By Charlos
Darkness was regrouping around me.
Standing in knee high collection of filth and garbage, the sewers had something inhumane about them. It was either the smell, or the unusual darkness, which covered the passages and was ready to eat away my last touches with reality.
A loud sigh echoed shortly, than disappeared. Nothing worked normally, nothing was abiding the usual laws, which we take for granted. Still alert for the danger, which was looming all around me, I looked at my lantern, which slowly leaked last drops of oil. The flame has gone out long before. All I held was a glowing torch and a dull tin gladius covered in mud and blood alike.
You could almost say, that the darkness had something sweet about it. Something that stood out from the merciless frostbite of nothingness. Feeling both youthful and slain by old age, my cut veins forfeited their colors, oozing red blood and replacing it with nothing. And this nothing had to be black, it had to be a part of the darkness, which I breathed in and breathed out.
It wasnít a time to see my life flash before my eyes, I wasnít touched by death yet and its white bones were far, far away from me. It was in no hurry. It didnít have to hurry. While races are won by men who ran the fastest, Death and me did not need to run or check on each otherís pace. The track had one finish line and nothing beyond it. So it did not matter who ran faster or who finished first, in the end we met, inevitably.
I actually had no idea, which way to run. But that didnít matter, you see. Because all directions meant moving forward, following a trail of ancestors and those before them. The traditions, which paid tribute to ones dying alone while attempting to make a stand, will soon include my dark soul.
Perhaps it was time to move on. At least a bit. More to verify that I am still able to walk than to lead to a definite destination. The map I so well kept in my mind before was confused and my sense of direction lost in the previous havoc of battle.
Talking about battle, the only sad remainder of it were my wounds and a corpse, which bleed before my eyes for hours, breathing deeply, yet unable to make a move. Thanks be to the Ereal, it could not move. It has scratched my hands and bled my head before I managed to bring it down.
The might of my last swing was long gone and the adrenaline was washed out of my veins, out of my body indeed. Unwilling to take any risks of being ambushed from the back, I struck my knife through its throat and yelled out upon its last breath.
If death is to come, I like to stare into its eyes.
But my cry was not answered by inhumane sounds prophesying my fate, but only by dimmed silence. The unsung evil was carrying on, claiming my sanity. Now, I could imagine the moment of my death. Walking in dark corridors, with no light in sight, running into walls and slumping into the filth, whose disgusting odors would become more evident and poisoning. I would hear no evil and see no evil, yet it would fill my being and control my heartbeat, before the silence will settle into my mind and I will forfeit my being, probably drowned in sewerage.
And the darkness will reclaim me without having to forfeit anything more.