Mist, Fog, and Smog

“The slayers are coming home,” a man yelled. The crowd cheered even louder. Icarus watched as the tiny dots below the town slowly escaped the fog, until he could see the men on their horses. He cheered for his father, the captain of the slayers. He could barely make out his father’s magnificent white steed. Icarus was proud of his father.

He had joined the slayers when he was eighteen years old and had never come home with more than a scar or the head of the dragon he killed. He had been the hero of countless missions and now, after such a long journey, Icarus felt confident he would finally be promoted from colonel to major general.

The crowd started migrating to the bottom of the hill to meet the slayers as they arrived. Icarus jogged up to the horses as their riders slowed them. Lieutenant colonel Barve was first to dismount. He was a large man with a large red beard and large red eyebrows. Icarus expected to be greeted with his usual, “Ho there, young Icarus,” but Lieutenant Barve just gave Icarus a sad glance. Icarus looked over the giant man’s shoulder. His father’s horse was riderless. Barve looked sorrowfully into Icarus’s eyes.

“Come,” he said, “We will take a walk.”

He and Icarus walked in silence together. Icarus would glance at the large man expecting him to start talking. Instead he just kept his eyes steady on his shoes.

“Why was my fathers’s horse empty?” Icarus finally asked. The lieutenant Colonel sighed.

“I’ve been in the Slayers for longer than most, Icarus, I’ve seen good men die to the most monstrous beasts,” he said. “But once your father joined… well it was unlike anything I had ever seen. Such a young man doing such incredible things with his sword.” He looked into the sky. “The number of men we brought home was almost always the same we left with. He never lost. And so I was happy to stay down as a lieutenant colonel when he was offered the colonel position I had been chasing.” He paused and looked at Icarus. “I thought he would never fall.”

“But he did,” Icarus said with tears streaming from his eyes.