The Unknown

The Unknown would be his future he thought, it stood so close.  Looming out of the site of view.  Just inside the shadows.  On the edge of the light, mocking him threatening him…and he felt…Studying him.  Lumbering ever so close yet so far…

            The Unknown never presented itself to others.  It was solemn, completely alone. Most feared it, feared what it could do to them.  Of how helpless they were to stop any of it.  Laid bare for any passerby to see the carnage, the horror, the fear in its victims eyes or even the peace…  Most ignored the eyes; they usually stared at the body.  Cold, Pale…Lifeless, wholly drained of a soul.  None had ever challenged it directly; some would think themselves invincible to all until they fell to the ground crying in agony.  Realization written on their face as if it was carved in stone.  Not any could escape it, Wizards of all sorts had tried, potions and spells… With little avail.  Killing was not its passion, it took no particular pleasure in taking away those who would be missed for eternity.

It would be warned when someone was ready to die or that the time had come ready or not.  Almost like a sixth sense.  Yet this man…He defied it…Directly.  Challenging it to take him away as it did his friends and those around him during the accident, lying motionless about him.  The sense was telling The Unknown to take him.  Why?  This confused and angered The Unknown.  What a waste of a life it would be, to challenge it for what it did and make it pause.  It had never hesitated before…Why now?  Others had asked for it to consume them and it had…He saw the difference.

Waking from what had happened, Loron tried to rise.  He quickly dismissed the thought when he felt short stabbing pains in his side and right leg.  Fearing the worst, he looked down at his leg and was amazed to find none.  It had been cleaved off from a falling window of the church they had all been building.  He checked the rest of himself.  Scratched and bruised, nothing irreparable.  His eyes glazed, his vision was blurred as it was on a misty morning in the hills of his lands.  His mind drifted, unable to think straight.  He was loosing blood fast.  He reached over to a dead priest and ripped off the man’s shirt.  It was caught on a wooden beam protruding the man’s neck but he managed it off.  He wrapped it tightly about his stub of a leg to eventually stop the bleeding.  He cried for help but his efforts were in vain.  None of the workers or volunteers or onlookers remained.  They were either buried or in a similar situation as him.  That’s when he saw it…Or more felt its presence.  It had come to claim him…it was said you knew when you were going to be consumed by it.  He knew that The Unknown would be his future.  Never! He screamed defiantly at the unseen presence. Never!  He again shrieked when blood oozed from his bottom lip.  It was taking him without his knowing it.  His mind was glazing, as his eyes had been when he woke.  Ne…He tried to yell again but it came out as only a whine with new blood seeping trough his teeth to make its way to his bloody mouth.  Slowly is vision gave way to a dark black cloud, totally opaque.  Physically he was drained but mentally he was strong.  Never!  A new will to survive and live emerged.  The cloud made its way to his mind obscuring everything.  He would lose this battle, he had no defense against a…A what? He asked himself…what was The Unknown?  Or even, who was The Unknown?  Question he had no time to answer.  He retreated to the deepest recesses in his mind, what would he do, he was being taken, none had ever survived…Why? More useless questions he chided for thinking of at such a time.  Fight he thought…What advantages did he have over it?  The Unknown would have a mind filled with knowledge for it had been in existence for all time…So he could not outsmart it.  No physical shape would mean no physical damage could be inflicted…But then how do you kill a spirit?  He remembered the wise words of a old priest.  The living have minds witch would enable immortality to humans but we were cursed with hearts also.  Rendering us to only be a fraction of a spirit mind.  A half soul doing the best he or she can until the heart stops from The Unknown.  He had his answer.  Heart!  He screamed from the recess of his mind he had retreated to.  The presence at first seemed mystified as if trying to understand a complex problem.  Loron understood, the wizards had tried spells and potions to eradicate it from taking away.  They had never thought about what would truly kill it that we already possessed.  Heart!  He strongly said with hope and surety of his convictions moving away from his mind and back into the physical being he was.  The Spirit surrounding him recoiled in fear.  The dark cloud removing itself.  His mind was back in his own control and he was able to think properly.  Slowly, his vision grayed from the black wall it had been.  Still misty eyed when he awoke and felt the presence receding back to the edge of the shadow.  It stayed as if deciding what it was to do next.  He lay still, knowing he could not move from pain and blood loss.  Watching.

Damn pest! Damn priests!  He had discovered how, him of all the scholars and geniuses philosophers and…The Unknown stopped itself.  It needed to make a choice to die and let death live, or to live on forever not being able to ever take away again.  It had made its choice.  From the shadows it revealed itself to Loron as it had the first time.  The Unknown moved swiftly towards him and enveloped him in a cloud darker than the first and disappeared in a wave of the black cloud.  The Last thing it had heard was a proud scream: “ HEART!!!” that filled the morning air passing through the wind like a sailboat on waves of a ocean.

Loron sat still, watching the place were he thought it was hiding.  Suddenly it immerged.  He panicked for a moment and hope filled his heart when he knew what to do.  It moved for him fast, as it did he painfully filled his lungs with air that reeked of the dead around him.  “HEART!!!”  And all went black.  He awoke what he guessed was the next morning.  He was still lying on the hard ground with shattered glass and splintered wood lay around him in chaos.  He found people, villagers crying on their knees before bodies nearby.  Why would they not help the living before the dead? He tried to talk and found it impossible.  He attempted to budge and found no pain.  Perplexed, he hauled himself to stand.  No one noticed him.  He looked down, his clothes had changed, black and wavy in a strange pattern.  Loron was now baffled, had a healer come to him yet…no.  He recognized his leg was back.  No healer could do that.  What had happened to The Unknown?  He felt a strange sensation, almost trying to get his attention.  A pulling sense…towards a healer that was bending over someone.  He walked over smoothly to the healer’s side.  The patient looked up and went rigid.  The healer didn’t seem to take in that he was beside him.  The patient was still looking at him in the eye scared for a reason he could not form.  Slowly Loron extended his arms enveloping the man.  A dark cloud enveloped them both. No sound came from the man or Loron.  After a moment the cloud receded into Loron.  Amazed at what he had just done, Loron was Unknown to himself.