Tiasen Sias

"So, you see my problem," Tiasen Sias finished explaining his problem, which was, in a word: Yanige. The boy had appeared in the village a few days ago. A Rosdravian exploring the mountains, an uncommon sight -- and to many, worrying. "What advice do you offer?"   There were two with him, not friends exactly, and only slightly human. Diveńka, he called them: like the divne godlings, but not. His familiars.   "Kill him," said one immediately, for it was born from knives baptised in battle, and the faces of the dying, twisted in pain, were still visible in the flash of its eyes. Tiasen had poured his own terror into the spirit, had offered it up as a sacrifice and a desperate plea both, and now he felt it stirr again. "He is the enemy and to destroy him is the only way to survive."   "He has offered no insult," Tiasen insisted. The idea did not sit well with him, though at the back of his mind a small voice said: this is the way it always has been; this is how we live. "And he is better with the sword than I."   "He will turn on you," the spirit said with calm confidence, as if it was the Fate itself. "You can be taught."   "I already said I do not have time for that," Tiasen dismissed the idea impatiently. He turned to the other, worried that they would echo the advice of their kin, but the spirit only looked at him with wide, dark eyes. Finally, they answered.   "Kiss him," they said, for they were young, and have recently learned of a great romantic epic. Likely it had been Yanige who recounted the story to them; Tiasen knew no one else as well versed in poetic tales of old as the strange Rosdravian boy.   "These cannot be my only choices," he said, despairing at his choice of companions. The spirits looked at each other, frowning.   "We know the ways of the human," the young one said. "You should listen when we speak of them."   "No," Tiasen said faintly, hiding his face in his hands and wondering where he went wrong with the rituals that made the two. He should have asked a human for help, that much was obvious. "You really don't."   Divne were, in fact, known for their alien ways of thinking and a creative understanding and interpretations of the world around them.   In the end, he could not kill Yanige. But no good thing can last forever.