Author Notes : I'm currently in progress revamping all the chapters because I realized all my characters were baad like totes bad (one dimensional, inconsistent, etc.). Well it's not like there any reader though, ha ha. Anyway don't expect a consistent update, I update when I feel like it :> This is a exercise writing for me, comment and critics are welcome :>

***

His hazel eyes glancing the surrounding slowly whilst maintaining straight posture, no doubt a remnant of the training when he was still a lowly squire. A humbling tradition and honorable obligation that his exalted grandfather always love to regaled its importance with. 

His young self always thought it to be a nuisance that stood tall mocking, no... humiliate him for three whole summers. Before a three light sword taps upheld his position as Knight of the Realms and allow himself to took up his right. A tinge of metallic coldness brought him back. Out of habit, he spare himself a quick glance to the protruding diadem in his temple. Gleaming, with an everlasting shine that had stood through generations. Etched in its plate a sentence that begin to haunting him since the damned decision. "For the people" he shuddered. Perhaps by a stretch "for the greater good" justification and string of silver tongues fact-twisting of most notable courtier, could somehow justify.

He closed his eyes and breath. He looked at the proud image of him; a combed straight hair, chiseled jaws, and a mean look for a face. Stood tall curtaining a disheveled boy with a contrite of hollow-looking eyes. The guilt has claim him, as promised by His Wizard.

"You must continue." the boy sent his whisper, perhaps his last whisper, smiling. A smile that only could be given by a loving person in their deathbed; trying to easing the suffering of their loved one burden of letting them go, even though they themselves were assailed by the pain of intangible degree. The man gritted his teeth, and bit his tip of tongue ever so slightly, he had promised the boy he'd never cry for him. Even though he wished and always wished that he could share the pain of his other souls. His other self. 

But none of those thoughts matter now. 

Have it ever been?  

The day were moderately sunny with a thick humid iron vapor that always been left out in the site of battles. His army were wrecked. Half of his soldiers were crying. And two of his generals had recently tried to commit suicide. But he stood proud, never giving even the slightest to the promised grief nor guilt to creep up his face. Because that the way it ought to be.

A smiling face greet him.

Sitting on the countless dead. A young fellow in his twenty that shared his hazel eyes smiled to him. Beside him stood a man and a woman. Clad within a wizard robe she glared at him, if there is a hint of promised grief or guilt, that had all been wiped from her face since she saw him coming. Reaching at his sword, the man, or should he said, his teacher, the knight-commander of his squire days, showed him a pained look of understanding, he remembered the talk they had under the clear starry night, when the fifth constellation shining so brightly. He remembered how he tried to reason to his teacher and how his teacher tried to reason with him.  But in the end his teacher duty and conscience prevailed, for the opposite reason that bear the same weight of his.

"Your answer?"

"To kill you."

***

"This a story of a loving poet."

I fallen in love with words; like so many foolish women and men before me

Or it might that I fell for the freedom, that the word promised all its' lover to be?

Caged in mortal body I tried to spoke to the words to accept me

But words never reply so I consoled the dream, the skies, the season, any that would give me answer; any.

And of course, I consoled the more tangible thing like every fortune teller that had managed to passed my father contempt and scrutiny

At one winter night, garbed in a rugged clothes; a whisper sent to me

"Spare a dime, young sir..."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Red in cheek, I threw a silver to him; grumbled for secretly hoping he was a mysterious man that sent the likes of me to a journey of destiny with a confusing wise word and weird-but-exciting reasons.

The winter had been rough, and my trip had been a dread

Suddenly a roar bellowed; and snow within snow race to me with a great trepidation

In a glance I saw again his rugged clothes as the snow buried my people

Does he have no fear of the promised guilt?

In my what I assumed to be a dream two figures stood before me

I recognized one in instant, for he had been portrayed in every town, city, and principality that had even one aspiring artist

"His Wizard."

[Your Sage, why have I been graced by your presence?] I brought myself ask

[My spell is weakening, child.] He showed me his signature face; the gloom; the regret, and the similar trite of emotion that the people of the land said when he cast his last spell. When he cast the promised guilt.

[Y-your Sage?] I found myself stammer at the horror beyond his word. 

I saw the gutted knife at my father stomach, the falling guillotine beheading my mother head, and the corpse -the flea ridden corpse!- of my sibling after they were died, left in gutter to rot and be ravished by the sewer rat, If His spell were ever fell.

[The price for everlasting were to great]

[Yet, it decided that someone must paid]

[Would you shoulder the burden?]

[And the consequences that befell after?]

[Would you shoulder the burden?]

[Knowing there would no one be loving you in the end?]

[Would you shoulder the burden?]

[For the littlest time, the slightest glance, the shortest meet with the one you love?]

So here I am, in the death door, pierced by my own brother sword, laying on the heap of countless dead.

I saw it.

And I smiled.

The ballad stopped. The room were silent. 

"S-so what happened?" A question could be heard. With a hoarse voice a gruff man managed to brave himself ask the question that everyone in the room had. All the eyes were falling into the smiling bard in the front.

"The promised guilt held, as His Wizard promised."

"That's not all of it right? What happened to his highness? To His Wizard?"

"I'm afraid that is the story for another time."