Chapter Text
“someone will remember us
I say
even in another time”
“The champion of the orcs, Quiglan, was not always such. We think of such races or faces so far from our own as to be monsters, but this is not true.”
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It had been a long time before Quiglan had heard his name. He had heard it whispered from his mother in an urge to rest, heard it hollered from his companions to stop training and join them, heard it screamed across the battlefield from dying foes.
His last foe he remembered from silence-he remembers a green trench coat and hat, a calm smile. He had tried to meet the eyes under that hat and found only shadow, even when the stranger’s face was gleaming in the light of his claymore’s aura.
His last foe had not talked, had not shifted from precise movements, had not screamed nor cried nor even spoke a word-until his last foe’s claymore was lodged within his stomach and he was pinned to the hard clay of the battlefield.
His life force was fading, he remembered then; his conviction slipping like water away from his grasp. His vision had been blacking, mind fogging, and he had, perhaps, reached out for the companions that he didn't hear anymore.
It was hard, he remembered then, to think of anything but remorse. He wished then to see his family, his friends-any familiar face.
The dull pain of him bleeding out was nothing compared to his sheer panic at realizing that he had let those chances go past in his search for strength. He had wished to sob, to apologize, to go back and make amends, but it was too late, and he was slipping into the darkness..
“Quiglan, champion of the orcs,” the stranger’s calm, unharried voice said; “My own downfall was similar to yours, though not as great. I will not let someone who has accepted something they thought to be futile in the past pass before they reach the future they have truly wished for.”
In truth, Quiglan knew not how much time had passed around them, for when his tears dried up and his remorse gave him room to speak he saw only a field of long grass, the sun shining faintly upon stone monuments that lay upon what once was clay soaked red with blood.
The largest one he stood up in awe for, as upon it lay:
Quiglan, Champion of the Orcs
Rests beneath in quiet slumber
For though the years were cruel to him,
He carved through quite a number
With bloody axe and gore-soaked palms,
His fighting spirit would not dim,
And in our wish, not saving face,
We rest our weapons for now psalms
Are what he’s gifted to our race,
In peacetimes now we see his spirit,
He yearned for calm and now we hear it
Through every brook, through every stream
Made run with blood, they now shine clean.
The quiet scrape of knife against wood and the brushing of grass was all that resounded throughout the field, and Quiglan’s many triumphs in battle felt like nothing compared to the calm that now overtook him.
“Speak, when you are ready,” spoke the stranger, whose head did not move as Quiglan’s head snapped in their direction. “I would have your story when you understand what it is you want to say.”
They fell silent thereafter, leaving only their actions and the grass to fill in the silence.
It was past sunset when Quiglan then spoke….
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“Such a legendary warrior,” and Quiglan was sure he had heard this voice before, “Could not be born in any place that did not raise its children to fight.”
Quiglan craned his head above the crowd that was forming, many humans moving to cluster around the speaker. He saw some in the crowd confess that Quiglan’s tale was their favourite legend, others that they were glad to hear it again, and a happy warmth blossomed in his chest.
It was strange, he thought, that none of them recognized the subject of such a story.
But, as he had figured throughout no small amount of reflection, fame was best enjoyed with quiet pride.
After peering over a particularly tall section of people, Quiglan near gasped at the sight of the speaker.
There sitting on a log, green trench coat fanned out and hat shadowing their face, was the stranger. Quiglan had never gotten their name.