Chapter 18, The Why

I seek, but know not what it is that I search for.  I reach, but there is nothing within my grasp.  I strive for perfection, but I have made more than my fair share of mistakes... and my faults?  Well, they are many and varied.  I yearn, but my desires are clouded and confused.  I pray, fervently, to the Lord of Light, but my words go unanswered... or perhaps the answer is unheard by me, or not understood.  I look to the future, but am trapped in the past.  Myself and many others have fought and bled for decades, but was it all for naught, or did we make a difference?

I have fought and lived through battles and wars that are now tales told in whispers to the younger folk around fires on the darkest of nights.  The Vreen, Bregandians, The Banaltra, The Vvrael, Hochstib and Jantalar, The Griffin Sword Wars, Nighthaven, the witch Hagga... and so many more.  I have lost friends, irreplaceable comrades who stood by my side through blood and death, standing firm, fighting and dying for goodness and right.  My path, though once traveled with honor in the brightest of light, without them now seems dim, and shrouded in darkness.

I am no longer the young Tehir raider I once was, naive and untested outside of my own people, who ventured so far from the Sea of Fire, through blood, pain, fire and smoke, ice, flood, shadow and death.  I am older, my face is lined and my hair is graying, but, unlike the popular saying that with age comes wisdom, I feel none the wiser.

I have seen the worst that people can do, and the very best that they can become.  I have fought evil, hatred, and greed, and done so beside heroic adventurers whose names are now legend, those whom I am proud to have known, served with, and learned from, those I name as friend, and enemy, those whom I miss terribly, each and every day.

Through all of this... this painful gaining of knowledge and experience, and the bitter losses, I have come to know one thing, the only thing that, to me, really matters.  No matter how strong we are, no matter how powerful we become, we are only as strong as the man or woman standing beside to us, and the one standing next to them.  We are only as powerful as that bond between us, that can link us in such a way as to become unbreakable, and unbeatable; we are better as one, we are weak when alone.

My friends all know and understand this, I gain strength from them, and, hopefully, they gain as much from me.  I would die for them... I have died for them, as they have for me.  We bleed, not for the cause, however just that cause may be, but for each other.  The bond of friendship defines our actions, our sacrifices, and our very nature.  We become who and what we are because of those around us, our brothers and sisters in arms, our friends.

We sacrifice for each other and we expect no thanks for this, for none is needed.  We do what we do for the respect we have given and earned, from one to another, as equals, through many trials and tribulations, through both the bad and the good.  My friends, both those I've gained and those I've lost over the years, far in the past and in recent times, mean more to me than anything else, for they are who I am... and why I am the person I am today; and it is they who are my sole reason for being.