“You can always take the soldier off the battlefield, but you can not so easily take the battlefield out of the soldier. Neither Skrande, nor Corsinthia, ever made a proper effort to de-educate their indoctrinated soldiers when the official ceasefire had finally been called. Fortunately - for the most part - this mattered not, as many people of both nations were - after a hundred years of conflict - far too willing to simply tend to their own business for a change; but this was not true of all of them, and for quite some time – especially around the border between the two lands – fighting would continue to break out between the still remaining very proud and angry men that were not yet ready for the fighting to end.

To be fair, it should be pointed out that neither nation at that point in time could actually afford to fund such a great endeavor as de-educating their entire armies. This is nothing to say of the fact that both collapsed governments still officially declared that there’s was the right viewpoint in the trivial disagreement that had started the century long war in the first place.” - Tallus the Scholar

Chapter 3: “Some Fault Myself”

Were it actually true that someone such as Master Via of the great Corsinthian Council of Sages was seeking out one such as himself, it would have probably been one of the greatest honoring moments of his life. However, for Jysalef Soresh, the fact that he had drawn his sword - almost immediately after leaving the bathroom - clearly revealed that this situation was no such honor in his eyes. With the business end of his blade pointed squarely at the neck of the now very nervously shaking messenger girl, Jysalef demanded of his ward, “Terus, if this all some sort of perverse joke as far as you are concerned, then I can most assuredly assure you that I am not laughing one bit at all of this.”

Terus, mouth agape with confusion at the second unexpected scene he had found himself gazing upon this day in so short a frame of time, blurted out in a rushed panic, “Sir, why are you threatening the messenger? She hasn’t done anything to us at all!”

In response to Terus’s naïve query, Jysalef began to circle the trembling pink haired girl; never once as he repeatedly traced a circle around her was his sword any greater a distance from her neck than a coin’s length. With a scowl greatly plastered all over his face, for he realized that the current naïveté of his student was not being falsified in the name of a rather lousy bit of humor, Jysalef began to educate Terus in all the ways that this situation was clearly a ruse not to be fallen for so easily.

“Terus, I must apologize for my earlier accusations as I realize that you have never actually yet in the course of your life stepped past the boundaries of the lands of Corsinthia into the realm of Skrande, so I guess it is only inevitable that you would not be capable of knowing that a girl such as this is Skrandonese when you let her inside to have audience with us. I guess I have some fault myself in this matter as I have been trying my hardest to see to it that your skills with a blade were sufficiently capable of seeing you through these trying times, as per those promises I made to your father back on the frontlines ere his last breath, that I have thus far been lacking in my talks with you on the nature of the things you must always be on the watch for in this world.”

At hearing his instructor say the word Skrandonese, a mixture of emotions washed through Terus in a rapid-fire procession such that they left him actually feeling more confused about this currently awkward situation than he had before Jysalef had began explaining things. Was it not against the Skrandonese people that his father had died in battle, afterwards the grief over which had been so great such that his mother withered away from morose like a hapless mouse's slow descent into a bucket of tar? Suddenly one part of him wanted so very greatly with all of his being to hate this girl – whom he had never before met – along side his master and share in having a blade at the neck of this great heathen; and yet it still invariably struck him that there seemed to be nothing at all remarkably special, or different, such that must obviously separate her from any normal person of the lands of Corsinthia.

Cautiously, the young swordsman in training motioned to question the stated logic of his master, “But Master Soresh, how is this girl before us so clearly from the lands of Skrande such that it should be so very obvious?”

With a heavy sigh the master deigned to the questioning of his student, “And this, my lad, is precisely where I have failed you in focusing so greatly on the ways of swordplay almost entirely to the exclusion of everything else. You see, it is plain as day when I say she is of those heathen Skrandonese for she has hair that is of the color one would see the sky be just before the sun sets, a color I should think you have not before ever seen any person in the fine lands of Corsinthia carry upon their scalp.”

Terus’s eyes now began to focus intently on the hair of the whimpering girl that his master’s sword was currently drawn against, sure enough Master Soresh was correct when declaring that this hair was not of a color that he had ever seen anyone else during the entire course of his life have. Upon realizing this most important fact, a sinking feeling entered into the pit of the student’s stomach with great immediacy. How was he ever going to prove to the master that he was ready to tackle greater challenges than leeoka clean up if he was going to so easily miss relevant details that stuck out like a sore thumb as much as this one did?

