A heavy fog rolls in over the hills, and the old warrior sighs. Worn out, he lets his eyes close as his head bows under its own weight. He shakes himself awake. The fog comes, and so do the things in the fog. And so does age come with time, wisdom with age, weariness with wisdom.
The end, he felt, was nearing. Not just another fog now, or maybe it was; a fog like all other fogs, but to him the last. He felt it in his soul. There was in this cloud, something which would be his ending. “The end of a thing,” he had once heard, “was better than the beginning.” So, leaning on his spear, he awaited the slow march of the fog cascading down the hillside.
Iridescent, its billows shot into the low sun’s rays. A river of rainbows and shadows. Always, under the beauty, the shadows. Always, under heaven, the struggle. Soon, he prayed, his soul would be lifted into the light.
Soon, but not yet.
He raises his spear and meets the first of the crawling things which haunt the dreams of men. Shapeless and void, depthless darkness, it shatters like glass. His tired limbs know the old dance, and he dances in the fog, piercing the unknown. His breath comes hard now, and sadness beyond his ken grabs at his heart. Such terrible, piercing pain in his chest.
One last thrust, he casts his spear at one of the taller monsters a little ways off. The demons laugh, rushing at the defenseless man, but he is not there. They coalesce upon nothing. He had been taken away.
Tale Told 