A Demon Hunter's Philosophy
A while back, I was approached by a kid who told me his whole family had been wiped out. There one second, gone the next, all in a roar of green fire. He begged me to train him in the ways of a demon hunter so he could avenge his family. I wasnāt in the mood to hear it at the moment, though, so I kept trying to shake him off. He was a persistent bastard. Kept up when I tried to lose him. I eventually tired of it, so I sat him down and told him I would train him on one condition: he had to tell me exactly what he planned to do after he had avenged his family. He said he would go on living. I told him I wouldnāt train him. This kidāyou should have seen himāstarted yelling at me about how much he needed to be able to do it, how it didnāt matter what he did afterward, how it wasnāt any of my business in the first place. He said he would find someone else to teach him. Said I didnāt give a damn about it all. Thatās when I had to stop him.
Ā Iāve heard this nonsense for years. Too many people have told me that I just donāt care about whatās going on in the world and that I should be ashamed of it. They tell me that Iām nothing but a power-hungry bastard who thinks heās invincible. But they just donāt know. They donāt realize that you canāt commit to this sort of business if youāre selfish. My guess is that they just donāt think it through and recognize the key factors in it all, nodding to themselves in self-assurance and content to look down on me from their ivory tower. If only they knew.
I told the kid how I became a demon hunter. How my family had been killed off, my wife and daughters left as half eaten corpses, slowly burning into ash that blew away in the air, the world reeking of death and hatred. My entire life had evaporated during the time it took for me to walk to the river. I felt the lust for vengeance. I did for a long time. I killed all the demons I could, trying everything in my power to get to the highest in command, all the while burning on the fuel given to me by the anger and the agony. It almost killed me. Not because I was getting into dangerous situations. By then, I had learned to handle myself and my opponents, learning when to stick around and go for the kill and when to disappear as though Iād never been there. There was no physical danger. But my soul ached. I was empty, nothing but a killing machine that had lost all meaning and sense of self. At first, I tried to ignore it, thinking it would go away. Maybe I had been pushing myself too hard. When I took a break from it to try and figure out what was wrong, I was left with more questions. I was having trouble remembering who I had even been and what I had ever cared about before.
The memories were still fresh. Not the memories of the happiness that had been shattered or the people I had loved, but the memories of the flames writhing across the ground, the smell of burning flesh, the sight of everything turning to dust. All I still knew was the searing fire of hell without the faintest idea of how I had gotten there.
So I left. I left it all, trying to find where myself had disappeared to. It wasnāt something I was able to do on my own. I needed the interaction with real people, not just whoever I was trying to impress with my skills. People who hadnāt lost themselves. Maybe they could help me figure out the mess I had become. The more I searched for meaning, the more I found. I met people who had their lives to live, families to care for, crops to harvest, all that I had lost in the instant it took to get a bad feeling in my gut. Those people saved me. The world I had felt had turned its back on me was all I needed. It became my purpose. It replenished my empty body and mended my soul.
I did my best to explain it all to the kid. I told him that the world needed to be his reason to fight, not the hurt and sadness inside of him. He didnāt believe me. He left, giving me a sarcastic thanks, off to find someone else to fill the void for him, someone who would teach him to harness the fire that burned away at him. I guess I hope he found that, at least. It would have been better than someone filling the void with whatever they thought it should be filled with.
I should have agreed to train him.
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