• And thus the boy unsheathed his blade, the one taken from the maw of the great bloodthirsty beast that dwelled under that deadly sand that had surrounded the boy from his birth, and would most probably do so to his death; soaked in blood.

    The beast, the life giver, the ultimate life taker, the maker, without which, the only world that the boy had ever known, and many others, would collapse, though no one but the
    inhabitants of this world knew of this. Most of these worlds would die, forced to fight to the deaths for their greed for; and addiction to, the product of the great beast. The galaxy would perish, forced back millennia by the lack of this maker, this killer, to a time of which there are no memories, a time where the stars remained unexplored.

    And the boy’s blade, taken from this beast, was just as perilous. With it, the peril to one being was certain, without it, the peril to many always on the horizon, until it came as death upon the hundreds.

    With the blade in hand, the boy watched as his many brothers and sisters fought, many of the enemy’s most skilled warriors falling with ease at the hands of his older siblings. But his people were outnumbered, so they were being felled as well.

    Observing this, remembering his duty, the boy ran, he ran to the subdued enemies, seeing whether there was any living among the dead. He found many, with knife wounds; faces and limbs sliced and stabbed, bloodied beyond recognition; as well as breaks; limbs bent to look as if they were put on the wrong way; spines, collarbones snapped, leaving the owner of these bones paralyzed, in extreme pain, though silencing their moans as to try and hide themselves from the boy and his peers.

    But the boy was vigilant, he and his younger brothers and sisters checking each individual body for signs of life, and, if finding any, ending it. He found one of these death-imposters, and leaned over its face, his discolored eyes examining the mixed emotions of fear and pain on its face. This confused him. Pain; pain was to be expected, the enemy was in extreme pain, and it should be, it deserved pain for the crimes it had committed against the boy’s people. But fear; the enemy’s fear of his older brothers and sisters the boy understood, but its fear of his face confused him, disturbed him. He was the bringer of hope, of light, of death. If any enemy did not receive a fatal blow from his siblings, it should be proud; it had survived the painful assault, and the gods had seen honor and power in them, and they had earned the quick, painless death. They would be honored as one to even nearly match the strength of the boy’s people, a high award for an outsider.

    But this one feared. The boy smiled at him, as to calm him, but it seemed that this had intimidated the man even more.

    “What is your name?” The boy asked of the man. “If you give me your name, you shall be honored by the gods as a proud and honorable warrior.”

    “I don’t want to be honored by your filthy gods, you demented scum boy!” screamed the man. “Just take that blade and get over with it!”

    The boy was confused, though he still needed to perform his duty, so he leaned further over the man, took his blade, and with one clean stroke, he slit the man’s throat.

    He moved over to the next man, and, seeing his peers were already far ahead of him, slashing the enemy’s throats right and left. The boy approached the man next to him, and again, he leaned over the man’s face.

    “What is your name?” the boy asked again.

    The man’s reaction was much the same. “Go away!” he screamed.

    He slit the man’s throat. He asked the next, and the next after that their names, and neither answered him.

    It was then that he understood. Only those proud enough to speak to him as if they were an equal or a superior, even though they were maimed and lying on the ground at the boy’s and the blade’s mercy, to speak to him as the child he was, is the sign of a true honorable and proud warrior.

    And so the boy asked every wounded man he found their name, and none of them was the man that deserved his respect.

    Over the next years he searched, though none the enemies were ever honorable.
    Eventually, he stopped asking, knowing what the answer would be. And so the blade’s bloodthirsty maker, over whom the battle was being made, feasted like a king on the corpses to whom the boy had given one more bloody, deadly wound.