Need

Author: Seth


"Sing. Sing, for the world calls, and the music of existence is far too great for any man to contain while remaining a citizen of the land of the sane." 
 
The fact that Nobu was the strongest soldier in the Ginsenkei, bar none, was a well known fact. The fact that there was one person among the ranks of Argenfluo's military might that he respected above all others as a fighter was not, and it puzzled those who knew. It had been quite the shock when he'd admitted that there was one whom he considered a truer warrior than himself. The fact that the person whom he considered the greatest fighter in the Ginsenkei had been a simple nomad who was often more preoccupied sculpting figurines or singing songs was just the icing on the cake.

The truth of the matter was that of the two of them, Gin was the one who truly felt the battle, and that was something that no amount of training would ever match.

Gin was an oddity, a glass cannon wheeled onto the frontlines and yet which had somehow always managed to avoid being shattered, and the storyteller had always been a point of curiosity for Nobu. The orphan-turned-soldier was fascinated by the nomad's ability to leave a path of broken bodies behind him with nothing more than his fists, to know what the enemy would do before even they knew it, to effortlessly follow the tide of battle as it shifted and swirled around him.

Ironically enough, the reason for Gin's spectacular skill lay in one of the very things that made Gin's status as the subject of Nobu's obsession so unlikely.

The source of Gin's power lay in song.

There was a reason Gin always chose to sing over playing instruments. Since the day he was born songs had been everywhere, infusing every aspect of his life. As a child he'd always been humming one tune or another, each depending on what he was doing, where he was, the state of the weather that day and a dozen other factors. Everything sang, each new situation imparting to him another melody that begged to be communicated with the rest of the world, and more often than not his voice was the only method he had of doing it, and so he'd gotten very good at using the one instrument he'd never be without.

Just like life, not all songs were happy, and some lyrics he would only ever sing when he was alone with no one to hear the heart rending words that tumbled from his lips, though he would always sing them, no matter how melancholic. Each melody wanted, needed to be let out into the world, and he'd found early on that trying to ignore any of the songs of life tended to end badly.

Be that as it may, there was one song that Gin had vowed to never sing. The song that grabbed hold of his soul each time he entered a battle was one he could not put into words; it was a voiceless, mindless thing that would drive even the meekest person to a state of battlelust that went past any point that could be considered sane. Still, it was a song, and so it called, screamed, demanded that it be unleashed upon the world. So the raconteur did the only thing he could; he spread the symphony of death not with his voice, but with his body.

Nobu never did discover the true nature of the power guiding the other boy, but he had his suspicions. Suspicions that were surprisingly accurate given the stories and rumours they were based on, but then the grains of truth behind each tale are always there for those who are willing to take the time to pick them out.