He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not

become a monster... when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also

gazes into you... – Friedrich Nietzsche


Prologue

It was a night like any other... in a city like any other.

Here and there, a soul would beg to differ, a mind would dare to think on its own. But does it matter? Is it worth thinking and feeling through your own perspective, in your own fashion, when it's what the world sees that forms the concepts? For truly we live in a dimension of the common eye, a place where people revel in the easily obtained comfort of thinking as one.

We feel safe and more than thankful to be part of the world and judge as it does; saves us a lot of effort, doesn't it? Until one day – or night, you'd be surprised how little it matters in the face of revelation – we find that it no longer fills our needs. We are one and make requests from life accordingly; yet now, late as it is, you realize that there are requests you would make which the others of the 'one' do not share, nor care to share. The burden of being an individual is frightfully heavy.

So. The night was magnificent and beautiful and it bathed the city only to reaffirm its splendid brilliance. True, for the 'one'. Not for those unfortunate enough to have been forced into becoming individuals, into seeing the world through a slightly different window from that of how those who led the masses described it. Society, in turn, had clung to its beliefs, for, though hollow, they were comfortable and reassuring; it had cast them and their other window out, refusing to even acknowledge their existence. Indeed, then, the city was brilliant; but not for those who had no roof above their heads, no food to feed to their children, no more than rags to cover their battered bodies. The night was beautiful, but not for those who were abused in the streets under the cover of darkness: mugged, robbed, raped, murdered.

Not for our man out there, on the anonymous roof. 'A' roof to the world, it had become 'THE' roof to him when he had sought refuge there. Suddenly, he no longer cared about any of his common points with the 'one'; he knew only that he wished to live. He didn't care about his knighthood and his multitude of titles; his fancy armor had been reduced to the weight of iron slowing his moves as he had climbed up the tower's countless stairs. Weary beyond measure it had made him, barely able to push the door open and drag himself onto the terrace-like roof. His last remaining flicker of strength was expended to close the door, but it did little to protect him from the pursuer.

Though in vain, the man scuttled away, seeking sanctuary with the small iron fence marking the roof's edges. As soon as he had done so, a clawed hand shredded through the door's wood in a move that made the solid boards appear like toys in front of a god's wrath, judging by the ease with which they were dismissed to a side. The figure that stood in the frame was nearly seven feet tall, dark and plated from head to toes in a set of heavily spiked armor that seemed to draw breath along with its owner. Only the eyes stood out and those looked human no more than the rest, for they appeared as a glowing pair of yellow orbs.

What peasants and commoners saw daily and admired as a brilliant knight and guard of the city and what any teenage boy who was learning to fight dreamed to become instantly shrank into insignificance when the dark one approached. No longer a warrior was what he had in front of him, but a simple mortal man entitled to fear for his life. Not a proud, radiant knight who beamed in his saddle, but a weakling who crawled on all fours and clung to the fence as if salvation could come from there.

"No, you can't!" his strangled voice, a hollow reminder of the majesty with which he proclaimed orders to the public, pleaded out in despair. Not for a moment did he cease looking for a way out, a way to live, as he spoke.

"I will be the last," boasted the plated figure's grim voice in reply. "You will go first." He laughed, a cold laughter that was his alone, for to any other it would have only sounded like a sinister premonition.

"There are others, I can show you," the knight-fugitive rushed in, clinging to what he saw as a chance. "Please. Please!"

Knowledge. Knowledge is power. Knowledge, or lack thereof, is the essence, the base upon which all else is built. Rarely does it come knocking on anyone's door. But what is the offer of a foundation to he who has built already... or at least soundly believes he has built? Nothing. Behold how a simple difference of perspective can turn the most precious of golden treasures into the mere duplicate of an already existent grain of sand in the hourglass. Expendable. Let it be expended, then, let it buy a moment of satisfaction, of triumph... a moment of the power it speaks of.

So must have thought the dark one and such must have been his reasoning when he chose to ignore the knight's pleas and advanced his final step on him. With a heavy, dry impact, the clawed hand, the same that had cut through the door with such ease, hit the man's throat; iron-clad fingers clutched and squeezed and the figure was lifted, breath draining out of it as air from a balloon. He gurgled incoherently and could not even squirm, his body as limp as a helpless puppet's and his eyes wide with the last moment's agony.

The dark one lifted him above the fence with no more an effort than that made to walk or breathe, but he did not drop him off. He seemed to enjoy watching the life seep out of the body drop by drop, in a tantalizing and unstoppable process, until there would be none left. Armor and yellow-eyed man together looked awfully disappointed when that moment came and they had to finally let go, to give up on the feeling of power and superiority murder brought to one's senses.

Again, he could have just thrown the body away, but no. The already dead knight came to crash against the fence with such force that a portion was easily bent and dislocated. The fresh corpse fell through the newly created gap, all the way down to the worn cobble of the street, a silent, powerless witness who had no doubt seen countless other crimes committed. Armor and bones crashed into an amalgam of sounds, while blood flowed forth through every opening it could find, staining the stone with a crimson puddle.

The next day, a body would be found in the street, just another out of so many in the eye of the 'one'. Another soldier, maybe one who happened to know the victim personally, would be too lazy in his investigation to even bother checking on anything; the marks on the man's neck would not be discovered, nor would the damaged fence above, and the official decree would go along "the fool jumped off the roof". Collective memory would carry this deed through a couple of days more, until nothing would be left to comment or laugh about, then all would move on. Truly, like it always happens, the murderer would get more attention than the unfortunate victim itself.

By the time the yellow-eyed figure will have become famous, bards and their tales would not even remember there were victims. Only those who survived for the grand event itself ever got the honor of being remembered; not those nameless figures far away in the background, men who had contributed in vain.

Life always moves on for society. No matter what happens to this or that other man. To me. To you.