“This is nice.” Jura said. She looked out over the rolling expanse of green meadows all around them, ending abruptly upon the pine strewn expanse of the northern mountains. Four months had passed and with it, winter, but not the crisis. The republic was beset all over by monsters and was in an altogether too slow process of recovering. They'd stopped the dungeon breaks and prevented something akin to an apocalypse, though nobody knew what had happened. Yet it wasn't over, not by a long shot. “I wish the others were here to see this.”

She was sad, and always would feel that loss, but she couldn't help but love this. Her first taste of true freedom. Tyr had wasted no time, resting for a day before marching out of the city without a word. It had taken her over a month to find him, neck deep in the butchered remains of gnolls that had occupied an abandoned village. Following a trail of slaughter throughout the eastern republic as he completed contracts at an astonishing rate. Always hunting, leaving behind nothing more than ash, blood, and offal to mark his trail. His arm was still a stump, but that hadn't seemed to slow him in the least.

He didn't respond. Rarely did. Neither would he touch her, only eating when she or Okami became overly insistent. Never sleeping, though. Neither could talk him into doing that.

“They died glorious deaths, you know.” She smiled. Tried to, but she felt the loss just as keenly as he did, Tyr was just more open with the black feeling clutching his heart. They'd all spent those years together inside the astral space, learning of one another, bonding - becoming close enough to call a surrogate family. “How they wanted to.”

“There is no glory in death.” Tyr replied softly. There was no vitriol in his tone, only genuine exhaustion. “Dead is dead. Time marches on, and it'll never stop, nothing matters.”

He said this, but he'd held a sword to the neck of a senator in broad daylight and beaten his attendant guards near to the point of death. Until the old man had agreed to build a statue of the three friends that had perished in Leygein and celebrate them annually. Benny's day, they'd call it, a day for each of them in a three-day remembrance ceremony on the first of July. That senator had threatened all kinds of punishment, but the constables and lawmen had never come. Tyr just kept moving, leaving little crumbs here and there while avoiding any and all pursuers, of which there were many. In truth, he had been the one to find Jura. She was an expert tracker, but Okami was better, doing as his soul sworn brother asked at all times within reason, easily avoiding her. Soul sworn, sharing in his sorrow.

“It is right to feel sorrow over loss.” Jura stroked his hair and he allowed her too. It was short now, but the cut was rough. She liked it this way, with a little trimming he would look nice. “But I don't think they'd want you to spend the rest of your life mourning. It's time to move on.”

Tyr looked at her. His eyes were so deep, one of the reasons she remained so taken with him even after their relationship had gone stale and one sided. “That's not the problem.” He said.

“Oh?” Jura furrowed her brow. “Talk to me, then. What is the problem? What can I do to help you?”

“I feel loss, I think. I will miss them forever, and I know that – but I'm not sad because they died.” He replied with a frown. “I am angry and upset but not because they died. I felt so little when Abe perished. Like... I watched him die, and my heart was still to it. They did what they had to do and that kind of determination is rare. He knew what he was doing. I am just... I can't explain it.”

He could. Tyr knew exactly how he felt and why. He wasn't sad at the loss, not at all. Rather, he was angry with himself because he was too weak to stop it. It was so... Selfish. All he could think about was his failure and complacency leading to a loss of himself. Thus, he rode Okami all over the countryside to slaughter hundreds of monsters in an attempt to grow and progress. Swordsmanship, magic... Everything... It was all worthless in the face of absolute power. These knights who perfected their techniques for decades would be ants against those creatures. And Tyr was well aware that greater powers existed. Powers that had not come to save their world. He didn't care about that, either, the death of a world. It was only pieces of him that would be taken away. Possessions.

Leading him into a loop of self deprecation, while at the same time aware how inappropriate his own considerations were. To be sad because he lost, not them, felt incredibly wrong – but he couldn't help it.

“I am not a good man, Jura.” Tyr said, standing next to Jura on the ridge. All of her wounds were healed and she looked no different than he remembered. Only better, matured and womanly, with long legs and every piece of her matching his ideal. His consideration of these things had receded, another piece of him lost. “And you should leave.”

