Randy Goodheart

Dr. Margaret Mitchell

Creative Writing

March 26, 2008

5.  Guess it’s true, your life does flash before your eyes just before you die…How many times have I felt the burn of cold steel, but this time it burns colder than I’ve ever felt, I have to at least see who it is that finally got the best of me. 

How…how can this be…the ancient one?  I couldn’t even hear him approach…how could he…no, got to hold on, can’t let myself go into the darkness…

My childhoods just a blur, feels like it was an eternity ago, but it was only ten years ago that I got my first bow.  Hand crafted by my father, a gift for his seven year old son who he hadn’t seen in two years, like all able bodied men, he served humanity in the constant war against the evelus; my first memory is the constant stories of these evil creatures, and the terror they brought to our world.  My father, whenever he got leave, told me stories of the great victories of men over these savage beasts, and it wasn’t until later, long after he died, even after I had followed my dream of following in his footsteps to fight these monsters, that his stories, no matter how compelling, were complete lies.  The creatures kept growing, they kept expanding, and men, well, they kept retreating, as the population slowly, then more steadily declined.  It wasn’t until recently that I knew that though, my father was my hero, and I remember that on that day, my sixteenth birthday, when a knight came to conscript me, as they did with all able bodied young men, that he would have been so proud to know that his son was a soldier, was training to avenge him against these monsters.  Guess that’s really where things started to change in my life.  Maybe sixteen really is the entrance to manhood, because my life changed more in the last year than I ever thought was possible.  Four knights came to fetch me, a final honor to my father, a great warrior among great warriors.  We traveled for three days, until we were far beyond any lands I had ever been.  At the end of the third day we reached the remains of one of the ancient cities, and, lying nearby, one of the remaining strongholds of men.  What sort of creatures strode the planet before us I remember wondering, no one alive remembered what they were like, all that remained was their monuments, massive steel and glass structures, even broken towering above the tallest trees, how massive must the ancient ones have been to need such homes.  The evelus changed all that though, as legend had it, the ancient ones did not even last a year against these monsters, disappearing forever from the face of this planet, some said that they had fled to the ends of the earth, and finally, in desperation to escape, thrown themselves off of the edge into the eternal abyss.  It is said that the gods placed us here after they fled, gave us the means, the intellect that these ancient ones lacked, building that touched the sky were no way to hide from the evelus, they sought high places, any possible way to get closer to the sun.  No, the ancient ones must have been peaceful, inventive creatures, strange carriages lined the broken black stone streets of their ancient cities, made entirely of metal, now burned and twisted from the days following their fall.  Peaceful as well, their cities lacked anything more than the simplest of knives, not a sword or pike or axe to be found, not even a bow.  No, they must have been gentle, peaceful giants living in their massive glass homes, observing the world and living at peace, to stupid to know how to defend themselves against something as evil as the evelus, something as powerful.  We had been placed by the gods to combat these monsters, as the legends went, we were smart, never did our buildings try to reach the sky, and the best homes were underground, where the evelus, masters of wind and fire, feared and hated.  Even children carried better knives than the ancient ones, and all young men learned to wield any weapon available effectively, and fight through pain, and the screams of dying comrades.  It was to this training ground that they led me.  I expected to see hundreds of young men like me, happy, strong, swift, heroic, instead, everyone I saw moved skittishly, constantly checking the horizon, fear in their eyes, scarred and hard, these men were not the heroic soldiers from the stories my father told me.  They led me to a barracks filled with young men my age, all recently arrived to begin their training, all excited despite the general air of despair and pain about the training camp.  Training was to begin in the morning, so we turned in early to prepare for the day ahead, but excitement kept me awake for hours, and finally, what seemed like moments after I shut my eyes, a roar filled the barracks, invading my sleep like blood crazed evelus, tearing apart my dreams and filling my mind.  Immediately I woke, terrified that our camp had been attacked, but the roar had originated from a man, a lone, massive individual.  Slowly, as I pulled myself out of the remains of slumber clinging like spider webs to my mind and body, I realize that this must be our instructor, and jumped to attention as my father had taught me, or tried to.  My still waking body did not respond as I had hoped, and like the others around me, I ended up in a startled sprawl while the mountain of a man proceeded to roundly curse us, our ancestry, our appearances, our strength, on and on, constantly roaring curses and insults, moving about the room pulling myself and my fellow recruits to our feet.  I glanced to the window, and discovered that the sun had yet to rise, and by the color of the sky, would not for several hours.  The cursing had died down now, and I turned my attention to this mountain of a man, who was now issuing commands in the same roaring tone, “Get dressed you lazy scum, quickly, now, you’ve already wasted minutes of my valuable time, we should have started our day by now.”  A mad scramble for breeches, shirts and boots ensued, and within moments all of us stood, dressed and sleepy, before this human terror.  He stared at us for a moment, letting the fear build, the uttered, or perhaps roared is a better word, “Follow,” and then, almost as an afterthought, “keep up, or you won’t make it through the day.”  He turned on his heel, surprisingly graceful for such a massive creature, and strode out the door; we followed, sleepy and confused, just in time to see him break into an easy running stride toward the gate.  We quickly increased our pace; thinking to keep up with ease to his loping strides, only discovering that he was getting further from us by the second.  Awakened by the chill of the night air, we hurriedly increased our pace, managing to keep him reasonably close, and followed him out of the gate.  I can barely recall the rest of that day, just pain, anywhere and everywhere in my body, by the time the sun rose and we returned from our “little jog” as the weapons sergeant who led us referred to it, my body was on the verge of collapse, and I was in better shape than most.  The rest of that day, and the next months are a blur of pain and work, drill after drill with every possible weapon, vicious officers offering insults and curses as often as instruction.  Those of us that survived, managed to last the three long months of training, didn’t run home with our tails between our legs, or crack and lose our minds, (three from my barracks of 30 alone), were congratulated, honored for one night as soldiers, then assigned to a company, given weapons and armor, and shown the gate.  I and seven of the remaining nineteen from our barracks were assigned to a company that currently was stationed on the border of the Ashlands, the first line of defense against the constantly expanding evelus lands.  Finally, we were soldiers, we would get to fight and slay para-evelus, and if we were lucky, one of the ancient monsters, a true evelus might present itself for our blades.

