The old man was dying.
He was laying alone on a filthy pallet bed in the corner of a dilapidated shack, his laboured breathing the only sound in the dark, muggy space.
The man was not large, under the mass of filthy rags in which he was wrapped, his slender frame was almost skeletal from the withering effects age and illness.
The heavy beard and overgrown hair revealed almost nothing of his features, apart from a pair of bright blue eyes, shining conspicuously from amongst the grime-lined wrinkles. There may have been no other indication of it, but there was still life in this decrepit frame, those bright eyes were ageless and alert, hinting at intelligence and strength, as if another, very different man had been trapped in the wrong body.
He had lived in this tiny shack for more years than he could remember, in a small clearing in the centre of the vast Porlon jungle, an isolated man-made dot in an endless panorama of green.
Surviving alone all of that time, the only occasional visitors were small, inquisitive inhabitants of the forest. Predators never strayed into the clearing for some reason, an old man alone in such an expanse of wilderness would seem like an easy meal, but pure instinct kept the beasts at bay, something primal telling them there was no easy meat to be had here.
A simple but well maintained sword with no pommel leant against a stack of firewood in the corner of the hut. If an animal’s instincts had betrayed it, or pure hunger had driven it into the clearing, this sword would have been an equally effective deterrent, as before disease struck the old man, his skill with the blade had belied his age and physical appearance. Until only a few weeks ago he would regularly perform well-rehearsed sequences of fluid movements in the open space before the hut, his speed may have slowed through the years, but the moves were always balanced and seemingly effortless, while the sword flashed through the steaming air around him in a glittering pattern of steel.
Now, the man could not even move across the hard packed dirt floor to reach the sword. The damp and humidity had finally overcome his body’s natural defences, he had fought off countless fevers and maladies in his time in the jungle, but this one was about to be the first, and last, to defeat him.
His muscles seemed to turn to water overnight, and finding himself almost incapable of moving, he had suffered through the burning heat and icy chill of fever, his body seeming to switch instantly from one state to the other, with never a respite in between. His flesh had disappeared from beneath his skin, exposing the contours of his old bones, and the skin itself became a washed out, pasty grey instead of the strong, almost golden brown it had been.
During the peaks of the fever, he would live parts of his life again, and experience the mistakes he had made, the pain they caused resurfacing and tearing at his conscience with fresh vigour. Forgotten anguish was brought back to the surface, all his regrets were freshly lined up in his mind, and there were many, as his life had been filled with the violence and cruelty of a world at war.
He saw scores of unarmed men fall again under his blade, but worse than this he relived women and children suffering the same fate, dying in pain and terror by his hand.
He saw torture and depravity, both committed by him and by others while he watched, and remembered the clouding anger that had made these acts seem enjoyable, even right.
His shame made the pain of the fever doubly unbearable, as he could not break away from these images of the past, he was forced to experience them again and again.
The old man experienced only one vision of redemption, a memory that kept him alive when the fever should surely have finished him off, he saw the day he had walked away.
He could not take back any of the evil deeds that he had committed, he could not bring back to life any of the corpses that littered his path, but the thought of that one day, when he had been strong enough to turn away from it all, was enough to keep him fighting. The memory of that one pivotal moment was enough to keep the guilt and remorse from washing over him completely.
It was not just his fate, and possibly his soul that were saved that day, he alone knew of the enormity of his actions, the impact that his choice had on the entire world, and he would hopefully take that secret with him to his grave. He had suffered here in the jungle, the temptations to return to his past were great, but his conscience managed to hold him to his path, and now the potential for a terrible evil would die with one old man in an endless forest.
The man’s breathing was getting shallower and his heartbeat more irregular, but his mind remained clear, his thoughts still flashing around in his head as they always had, senility had not found a home here.
Even as his life drained from his frail body, the old man was triumphant, for his actions meant that a secret would never be told, and a race of men would never know a true horror. His forced exile to this most remote of places had ensured a great future for his world.
With this thought still strong in his head, the old man noticed the walls of his little hut were getting slowly brighter, and as they brightened, the pain from his disease-wracked body was becoming less and less. He felt as if he was being lifted, pulled free of his body, leaving the earthly feelings of pain and suffering behind. He rose into the air above his mortal body and looked down at his spirit form to see once more the physique of his youth, his slender frame now well proportioned with muscle, his skin once more golden and glowing. He felt again the energy of youth flowing through his body, a feeling he had slowly lost over many years, but now the instant return of it was indescribable. He knew then that he was dying, but the thought of this was not horrific to him, it was realised with a sense of happiness, and relief. As the brightness intensified, so did his joy, he had kept his secret, he had saved himself and his whole world from a terrible fate! His mind soared free of his body, free of the hut, out into the open air, high above the still brightening jungle, where he could see the beauty of his world as never before. His joy was almost complete, everything around him became brighter and brighter until everything was a dazzling white, and he had no more to do than to watch in wonder as he rose above his world and discover what would follow this life.
Just as everything began to fade into the whiteness, as his life began to fade with it, and the spirit of the man had nearly reached a pinnacle of elation, a voice rang in his mind with the power of thunder.
“Now I have you”.
The words boomed through the old man’s whole spirit, the unmistakable familiarity of the voice crushing his joy instantly, the bright whiteness around him being cast in an instant into pitch black.
His ascent ceased instantly, instead the old man began to fall, hurtling headlong towards an unknown point, his future still unknown to him, but now his fear of that future was total.
Pain encircled the man’s ethereal form like talons, digging into him and dragging him deeper into the dark, giving him no chance of escape.
The afterlife was beckoning, but it was not the one he had hoped for, his screams as he was enveloped by the blackness were heard by no-one.
In a tiny hut, in a small clearing, miles from human habitation, in a vast jungle at the centre of a continent, a simple but well maintained sword with no pommel crumbled into dust, leaving no trace of it’s existence.
