From Balthazar’s Illuminated Manuscript:
There once was a wood cutter and charcoal burner who lived deep in the forest with his wife and two children. Each day he walked deep into the forest, and cut down great oak trees with his axe, and piled the pieces of oak into a careful pile of split logs, and then carefully covered the piles with earth. He’d then light the piles on fire so that they would burn slowly within the embrace of the earth so that the wood burned down into charcoal, which he would then cart into city by his trusty mule Asen to be used by the blacksmiths and glass blowers and potters in their forges and kilns.
One day, while he was deep in the forest, he was surprised by a giant creature of the forest. It had a great beak, and five bulbous eyes, and walked on six legs like a beetle, but looked as though it was made out of wood and tree bark. The wood cutter was frightened, but the creature looked at him without recognition, and then walked back into the deeper parts of the forest.
When the woodcutter got home, he told his wife about what he had seen, and how he had fled and left the pile of oak logs as he fled. But they were poor, and they fretted that he had worked for days on the pile, and that they might not collected the charcoal, and so he resolved to go back. But as he said it, his small son Tesek leapt from under the table where he had been hiding, and exclaimed that he must go with his father the next day, and so see the giant creature. The woodcutter and his wife refused, saying that the boy was too young, and the deeper parts of the forest - where strange creatures who cared not for the ways of men lived - were too dangerous for a young boy.
The woodcutter left early in the morning with Asen and the cart to see what could be salvaged of the charcoal pile. Long they traveled along dark trails as the forest grew denser and darker, until they came to the grove that the pile was built amongst. The woocutter had put coals in its middle to begin the burning process, but it did not seem to have taken the flame. He went to his cart to get his firing tools, and has he reached for the cloth that covered them he saw the cloth move, and Tesek leapt out, surprising his father.
“Hello, father,” he cried, “I have come to help you. I know that you will be angry with me for not staying at home, but I am brave, and strong, and will help you if the creature returns.”
“And what will your mother say?” his father asked. “By now she is up, and sees your bed empty, and it frightened of what may have happened to you.”
But the boy told his father that that was as it had to be, and that even if they immediately went back, she would still be frightened, and that they should relight the fire, and then go home and tell his mother that the task was finished. This they set about doing. They burrowed into the side of the mound, and Tesek, being smaller than his father, was able to crawl into the pile, to blow on the coals, and get them to start again.
But as he did so, he heard his father cry out in fear, for the creature had returned, and devoured his father before Tesek’s very eyes. As his father struggled against the beast, they rolled to and fro, and the burrow in the earth that Tesek had crawled into collapsed, and he was stuck amongst the piles of oak logs, deep in the earth.
The fire began to heat up. Tesek struggled to escape, and as the fire spread, Tesek became one with the fire and it’s smoke, and slipped through the tiny spaces between the wooden pieces that no boy could have fit through, and so - eventually - came out of the pile. When he saw that his father was gone, and that Asen had run off into the woods, he went home to his mother and told her all that had happened. She was beside herself with the loss of her husband, but also furious at her son who was twice so close to death, and swung her hand to hit him, but he slipped away from her hand, and she found that she could not touch him against his wishes. He had become like smoke and candle flame that - when a hand is passed close to it - simply moves out of the way, and cannot be touched.
And he said: “Mother of mine, I will avenge my father. I will become a great warrior because no one will be able to strike me, even as you try to strike me in vain, and I will go back into the deep forest, and kill the beaked creature with five eyes.” And with that, he strode out the door.
Tesek spent many years traveling the world, and he did become a great soldier. He moved like smoke and flame, and his enemies could not draw his blood. But so much blood did he draw with his sword Fagel, that they became together known as the Red Blade.
And after many years, he returned to the forest, and he traveled deep beneath it’s dark canopy. And no tale tells of all his deeds as he tracked, and slew the forest’s creatures that knew not the ways of men. And finally, he came to an old, old mound. And he found sitting upon and ancient creature both insect, and plant. And it sat with its five eyes staring, and it’s beak closed tightly. And the Red Blade leapt onto it’s back, and struck off it’s head even there on the pile of charcoal that once his own father had made.
But he found that the eyes were each a gem stone, and that the beak was like two blades of knives. And he took these things, and went to his mothers cottage, where she still lived in the wood. She was old now, and cared for by his sister, and by her husband who was also a wood cutter. And he said to them “Take these gems as the price of my father’s early death. They are worth much charcoal, and you can live happily and without care for the rest of your days. But I will take these blades, and make from them daggers, and forever will the Red Blade be known by his sigil: the axe of my father, crossed with my blade, and surrounded by the five gems of my enemy.”
And the Red Blade went back out into the world. And he killed many beast and creatures who hated men. And of evil men he slew armies. And never was he touched by blade, for he was like flame and smoke - which though visible in front of us, we may never grasp.