Unconscious Thoughts

[Val]

There are some sights, some things so horrific that people never quite seem to get the image out of their mind. Like a bad stain, no matter how hard they scrub, no matter how hard they try to rid themselves of the bad memories and replace them with something more pleasant, or at least a little less horrible, they always seem to come back. Val had seen some horrific things in his time. He’d witnessed members of his tribe perish in battle, disemboweled and ripped apart by the game that they’d been sent to hunt. It was nothing new to him; it was just the way things were. One wrong step, one miscalculated move, on err in judgment would cost him and his tribesmen and women their lives.

 

It was admittedly hard for him to get over the first time he saw a sparring partner’s entrails torn apart by the razor-sharp beak of one of the Shroud animals. He often awoke in cold sweats after with only the soft, cooing sounds of his mother to soothe him back to sleep. The second time it happened, Val took it a bit easier. By then he had been trained to count his blessings that it wasn’t him and to learn from his brethren and sister’s mistakes. The third, fourth, fifth, and countless times after he’d put that into practice, calculating their moves and committing what went wrong to memory. Then, he spent the rest of the day training and contemplating over what he’d learned. 

 

Their death was a lesson not only to him, but to the rest of the tribe. It served as both a reminder of what weakness brought and a testament to precisely how fragile their way of life was. Just one death would weaken their hunting party immensely. It was another pair of eyes that couldn’t call out enemy location. It was another nose unable to track their prey. It was another spear unable to flank the target, or another decoy meant to draw its attention. Val learned that each member of his tribe, including himself, was ultimately expendable and precious all at once. They would gladly die for their tribe, and yet each and every one of them was needed to ensure its success. 

 

It was through Val’s continued success that he eventually gained the status he felt destined to achieve, and it did not come without its hardships. Many times did he find himself on the receiving end of that razor-sharp beak, and many times did he return with cuts and scrapes and bruises, some severe and others simply grazing. Even still, he committed his mistakes to memory and swore to learn from them rather than dwell on them. Through the training of his tribe, through the way of the Wolf, Val learned to be a remorseless killing machine. Repeated sights and circumstances often left him immune to the more gruesome occurrences over his career. So why, then, with all of his training and all of his past, with all of his experience and all the sights that he’d seen; why couldn’t he get this one out of his head? It replayed over and over in his mind, like a broken record that had chosen to skip at the most harrowing part of the recording.

 

The blade came down, the hand came off. 

The blade came down, the hand came off.

 

Why did he leave her side? What possessed him to rush forward? She was right there. She was right there. All he needed to do was stand there. All he needed to do was protect her.

 

The blade came down, the hand came off. 

The blade came down, the hand came off.

 

That was what he was hired for. That was why she fell in love with him. That simple objective, that simple order was the sole reason they’d grown to know one another. He failed it. He failed his purpose. More importantly, he failed her. 

 

The blade came down, the hand came off. 

The blade came down, the hand came off.

 

Were it any other job, were it any other person, were it anything else at all, he would toss it aside and consider it another loss. He wouldn’t get paid, but that was fine. He’d grown used to a day or two without food ever since being removed from his tribe. It was nothing new.

 

The blade came down, the hand came off. 

The blade came down, the hand came off.

 

But this wasn’t just another job. This wasn’t just another lost chance to eat that night. She wasn’t just a random, pathetic woman that he was meant to keep safe, or even some lady considered attractive enough to lay that night. She was his love. She was his life, his betrothed, his world. She was the single most important thing in his world, the only thing outside of himself that he considered worth fighting for. And he’d failed her.

 

The blade came down, the hand came off. 

The blade came down, the hand came off.

 

Running over the scene in his head, there was plenty that he could have done differently. He could have shot the captured lightning aether immediately instead of waiting, giving her a chance to strike or shield herself rather than leaving her open. He could have stuck by her rather than rushing in for what he knew would only be a glancing blow. He could have stayed where he was and took the blow for her. It could have been his hand, should have been his hand. He should have moved in the way to force the blade to cleave him in two rather than risk any sort of harm to his beloved.

 

The blade came down, the hand came off. 

The blade came down, the hand came off.

 

But that’s not what happened. He erred in multiple ways, and it ultimately cost him. He hadn’t even lived, had he? This was death, wasn’t it? What else could it be? There was only darkness and these images, then silence. He vaguely recalled struggling to do something, anything to the man who had skewered him on his blade; to the man that had dared to touch what was his. 

 

The blade came down, the hand came off. 

The blade came down, the hand came off.

 

There was that, at least. He’d manage a distraction long enough to ensure she got her revenge. He recalled seeing the man’s body fall before everything went dark, before he passed away into whatever was in the next life. Perhaps his Princess would be able to move on without him. When the members of his tribe perished, Val often coped with it by concluding that they simply weren’t worthy of being called Wolves, or that they had perished due to their weakness so that other, stronger brothers and sisters could take their place. This was simply his time. Someone stronger and more capable would soon take his.

 

The blade came down, the hand came off. 

The blade came down, the hand came off.

The blade came down, the hand came off. 

The blade came down, the hand came off.