The world here was ashen, lonely... empty. He could not recall how he had arrived in such a place, or why that redhead wasn't with him. What was her name?
What was his own name?
As he walked, he felt a gentle, rhythmic tap against his hip.
Tammrab. That was his name. The tapping was momentarily forgotten. He continued his purposeless journey in the barren, grey valley.
He failed to notice the bloody pools that were his footprints, quickly soaking into the dust and vanishing, never noticed and yet long forgotten. Long behind him the red footprints reformed, tiptoeing silently in pursuit. A storm of sand accelerated, wrapping itself around the formless creature, defining the nonexistent. Unseen, but visible.
It extended its dust-cloaked hand and wrapped its fingers around Tammrab's neck with ease, snapping it without thought or deliberation. Then it came to stand before him.
Tammrab watched with the all-seeing eyes of an acute mind imprisoned in a dead body as the demon picked an hourglass off his belt. As it touched the cool glass, the demon's shroud of sand ground itself into the rusty breastplate of a Latarian resistance soldier. Open sores covered the hand that now held the hourglass, rubbing blood and pus over the smooth, clear surface. With its other hand, just as infected as the first, it reached into the gaping aperture in its armor, drawing forth a splintered arrow, dripping with a gritty, rust-colored blood. The hole... Dum spiro spero... The battle cry of the Latarians. Dum... spero... The hole had ripped through the word spiro. Breathe.
The demon clenched its hand over the hourglass; the salt inside poured into its wounds with a hiss. Tammrab's eyes did not close as he died; his mind simply went black.
--
When he woke, Astrid did not tell him how he had nearly opened the door in his sleep. The door that he warned her never to even touch. The door that would silence the house with a dull blanket of death.
----------
So I guess this is more like "avoiding" misfortune by not actually dying and having a friend to stop you from opening a door of doom. But y'know... I'm just really not good at writing towards a theme. Meh. XD Hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.
No comments:
Post a Comment