A very, very old drabble I recently discovered in my file archives. Was posted once upon a time, and, even if for nothing more than sentimentality, I believe it deserves to go back up. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the barely extant plot.
It was warm, but not uncomfortably so; just enough to make him sleepy. His eyes were half-lidded, golden, watching in abstract fascination as his magic danced in rainbow waves across the crystal walls of the cavern. Books and boxes and bottles lined the many ledges that served as shelves, and a pile of furs in the corner made a surprisingly comfortable bed, yet he refused to call the place home. There was only one place that would ever be home.
No, he would not think of it. It did no good to dwell on the past; it wasn't as if one could go back and change it. Although, he mused idly, he probably could if he really tried. He was, after all, the most powerful warlock to ever exist, wielding the power of the old religion, the power of life and death, power he, unlike any other, had been born with. However, he found it rather… pointless. Men, he had found, seemed doomed to repeat their mistakes and the mistakes of their forefathers over and over and over again. It had been many, many years – an eternity in the eyes of mortal men – since he left that life; he had little wish to return and live it again.
His weary gaze slowly came to rest on a certain book. He held out his hand and the book slid out of its place on the shelf and floated across the room to land gently in his upturned palm. A gnarled finger traced the barely-visible runes inscribed in the worn leather cover of the old tome, then carefully opened the book. The parchment pages were frail, and crackled as he moved them, and he was half afraid they might turn to dust in his hands. The colorful pictures and inscriptions, the flowing text inside, was as faded as his memory.
As he turned the pages, his clouded gold eyes lingered on certain spells, snatches of the past floating towards the surface of his mind, but vanishing shortly thereafter. A woman's smile, a young man's laugh, the clanging of swords, an angry shout, and fire, fire, fire.
He closed his eyes sadly and quietly shut the book, sending it back to its space on the shelf. He could no longer recall when or why it was he had come to live in the crystal cave in the middle of a forest on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, nor where he lived or what he did before that. He remembered one thing clearly, and one thing only: he had failed. He knew not what it was he had failed in doing, but that singular fact weighed on his mind greatly during his slow, lonely days in this place.
He had failed.