A morning's dissolution.

[DoS Archive]

From: helthorne@aol.com (Helthorne)
Date: 05 May 1999 22:27:37 EDT

He knew something was amiss when the black cloak of night had remained over the castle through the damask morning. Smoke in that quantity was blatantly unheard of. The charcoal-black cloud reflected in his pupils and rose like his temper. He had always grown angry in the face of panic.

A look down and over his shoulder yielded the cooling appearance of his last companion. The other four had erstwhile fallen to the crooked blades of an advancing Nespithian battalion during a chance and lethal encounter on the shore of the great Xerxes river. The two survivors had plunged into the icy water and risked hypothermia over a slow, painful death. The pathos of it all was that it wasn't even a hard choice. He ruefully perpended Chance;
how desultory and inchoate and--he mouthed grimly--merciless.

"What's happening?" Cevin's unusually agreeable voice lurched Helthorne from his trance. Perhaps it was his timbre.. Helthorne always had an ear for music that extended beyond the ambit of words.

"I see a black cloud looming over the castle not unlike the one over our heads, friend." His eyes gazed distantly across the land. The rising sun silhouetted him as he knelt, perched like a bird of prey atop the ascending precipice.

"What do you propose we do?" Cevin shielded his eyes as he observed upwards his companion and leader, blackened in the presence of the circumambient light.

"I must return. I release you from my command.." Helthorne at last turned fully to regard Cevin. Only the whites of his eyes were visible upon his backlighted form as he rose stiffly and began to descend. ..And release myself from responsibility, he amended silently. The breeze picked up and tugged at Helthorne's shirt.

"I have no place to go. You know that." Cevin's tone touched on scorn; his face further wrinkled with contemplative disapproval.

Helthorne removed his battered war helmet and apathetically let it fall from his limp hand. The metallic piece rolled lumpily in the dust and came to rest against a crop of rocks. "There is nothing left for you there, Cevin, just death. You have no bonds with it." He untied a small pouch from his belt and tossed it at the man's feet. The sun fell favorably upon Cevin, highlighting his features and lending the semblance of a holy aura. A golden
glint escaped the tattered bag.

"There's your pay. Move on to your next job, mercenery." Cevin could taste the bitterness. A small cloud partially obscured the sun as he reached down to retrieve the pouch. His fingers made contact but he immediately retracted them and straightened himself.

"I've no need for this. I watched my friends die; they meant nothing to you." Cevin paused. "I have a bond with it." Grey shifted to white as the sun blazed clearly now overhead. The dust-swept breeze ate at their legs as the morning slowly dissolved.

Helthorne turned to face the vast expanse of land that lay before him. His position rendered his voice difficult to distinguish from nature's own din, yet Cevin apprehended three words as the rising gust of wind carried them to his ear.

"Then we go."