The Precipice.

The battle had been long.

He raised his arm to the sunlight and wondered at the scars that crisscrossed it. What pain I’ve endured to be here. It was less complaint and more a statement of fact.

Suddenly he felt the weight of the armor covering his chest. The shield on his back seemed to pitch him forward as he walked. I’ve walked for so long. As he thought this, he paused to look back, both to rest and gain his bearings before proceeding. His hand instinctively rubbed at the aches in his neck as he looked out on where he had come from.

A massive landscape stretched out under his gaze. From this point he could see the land where he began his journey. Before the war began. His eyes traced the pathway. There is where I was attacked… that is the valley that I was carried through… there is where my sword was knocked from my hand and I felt alone… Bodies were strewn about here and there, piles of the enemy he had slain with the First Warrior’s help. Victories won, but battles that left their mark.

At last his eyes fell to the foot of the mountain he was currently on. The battle had been fierce there. I barely made it out alive, he mused. Memories of times he sat to rest too long now haunted him, his resistance to the Urging freshly remembered. He shook off the hauntings. I am past that. He turned and resumed his quest.

Dark clouds rolled in from the south. Deep, black, foreboding… threatening. As he topped the ridge a mighty wind blew, forcing him to squint hard against it. I thought there was a bridge here. No bridge was to be seen, just a expansive, gaping hole. The wind caused him to stumble, but he righted himself. He looked for a way out.

It was then that he realized something odd about the wind - it was blowing him away from the precipice. Intrigued, he pushed forward, his eyes raw from the bluster. And there, he /saw a narrow bridge stretch on into infinity. As he advanced a hail storm erupted from the sky. The pellets pelted his armor, his face, his arms, and he was pushed to the ground. I am close… so close.

With a disgusting thud, a fist-sized rock struck the crown of his head, and his vision instantly dimmed. His last sensation was a bolt of lightening illuminating the heavens, followed by a peal of thunder that shook the earth. Is this what I’ve traveled this far for?

And the darkness overtook him.