A Myth of a Debt of Blood

Choices are easy. It's the consequences that are hard. Some are meaningless, blowing over in a rotation or so, yet others span years, centuries, millennia.

Tell me, what sort of price would you pay for choice? For the freedom to choose? For the chance to make a change, a meaningful one, a change for the better? Would you kill for it? Would you die for it?

What sort of choice would that be, and what sort of being would grant someone the freedom to make that choice? To place the knife in your hands, give you the encouragement to do it, my child. Take one life, pay the price, save millions more. To look someone in the eyes as you killed her, both of you crying in grief, knowing you were performing your duty, to yourself, and your people. As you saw her lying dead the floor, would you know in your steel heart that you would do so again, though it would rend said heart to pieces once more?

There is a being who has made that choice. Who has taken her blade, and pressed it against a throat. Who was willing to pay the price in blood. They say she is exiled, gone, never to be seen again. But somewhere, that choice remains, the knife discarded on the floor, centuries-old sanguinity crusted on its edge, waiting, just waiting for someone to retrieve it.