Flashback The Proving

[Shouta]

Direction, Purpose, Sanity. All these were words that flashed like so many lights inside the mind of the tired ethaefel at the question. It seemed a simple inquiry introduced by an innocent curiosity. But, to the ethaefel whom had made such a cause his torch in the tempest, his salvation in the storm, it was like a sword seeping into a shaken soul. It must be asked of every would be monk? As it was asked of him. But Shouta had trouble baring such brutally raw emotions to the casual review of the elderly monk. How does one go from being chosen, being raised up, to being abandoned as little more than a tragedy tossed from high, a heavenly trashing? Denial. One denies the past and finds new purpose. Shouta had decided on the dance of blades and the lord who stood on their sharpened edge. He shook himself from his morbid musings and eyed the aged warrior. “He is my redemption and his way is my path. In this chaos of mortality, my serenity lives on the honed edge of the blade. What is Uphis? He is my driftwood, and this world the anchor that tried to drown.” The words were spat out sparingly. The gift of their utterance not one willingly given, but begrudgingly needed. Shouta hoped it would be enough to satisfy the Prior. He was used to pain, but when his soul was stripped and left to burn painfully as the question had done to it, he still could not deal with it. Even after so many years. The bitter anger at Leth made him feel a cold hesitance about any other loyalty. Was his choice made out of hate for another rather than loyalty for Uphis, or rather desperation to be wanted?