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A knight lives to serve- to aid those in need.
I keenly remember these words as they had resonated so well with me. It wasn’t just the words that were spoken either. It was how you said it with such enthusiasm and such joy. The way your face would beam and your eyes would sparkle with jubilance.
I understood these words as well. While I had not lived a lifetime as one pining to be a knight, I did grow wanting to help those around me. Your journey must have started the same: small little tasks, things that a grand knight now would see as miniscule and pointless. People were thankful for someone aiding them with tiny things, and it too made me proud. It seemed I was really good at helping people.
I was proud to aid those in need. To help with monsters, or beast tribes, or primals, or armies, or Ascians, or creations meant to tear this Star asunder. As I dragged my bloodied body with my lungs screeching for air, bones begging for rest- I fought on for them. Because I was their adventurer, their knight, their Warrior of Light. I only wished the best for the people so that they could live in peace.
A knight lives to serve- to aid those in need.
This phrase was not known to me yet, certainly not before I met you. But if I had heard them, I most likely would have carried them through even as the people- those very people that I had fought for, killed for, and many times almost died for...
... turned their back on me.
They tore down everything I'd ever fought for. They attempted to, or actually killed those I'd trusted- those compatriots that I had come to love. They pushed me from my own home as if a vermin carrying plague.
I'd learned with you that it wasn't really their fault. A person is smart, but people en-masse can easily be swayed when faced with their own potential oblivion. You'd seen it your entire life, and even as they pushed you out, even as they decried you less than a person to live out here in a post in the cold, you still wished for their safety. You saw the best in them, and knew that if you kept your hand steady, if you kept a smile on your face, then some day, somehow, they'd be guided from the darkness into the light.
You loved them. You wished to help them- to aid them in their time of need. Much like you did when you took us in at Camp Dragonhead.
Much like you did when you threw yourself between me and certain death.
You were still smiling, even then.
A knight lives to serve- to aid those in need.
It is difficult to help people who are too afraid that the change would bring them despair.
I'd learned this in the cold. I'd learned this overseas. I'd even learned this just outside the borders of my own home.
A people who had been beaten down, restrained, and trampled upon for decades- for generations- struggled with the idea of their own freedom. We saw it in them, just like you had. We knew if we tried, and we tried, and we tried; we could free them from the shackles that they'd come to call home.
But it was very much like herding sheep corralling themselves at the bottom of the hill panicked during a storm. That they would rather drown than try to listen to reason.
I was a knight, I was a hero- the Warrior of Light. I'd done it before, I could do it again.
I could fight monsters, and beastmen, and dragons, and primals, and armies, and Ascians, and those who could tear this Star asunder. And I was the only one who could stop them.
So again, and again, and again I dragged into battle my bloodied body, with my lungs screeching for air, and my bones begging for rest. Around me I watched countless compatriots and friends killed in battle, murdered by those who would stand to do these people harm.
And when the dust settled and the sun rose again...
... they still struggled to see their shackles undone. They decried in outrage all that we'd done in the name of good, in the name of hope. Some were convinced, some were not. You'd seen that too in your final days. But you'd planted the seed for a tree you'd never see grow. Perhaps I too was doing the same: planting a seed for a future tree to which the people could bask in the shade with nothing but content.
A knight lives to serve-
These problems do not seem to be restricted to our own world. I have now seen it across stars. Now I bear witness to both those desperate for a savior, and those desperate to hold the status quo. I am, once again, the only one who could help against powerful enemies. Once again I am the knight dragging my broken body into battle, with liquid light boiling in my lungs, and my soul cracking while begging for rest-
To again fight monsters, and armies, and sin eaters, and light wardens...
... and a single Ascian.
An Ascian who held out an olive branch to understand one another.
Even with his snide remarks and his obnoxious laughter, he would speak of a home long forgotten. Of a world where strife was unknown, where the people could live in peace, and where heroes were not needed. Where Knight was an idea, and not a mantle to carry 'til death. And yet even without those figures, they were still a people willing to throw away their lives for the sake of all.
Yet I am expected to fight him, a knight much like me. And while those see a monster, I can see a figure caught in strife.
A man of willpower, of passion, of longing, of grief. One who was throwing his very all to save a people he loves; one who also thinks that the steps he has taken are the right ones, that the people who have long been gone from this world are those he needs to aid. But unlike me...
He actively chose to bear this burden.
A knight lives to serve...
But what if I don’t want to be the knight?
What if I want to be the King? Or the Queen? Or the Bishop? Or the Rook? Or the Pawn?
... what if I want to be nobody? What if I don’t want to be on the board at all?
Why is it, at the end of the day, I must be the one to choose to swing the blade? That I must choose the life to be taken.
I did not choose to bear this title.
I did not choose to don the mantle I was given. I did not want this sword or this shield. I did not want this pedestal, and certainly did not want the fate of Stars upon my shoulders.
The cosmos had deemed it for me. It had been imprinted on my very soul to carry the weight of all those around me because it was only I who could bring the end to the enemy: to cut free the light in the darkness. It was the cosmos that had set me on the path to be this Warrior of Light.
But am I really the hero? Am I really the savior? Do the people who I've fought for-
Who have begged for me to solve even the simplest of their issues?
Who have turned me away and decried my name?
Who have spit venom in my face in their trying times?
... is it really up to me that I, in this final moment, choose between those who would selfishly cut a man for a coin, and a society willing to sacrifice itself almost entirely for the good of all?
To take the life of one who had spent centuries working towards that which he had promised for a people he had loved- to aid those in need.
Why is it my choice to make? Why do I have to be the knight?
What if I want to be nobody?
...
...
...
What if the person who is in need of aid, is me?
...
I wonder if you'd be disappointed.