“There are no good men. You told me that, remember? Just men with choices.” Jura gripped his arm tighter. The only one he had left, feeling the corded muscle beneath and a heat inside of her every time she looked at him. He was so beautiful, and the scars on him only enhanced that for her. Regardless of his motivations, those he would not speak on, he was a hero. A bounty on his head only to see him returned to the republic so he could be awarded, but Tyr didn't think that way about himself. A hero... Hero of what? Dead friends and broken promises. “I'll leave.” She said, toying with him, amused in seeing the flash of hurt flitting through his eyes, even though he'd said it himself. “When I'm ready. One day, but not any time soon. Our place is together, you belong to me.”

Tyr didn't laugh or smile, didn't snort derisively, only looked at her calmly. If he was to be so selfish and entitled, then he swore to never blame someone for doing the same within reason. “Alright.” He replied. “I'll return. I will let go of these feelings and try to be better to you, and for you. In exchange, I just have to do one more thing. One more crime.”

Days later, they arrived to the final stop on his trip. Tyr's body grew stronger, but he was only half a man with a single arm. He needed more. His greed to glut himself was unbridled, and he'd never stop until he was satisfied. Satisfaction came from acceptance that Jura deserved more, but he'd give it one last try. Nothing could help him, and he'd been looking for the answer everywhere he went.

They called it the 'red meadow'. A field of bloody crimson flowers surrounded by a stone wall. Appropriately called the 'crimson lotus', they were unequaled in terms of their alchemical properties. Even so, they were contraband. Nobody was allowed inside and as soon as the wall was crossed an alarm would sound. Nobody tried, typically. Those who did would die most assuredly. Rumors pervaded however, that those few who had managed to harvest these things could create medicines of incredible potency. Tyr had visited healers, but none could help him, not even the churches. His arm was gone, and the impurities within him refused to allow it to be regrown. Like a curse, but he knew it was the remnants of that creature he'd unwittingly awakened in the past. A poison in his blood, but also the only thing that had kept him alive after a power unfit for his body had passed through him.

It tempered him. When he managed to break through the artificial barrier he would become stronger than ever before by quite a measure. This, it would seem, was all part of the plan, they'd left him with something, he just needed to figure out how to metabolize it. Everything that he was came from others, the examples were endless, and he'd face their faith with some of his own for once. It wasn't about getting stronger anymore, really, but an attempt to find some sense of wholeness within him self.

If he wanted to truly seize his destiny, his first objective was to ensure he could do it with two hands. Tyr had been a slave to these things for his entire life, and he refused to let his freedom be torn away from him. Those three years of relative contentment, learning to care for things and focus on what he wanted to do... It had changed him.

“I don't think you're supposed to do that!” Jura called out nervously. Okami refused to approach the place altogether and warned the same, but Tyr was stubborn. Leaping onto the wall and dropping down without a word in response. Jura backed away from that accursed place and took position near the great wolf. Smiling as it licked her face, scratching him between the ears. Her own soul sworn beast, the terrormaw, was currently latched to his back, sunning itself lazily. As always, it remained small, having never grown. Even after all those years inside the astral gate after she'd managed to smuggle him inside.

Freki was his name, and she loved him. Like herself and Tyr, he and the wolf made for fast friends and easy partners.

“He will be fine.” Okami said. He had an interesting voice, for a wolf. Smooth and calm and warm, a deep rumble to it. Absolute confidence conveyed in every word.

“Are you sure?” Jura asked. She watched as Tyr stalked through the meadow of crimson flowers, toying with a few before shaking his head. He was a small figure now, his expression unable to be read, but he seemed disappointed, working his way through the place and shouting for something. “This place is cursed.”

“Not so.” Okami replied. “It is what it is, as are you and as are we all. A natural thing, flawed and imperfect, to ignore his convictions is to dishonor him.”

“Aren't you worried about him, though?” She asked.

“Of course I am.” Okami nodded his massive head. “My brother is warped and twisted. Broken inside, both by his own doing and those of others. He does not understand sin or vice as thinking creatures do, too simple and naïve – too lost in the games being played by others. All I, or anyone can do, is allow him to walk his own path and aid him when he requires it. If you look closer, you might be surprised what you see, whether you'd call it ability or talent or anything else. Just watch, my line would never have bonded with anything lesser.”