Chapter 55: The Smile of Arden
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Arden never really wanted anything other than to help. Think of it as a sweet innocent child’s wish after being saved by someone whose dream was not to see anyone cry. Arden remembered his childhood days when he was a wee lad or at least the parts where he would look at tourneys and watch the knights compete. He remembered the various guardsmen smiling at him when he delivers their beer or when he helped an old lady with her chore. He died in that town of his but he can see that the only reason why he wanted to be helpful because it rhymes to his desires.
He remembered a skald and a bard singing on a tavern once. He remembered their songs and wonders that echoed within his heart. He’d died when the fire that took his parents and friends but he was reborn and forge to become someone with a single pure desire to help.
Why does Arden want to help?
Simply, because the world is cruel enough that he wanted to bring kindness to it through helping others. Everyone dies, burnt, stabbed, mauled, sickened, maimed, gutted, flayed, shot, and so on. He remembered how many people that died on that fiery day. Their screams their cries and so on echoed for days on his head before he was able to calm down. And then by that time he thought that he wanted to help.
In Mesh he was able to achieve things out of pure joy in helping. Some called him fool for doing so while some merely sneered and take advantage of him. Arden is really hollow inside. He felt like his only joy in life is helping people. The euphoric feeling that it gives him was better than having eaten a feast or anything worldly.
He wanted to help because it felt good. He wanted to see someone smile as they help. His dream is really simple and that is to see those he helped smile. Of course, even he knew good and evil. He knew that there are people that will take advantage of him and try to break him.
Indeed he feels joy but his heart is as brittle as glass and even though he died in that fire a long time ago his heart that of brittle glass survived with him. And no matter what training or mental resistance he had as long as his heart was glass he will continue to get hurt.
Arden admired the tales of the heroes and knights in the poems and songs of bards and skalds. But yet he was just a normal kid bestowed by a foster father who had a knack for killing mages and eccentric knowledge’s that were out of the world. Arden never really cared to ask much about the knowledge his foster father planted on him knowing he could never truly understand where his foster father or the knowledge came from.
So rather he wanted to use the knowledge to help. He's not fond of killing and tries to avoid it but the way his foster father taught him morals made him sympathetic and even make him want to help more. The world is cruel and torn with a war that has lasted for centuries. His foster had an idea of a peaceful world, a world where men and women live in so much peace that they began to worry about the little things.
Arden admired that kind of world despite feeling that it was rather stagnant and decadent. But people were living happiness. Unlike the world, he is stepping right now where life is so easily replaceable and no men or women would bathe an eye when a child cries for help.
Just imagine Arden being taught the morals of a modern man who grew up in that kind of time. His foster called the world medieval and cruel. He’d show disdain and at the same pity on it. His father always wondered and muttered about helping the world through the peacemaker he had.
Arden could not understand the head of a modern man. He never did, but he understood the ‘mercy’ that his foster father wanted to show to the world. He wanted to see the world to help and indeed when he got out of the confines of the walls of Mesh City. He saw the world as cruel as it truly was. He saw men and women die. He buried a village worth of people in a single day while crying his eyes out for them simply because no one will cry for them.
He saw people having no pity as if their hearts were steeled. Everyone he met so far felt like murder was natural and something that should not be questioned if they wanted to live in such a cruel barbaric world. Arden’s brittle glass heart could not understand them.
How do you think he felt when he killed men and women to save other men and women?
He found it cruel and if possible he wanted to help them.
But even so, such things were rather complicated.
He finds his life precious because he owes it after surviving that fire. Arden remembers the flames and never will he ever risk the life he owes. He has the obligation to hold tightly to it even though he is someone who would do everything to save someone.
Arden is a simple human being that wanted to help people in order to bring them kindness and see them smile in joy. He wanted to see grateful smiles and he wanted to believe that there can be kindness in this world so cruel. He wanted to believe that no matter how cruel the world is. He can still somehow make it better by helping people who he can that needs help.
He knows that helping everyone is a pipe dream. He might be called foolish but only because of his ‘joy’ that he acts like one.
