The icy hands of horror breached my chest, grasping tight my lungs with ever constricting tendrils. No breath, dizzy, my head swam with ghosts and goblins until darkness seized my mind. Blessed oblivion. In dreamless sleep, I knew nothing, no fear, no horror, not even a self at all to fear for; there was nothing.
Now that I have returned to the land of the living, now that I find myself here, emaciated, called up from the muck of death, a rotting slave to a faceless tyrant, I do not fear. Can evil or good be done in a world which is at bottom nothing? I have been to the bottom, and I fear no pain that might bring me there again.
I see you still fight, even though you see me. Can you see and not know, not understand, that death is everything, and everything else is a lie? Succumb, dear friend. There’s no need for struggle. Your enemy has won. It is only for time, now, dwindling time, that you trouble yourself so.
Whistling through the dusty air,
finding purchase here or there,
the slender sword some music made
that troubled then that ghastly shade.
I know that sound. I did forget. I too, yes, I too, once knew why you fight, for I, I know, once fought. Such sweet music is in the steel, and souls, like steel, too sing. I once sang with steel. O Mars! O red light above our struggle. Beams and rays of iron’s blessing, cannot they shine on this too, this dead thing of earth and dust and fading memory?
Steel, refined blade, pierce this listless heart. I long to feel pain again.
Tale Told 