This had gone on far too long.
My bike skidded to a halt, the purr of her engine reaching a roaring crescendo and then dimming to a steady thrum as I kicked the brake. I left her running as I slid from the seat; my mind- and eyes- were more concerned with watching the skyline… or, more accurately, how it had changed. I may have been a stranger in this strange land, but something told me that today’s events weren’t typical phenomenon. Perhaps what clued me in was the presence beckoning me toward those spires.
Asmodeus.
I brushed a stray lock of dark hair out of my eyes with a gloved hand, leaning against my bike as I recalled my summons and my orders. My imminent inception of my fallen brother was not of my own planning, though the pleasure of this task made my bones sing with exultation. I was but a messenger, a harbinger, a tool. My story was only a footnote in a far greater tale… one which was drawing to a climax, and upon which the curtains would soon close. Not on me… Nor on Azazel, whose words had sent me down on my way…
But I was getting ahead of myself.
I extended my hand, and Soul Reaver came to my call.
Shining metal crackled with energy, humming faintly in anticipation of the conflict to come. The blade wielded me as much as I wielded it; sometimes it was difficult to tell where I ended and the weapon began. It all amounted to the same thing anyway, at the end of the day. It was Death.
And so was I.
“No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee….”
-John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
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