Broken Circle
In my dream, I see faces. I always see faces, and I always see them in the order they were taken away from me. I wish they were accusing faces. I wish they were contorted with hatred, despair, bitterness, sorrow. They are not. They repose in my mind in a gentle, loving slumber, looking out at me with kind and understanding eyes. Because they are so kind to me I have nothing on which to fix, no anger or hurt in return which I can use to stab my jaded nerves to life, and this leaves me with a kind of regret. The mind is a perverse thing.
Not all of them were close to me in life. The girl with purple hair, for instance. Even in my dreams I see her only as a flash of wild, exuberant, exotic color, a shimmer of violet across my dazzled eyes. I never saw her face clearly. She must have seen mine, though. I still remember the day I was slipped a plain golden ring, the day their faces lit up with a laughter long suppressed and mine burned with a silly shame. I laughed with them later. It was a good day.
Others flash before my eyes, the bits and pieces of their lives irretrievably tangled with mine. I see my mother, rest her soul, my father. My brothers, brothers in arms. My sisters, their flowing hair a teasing, life-filled promise. I loved once, loved with all my heart. I learned that all such flames burn out in time, for who can love forever? Who would want to? I never loved again.
I wake up in this dumpy inn, an outpost of civilization that reminds me of a pile of darkened kindling dumped onto a slate. It's a messy, dirty, run-down nest, and I hate it. I have seen many places in my day. I have walked the streets of golden empires dying in the sun. I have profaned the vast halls of ancient spirits with my footsteps. I have planted my feet wide on a heaving deck in a West Sea hurricane. I have dared much, and seen much, and aspired to great and noble and vast things, and these days I've slept many a night in a worthless hovel like this. I work my way slowly north, or slowly west or east or south; there's not much use keeping track of direction.
I look in the mirror, a slime-encrusted, streaky piece of glass, and my face fits right into the theme. I've got more salt than blond these days. Shot with grey applies not only to my long, messy hair and short beard but also to the sagging skin under my tired eyes, the corners of my mouth. The roses in my cheeks that once set girls' hearts aflutter have long since wilted and died. I look like shit. Unfortunately, as I find out a second later, splashing water on that mess doesn't make it any more presentable, but it does wake me up. I pull on a second-hand set of pilgrim's clothes, junk that I got for cheap back in Tolbi marketplace. They're ragged and worn, with creases that no mortal hand can remove. Colors have faded with age and hard living to a uniform dirty gray. There are a few splashes of bright color: my breastplate, a blue flower I picked by the roadside yesterday. Pulling open the V of my robe, I see another, over my heart. The torn, fluffy remains of an idealist sit in that breast pocket. A battle flag of a long fallen nation, a strip of yellow. I don't wear the thing anymore. It's too precious and too battered. It deserves a rest. I couldn't get another one, though for a while after we killed the dragon they were a popular item: it's not the cloth I like but the dust and sweat caked into it and the memories they hold ensnared.
The innkeeper gets his pay, the knife-like sallow bastard. He's ripped me off but I don't care. Money's the least of my worries, and if I don't have enough I just drop into a ditch for the night. It's not like I'll die, and I've long since passed a point when pain isn't a constant companion. I swing out onto the open road, under a sky like lead. There are cracks in the ground, believe it or not. They are mementos of a war fought along this road, about who knows what. Gashes in the earth, great open wounds that will take a man's lifetime to heal fully. This particular war I didn't reach in time to participate in. I was busy in some other war, I think. There's been a lot of them.
At one point I kinda thought we were wrong about the lighthouses. After Vale folded, and Prox came roaring back south with fire in their teeth, unchained by Puelle's murder, and the Long Plains erupted in torch and sword, when most of them died, run down like rabbits. That was when I first doubted. But after a while I wasn't so sure. Maybe the new energy in the world whipped man's animal instincts to a greater frenzy. Maybe it was just the time for it, a time when empires began to emerge from the sleepy villages I'd loved so much. Maybe it would have happened no matter what I did. It would have happened in my lifetime, that's absolutely certain.
