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Aeraie

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April 2013 Stories Competition

Posts 2-3: Poller5

29-Sep-2012 19:40:46 - Last edited on 01-May-2013 21:52:07 by Aeraie

Aeraie

Posts: 9,100 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

That was the trick, he knew. Stay ahead of it. Never had death caught him by surprise.

Until now.

The absurd notion gripped him that it was not a very noble way to die, alone in a bed, too weak to even stand, wracked not by injury nor illness but by simple age. But he had lived his life by the conviction that there was no noble way to die; death was death, a final trip to the undiscovered country from which no traveller had ever returned. Let others have their noble death in battle, their worthy self-sacrifice. He would live.

Aye, but for what?

What value was his life now, which he had before prized above all his possessions? He had done everything right. Everything. Yet death had found him just the same, unwilling to be cheated of its prize. He had come to understand, by watching the world, that death could have a meaning; martyrdom could inspire wonders, sacrifice change the world. What meaning would his death have? Perhaps a healer would make a note of it, as proof of the limit of human endurance. His life had been spent denying mortality, but in the end he stood alone as the greatest testament to it. No candle may outshine the sun, and no man may outlast death.

A chill cold had started to crawl up his legs as he lay there, and with terror he felt death enter the room. His mind, trying to make some order of his end, jumped from thought to thought faster and faster until he could make no sense of his own mind. Though the sun still shone outside his window, the light had grown wan, and it seemed as if mist was encroaching the room as the cold spread to his chest.

29-Sep-2012 19:41:03 - Last edited on 01-May-2013 21:49:20 by Aeraie

Aeraie

Posts: 9,100 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

He had read, once, that a warrior defeated in a duel often congratulated his victorious opponent. Why congratulate someone who’s about to kill you? he had always wondered. But now, facing his own victorious opponent, at the end of the duel that had been his very life, he came to understand that mentality. He had done everything he could to win, done everything right and to the best of his ability. His opponent had simply been stronger. He saw that now. He had thought himself a shrewd businessman, but now he realized that his life’s goal, to live and go on living, had been a worse venture than any proposition he had ever turned down.

Everything was cold, now. The fog kept rolling in, filling his body, filling his mind; then it coloured the room the whitest shade of pale, and he was dead.

~*~*~*~

Know that death is a debt we all must pay.
— Euripides, Alcestis

30-Sep-2012 22:25:23 - Last edited on 01-May-2013 21:48:58 by Aeraie