The man, who had been a loyal servant of the king - the man named Arthael - one of the few paladin soldiers fit to be one of the King’s most elite guards, no longer wanted to kill the child’s friends.
Instead, now he could see the suffering his King had caused the child. He had witnessed the heir of the kingdom kill a harmless girl - the heir who had killed a child’s family, and whose very soldiers had started the blood feud of the man who had orchestrated it all. The man no longer hated Cleaver but saw him as a fellow warrior.
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But the child, who had been in his own small war with the Church, could also see the life of the man. The man who had been taken from his parents at only a few years of age and then trained for 20 brutal years without any rest - all simply because he had an affinity for magical artifacts of the church.
A child who had become only a man because he was forced to, not because he could make decisions or learn how to - but a child who had become a man without any choice in the world or free will of his own. But despite that, the man was not without kindness.