I'm not sure when the other seed began to grow in my mind. The seed of hatred I felt for that damn rock. For a while I really lived, I really enjoyed riding on that tidal wave of bloodlust, hunting the world over for that rock. It was when I stood alone in the ravaged ruins of the Sanctum after climbing under the earth for an endless age, and the subterranean wind blew about my ankles, that I first knew. I realized then that he, or it, was gone forever and I would never find him. It was a guardian of another era, and its time had passed away. For the longest time I delighted in wondering what sadistic race had created such a protector, one that would curse even its champions. I delighted in red thoughts of torture and violence, in estimating the power that now flowed through me and comparing it to the puny power of the Wise One. And all that was taken from me. The last hardy leaves of hope in my soul died that day and I never found anything that would revive them. Only a cold hearth, a hard road, and silent altars remained to me. The priests were all dead or gone. Who would tell me where to go for the release I desired? After a time, indeed, I found many who scoffed at the gods. They put their trust in new gods, of commerce and exchange, and dared to spit in the faces of the ancient and gnarled deities I had loved and trusted. I did not spit. I had robbed them of their power and given it to man. I pitied them, and wept for them in the silence of my heart. They could rest, forgotten.
On a hill with a few stunted, dying trees rests a great stone. It is about twenty miles from the inn of this morning, and it is now wearing on to noon. I am a tireless walker and need no rest or respite. The crack of thunder greets me, savage and triumphant. Jupiter and Mercury rule the sky now, and they are pitiless masters. Rain, hard pelting rain, begins to assault me.
One black day in the long litany of black days that I have counted, I was at war. I had sold my sword enough times that the novelty and the shame of killing for money had worn off. And one of the fledgling empires of my youth, fighting another, tore the firmament of the Venus Lighthouse, and sent what was left of the ruins crashing to the ground. That day something else in me died. Venus was my lover, my companion, my intimate associate, and she was gone from me, fading faster every day. That balance could never be restored, for who, scrabbling for petty money and land and power, had the love and the craft to smith a Star like the stars of old, a vessel for the mighty strength of Gaia? And so she passed away also.
I see someone coming toward me, emerging from the scrub across the clearing. In this same war I first found him again. All that I had known was gone from me. Was it any wonder that we should, after our first shock and hate, become friends at knife's edge? No one else would last. We were enemies in a struggle no one remembered, a struggle buried under tons of rubble and long years. A struggle, in the end, quite easily forgotten.
It is terrifying, to live past a certain age. We are meant to stay within the bounds of our lives, and if we trespass outside them, our gifts and our luck soon wear out. We see the edge of the tapestry, the holes and stretches in the fabric. Our play is over, and yet we remain on the stage, unneeded and frightened. I draw my sword, the lion's head pommel and ribbed grips worn past any recognition. The blade is chipped and dulled, too used to remain beautiful. I raise my open hand in warm greeting, and he flings his up in return. He never got as much of the Sun as I did. He looks even worse for wear, even more bruised and torn. He has spread what remains of life as thin over himself as he can, and the veneer is very thin indeed.
We cross blades, in the rain. We dare not meet too often, for fear that this last novelty, this last pleasure will fade away. It is a terrible fear and our only fear, and we will do anything to preserve it. So now, for the first time in months, I hear the dull, tinny clang of swords, rejoice in the quick, harsh interplay of opening and counter. His blue hair, long and frayed, slaps him in the face repeatedly as it gets soaked. My blond strands stay behind me, for the most part. We shift positions as ancient footwork comes slowly back to us, old tricks present themselves for inspection. Quick left, duck, slash, bring the blade up and across to block an overhead down-stroke. Jump back and swing across at neck level; when the blade is rebuffed, pull backward with the force of the rebound. We will fight for hours. Days, maybe, if we're feeling up to it. We will only stop when we feel the dread touch of familiarity creeping in, when a move is repeated too many times. We will stop, and lean on our swords in the rain, their points pushed into the soft wet clay, and we will talk about our lives. There is never much to say, but it is something. Then I will go my way, and he will go his. We will meet again.
Could've made this longer, put a better ending on it, but it made me pretty upset and I don't want to touch it anymore. I hate that. It is what it is: a look at poor Isaac discovering the pitfalls of eternal life. Now please, go do something fun.
Oh, the title, in case anyone's wondering, is about the circle of life and death. It's a scary circle to break. Again, I wanted to actually work this in to the main text but this has just made me so depressed that I'm off to listen to blink-182 until I feel better.