I am going to let you on to a little secret, I have no idea what I am doing. I have no idea how I ended up where I am, and I am beginning to believe my best just isn’t good enough.

I’m can’t remember the words Mael Judoc made me repeat, I wish I could. I wish I could verbatim tell you the oath I took. Instead a saint asked me to swear an oath and I did, does anyone say no to God? I’m certainly not here to tell God that I know better than them. That my actual purpose is to mother hen Henri, make sure Alphonse drinks water as well as wine, and that Milo doesn’t go back to being a bandit. If I’m being honest, a much easier job than any of my current tasks. Which are… stopping a witch king? Defending the town? Making sure we don’t make blind deals with Spider Crones? But, I think God may have made a horrible mistake because I do not have the judgement to be making any of these decisions. And the more decisions I make with any sort of conviction the more people keep asking me what to do.

Henri stands there weeping at the loss of his entire family and all I can tell him is, to pull it together and keep going. Gerard doesn’t think he can go on and all I can say is we keep going until we are dead or we have succeeded. I don’t know when I became so heartless…. Or optimistic? When did I stop seeing failure as an option? Who do you trust when failure isn’t an option anymore? Is it me? Is it a talking sword? Some combination of the two?

Nothing has ever felt as right as this sword in my hands, but I am starting to consider the cost. Can I continue to burn the candle at both ends? Maybe I can do it just long enough that everyone I care about will be okay.

Milo takes the sword from my hands, “The town isn’t going to die in the next 10 minutes, eat some food.”