Kill me, said the blue magicman. Kill me, crimson lady, I need death, I need an end to this viciousness.
Crimson lady sitting on her throne, smiled. Not a smile of joy, or mirth, yet not a smile that bespoke the presumptuous evil. It was a smile of understanding, and it was one of compassion. Many had come before blue magicman, many. Many had traversed through the obstacle ridden path, just to meet and end they believed was justified, not sinful and appropriate.
'Crimson lady?' the blue magic man urged.
She sighed, not looking, her gaze fixed on a figure climbing the mountain of darkness. Far away, she thought, he was too far away for her to bother with him now. But for reasons one or two, her gaze refused to budge. Did they know what it meant to not cross? In a world where they came to seek death, was death itself the greatest punishment? She laughed. No, she told the little voice in her head, no, it wasn't.
The blue magic man, standing with the hood in his head, shuffled.
She took off her sight from her much wanted vision. Who was that man approaching her from the mountains? Maybe she herself would go and visit. But for now, the blue magic man stood, utterly bewildered by her lack of interest. They all were. The angel of death, she was, and yet they all presumed her to be the knight of darkness. She took lives afterall.
'Yes?' she announced at length. 'Blue magic man, are you?'
He nodded. She knew him, he thought, but of course she knew him.
'And you want to die because?' she asked, her voice hardly above a whisper, hardly carrying over the steps that led to her throne.
Blue magic man strained to listen, his ears perched.
Crimson lady smiled. 'Had you wanted death that much, blue magic man, you would have died along your path. Never made it this far, you know.' And then, raising a finger, she pointed towards the figure over the mountains. 'Behind you, there comes others, but whose wish will i grant? Anyones? No.'
Blue magic man's eyes widened. 'We aren't to be granted our wish?'
She shook her head, with the slightest tilt. 'No.'
'But there is no hope for my life, there is nothing more I seek from it, there is nothing more I enjoy about it. If it wasn't sinful, I would have taken mine gladly.' Blue Magic man was a trifle enraged. All that journey and the Crimson Lady refuses. Was not taking lives her only means of survival? Was she not the angel of death?
'Sin, you say.' she laughed. 'And what would be the punishment for it? Anything worse than what you have faced to come to me?' she asked.
Blue magic man stared. The figure fell into a deep ditch into the mountains. Crimson lady heard it all and yet her reactions altered little. She was used to it, she was tired of it.
'It would not be.' she announced. 'The mountains out there act out of selfishness and evil and the lands filled with flowers are only but stages for your nightmares. You make it real, in your pursuit of death, you make everything real. You come here, seeking death, when your wand could do much more in your land of magic and deception. It is not death you wish to meet, blue magic man, it was merely your thirst for adventure.'
Her words hit blue magic man and not with total comprehension. Not to begin with anyway. He stared at her for a while. He looked at her with awe and told himself, that if there is anything he had conquered greater than his fears, it was that the crimson lady was not death herself. She was the angel, the angel in red.
'You may go now.'
'But how?' Blue magic man asked.
Her laugh was piercing. 'You mean, you want to leave?'
For once, in the whole journey, he was frightened. Not when the snakes crawled about him, not when his bed mysteriously became a free fall into a land of jagged cliffs, not when the spiders ogled at him, it was now. Did he really wish to leave?
She laughed again, cutting his soul to pieces, 'You want to leave, don't you? It was adventure you seeked. The thrill of conquering death's valleys.'
Blue magic man shuddered and stared hypnotised by her.
'But Blue Magic Man, no one leaves the land of death. Not, if they really want it.'
She pointed towards the figure who lay spreadeagled over the ditch. She could see it all, in her mind, and she could show it all, with her mind.
'Your comrade, he has died in the land of death. Do you understand what it means, Blue Magic Man? He has died while I sit with you.'
He shook his head, clasping his wand tightly. Adventure, his mind screamed. Was this all a pursuit of adventure?
'He mourns over your death and sips tea. He has met death in the land of death,' she laughed.
'But you never will.' |
Submission Name: Crimson Lady
