“Ooh you’re a master” the headman’s large smile revealed his disproportionate gaped teeth. Itrepulsed the master, who disdainfully showed it with a slight grimace.

“The master”, he corrected him with annoyance, still lifting his head and looking at him with

haughtiness.

“The master”, the short headman repeated with confusion, “the gods sent you to us when we most

needed you, noble master. I knew it wasn’t myths, the stories about the masters.”

“Well, most of them”, the master now looked around the village. It didn’t differ much from the other

villages he had visited lately. The saddened faces of passers, the barking of stray dogs, and the ever lasting distant weeping of a child. And like all the other villages, it smelled of dirt, laundry and

charcoal. The air whirled, and the roads were muddy. The flies were of course omnipresent.

He finally looked back to the patiently waiting headman, “So tell me about that thing you needed me

for”.

“Yes, ma_”, he broke off, “the master. We’ve been tormented by a strange phenomenon. My people

seem to be so tired. Men, women and children, they’re weakening. They sleep more, and only with

effort do they come out of their homesteads. Plenty of them fainted while working. No one can farm

the land, and the work’s still. If this lasts, we’ll die from hunger. We’ve called physicians, but none of

them could find a remedy. You truly are our last resort. Save us O noble master sent from the gods.”

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The headman’s worried face made him look even shorter, and more powerless.

The master didn’t take a second to ponder it over, he immediately answered as if reciting. “That

tower you have behind the village; I assume it’s part of the land.” The headman nodded. “I’ll stay in

it. And I’ll need vittles dropped at the gate once a weak.”

The headman looked at him quite confusingly for a while, “but of course noble master. But that

tower is in ruins, no one lived in it for ages, we can give you a room.”

The master started walking away at the middle of the sentence, his black cloak fluttering wildly

behind him. The wind wasn’t that strong though, it seemed to the astonished headman out of place.

“And something other than potatoes, I grew sick of your potatoes.” The master yelled from a far

lifting his tall wound slightly from the ground.

“Our?” the headman mumbled to himself. But it didn’t go unheard by his son, who was listening

intently to their conversation leaning on the wall of a homestead.

“He means peasants dad” he said grinning and clenching his teeth. “See how arrogant he was. He’s

looking down on us, and dares asks for vittles when you tell him we’re almost dying from hunger.

And they say masters don’t take rewards, and that they’re heroes who do good for the sake of good.

He's nothing like in the stories.”

“Nothing is like in the stories son. Truly Nothing.”