The First

*Haseo speaks, and speaks, and speaks, until his throat is dry. He tells her not just a story, but his  story. Of how he used to roam about Dragon Island, aimless, scavenging what he could and getting the shit kicked out of him by it's random denizens. About how he had stumbled into Seishiro, who'd given him the flying device he still used to this day, the staff, and the sword. He told her how he'd been at the city when it had fallen the last time, and it was his first time seeing death, how Miko had killed a young boy infront of him, made eye contact, and walked away.

He tells her of how after that, he'd asked Rugar why some people had to die, and some lived, and what he'd told a child...words that, unbeknownst to him, Kori had actually said first, to Rugar, and he'd merely passed to the child.

'The value of life is determined by the strong.'

How after that, he'd thrown himself into magical studies with a boy named Aldrick. They'd both arrived in the bunker around the same time, and there was no one else he could talk to, no one else to hang around. All that he knew was that the strength, the conviction of that boy's words had roused him to look into magic, but he still hadn't had the courage to use it in battle. All he'd known was that he was going to learn it, and then, everything had just...come together. It was just riveting. The musty old tomes, the sensation of getting magic to -work-, sparks becoming fire...

And then how those two boys had been thrust into war.

"He died, that day. His first real fight. He fought Kaguya."

There's a ghastly smile on his face. Equal parts haunted, reminiscing, tired, nostalgic. There are a myriad of emotions one feels with confronting the reality of mortality - not a mere one.

We're more complex than that.

"I took up his spells, his blade style, I fought like he fought - because no one else remembers Aldrick."

His voice rocks this earth with the reverberations of his very soul, expressed with vibrations and contractions of the throat and a flick of the tongue but resonating from beyond the metaphysical, his very conviction one that could part the seas.

"But I won't forget a single face. I remember every man who died on his knees, smilin', fighting for what he believed in - no matter how stupid, or even if that man was my enemy..."

He sighs, and relieves some of the pressure, because holding this much would only bring him grey hairs...

"And I could certainly never forget my first friend."*