Children’s laughter light on the wind

and through the streets, Kalon perceived and

for moment, brief, Kalon relaxed his anguish

and stood for the first moment

in a year and ten days: hope. Yet,

grieving men irrational and lashing be, and

happiness, sudden, transfigured to madness.

“This is no time for hope and laughter,

show these young that no joy should be, I will.

Joy torn from me, joy I will tear from them.”

So our hero, drunken, ponderous, trod

within a clearing of children squat on muddy grounds.

Flame for refuge from brumal winds,

and amongst them a skald, but unlike any skald

Kalon had yet seen. Their fashions strange,

and no book of tales they held on their belt.

Performance entirely memory, and no harp,

or lyre, or drum, or flute, or bright bells,

or tambourine. A strange lute, four course of

two pair strings, all metal, and language

now known to him written upon its head.

Strange runes, yes, “Man from the East”, or so

the heavenly muses have whispered to me within dream:

turbid, rapid and fleeting.

The oddest feature of the skald, Kalon thought,

was joy, visible.The audience, all children,

laughed and begged for stories and songs.

Yet, not quite did the skald begin to tell a tale

when they spoke outwards to Kalon.

“A giant has found us! Quick! Grab food

and make me as tasty as possible! Run! Run! Run!

Wait, children, no giant! My eyes in this snow and ice

betrayed me. The mud he wears, however, speaks

different of his dominion. Friend are

you a swine?” Impishly the skald teased,

and laughter, like flocking wings, rose

once more into the air, dismissing anguish

from the children sat on muddy ground, oblivious

temporary, to their dying world.

Kalon, still anguished, lashed with his tongue at the skald.

“I am no swine, no. But I am low, and you are lower still.

What lies and wrongs you give to these children; even

worse than The Four, you be, for even they are silent

in the face of our calamity.”

The skald, unphased, set his bizarre lute into a stranger-yet

bag of hard cloth, and brushed his hands on his

foreign tabard.

“I tell no lies and give no wrongs. My stories: all true.

Embellished from what has already said, or yet to be done,

I cannot deny. Even then, still true, or soon to be.

Children do not believe the words of skalds anyways.

so nothing you have to fear from myself.”

Kalon again lashed: “You have a tongue of arsenic,

worse than those deities, for laughter and joy

are the greatest lies of our withering world.

Hope is lost. The world is ash. Joy is harmful,

for it will only bring greater despair when these

children are slaughtered by those disgusting fiends,

and bring those fiends greater joy.”

The throng of yong, barely a decade at oldest, ruptured

in wails and worry, reminded of their hopeless

and miserable year, reminded that there was no

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true refuge from the three remaining fiends.

No castle impenetrable. No sea uncrossable.

No mountain unscalable. No army invincible.

The bard responded: “If joy is harmful because

it can be lost, then pain is good because then

one’s fall is so short that it is unnoticeable.

Why is it, then, that men do not want pain?

Pain makes men miserable, and that is why

they do not want it. It is not good for man to

be in pain? Why else would man seek

drink, whores, or gambling?”

Kalon objected once more.

“Men do not want misery, yes, but man

cannot avoid man’s nature, which is misery.

Man however, wants to avoid worse misery.

This is why laughter and joy are bad, for

they make misery worse by distance of fall,

and perhaps even more miserable than one began.

Drink, whores, and gambling subside misery, without

making one truly happy, and thus are not bad in

comparison to laughter and true joy. Need not

gods and prophecy to end more miserable

than one began through joy and happiness.”

The skald, thankfully, did not succumb to pessimism.

“So then your anger be not at laughing children, but gods?

If so, why care for the joy and pain of these children?

They are not gods, they have not angered you.

No man harmed you with joy and hope. And;

for the gods created man, no god harmed you

with joy or hope either, but harmed you in creation

if you are so pessimistic.

A man who cares of nothing does not last long,

yet you live a year and ten days into the wrath

of the four-now three-titans. Perhaps, then, deepy

you care and because of these things youscorn wrong,

it seems, and your wisdom is now

tainted false by anger and self-pity.”

Kalon, offguard, was caught, unprepared for

the skald’s quick tongue, and spat at the storyteller.

“And what makes you wise of the stories of god

and man? Their prophecy: wrong. Their heroes: killed.

I know’st this, for I was once a hero, but no longer.

Their rhymes betrayed my duty, and thrust grief

upon me tenfold of any here.

The skald, slow and mocking, approached the dirty

hero and examined Kalon closely.

Head to toe and back to head the skald’s eyes and nose went.

“Strong, yes. That much can be seen if one

looks and smells unders your grime, swine.

Yet, not a hero, for I have witnessed many and know the smell.

As you said, the gods lie in rhyme and they prophesied

you a hero. So, if gods be liars then how could you have

been a hero if what the four prophesied was false? Therefore

a hero, you never were. Simple oaf, though the odor tells me ass!”

Kalon, reckless, furious, and stubborn in vain attempted

to deflect the verbal wound: “What do you know

of heroes and wounds and battle? Skinny, weak,

nary a sword you could wield, nor spear, nor shield.

Is it not heroic to fight those four demons now three,

for one defeated? If so easy, then why not you slay

those remaining three? Then you understand the

task, impossible, that lay before thee, and more pity

on defeated men you would have, and more importantly

not tell lies in rhyme and songs to children.”

The Skald mimicked a sword thrust upon his heart,

and with feigned mortal breath, defeated Kalon.

“Shame! Oh woe! Indeed you are who I thought ye be,

Kalon! With all grime, impossible to see. Man who claims

to care for none, yet concerned for children and his reputation.

Unless you admit prophecy right, no hero I can call you, and I know

heroes for I am a Skald. While normal Skalds of these lands carry

books and scrolls and paintings, I carry stories in my head. Lighter

weight for the longer distances I travel. My job, unlike yours,

is not a duty of violence, but of fate. Heroes fight, heroes die,

heroes save, heroes fail. My job is to know, and to see.

Sometimes know first, sometimes witness. And Kalon,

for I only speak truths and no frivolous rhymes I tell:

still a chance you stand, to send the remaining three

through the celestial sphere, unto Hell.”

So the Skald, serious, solemn, spoke, and gave

Kalon a moment of silence, and regret.

“Skald. May I stay, and listen to story, to make sure

you tell these children no lies, and give them no

false hope?”

The Skald nodded, and plucked of his strange lute to

begin a tale foreign to these lands, and our sphere.

Skald spoke of a woman of ominous and auspicious

birth. Dead, yet fated, born under plethora of celestial

bodies. This woman longed for power and knowledge,

yet her desire for these things led to a fall so dire,

that her soul lay on the edge of death and decay.

So we wandered the lands, aimless, and committed

evil deeds, just as vile as those terrible demons.

One day, her demise she foretold, and so far too the north

she sought a great tree which had brought death

and value into her world and she drank from it.

For many years, she fought the forces that dragged

her low, but with years came wisdom, and with wisdom

came to realization. Greater threats. Greater foes.

The divine bid her defeat, and she could not turn her

back, for she was the only one powerful enough

to save. Her life was unhappy, but it was a good

life, for she did good things with it. Kalon saw no lies

in the story, but did not see himself as the Skald intended.

The sky had turned dark when distant bells of the

watch resonated their terrible gongs, permeating

walls and taverns and houses and minds.

A demon had come to the city. It was still the end times.

Still faithless, still hopeless, the wielder of tides ran swift

through throngs of the innocent and damned,

fearing wrath and woe. Still hopeless, still faithless,

and not ready to believe himself a hero.