the best we could.
I wish I had words of comfort to say to a lonely child I found buried in the wreckage, but I had other people to help. People who were alive, that is, which wasn't very many, much to my misfortune. The silence that fell that night was not victorious, it was a horrible vacuum in which not a single scream was heard. The next morning was filled with widows and their tears that flowed and seemed to have no end, just like the suffering I went through in that agonizing search for bodies that were still breathing.
It wasn't all sadness, though. Some people lived and kept on living. I once met a knight called Adelbert, his determination was a remarkable feature of his character even in his earlier years and, over time, he became a knight and has been serving for many years since then. He told me that he owes his life to a knight who rescued him when he was a kid. It couldn't have been me, could it be? It happened so many years ago and, besides, there were so many boys like him that day, and who can I be to know the fate of them all?
But those days are over. They are behind me. Now I'm retired and leaving Alexandria. However, that doesn't mean my life is over. It's only over until my last breath is drawn out of my lungs. I still have my sword, if necessary. Perhaps I won't encounter as many wild beasts as people used to when the Mist was all over the continent, but I'm not willing to face them head-on, as I'm not in as good a shape to fight as I was in my youth.