Death
Nothing could have prepared me for the day we met on the battlefield.
Surrounded by deep-throated screams, gut-wrenching violence, foul smells of the dead and dying.
All of it seemed inconsequential when compared to him. Small. Like the buzz of a bee within a field of flowers. Or the gentle breeze swaying strands of golden hair.
Eyes. Eyes so black, it was as if I gazed into darkness itself. The space between the stars. A vacuum of everything and nothing.
Eyes that craved death and dominance. Eyes that emanated pure, unadulterated power.
And they were on me.
Scanning, cunning and swift
I wondered then, standing on the blood-soaked earth. Foe against foe in the first skirmish of war. If the legends about the King were true.
Once mere stories told to a child to keep them disciplined, now a reality in these decaying grasslands.
He is the siphon that the devil wields.
Blood and flesh like impenetrable shields
Eyes piercing, sharp and dangerous
Beware the king, who tortures the traitorous
Who kills the weak and mocks the poor
Who takes what he wants, and so much more.
A fickle thing, the rhyme. I wondered, even as a child, how someone so cruel, could want more than he already has.
How someone like the King could actually want.
Perhaps, I used to think, it was greed.
Perhaps, it was power.
Perhaps he wanted more than the material gains.
The riches, the land, the throne. The King had it all.
Or so it seemed.
But as death stared back at me, eyes narrowed with the intent to kill, I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the edges of my lips.
The confident glint that sparked in my eyes.
That day I was the leader of the strongest resistance in the History of the Isles.
And the King was doomed to death.
But one the lead to another.
And the front lines of the resistance folded.
Clouds thickened and grayed, brought upon by the force of all the Gods. Rain, sharp and cold, cascaded across the terrain.
But,
A slip in the mud.
A sword flaying skin.
Darkness.
And when I awoke, I was no longer a leader of the resistance.
But a prisoner to the darkness.
