Keto stepped over the log and settled onto it, joining the Landian around the fire.

“How’s Aramil?” Quartes asked as Keto fished around in her pack, producing a bottle of wine.

“He’ll be ok,” she answered, twisting at the cork to work it free, “Kalitz is keeping an eye on him, we may want to look into getting a healer though.  At this rate less our heroes are going to get to the point where they’re more scarred than you.”  Keto laughed in victory as she freed the cork from the bottle.  She raised it to offer to Quartes.

The Landian still wore his bracers from the battle, though he had removed the gloves beneath.  His thumbs traced the scars on his hands, his pale eyes watching each of the old wounds.

Keto retracted the bottle, “Copper for your thoughts old man?”

His brow furrowed, and after a moment Quartes shook his head.  Keto stood up, shifting around the fire and sitting down next to the Landian.  Quartes moved slightly to give her more space and then Keto offered him her hand.  After a moment, and with just a hint of a smile, he took it.  His gaze had turned to the fire now and after a moment more he sighed.  “I’ve watched a lot like Aramil die, I often led the battles that killed them.”

“I think that’s part of leading them in a war,” Keto raised the bottle of wine but Quartes gave a shake of his head.

He turned to look over his shoulder where the campfire of the others could be seen.  “By the end of the Last Cycle,” he started, his voice hushed with his thought, “the other Landians and I had gathered our armies on the western coasts of Illithiust, around the sparse ruins that I was told were all that was left of the Line of Calelden.”  He looked back towards the fire and then to Keto.  “We left those that were not needed for the fight there and when I awoke after the end of the Cycle I returned there.  I thought that any who had survived would go there, would go back to their families and loved ones we had left behind on the coast.”

Keto put down the bottle as Quartes spoke, giving the Landian her attention as she watched his pale gaze.  She gave his hand a squeeze, and him a smile.  “That seems like a reasonable thing, to try and reunite with them.”

Quartes’ gaze drifted back to the fire.  “I knew there were Dragons that had survived the war, and especially without the Sword of Lehn that I would need their help.”  He instinctively looked to the scars of his right hand.  “I didn’t have most of the shards at this point,” he added after a moment.

“There were survivors, people that just wanted to take their loved one and escape to whatever safety and hope they could find.  I…” he hovered over his next words, “I was not welcome back by them.  Even as I fended off roving dragonkin, even as I tried to stop the base instincts of some, I was viewed as the cause which gathered it.”  He looked up to Keto, uncertainty in his eyes, a sight which she had learned was as unwelcome to him as sand to a clam.  “I came here, east of the mountains, not because my work was done back West, but because I couldn’t handle being…seen that way.”  He shrugged doubtfully, “Yet, as you have well pointed out, and as my limited company makes clear, I don’t…I scare people as much as I bring them courage.”  The Landian looked up to the sky, taking a heavy breath.  “Now, I start this war again that will see many more die.  I invite Dragons to greater violence as I threaten them.”

Keto waited and watched for a moment, giving Quartes time to find more of his thoughts before she answer.  “You sound you think you’re the villain of the story.”

Quartes shrugged slowly and then looked back to Keto, “That’s one way of telling it isn’t it?  I invite the war, the Heir of Lehn, the last of my kind picking a fight to try and settle an ancient grudge.  Is one telling not to simply have people say enough, and to not join a tyrannical Landian?”

There was an intensity to the Landian as he watched, dared her to prove him wrong, and begged at the same time for her to do so.  Keto scooted over, closing the distance between, and resting her head on his shoulder.  He stiffened at first but relaxed and as he did so she lifted her hand, bringing his with hers, and looked at it.  The contrast was expectedly stark, scars and weather worn tan against her lithe fingers with only her callouses to show.

“It would maybe be a suitable story but,” Keto paused as she lowered their hands, “you are many things Quartes.  I think you aspire to be a hero more than all of your predecessors.  I think it’s why you survived your Cycle when no others have.  I think maybe you can never be that hero in the way that you desire.”  She felt him shift, his head hanging.  “What I know though is being the villain you speak of is not a role you can plan well enough for it to work, and that there is enough grief in this land that someone else could always rise to be the embodiment of Lehn.”

“People are going to die,” she continued, her left hand itching to reclaim her bottle of wine.  “I can’t imagine how many you have seen die, I can’t imagine I’m ready for the consequences of these words, but we’ll be doing it for something to change the path of all those deaths.”

She waited, listening to the Landian take a breath and then after a moment he shifted again, his head resting a top hers.  “Thank you.”

Author’s Note: Inspiration taken from “Villain or Hero” by Beth Crowley.