Thusday Thirteen #5 -- Thirteen Paragraphs from Forging a Legend

Thirteen paragraphs from Forging a Legend This is one of my favorite scenes, and thirteen lines worked out perfectly! I didn't bother numbering them.

Thesk made no move. Abriel realized that he waited for her to make the first attack. He did not even bother to pretend at a fighting stance.

What have I got myself into? She thought. She decided to try a thrust.

A stabbing pain invaded her right lung. She looked down at the sword protruding from her chest in astonishment. He had struck so swiftly that she had not realized a blow was coming. As she gazed at the sword, she dimly reflected that the metal was the same whitish hue as the chain of her amulet.

It withdrew from her chest and blood poured forth.

Pain hit her like an avalanche. Her knees could no longer support her and she collapsed onto the sand. She knew that the wound was mortal and that it would be an agonizing, slow death. Her lung would fill up with blood and bile and she would drown in her own fluids.

Her feet churned the sand in spasms of pain. She remembered the fight pits, and the man struck down by his own friend. Now, it was time for her to play her death drama before the crowds.

She could no longer see at all; a red haze filled her vision. She could still hear, however. A great rending filled her ears and she felt the jagged metal from the armor rip out of her wound. A burning filled her lungs and she knew that the drowning process had begun.

She thought of the Nameless one. The Namer, she corrected herself, thinking of the Furdi, of Danor. She thought of what Danor had told her one day, early in their acquaintance, while they sipped cool water in the entrance of the forge. He told her then that the Namer escorted the souls of the newly-dead to his home.

All at once, she welcomed such a place. Whether to the Namer's home or to the gods Beyond--what difference did it make? An entirely new adventure awaited her on the other side of death. What was there to fear?

She had always thought of death as cold and dark. Instead, she found it bright, airy and softer than the down of goslings. She wanted to drown in it. However, she also found a firmness that she did not expect, unyielding and impenetrable--a closed door.

Take me, she thought.

Then, a meaning bloomed in her mind, a meaning of perfect clarity. It was as if someone--or something--had planted a perfectly formed idea into her mind without cumbersome words, and without any trace of ambiguity.

And she knew that her time to die had not yet come.

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