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A Search for Purpose
The words, carved into a stone placard, had begun to wear smooth from months of sea-salt and storms. Pythios knelt, removed one heavy plate gauntlet, and ran his thumb over the inscription.
“Even their memorials will soon forget us,” he whispered to himself and gave a single humorless laugh.
The placard's text continued on to describe heroic sacrifice and victory; to him it spoke only of lies and defeat. From birth he had been told that he numbered among the chosen, that he and his would ascend to rightful supremacy, and that the other kingdoms of the world would be cast down into ruin. He straightened and turned his eyes down toward the port of Avanthyr. The sailors and townspeople scuttled about their daily affairs obliviously.
“They look like rats,” he thought, “rats swarming over garbage.” The observation only darkened his mood.
These people would never fall. They bred and consumed and flourished, and when they were brought low it was only by more of their own kind. This was the doom of his people -- their endless plots, their ancient nobility, and their infinite patience would be drowned and forgotten by this sea of apes. Even now, what was left of his people survived only because the humans were too distracted to end them completely.
Pythios scowled, disgusted by the world and by himself. The ‘god’ he had followed had been revealed to be as false as his promised glory and had been butchered at the base of the very hill on which he now stood.
“In a land where gods come and go like seasons, where do you put your faith,” Pythios quietly demanded of the stone monument before him. He waited petulantly for some divine reply, but was answered only by the muted clamor of the port.
He gave one last lingering look to the heavens, snatched his helm from the cobblestones, and marched toward Mirakus to lose his concerns in a mercenary's work.