Re: Writing Exercise: Brawling!
I staggered back, vaguely aware of the shrill piercing whine in my ears. The pain served to dull my senses down to the slightest of stirrings, as if my mind was trapped, screaming in a blanket of darkness. I blinked; the first movement I was aware of, and I could feel the lid as it scraped across the surface of my eye. Everything was so... slow. I opened my eyes and sluggishly looked at the world around me. Nothing had changed: I was still standing before the altar and the blinding light from its surface was no longer present, a smooth marble presenting my own shocked and dishevelled reflection. I stood at the centre of a ring of pillars, at the far end of a temple hall, the door to which was slightly ajar.
"You bastard." I turned, confused, surprised and full of understanding all at once. Dmitrii stood at the entrance to the temple, about twenty feet away, the anger broiling up and overcoming his normally neutral visage to give his face the appearance of seething rage. "You utter bastard."
"I had to," I defended myself, Dmitrii's presence seeming to have righted time's flow. "We can't win without this. Our foe is too great, too powerful for us to face without some form of assistance. This will save us all."
"I know it will," Dmitrii snapped back at me, snarling as he did so. He began to walk towards me, striding as he had done so often with an air of cocky arrogance about him despite his turn of anger. "That's not the point. You scheme, you cannive, you tear down your allies to make good your own future and your own fortune! Where am I in this, Alexander? Where am I?!" I opened my mouth, but words did not come out. My entire being still felt incredibly strange, numb even to the vibrations that were sent throughout my body as I slowly descended the few pearly steps to the main floor of the temple... yet at the same time, alive beyond anything I had ever felt or could have ever imagined feeling. The farthest storms and the faintest of whispers all rolled in my breast as I overflowed with the power of a star. "We were as brothers, you selfish cur!"
"We are still, Dmitrii!" I pleaded, although I know full well he would not listen.
"No, we are not. Why is it that you're better than me?! What is it that makes you greater?!" Dmitrii's pace hastened as we drew near to each other. "What gives you the right to have all that power, and I left at the roadside like some worthless mongrel? You should be below me, not above me. My friend died and in his place stands a newborn god, atop his throne as a self-appointed lord of all. I'll show you just how low you really are!"
Dmitrii lunged, and a pang shot through my heart as I understood exactly how this would end. As a still-motion he moved, his fist travelling so slowly I was sure I could count beyond even the infinite before he reached me. My time was different from his; my mind was somehow eternal, ageless, and beyond anything he could comprehend. I moved; his attack met air and he came at me again, dancing on his feet like he did so often at sparring when we were children. This time, however, there was no competitiveness, no sharp spark in his eyes as he threw blow after blow at me -- only desperation, anger, and bitterness towards the one man who had stolen his dreams from him, and the one man who he had been so sure was so far beneath him.
Me.
An elbow aimed at my jaw; instinctively I raised my arm to block it, and I felt his bones pulverise under the force of my retaliation. He didn't cry out, only stepping back and staring fixatedly at me, his left arm hanging lifelessly by his side as his bones poked out from underneath the skin and clothing. Again Dmitrii advanced and again I moved in time with him, not wanting to hit him yet unable to stop him for fear of harming him.
I felt the wall behind me, and realised he had backed me into a corner. I let the blow land and again I felt his arm break against me. This time he did cry. A short intake of breath and the smallest of whimpers as he crouched before me, pain and hatred burning ever fiercer in his eyes. I hated this; I wanted to stop him, wanted to make him see that I hadn't stolen this power out of spite for him, only because I knew that he would not be able to deal with the responsibility: But I knew that he would neither see reason nor stop his assault. I'd have to stop him myself. He knew he couldn't win; he knew that I knew, and that was the worst thing about his eyes as he stood before me, my brother-in-arms turned aggressor.
As he threw himself at me one last time I bit back tears, flinging an arm up in an arc -- not even an aimed blow, and yet the deafening boom and then silence as his body flew like a ragdoll through the air was the most real thing I had ever felt in my life.
He hit the ground with a horrible crunch. I felt sick to my stomach, unable to take my eyes off his unmoving body at the other end of the hall. Slowly, and unwillingly, my legs began to carry me towards him. Soon enough I was standing at his corpse: I couldn't quite remember the journey between the wall and his body. My mind was a blur, seeing still images of his body and the motion of his body flying through the air replaying over and over again in my head. I raised my hand; blood. Dmitrii's blood.
I turned away, towards the door, and began to walk. His body lay behind me, broken and small and bleeding out on the smooth dark stone. I had received this power, but an at unimaginable cost. One that, even if I were to save every single person and stop all the evils of the world, would never truly be worth it.
