When the Last One Falls
Metal clashes on metal.
Salty blood finds its way to lips of a soldier; sweat and blood mingled.
It seems all the world is covered in death; it seems every man fights, or bleeds, or dies. All the world is chaos and bloodshed – it is all the world to one man. Maybe others, also, but all he can think about is his part of the world. Another man may be fighting against him; swords hacking at each other, now finding a weak point, now sinking into flesh, now being lifted from the body to perhaps find another to plunge into. He has forgotten all else, if there ever was anything other than the actions which he now carries out. The man he just killed has been forever blotted from his memory. The fallen soldiers that lay around his feet do not register in his shocked mind. He recognizes only his pain, his need to be alive, his own thirst. But such selfishness is induced by his lack of perception; he neither sees nor understands that there are others around him. He is all alone in a world of monsters, in a place he considers to be the height of hell on earth. Blood from his sword drips and rewets his already bloodstained fist. Amid the screams and tortured groans of the dying, he feels a sort of silence. Is this Nothing? he wonders. To recognize Nothing – is this emptiness? Yet even his mind notices his thirst, and that cannot be Nothing.
The sky is gray, and somewhere in the back of his mind he wonders why it is that ominous color. His hands keep moving; blocking, killing. He looks up: there are many against him. All at once and yet so exquisitely disjointed he battles what seems like metal-scaled dragons, their cold, hard, blood-red tongues piercing his skin. Another dragon – no, are they dragons? Or are they spirits? For they keep coming as if there is no end to them – it falls under his sword. He reaches a point in his soul that is still. Someplace deep tugs at his consciousness that promises solace. That promises Nothing.
Something screams, but when he looks there is no one before him. His thoughts begin to wander away when a vine wraps its dewy tendrils around his ankle. Surprised, he looks down, only to find cold eyes staring up at him. He stares back. Another monster attacks him and he shakes the vine-like hand off of his ankle. Fighting back against his foe, his body moves almost by its own accord. His mind stays locked on the image of the eyes of the dead man. They were light blue, he remembered as he ran his enemy through with his sword. Light blue; and so calm. He decided he liked the way they looked. They looked a lot like Nothing.
Scanning the field, he recognized the reddish brown liquid that covered everything. Blood, he had once called it, before he had come here and forgotten. Now he didn’t even know his name. Dotted here and there along the battlefield were bits of shiny – what is it? He moved towards them, and remembered that they were living things. In the way that he was alive. But they were things that needed to live no longer; that needed to meet the sharp edge of his sword. He fought one, and then another; wordlessly, soundlessly. Routinely. He knew no other world than this. He had never known any other world. Another one came, one of the things that were alive but should die. Dragons, he thought he remembered. No, not dragons. It was him, a reflection of himself fighting against him. He was a monster too. They were all monsters; outcasts trying to survive.
All his thirst had died. The pain he felt was low, as if buried. He found that he liked the idea of being buried. How deep? Far down, where neither wind nor water could ever touch you? Where there is Nothing? How deep? Six feet wasn’t far enough, he thought. He watched a body fall to the ground, headless. Six thousand; six million! How deep could he go?
Something hit his chest, then seemed to streak to his head. What was it? A feeling? A person? A reflection? He was still standing, but he could not see anyone else on the field. No dragons, no spirits, no mirrors. The ground was wet and slippery, and as he walked he tripped over things, but he couldn’t remember what they were. A yellowish gleam made his eyes squint. Oh. He remembered what that was. Sun. Or at least it used to be, back when he had a name. He fell to the ground. The sharp feeling pushed at his chest. He had forgotten what it was. Pain? Yes, pain, he thought. The oozing liquid he had slipped on had somehow gotten on his shirt, covered his body, he noticed. The sword – he would always remember sword – fell from his limp hand. Sun, he thought again. His head sank to the ground, but it seemed his mind kept falling. Deeper and deeper he felt himself go. There was no sun, no pain, no sword. He was not there; he kept going deeper – six thousand feet, now six million. It was darkness and light at once, there was no one; he was no one. Hell closed, the realm above waited. Space filled his time, his body, his mind. Then it left, and he was no longer falling. He knew had not landed, nor did he float. But he also knew this was not Nothing. He still thought, his mind still carried on. The threads of life began breaking, one by one, and his mind detached, freeing itself into a kind of Nothing he had never known before…
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