Simply Symbolic

"Simply symbolic."

"I beg your pardon, sir?" The man had not been the same since the Knights of the Thorn were pushed back into the keep.

"Do you feel as if the gods are watching now, smiling as our enemies take what is left of our spirit? Look there. The barbaric devils have torched the royal library and stand basking in the warm byproducts of sacrificed knowledge. Where do we venture from this pit of heavenly wrath? A world that was once a bright beacon of hope has become a funeral pyre for empire. Do the night stars shield mockery in their twinkling eyes? Are we the victim of a great celestial joke?"

"Sir, you speak nothing but blasphemy."

"Perhaps, but I feel assured that my sins will all be purged in the same fire." The soldier glanced at his companion, her loose hair, eyes of some tormented beast caged in a face of innocence.

"Can you imagine such sins?"

"What trangressions do you speak of?" In her mind played visions of erotic mistresses in exotic locales. Velvet window drapes, brown liquors, opium clouds ricocheting off crystal chandeliers. Laughter and dancing and self-medicated merriment. All the joys she imagined men were allowed to achieve while ladies were learning to embroider. "Nothing temple-worthy, I imagine," she sniffed.

"Not these temples, never." His hands made a sweeping gesture to mask their trembling. "These gods are dead, or at the least, they have abandoned us. Death is our sole god now. He speaks his teachings of Darkness through his messenger, Silence. I will visit him soon on broadsword sings. His sins, they spread more evenly through my soul. The murder of boys who have yet to lie with women. I have cut down countless children because these Neanderthals try to pass them off as men. They are but sacrifices to my great god, but they have not quenched his thirst. Still he yearns for more blood and will soon overtake me."

"Sir, you talk in tongues too unseemly for civilized conversation."

"My lady, you are lucky that my god allows us to do anything other than foam at the mouth and spew spit the times are so mad. However, what I fear is the worst black strike against me is this, Death peers into my damaged soul and knows that if he chose to visit me, I would offer to send you in my stead." The man fell to Silence after this confession and left her to Darkness. She pondered the man's passing away to his god and the simply symbolism of the feathered arrow that he rode. The man had appeared villainous at first, but she wondered if this was because she was so unaccustomed to survival in its purest form. Her enemies were now dancing around their paper fire, happy, for the moment, that they had so well-appeased their primitive gods.