It was the Bell of ending, with blood streaks across an abyss of blackness in the starless sky spiraling towards the emptiness. The gate to demise, the portal of death… the void… the Void, the Void, avoid the void! Stiff legs cramped with fear, and the grip which held a shining sword the only thing that lit the darkness. “Come, child! Come join your father!” That voice, so cold and heartless, rang out above the sounds of whipping air past young ears, like fingers Dira herself screeching against the fragile glass armor of his mind, wearing it down till cracks formed in his very sanity.
A hand outstretched from the Voider, holding open but a small pit of emptiness. Inside, the Nothing swirls. The nothing of his nightmares, filled with monsters too evil, too powerful for his comprehension. There was no name the young warrior could call it. The Nothing was the only name which did not break his soul with the very thought. Johan lifted the sword of light to the sky, and shouted to the Voider in a single bout of courage. The blurred ghost of his father stood before him, facing the corrupt being in much the same way. “I do not fear you! Do you hear me! I do not fear you!” The child’s voice rang out in innocent courage while his father’s held a more pure Knightly heroism.
The Voider laughed. Upon the man of his nightmares, Johan could only see a mirror of the void. Shadows covered a featureless face; his garbs were as the sky, stricken with blood and evil, as if they alone had tainted the world. The outstretched hand extended fingers and in response the Void opened wide. The suction of air into the dark portal grew, and slowly the Knight and child slid closer. Ice-slicked earth, the heat gulped from the soil by a man drunk on corruption. Ssena would be proud of this man. Proud of how heartbroken the child became, how time slowed within his mind for the end of his innocence.
“Father!” The word came from the very soul. Reaching out with his empty hand the child attempted his last grab for a man already dead. The look in the knight’s eyes was not of the valor-earned man of story, but of a horrified child. The knight was no longer father of the child. He was no longer a man who had proved his glory again and again. He was foreshadowed a glimpse of the child, a glimpse of what was to come.
The knight had reached out, attempted to grab the child’s hand. His lips parted to scream for help, but no sound came past the sounds of helpless wind sucked into the void. Fingers touched, but only that. The clatter of a sword rang through to the child’s ear as the knight became distanced into the Nothing that fueled every fear Johan has come to know…
“Father, no! Come back!” The child shouted in desperation. From the Void to the Voider his eyes turned, tears wetting his cheeks down to his chin. “Please! Bring him back! Bring my father back, I beg of you!” That laugh came again. That cruel, heartless laugh; it was even colder than before. The child could do naught but raise his sword as his father would have. “Bring him back now! I will cut you!” He demanded with a voice crackling in fear and sorrow and hatred.
“Cut me?” The Voider spoke, still recovering from the bout before. This was a game to him; it could be heard in his voice, seen in his empty face, felt by very presence. “Cut me with what, child!” Horror grew as bloodshot eyes trailed down to his hands. The sword he had held cracked and dulled. From the tip it began, then down to the hilt in his hands; turning to sand and swirling into the void.
No strength. No courage. Nothing. He was nothing. “Your sword is on the ground, child. A horrible time to drop your weapon…” On the ground? His breath hastened when he found the subject of the Voider’s words. His father’s sword… was it his father’s sword? It looked so familiar… It was with one step closer that the child slipped and the chimes ticked away as he slid towards the void. Only a few more till he fell in.
It was so close; his salvation was at the tips of his fingers but just out of reach. Closer and closer he neared the End and left the Knight’s weapon. Further from the Blade and closer to the Bane, the child cried. “No! No, please! Father, help me!” He cried out his life. As his hands dug into the freezing dirt they changed – the child changed. Lifted from the ground and sucked towards the void. The child became an echo, the Knight who had fallen into the void destined to do so again. The chimes slowed, the child-knight clawed at the air. He wailed one last time when he felt death reach through the Void and finally grasp his struggling body, and yanks him into the…
*Thump*
Wrapped in thick blankets and struggling to sit up, Johan awoke screaming at the peak of his lungs. The images, the horrid nightmares, they burned into his skull long after they had vanished. When his eyes snapped open he found himself on the stone floor. The nightmares had been getting worse, but this one had him shaking. A wet feeling on his lip drew a hand up to touch and draw back. In the faint light of the dying hearth he saw the shine of red. Even with a blurred vision he knew what it was… nosebleeds were common after one of the more violent nightmares.
His shaking hand slowly begins unwrapping the blanket from his frame, taking a surprising amount of effort for such a trivial task. The thrown blanket brushed against an already teetering sword leaned against the edge of his bed. It slid and clattered to the floor, the sound mimicking that of his nightmare, a sound which brought coldness to Johan’s frame and stiffness to his muscles. In the dim light of his room he could still see the voider, his image portrayed in the very shadow Johan creates against a far wall. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, his hoarse voice rose for a phrase he had spoken more often than a blacksmith’s hammer struck steel.
“Only a dream.” Only a dream, those words were spoken at least two dozen mornings a season. Despite their purpose he extended an arm to slowly lift the Bastard sword in a trembling grip. “Only a dream.” It was only one way of warding the monster. When he brought the sword closer and allowed his free hand to rest on the hilt, he took a deep breath. This was the sword from his nightmare, the one which could have saved him. He knew it was… it was the same sword dropped those many years ago during the actual event. “Only a dream.” For the third time his words came, and finally his body slowed in its shaking and his muscles relaxed, just enough for him to stand.
The nightmare had ended his night’s sleep and may have woken those in the apartments nearby… but now came the worst part. Soon enough dawn would arrive, as it did every day. He would have to leave for his usual activities and duties, as he did every day. He had slowed his life down to make each of these days last, but with dawn he drew inevitably closer to his fate. Just as in the nightmare, he was bound by tradition to become a knight, just like his father, and his father’s father. He was an echo, and it seems the last. He would be the last echo; he felt that in the fiber of his being.
But he was bound by blood. It was the blood of his father that ran through his veins, and as he had shed his in a tradition of bloodline, so will he. |
|
by Johan Barnaby on May 13th, 2013, 5:46 am 