[Pyro]

IV. True Freedom

    What is the truest definition of freedom? Without conjecture and bias, pain and pragmatism? The preconceptions of those born today, and those born a thousand years ago?

    Is it something we can acquire within the surly bonds of physical form and earthly spirit, or must we reach past the veil of life into nothing to become truly free?


I had a dream a year ago. Or perhaps it was a year and a half when the butterfly still wandered in its hunt. A time short for many, but half my life thus far. A time when my rising anger was nothing more than gutwrenching anxiety and fear. The beginning of what and who I am today. My brother and I stood in the arena, the sky and trees and grass ablaze and turned to glass by the sheer inferno that surrounded our dance of death, for I knew he would kill me if I lost and I knew I would kill him if he lost. It was simply fated by that point. Words had long since been lost to the primal grunts of battle. The sweat and blood that filled the air and splattered the ground. My armor tarnished and my body battered. My perfect skin marred with black burns and blue bruises, plate dented and worthless. His form scratched, burned, bruised like mine. I could see where my spear had struck true. His blood had sizzled and his skin had cooked. 

A parry. A strike from the side. The world spun and sickness overtook my skull after the felling of a blade's blunt back against my helmet. I panicked and faltered, my knees gave out. I dropped to them in the mixture of dirt and glass we had created from the ground, and I stared up at the looming shadow of my brother. I felt twisting fear, anxiety and terror. Quelled rage and shrill desire to deliver him to pain.

And then... He cleaved. And I felt not pain, nor shrill, primal feelings, but relief. Not the masochistic ecstasy a true monster feels at being felled, but the relief of my bonds being released. My arm severed from my body, the red hot blood filling the air with screeching steam. Yet, I did not panic. I had entered a sense of serenity unlike any other. The gap that divided life from void bridged, and I felt myself linger between it as the weight of armor and limb fell from my form. And so, the dream ended with bliss, and not chaos. For it is the body that binds us here and gives our souls weight. Something only the living may feel and, in turn, embrace. For it is this weight that holds our forms to this green earth and gives us meaning. To toil is to live, yet to be in ecstasy is to live as well. With purpose comes the lack of.

Yet, this is only a dream. But I have felt the gap between life and death bridged as the blood seeped from my wounds on the fields of Lordwain, and the white abyss of Purgatory, or the halls of Greilland, crimson seeping from my mouth and filling my sabatons. I have felt the chill touch of the other side and embraced it, but yet, not in full. Come to understand that there is pain in living, but not death. Yet, it is this pain that also gives us meaning to exist. Every ounce of it is an opportunity to learn.

To answer my previous question, I have discovered that a man is defined by his actions in the end, rather than the beginning. His legacy which carries on from this world to the next. He may slaughter and maim and kill and be called evil, but if he gives his life protecting the innocent, forgiveness is granted for he can no longer change what he is, only pass to the other side. Yet, this also applies to good men doing bad things. A hero who decapitates the bandit feeding his family by stealing bread is the villain, plain and true, for that is how he is defined in that moment. 

What is it, to change? Can we truly be different from how we were crafted by this world, molded by the touch of a cruel father and saved from hellfire by the gentle touch of a mother?