Glaring ever more greatly with each iteration of his waltz around his captive, Jysalef continued in providing his ward with a lesson about how this detestable pink coiffed person was clearly not of their fine God fearing lands, “There is a plant, Terus, that I am sure you have seen the farmers of ours lands raising in their fields as we have travelled from town to town in the pursuit of advancing your swordplay; I speak here - of course - of the dolskum plant whose root is so important in the dying of cloth and thread. Although not technically lethal to ingest, the plant is utterly unfit for the consumption as it produces a plate of those most vile and bitter taste. That the people of Skrande are mentally lacking enough to desire to use it as a spice in most near all of their dishes should alone be proof of their idiocy.”

As he began to slightly draw his sword back, so that he might better thrust it forward and put a proper end to this whimpering audacious heathen girl standing before him, Jysalef smirked and delivered the culmination of his lecture, “Though I must admit that for our divinely ordained purposes, it is to our favor that the repeated perverse consumption of the dolskum root in the days of one’s early youth has the effect of permanently dying their hair from the inside. I will make no such great falsehoods as daring to claim that I understand how it does that, but the end result you can always keep yourself safe in these times with is that anyone with unnaturally colored locks of hair would best be put to death for your own safety!”

Surely the master would not lie to him about such things, and Terus quickly found himself nodding along with Jysalef’s great wisdom pertaining to the grander scheme of the world; but before a decisive piercing blow to the girl's neck could at last be struck, a troubling thought about this entire situation pushed itself to the fore of Terus’s mind such that it forced him to blurt it out with great expediency. “But sir, I can see now that she is clearly Skrandonese as you say, but I still don’t understand why we are afraid of an unarmed girl!” Having now asked that, Terus was half afraid he was going to hear details pertaining to the nature of how his father fell in battle that he suddenly realized he really wasn’t yet feeling as though he could properly stomach the knowledge of.

So unnerved was he by the fact this boy was still proving impossible to receive proper education on the matter, that Jysalef immediately spun around to face Terus as he proceeded to yet again further his lesson to the lad – employing this time in the process voice with volume sufficient to possibly wake the very dead itself, “Of all the sages that offered insighted interpretation of God’s signs, such that we the people of Corsinthia might persevere in our holy ordained task of bringing the truth to the unfortunate misguided heathens that dwelled in the lands of Skrande, Miran Via was the greatest and wisest of them all! Therefore, would it not seem more than slightly unnatural to you that if he had a need to communicate with someone, in a matter of such urgency that they needed to be fetched to him, that for the barer of his most important communiqué he would send a Skrandonese girl?”

Terus would have had no choice but to admit that there was – as his master has pointed out – indeed a paradox present that prevented the situation at hand from being read as innocuous, but before he could say such things he took notice of the fact that the pink haired Skrandonese girl had taken the refocusing of Jysaelf’s attention away from her as opportunity to begin rummaging frantically for something contained within her cloak. “Sir! She-”

Jysalef did not wait to hear the rest of his student’s concerned warning, nor did he need to, and began to spin back around to face his captor at almost the exact same time Terus had begun speaking of what he had saw. These were the sorts of foolish things he had hoped to properly instruct Terus in the ways of being wise enough to know how not to make. Although he had originally been concerned that this summon from Master Via was little more than a ruse to lead him into a trap where the still war eager comrades of Skrandonese warriors he had slain in the past would lay in wait, especially since it seemed unlikely someone as important as Master Via would be spending his free time since the end of the holy crusade in a filthy little town such as this one, he now cursed vehemently at himself as he realized that with all likelihood this itself was the trap and there was now a blade moving with great expediency towards the very easily cut parts of his neck such that he would not be able to meet in in time with his own blade.

That it was not a blade that Jysalef saw when finally he did complete his panicked about face maneuver - which from his point of view seemed to take forever to perform - but instead the unmistakable signet ring of the greatest Corsinthian sage of all time in the hands of the trembling pink haired Skrandonese girl, caused him to let his own sword fall deafeningly to the ground.