The Story of Two Old Men

"I'm Arando Schindler, from Canlus. I'm looking for an old friend. We adventured together in a party a long time ago, but we parted ways over some things. Now, for certain reasons, I have no choice but to seek his help. But as you can see, I don't know Avalon at all, so I've been wandering around, hoping to get lucky."

Arando briefly explained his situation.

"Oh, no wonder you were able to enter Avalon, sir. Your friend must owe you a great debt, or he wouldn't have given you a key that lets you enter Avalon." The so-called key was a special, small totem. Every Avalon Orc who ventured outside carried several of them, because without one, it was impossible to enter Avalon—not even for an Avalon Orc. As an aside, only Spirit Shamans could make these totems. Solam, an Elemental Shaman, couldn't.

"Heh, it wasn't any great debt. We were teammates back then. Looking out for one another was only right," the old man said with a wry smile.

"Could you show me the key? Each one bears a clan totem. You could tell me its name, but I might not recognize it. If it's a clan totem, though, I'll know it. Then I can point you in the right direction. Avalon is huge, and wandering around like this is dangerous." Seeing that the old man had a story of his own, Solam decided to help him. Since the old man had done a favor for an Avalon Orc, Solam felt he ought to lend him a hand.

At Solam's request, the old man thought for a moment, then pulled a small totem from his chest and handed it over.

The moment Solam took it, he was stunned.

"The Bloodaxe Clan? Why do you have a Bloodaxe Clan totem?"

"What's wrong? Is there a problem?" The old man was puzzled by Solam's surprise.

"Uh... no problem. I'd just say you're pretty lucky. Guess which clan I belong to."

"You're from the Bloodaxe Clan too? No way. The first person I've run into in Avalon is from the Bloodaxe Clan?"

"Then your friend is...?"

"Kramsh Sakmi Sacklair Tomya."

"..." Solam felt like the world was a very small place.

"Young man, what's the matter? Do you know him?"

"How could I not? He's my grandfather." Seeing the old man's stunned expression, Solam quickly added, "My real grandfather. My name is Solam Sakmi Sacklair Tomya."

"Well, that's quite a coincidence."

"Tell me about it. I didn't expect you to have that kind of history with my grandfather. But how come I've never heard him mention you? He's told me stories about his adventures since I was little."

"Ah, is that so? I suppose it makes sense. He never approved of the way I did things back then. In the end, we stopped adventuring together because our principles clashed. Come to think of it, I can barely remember what exactly caused us to part ways."

Solam perked up at once and pressed him to describe what his grandfather had been like when he was young and how the two of them had split up.

Since Solam was the descendant of an old friend, there was no need to keep anything secret. Arando began telling him about their younger days.

Their story was much like most adventure tales. When the old man had been adventuring abroad in his youth, he met Arando while taking on a quest. Like most young people, they'd been full of fire back then, and they soon became friends. Naturally, they teamed up and set off on adventures together.

But, well, they'd grown up in different circumstances. At first, they got along fine, but the longer they adventured together, the more obvious their differences became. Despite his intimidating appearance, the old man was, by alignment, a classic lawful good sort. He had a strong sense of justice and honor. He wasn't quite on the level of a paladin, but he was certainly a model of virtue. Arando, on the other hand, had already been unmistakably lawful evil in his youth: the kind of person who'd stop at nothing to get what he wanted. He wasn't completely deranged, but he wasn't a good man, either. Still, he was always loyal to his friends.

They argued constantly during their adventures. Arando thought Kramsh was too slow and stubbornly clung to a warrior's honor instead of learning to adapt. Kramsh, meanwhile, thought Arando was too extreme, willing to do anything to achieve his aims and far too concerned with personal gain.

The clearest example happened in a city in the south. They accepted a noble's commission to rescue his family, who'd been kidnapped by bandits. After investigating, they discovered that the kidnappers were actually a group of villagers who'd been pushed to desperation. Seeking revenge against the noble, they'd kidnapped his family under the leadership of a warrior. All they wanted was for the noble to ease some of the excessive taxes and levies. Kramsh thought they should help the villagers, while Arando felt it had nothing to do with them—they just had to rescue the noble's family. After a fierce argument, Kramsh's view won out.