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That is why seeing the hand piercing his stomach. Arden could not help but point his eyes at the lady who he hauled for days. The lady suddenly freed herself from the carrier backpack he made and stabbed him right in the stomach. He somehow knew the lady was healed up but he believed that the lady still needed help.
He thought that she really needs time to help but looking at the hand on his stomach. The one piercing him right now that slowly allows blood to flow out of his body as if a barrel of wine that was poked with a hole. He could feel the cold air and then see the malicious smile of the lady that contains so much hatred for him.
Arden wondered what he did to make the lady so angry at him. He saw Jess pointing his bow at the lady. But the lady was an ascended knight who controlled power even Arden could not match unless he draws the line and construct the weapons he needs.
So Arden could not blame the shivering Jess who can only lower his bow down as the lady threatens him. The lady had hazy black eyes that seem to spin with madness. She spoke of how insulting Arden was for the following weeks and how this is punishment for being such a conceited fool.
Arden felt his stomach twist in pain. The blood flowing out of him made him feel faint and floaty. His ears were ringing and his eyesight became slowly blurry. The intense pain he felt when the lady whose hand turned into a sword made him unable to get the whole picture of what really is happening.
The lady was clearly mad at him. He didn’t know why but as he listened he understood that the lady was offended and that her pride was insulted and desecrated by him. Arden thought that all he did was helped. So listening to the lady made him somehow think that maybe it was his fault that she was this mad. Arden wanted to speak but the lady seems like she wanted to give him the piece of her mind.
He listened to the rant of the lady whose eyes are twisted. From the way, Arden stopped her from killing the war leader who insulted her mother. The way he made a fool of her by getting the entire warband to side with him rather than her, and finally the way he spat at her pride and honor by carrying her like a cripple and making her feel like a useless scum.
She hated all of it. And hearing this made Arden more confuse. He only did what he thought was right yet she was angry because he did what he thought was right. He only saw the lady being helpless on the ground and he did what his mind told him to and helped the lady that could not walk. He could not let the lady die so he chooses to carry her to survival even though he felt that the lady was fine and was just being apathetic.
But...here he is with his back facing the cliffs of the mountain. The lady stabbed Arden right in the gut and he was bleeding rather fast. The lady’s strike was something that he did not anticipate or even guessed that the lady would do. He was indeed foolish and seeing the lady pulls her hand out violently out of his stomach. Arden uttered a groan as the lady’s knifed hands get pulled out.
The lady sneered and then slowly pushed Arden closer to the cliff. The lady had violent eyes and then the lady spoke to him as she pushes him off the cliff while having this cruel smile. But seeing the smile that she had, he could not help but reply:
“You are Welcome...I am glad.”
...
“Although you insulted me I shall thank you for what you have done at least. Goodbye, you fool.”
Valera made sure that her words sting and looked at the face of the man who shamed her. She wanted to see him shout in rage for being stab sneakily and scream at her with all of the air in his lungs but what he saw instead was the foolish magus smiling at her with such a pure expression that it shook her being.
He, Arden, the man who she stabbed at the time when he was worried about the bandits down the path, smiled as if what she did was nothing to him. She wondered why the man would smile so brightly at him like the sun but then she heard him speak while he falls down below the ground.
“You are Welcome...I am glad.”
She heard the man clearly with her superior hearing. The man who she stabs, and pushed off the cliff in order to punish him said such eerie words that it shook her being. The man was glad that she said thanks to him. She made a cruel smile yet for the man her words and the cruel smile she had was her thanks.
The man named Arden was glad that she smiled and thanked him despite her actions in doing so was rather twisted and irrational.
She saw the man plummet down below while blood flowed out of his stomach leaving a trail. She has seen how tough the man was after experiencing being carried by him.
And she should be happy that she managed to punish him after such shaming he did to her. But instead, the lady was filled with a creeping feeling of dread. The beaming smile of the man who she pushed off the cliff terrified her. He shouldn’t be smiling while being pushed off a cliff to die.
But he smiled towards her with pure unsullied joy that the lady could not help but have her soul struck with absolute fear.
A smile that was so beaming with warmth and pure joy shouldn’t be terrifying but it managed to spook her so much that she could only retreat a few steps back out of fear and tremble with her knees feeling weak.
She prayed that she killed the man.