Not All Heroes Die

“It does not count if you are already planning your defeat,” I said, staring down at the boy knelt in front of me. His fingers were weakly wrapped around the hilt of his sword, blood decorating the blade, glimmering in the dim light as the sword flickered with the flame of the torches nearby. His face, though young, was beaten and bruised and bloodied. Despite having put up a significant fight, he had barely managed to scratch me. My arm stung from the cut near my shoulder, but it was nowhere close to the amount of lacerations decorating the boy’s skin.

The boy stared up at me with a dazed look, eyes unfocused as he attempted to blink away the blood and sweat threatening to blind him. He gathered his legs underneath him, shakily standing with his sword arm hanging limply by his side. His muscles shook as if he had the thought of raising his weapon should I strike again, but he was too weak to do so. 

“I have not planned my defeat,” he said, breathless and quiet, almost as if he were struggling to get the words out. “I have come here to defeat you, and I will succeed.” 

I tilted my head back and laughed before closing the distance between us and gripping his trembling chin in my hand. “My dear, you heroes are too young to fight the world,” I said, swiping the blood away from his lips with my thumb. “Go home. Enjoy your life, and leave the demise you believe is your own to your elders.” 

“This is my destiny,” he roared, though the shaking in his voice hardly made him threatening. 

“Boy, you know nothing of destiny,” I hissed out, tossing his head to the side. “Destiny is not coming to me and killing yourself. Destiny is not wasting your life by destroying something you do not understand. Destiny is not fighting a battle that is not your own.” I circled him, eyeing how his legs shook and he had begun using his sword as a support. I had not meant to damage the boy so severely, but he had put up quite a good fight. The old man who sprouted this nonsense about destiny and fate and fighting for honour and truth trained this one well, but there was no sense in killing a boy who had been misled and lied to.

“You are evil,” he said, trying to swivel around to keep me in his eyesight, but he could barely turn his head without losing his balance. 

“No, my dear,” I said with a sickly sweet smile. “I am not evil. I do not send young boys miles away from home to fight someone stronger and feed them lies to exact the revenge I am too weak and incompetent to achieve myself.”

“D-do not speak of my master in such a way,” he hissed, his fingers tightening on the hilt of his sword, knuckles bone white. 

“Your master is a man who hides away from the truth,” I boomed, stopping in front of the boy as I narrowed my eyes on his face. I was not angry at him, for he had done no wrong. I was angry at the world. His people had labeled me a monster simply because this man who had deemed himself worthy and righteous said I was, and proceeded to send boys who did not know better to try to kill me. Each time, I had to fight the young warriors off, each time I had to shatter the false serenity and heroism they had been given, and each time I sent them home, broken and injured. I had grown tired of it. 

“He is an honourable man!”

“He knows nothing of honour!” I yelled. “A man who burns down an entire village because one person wronged him is not honour. A man who kidnaps children to train them to fight for his own petty and self-indulgent reasons is not honour. A man who deems a young woman as a monster because she fought back against his evil, against his lies, is not honour!” 

The boy faltered. He knew nothing of his “master’s” past, knew nothing of the tortures I had faced because of him. 

“Y-you lie,” he said, taking a shaky step back from me. 

“No, my boy,” I said. “I do not lie. The one thing I learned from your ‘master’ is to never lie because he has grown fat on the throne of dishonesty. And now here you are, injured and half-dead because he told you this was what you were born to do. Tell me, boy, have you ever held a sword before now?”

He looked down, jaw clenched. 

“I thought so,” I said. “Go home. I do not wish to kill you. This is not your battle, this is not where you are meant to be. Perhaps we shall meet again one day, in better terms, and I hope you see the truth and the light you are hidden from.” 

The boy looked conflicted. Die here or go home and disappoint his mentor. It was clear the boy did not wish to die. He was likely to have a family, a mother and a father, perhaps a young girl he fancied waiting for him. Would he be shunned if he returned without my head? Would he be a failure if he chose to live rather than to die? 

“There is nothing waiting for me back home,” he said in a soft voice that spoke volumes. He was an outcast. This was his chance for redemption, for acceptance. 

“And you thought this would change that?” 

The boy faltered once more, his legs finally giving out and he fell down to his knees again. “I had no other chance.” 

“You are young. You have all the chances in this world,” I said, kneeling down before him. “You do not need to kill someone to prove yourself. You do not need to be a hero to be worthy.” 

His head bowed as his sword fell from his grasp, clattering to the floor. “Then what was I meant to do if not this?”

I fixed the boy with a soft smile and said: 

“Live.”