John French

But they are many and he is alone.This has not come to pass yet, he thinks, this is not happening. I am not dying. This is my fate, what shall be. This is the future, it has not happened yet.

The world goes quiet and warm.I am dying, he thinks, I have failed and there will be nothing left, nothing but ash and hungering darkness.Something within him dims, fluttering to nothing like a flame fading to cold embers.He tries to raise his sword.He is falling_He was_ running the ashes of a dead world through his fingers.

We know no fear. It was cut from our souls at birth. We can feel it only as an absence, as an empty shadow cast by the light of annihilation. In the face of a future of atrocity I stand mute, numb to the only feeling that would make me human. But I remember what fear was: its cold pulse in my veins; its echo in my ears. I remember fear, and remember that I was once human. I look towards what must come to pass and I wish that I could meet it as my ancestors did, with fear. The future deserves that, it deserves fear.

Some carry beautifully crafted swords all their lives, and never realise, until they are daubed in blood, that the pleasure comes not from owning a sword, no matter how perfect, but from letting it cut.