| Original Message |
"St. John"
Posted Apr 4, 2000 12:04 PM
"It's just another,
just another,
just another,
just another,
Holy War..."
-Blind Guardian.
Many people went away to fight Crusades, or go on Soul Searchings, or Quests.
Not Jathanon. He had done that before.
Where many people sat around the fire, not to admire the flames, but to escape the cold, he would gaze into the blaze and meet its challenge it to outmatch it. Where many found the Beast within them to be too great an opponent and so set it to lash out at those around them, he not only mastered it, but tamed it until it became his own master in a different way; in the way that the teacher becomes the pupil's master when the pupil has questions.
Yet all this, like his own past, he kept to himself. None could learn from his stories better than he alone, so let them learn these lessons from their own stories...perhaps he would help them write them, but he refused to be their author.
Such were his thoughts as he sat before the fire once again, as he had sat before a multitude of fires before; each one different, yet with its own tale to tell of past and future wars, loves, jealousies and kings. He enjoyed the hearth...it was a pleasant mixture of the half of the elements that man had only now truly begun to understand. And besides...it was warm.
Gloved hands traced over one another beneath his obsidian gaze as he lounged in his usual nonchalant majesty, unconscious of it, of course, yet it was bred into him as it was all his Kind. Most of his Kind had gone the way of the Pheonix, however...gone to leave only their legends and their lessons behind, along with the myriad bedtime stories mothers would tell their children to make sure they stayed in bed. ...A subtle smile played over his lips, and dark marble eyes softened at the amusing thoughts. A bedtime story. Even gods had been forgotten, left as nothing but statues beneath the rubble of cities that had progressed past their need for such idolatry; yet he and his kine would be remembered in such simple things as bedtime stories. THAT is the way to true immortality.
His smile became a little less subtle just moments before the bass rumble of a chuckle echoed from his barrel chest. His bretheren knew of what they had become. The legends sung about by bards, whispered about by knights, and ...well...quite frankly...drooled over by many a mage, had indeed survived in one way or another. Such was best. Yet still few of the old 'devastation' passed back over from their holdings and sacred Proteria. Of course it was more comfortable there, where everything was as they pleased and no one could come or go without their knowledge or permission. Of course.
He stood slowly, letting out a long sigh and perhaps an imperceptable nod. Of course it was more comfortable by the fire. But it was the job of babes and old men to sit by the fire, moaning over the future or dallying over the past. As he turned away from the flame and the warmth, his myriad trinkets clinked almost merrily from where they hung about his thick neck.
Many people went away to fight Crusades, or to go on Soul Searchings, or Quests.
Not Jathanon.
He had come back.
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