"If anyone were to ask me, I'd say it was you."
The words echoed, unspoken, in the mind of Daeyn Skysong. The world around him was silent- silent as death. He lay on his back, rather peacefully, staring up at the bleakness of the sunny, blue sky, and began to ponder very strange things. Trees were falling in the forest- rather rapidly, in fact, was the Wood itself falling. But, if a tree falls in the forest, and no one around it cares (or survives), does it make a sound?
More important: Does it matter?
Probably. To someone. Amazing how much of life one wastes on the things that don't matter. Amazing how much of life one wastes on things that will -never- matter, and all without being able to focus on the things that do. Or say them, he lamented, privately. He remembered once, a very long time ago now (probably about a full half an hour) when his beloved had held his face in her hands and asked him the most important question she had ever asked him. A thousand things in one sentence... And he had answered with the right answer, but not in the right way.
He had failed her. And now she had been ripped asunder, her flesh torn by hungry ghouls. He had watched it, helplessly, with his own two eyes, as his soul was sucked from his body and his beloved's own odds and ends relocated to locales more dismal and decaying. Digestive. Dissassemble, devour, destroy. Dead, dead, all of it dead! Make it all dead so it dances again. Had he been able to, he may have shook his head (or possibly shorn it right off) to free his mind from the insanity that he felt gripping it. But, as it was, the former Paladin had no control over his motor functions, or the runaway despair ("there's those D-words again," he thought. "Devious, dastardly little things!") that was now seizing it.
He wanted desperately to feel sorry for himself. He wanted to feel angry. He wanted to cry. He wanted to kill something. Everything. But, he felt nothing, other than his own mind slipping away, floating above his body like a puppetmaster watching in horror as the strings controlling his puppet snap one by one, leaving a useless ragdoll on the floor. Except, he couldn't even reach down and retreive it. It was simply... Gone.
Something in him told him he was dead. Even if his flesh was still alive, his heart pumping blood, his mind hard at work, pondering the trees and the howling and the sounds of marching, shuffling, trodding feet and slavering ghouls and the vicious spikes and almost careless metal and woodwork of the meat wagon in which he lay... He was dead. Even were his soul still in his body, the death of his beloved meant his own.
He only hoped whatever power his soul now served would be merciful enough to let that dead feeling remain.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
One, two, step. One two, step.
They danced rapidly around his bedroom, an intricate quick-step of flashing light and rushing blood that only soldiers and young gentlemen of slighted honor know how to perform well.
Even then, he had only learned among the humans. But she could dance it as well as any of them, and dance she did. Perfectly. Parry, counter, side-step. Each strike was different from the last, based on his own choice of parry and counter-attack, her blade seeking out his weaknesses and meeting only the swift, sharp report of whistling steel coming suddenly to a halt.
"Where is your weakness?" She asked. That maddening question was what drove him on. Drove him mad. Made him swing so furiously, stab so viciously, parry with enough resistance to stop an avalanche, then loosen and strike again. She had been asking for hours, it seemed, and received no reply.
After another round of strike-parry-counter-step, he finally said "I have none! I'm already dead! All things are concious, nothing decays! It's why the living fear us still! It's what you hate me for!" He roared, taking another swing.
This time, she simplyy stepped back, out of range of the Death Knight's blade, and lowered her own a little. "Why are you here?" She asked, fel-tainted eyes looking him over, as if he were suddenly a curiosity. She had been tormenting his dreams for a little over a week, and it had alternately brought him no end of joy and torment. But, always, she was the same figure. Small, blonde, slightly scarred... Perfect. And her perfection was made more obvious as she stepped into the moonlight, eyes still fixed on him as the silver gleam illuminated the paleness of her bare flesh.
"Because I'm asleep. Because this is a dream. Because you're here to torture me in ways you couldn't in the waking world," he replied, standing off with respect to her sudden lack of aggressive posture, though he felt his own aggressiveness rising to the forefront of his mind, clouding his thoughts, making him tense and angry. He shook it off, then lowered his weapon.
"Why are you here?" She asked again, tilting her head.
He opened his mouth to reply, simultaneously rising his blade to strike again. It fell to his side, however, and his jaw fell closed as he remembered the words of a wiser man. "Anger..." He quoted, looking up at her, fixing the blue corruption that his own eyes bore upon her, "is only a placeholder. It is a defense. For you to be angry, there must be something to be angry about."
"Why are you here?"
"I'm a protector. No, that's not quite right... I'm a fighter. Wherever something happens that threatens those I care about, I'm there, fighting it, struggling with it... Because Undeath allows me to. Tirelessly."
She simply looked at him, mercifully leaving the question unasked as she slipped forewards, her sword-arm lowering fully to her waist. "You look like you haven't slept in years." She said, reaching up to lay her hand against his cheek. Almost in reflex, he leaned his head into her touch, though in their proximity, the blades crossed beside them, scraping slightly together, reminding him of the impending clash.
"Why?" She asked, her fingers falling, tracing the scars that decorated his chest and stomach, her forehead falling foreward against his shoulder.
"Because I love them," he started, reluctantly stepping back from her touch and lifting his blade in challenge. It had to be resolved. It just... Had to. "Because, I can't help it. Because someone has to. If I can't protect them, what good am I? Why did I have this all handed back to me, much a mess as it is?"
She lifted her sword and slipped forewards again, breezing past his defenses- indeed, he had none. He was able to react only by striking forewards just as she did, a simple jab for an outwardly simple task. Both swords collided with their targets. Peirced. Drew blood. Even with deadened nerves, he expected to feel something. Pain, perhaps, or even his heart exploding from pressure as it was run through. But he only felt relief, relief that the conflict was finally over. She looked up at him, smiling broadly.
And then he understood.
"My weakness isn't my own. It's-" As he spoke, she stood up on the tips of her toes, and pressed her forehead against his, and said, "Shut up, Frostbane." She leaned still further upwards, her lips brushing against his own, silencing him.
He woke up, and couldn't help but laugh.
No comments:
Post a Comment