Despite the months of pain and constant exhaustion among grim men, we still could not understand what war was, the tales of glory that we heard all our lives still held to much sway in our minds.  We marched towards our new post, led by a single veteran of Rector Company, a grim, scarred man, hardened by battle, but an astounding warrior.  He had to be, Rector Company was composed of only the best the army had to offer, it was an honor to be assigned to such a company, especially fresh out of the barracks.  After two days trek, the vegetation and animal life started to disappear, and the world slowly faded to gray as we marched onward, the stench of sulfur constantly growing stronger.  We had reached the borders of the Ashlands, only half a days march from our assigned company when a shadow fell across our band for a moment, and in a spurt of blood, our guide disappeared, or all but his boots, into the cavernous jaws of an evelus, swooping away just as quickly and silently as it had come, slowly banking to make another pass… Everything slowed to a crawl around me, half of the other recruits froze in shock, staring at the pool of blood and bone around the boots of the late veteran, unable to comprehend his sudden, shocking disappearance.  The rest of us dove for cover, I managed to get under a rock overhang just as the massive evelus came by for its second pass, I felt the wave of heat it unleashed, smelt the odd aroma of flesh searing, and heard the crackle of roasting meat, then the unbelievable heat overwhelmed me and I blacked out…

Groggily I woke, the part of my mind that was functioning was in complete disbelief, after that much heat, even with cover, I shouldn’t be alive.  Yet somehow, I felt almost no pain, just a sharp, burning sensation on my left shoulder.  I looked down, expecting to see my own blackened flesh, all my nerve endings fried, which would explain the lack of pain.  My mind couldn’t process the sight for several seconds, my skin was untouched, unblemished, yet the heat had been enough to completely burn my clothes, even my tanned leather boots were burned to ash.  As I scanned my body in disbelief, looking for any signs of damage, I did glimpse a rough spot on the side of my left arm.  Rolling onto my right side, with a grimace of discomfort at the sharp rock that dug into my bare flesh, I craned my neck and twisted my arm to get a good look at the backside of my arm.  I stared in disbelief and shock at what I saw.  One perfect, shining, black scale, embedded in the flesh on the back of my arm.  I was marked.  An evelus had marked me.  I was a doomed man; every child was taught what happened to those who were marked.  They would become a      para-evelus, slowly, painfully, they would become a monster, eventually, if they survived, they would completely transform, becoming true evelus, the plague of the human race.  I had no choice, my fellow man would kill me on sight, I couldn’t allow myself to become a monster.  I would fall on my blade, as we had been trained since childhood, all children knew that to be marked was a sentence worse than death, and that the only forgivable action was to take one’s own life…