The cold stare of a man long inured to the travesty of life flowed from the onyx eyes of one into the brown, flat, unblinking eyes of another. The Brown eyes were surrounded by a youthful face full of life and vigor, lit up by an inner fire that burned away all impurities and doubts. The body attached to the face was prim and proper, the perfect example of the holy human form exemplified. Its owner held aloft a Lex Divinicatus in one outstretched arm and a sword of gleaming gold in the other. His foes cowered before him as surely as his allies were emboldened. This was an example of a man, an extraordinary man, in his prime age and time of greatness.
The onyx eyes that stared into those youthful brown eyes couldn't have been more opposite than its object of admiration. A cold wrinkled face surrounded those eyes, a face that had seen its final days approaching for some time and expected nothing less than silence and coldness in the dawn. Its shoulders were stooped, and its wizened arms ended in gnarled claws of afflicted joints and bone. Its legs were weary, and its heart was quiet and steady. Such was the lot for a man of his experience, at the end of his lifecycle nothing was left to nourish the soul but faith and half-remembered echoes of a time long since passed into oblivion.
Such thoughts were hardly comforting nor were they concerning. It was as it is an accepted fact of life. Many things were accepted at the age achieved by Confessor Cratos Leehan. Many things accepted on the basis of faith strengthened by experience. He looked once more into the youthful face and vigorous figure of the imperial saint Heles Hogon, a man who knew the fires of youth but burned out before he was enveloped by the colder and surer embrace of age. He stepped away from the painting and continued down the hall in his slow, limping yet steady gait. He had rushed many things in his life and he was not prone to idleness even in his advanced state of seniority, yet that painting held considerable sway over his thoughts. What would that young saint appear to be had he lived through the gauntlet of Stranser Primus? Would he still carry that energy and vigor that had served him in youth or would he have been abandoned to a much sterner aide?
"No one man will ever know." He whispered to himself in his raspy voice. "No man save the Emperor." He made the sign of the Aquila and left the gallery without another word.