"Let this be a lesson to all of you here, let this live on as a parable to those who are not! Joshua Graham, you have failed the Legion and Caesar himself! For your shameful act, you are hereby punished by the flame of the nation you helped create, and so fire it shall be!"
The torch struck Joshua in the head. The flame blossomed down his back, and, for a moment, he couldn't help but notice that it tickled, sort of. Joshua knew, however, that he'd had his last laugh long before this. The flame hit the ground, simultaneously, his heart. He looked down the gorge, only the largest damn grave befits the largest of sinners. Edward knew how to speak to the soul, even if he didn't know it's language. The burning started. First, his fingertips, although the pain quickly shot up his arms, and, faster than the flame engulfed his body, did the pain engulf everything else left of Joshua Graham. You can't soak a burn on the soul, it is eternal. Like food in your teeth, it clings to your mind. This burning may have begun physically, but it would take another form as a foot hit Graham in the center of the spine.
Joshua fell, his mind screamed, but he would not let his mouth. No, there would be no sound from The Malpais Legate. He closed his eyes. Tonight, any tears would convey weakness, regret. Laughter, in Joshua's mind, was not a statement of anything other than insanity or defeat. Men laugh at death when they watch two gladiators duel in the arena, but their haws would quickly silence were the knife in their gut. Laughter is an attempt to appear strong when you are permeated with weakness. No, there would be no tears, and there would be no laughter.
No, this legend would be born of silence.
The silence is what will live on, the uncertainty, the maybes, the could-haves. Laughing as he fell would end on his death, but silence, silence will outlive us all.
"Edward can kill me, but he'll have to get up earlier than that to fool me, my silence will outlive every word I have uttered." Graham smiled, he was not blind to the irony of the thought. By his own logic, General Oliver must be a very earlier riser.
He could feel himself rocketing down the cliffside. It was this moment when something incredible happened, impossible, even, but it happened anyway. He could feel his skin leaving his body to both earth and flame as he skidded down the canyon. The curvature of the cliffside cradled him, in the loosest meaning of the phrase. It was as though the hand of God reached back for Joshua, one more time.
Joshua woke, his eyelids dragged themselves open. Even a nightmare couldn't give The Malpais Legate a start. Raising himself to a sit, he picked up his legs and put his feet on the floor in front of him, as people are wont to do when waking from a good sleep. Leaning forward, his hand grasped at the area around his feet. Clutching a bighorner skin bag, he loosened it, and reach inside. His hand resurfaced with a half dozen rolls of gauze. Sighing heavily, he reached for the back of his head, where the tucked in end of an old bandage still resided. He began to unravel his face, the dead, dry tissue clinging to the old bandage. Even a surgeon's hand could not remove these bandages with enough diligence to prevent the bleeding. Joshua winced as his eyebrow clung to the gauze. Using some water, he was able to loosen it enough to free his face. As quickly as he exposed his face, he would clothe it again. Admittedly, he knew it was no better to be a mummy than a zombie, but as least mummies can be clean. Besides, no one deserved to look upon the face of a thousand murders, of a thousand Godless kills, Joshua sighed again.
The face of the Devil.
Footsteps interrupted what would have been another normal New Canaan dawn. A familiar voice:
"Joshua Graham! An army, Joshua Graham, an army!"
"Calm, Follows-Chalk, White Legs?"
"No one I've seen."
"How many are there?"
"I didn't count, thirty? They carry a large red flag with a skinny bighorner on it!"
Joshua sighed, as was becoming his norm. The Legion.
Not an army, at least, more like a squadron. Their lack of training meant larger groups would be assigned for menial tasks, especially if that task is putting an old legend to sleep. Joshua instructed Follows-Chalk, a good kid, by Joshua's standards, to migrate the noncombatants and children into the farthest retreat of the canyon. Joshua turned for the corner. Reaching it, he pulled on a dusty blanket atop a metal shelf scavenged from a ranger tower not far away. Emitting a plume of dust, the blanket shed light on an old friend, a trail carbine with a medium range scope, an exemplary firearm amongst the many that littered the wastes. This gun was the second he would inherit in his days with the Dead Horses, and it would be with these two weapons only that he had not yet committed a Godless act. With this machine, Graham could hit a Legion soldier in the teeth at fifteen hundred yards. Joshua would only ever admit to his capabilities, in his own words, "if the air was clean". Graham walked, gun in hand, up a makeshift stone and dirt staircase at the back of Angel cave, the cavern he called home. As he reached the exit, he inhaled fully, closing his eyes. The air was as clean as it would ever be.