Orin

    I couldn’t help but stare. He even looked broken on the outside. His smooth brown hair curved around his head like a hood, only to betray the owner’s once-sharp deep grey eyes like the edges of a shadow, but looked dull and blank out straight down onto the dusty road. His arm was hooked around a thin staff that was a worn brown. I couldn’t move, and Roden gave me a confused look as I stood motionless.
    “What’s wrong with him?” I asked half-scared half-curious.
    “He...” Roden scratched the back of his neck. “He’s broken.”
    “Why?” I wondered what could do that to a man, seed cracking roots so deep in his soul that when they developed they broke him in two.
    “You don’t want to know.”
    “I do.”
    Silence. I waited for him to continue.
    “Perfectum miles,” Roden said, sighing and standing next to me.
    “Huh?”  
    “Latin.”
    “For what?”
    “The perfect solider.” Roden said, sadness lacing his voice. For some reason his words struck me deep. “He earned his nickname quickly. He climbed the ranks as easy as walking, every week he was in a higher position, sometimes even two. He was quick-thinking and fast-learning, extremely intelligent and was one of their very best soldiers.”
    I swallowed. “And then?”
    “Then...” Roden sighed again, pain clear in his eye. “Then, he reached complete commander in arms. Then... the cracks began to show. I don’t think he realised, not at first, and not until it was too late. He was slowly unpicking himself, one thread at a time, pulling apart at the seams. War was wearing him down, grain by grain, tear by tear. He pushed himself too hard. He realised he was developing a thirst for blood. He realised when you wore him down enough a monster hatched to protect itself. He retreated, like every good soldier would.”
    It was almost as if I looked at him with a new pair of eyes. The man who sat with his arm around his staff, the man who had cracks too large for you to heal with anything, the man who sat like a soldier, never at ease. If eyes really were the windows of the soul then the occupants were long dead.
     “Who was he?”
     Roden smiled a sad, little private smile. “My brother.“