The Rites of Malice: Ceremonials (An Aardwulf Tale)

Chapter 17

NB A/N AT THE END!

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"You only live twice: once when you're born, and once when you look death in the face." - Ian Flemming, You only live twice.

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."
― Sylvia Plath, the Bell Jar

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Present

If you've ever been remotely close to death, you will know it's nothing like falling. It's nothing like being consumed in an infinite and finite black, that is tangible and yet...not.

You'll know nothing of sensation. There will be no cataclysmic hellfire or unsullied white light in constant conflict over your soul...because it has already been decided.

It was decided the moment you came face to face with the possibility of death.

It was decided the moment you filled your lungs with your first breath, crying out in bewilderment at the harshness of the life you had just been born into.

Your life.

Your salvation.

Your demise... is preordained in life's inevitable death.

But you'll know... the moment that you looked death in the face, you'll know. You'll know that in having barely escaped death, that true death was never experienced. You'll know that you haven't the faintest idea what death feels like, because you managed to take another breath, not unlike your first ever infant one.

You'll know that all those poets, philosophers and priests have filled their lives with hollow words as a small consolation, because true death can only be experienced.

But you managed to remain alive.

You managed to evade death, with only so much as the mark of wisdom. An unconscious knowing.

But still, you will know nothing of death...except, in the will to live and remain living.

You'll acquiesce that death was best left for another day.

You'll continue breathing, consciously and carefully - always carefully.

But I couldn't breathe now.

The air had been forced out of my lungs in the wake of the arrow piercing itself into my side. I instinctively moved my hands to my waist, feeling the sharp arrowhead protruding through the flesh of my abdomen; and the scorching crimson liquid pouring out of the wound without a living conscience.

My mouth opened up to gasp at the ripping sensation - at the white-hot pain - but nothing came out. I couldn't breathe.

This was my fault. I'd been careless.

I felt the weight of the shot lurch me forwards, and aid in gravity pulling me to the floor gracefully without a sound. The cold of the ground dug into my shoulder as it made contact; somehow embracing the blackness that was slowly crawling its way over my vision.

A wistful thought tumbled across the plains of my barely conscious mind just as my head came to lie on the barren stone floor of the Royal Hall.

Death.

Is this what death felt like?

Was it the slow caress of pain descending peacefully into an eternal black?