The rain painted rivers on her skin, the kind that twisted and branched with swirls and spirals across the earth to wash away the blood from her hands. Edith watched with glassy eyes the finally desperate twitches of her victim before he finally succumbed to the poison running through his veins. All throughout the kingdom, water dripped from eaves and shingles, each droplet a note in a much greater symphony, as somewhere below a masked figure slipped away into the winter darkness.
Edith wouldn't say she pitied her victims, simply disapproved of the way her kingdom deemed their deaths necessary in fulfilling a greater cause, or "ridding the world of evil," as her comrades would say. It helped slightly that they all "deserved it", although she wasn't much to talk. Regardless, all must meet with Death someday, for none are free from the shackles of time. Edith herself didn't fear the end. All people of Agrilad were once immortal, after all. In essence, everyone still carries with them the same immunity to disease and old age, however, with the changing of eras came the introduction of weaponry, which must not have been accounted for by the gods. No, there would only be one true endlessness for once immortal beings. Above all else, Edith craved remembrance. When she died, she didn't want to be another name on a long list of dead that day, she wanted the world to pause for a moment, shocked that someone as great as her had passed on. And then the wars would continue, but the world would be different without her. Because she mattered, didn't she?
Edith wouldn't say she pitied her victims, simply disapproved of the way her kingdom deemed their deaths necessary in fulfilling a greater cause, or "ridding the world of evil," as her comrades would say. It helped slightly that they all "deserved it", although she wasn't much to talk. Regardless, all must meet with Death someday, for none are free from the shackles of time. Edith herself didn't fear the end. All people of Agrilad were once immortal, after all. In essence, everyone still carries with them the same immunity to disease and old age, however, with the changing of eras came the introduction of weaponry, which must not have been accounted for by the gods. No, there would only be one true endlessness for once immortal beings. Above all else, Edith craved remembrance. When she died, she didn't want to be another name on a long list of dead that day, she wanted the world to pause for a moment, shocked that someone as great as her had passed on. And then the wars would continue, but the world would be different without her. Because she mattered, didn't she?
"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" - from Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell