His joints gave off a dull ache as he stood there in the immaculate throne room; too immaculate. People were on the streets dying of starvation or the plague, yet here the king sat in his throne basking in the multicolored sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows. Though, the king didn’t so much as back as he did slump down in his throne. He looked tired and wrung out. Roderick understood; he felt the same way. This life on the road offering his skill with a hammer either to pound steel and iron or someone’s skull was taking its toll. He came to this meeting today to hear the king out and see what this mad errand would offer him should he survive. The pardon wasn’t important; he wouldn’t need it. He could also do without being celebrated as a hero. That wouldn’t do anyone any good. What would some old timer beat all to hell like him do for anyone as hero? The favor of the king and a reward would help though. He could retire on that, kick his feet up somewhere nice and relax his aching bones finally. 

That’s if he survived finding the cure that is. He didn’t have high hopes, looking around at the others who responded to the king. Two among them were children; one looked older than the other, but both were scrawny wisps compared to Roderick himself and the other warrior standing there. He looked capable. The other man was… questionable. He looked wiry and more inclined to skulk about than stand firm and fight. He hoped this quest would need men more like him more than it would men like Roderick and the other warrior, especially with the children there. He would keep an eye on them. Another child wouldn’t die on his watch. He was tired of death, weary from the toll it took on him over his long life. Watching people die as often as he had would do that to a man, it would haunt his eyes.

As the hooded sage finally came down the line to him, he shifted his helmet slightly and slid off his left gauntlet so he could shake back his sleeve. The king’s man traced his finger over Roderick’s arm and muttered to himself a moment. A shining symbol appeared upon his forearm before fading away from sight and memory as though it were never there. This mark was suppose to protect them from the blight. If that were so then why were they not administering these to the populace to protect them? Why only the foolish souls in the throne room? Best to let the questions welling up lie for now. His mind would do better to focus on the task at hand and do what he could to work with those around him and find the cure. Finding it would take time, maybe a lifetime. Roderick just hoped at the end of it all there would still be people left to benefit from it.