They explained the whole situation to the noble and assured him that if he agreed to the villagers' reasonable demands, not only would his family be released, but the warrior leading them was also willing to confess and accept punishment to appease the noble's anger.

Solam could guess what happened next without being told. There was no way the noble would agree. In any world, the powerful were all the same.

Sure enough, the noble not only refused, but accused Arando and Kramsh of colluding with bandits and tried to arrest them. Kramsh may have been an upright young man back then, but that didn't mean he had a good temper. The two fought their way out. They escaped, but the noble still planned to put out a warrant for their arrest.

In the end, Arando secretly went to the noble without telling Kramsh and made him an offer: he would rescue the noble's family in exchange for the noble dropping the charges against them. The noble refused and proposed a different deal. They had to rescue his family and help him punish the bandits. In return, he would not only drop the charges but also give them a large reward. Arando agreed. He used Kramsh's standing among the villagers to trick them into releasing the noble's family, then joined the noble's private soldiers in a pincer attack that slaughtered the villagers to the last. Kramsh didn't know what had happened at the time. It was only later, through a twist of fate, that he found out. After that, he and Arando went their separate ways.

From Solam's point of view, neither man's way of handling things was entirely right or entirely wrong. There were good points to both of them. The old man's commitment to justice couldn't be faulted, and Arando couldn't be entirely blamed for trying to protect his friend. But neither had found a better solution. The old man had been too rash, and Arando too self-serving.

Still, when Solam imagined himself in their position and considered what he would have done, he decided he'd have simply killed the noble and ended the whole thing. With the knowledge he'd brought over from his previous life, quietly killing a person or two would have been easy. Sometimes Solam even wondered what he'd done in his past life to end up with so many bizarre skills...

It seemed the old man hadn't talked to anyone in a long time, so he went on to tell Solam about the adventures he'd shared with his grandfather when they were young.

One of the stories was about how Arando had saved old Kramsh's life.

It had happened while they were adventuring in the North. One time, they went to Troll Roar Forest for what was supposed to be a simple ruin-exploration job. Unfortunately, the ruins had been taken over by a Beholder. Its body was a sphere six feet across, with a huge, fang-filled mouth. Its movement was controlled by a central eye. Six more eyestalks extended from the top of its body, each ending in a smaller eye. It could speak its own language as well as Common, and each eyestalk could fire a deadly magical ray.

It was a grueling fight. The Beholder was only an ordinary Gauth Beholder, but if Arando hadn't used up the scroll his mentor had given him, they would both have died there. As the Beholder lay dying, however, it fired a magical ray at Kramsh. At the last possible moment, Arando threw himself in front of Kramsh and took the hit. Kramsh was unharmed, but Arando was left on the brink of death. If Kramsh hadn't carried him to a church in the city, going three days and nights without sleep and pushing himself to the limit, Arando's bones would have crumbled to dust by now.

Once Arando had recovered, he didn't think Kramsh owed him anything. If Kramsh hadn't risked everything to get him to a church, Arando would have died. But Kramsh was a straightforward Orc who believed that one thing didn't cancel out another. Arando wouldn't have been badly injured if he hadn't taken the hit for Kramsh, so helping him afterward was only the right thing to do. That was why Kramsh was convinced he owed Arando a favor.

Truthfully, if Arando hadn't been out of options, he never would have swallowed his pride and come looking for his old friend. There was a reason these two old men had been friends: they were both stubborn, and both valued friendship. They just had very different ways of doing things.

"So what exactly brought you here to find my grandfather?" Solam asked casually. He truly didn't mean anything by it; the question had simply slipped out.

But the question left Arando at a loss. At first, he'd only wanted to escape the Arcane Brotherhood, and thought of his old friend. But what now that he'd found him? Did he want Kramsh to avenge him? Honestly, Arando didn't.

He knew that if he asked, Kramsh would agree without a second thought, even if it cost him his life. But as he'd just said, Arando might not be a good man, yet he was stubborn. The revenge he carried was his own; he couldn't drag Kramsh into it. So why had he come looking for Kramsh?