Round I: Match 2--Rune vs. Rodrigo Istalindir
Word count=681
[sblock=Transition]
Transition
Lost. Shake [ my ] head. Do [ I ] have one? Close enough. Shake it. Is it clear? No? Must remember, traveling the Mindway can be...disorienting...to those accustomed to the illusion of identity.
Silver spheres. Some move quickly, with purpose. Some meander, nothing better to do. Each a mind in transition. Which one am [ I ]?
Where was [ I ]? Who was [ I ]?
I remember. I was an old man. A shaman. I walked the End of Days. What was the prophecy, again?
Beast dies and worm devours.
Life lives and Death empowers.
Turn, turn. The reason learns.
Turn, turn. A season turns.
Sunder Cycle for Everlife.
But never Growth, nor Love, nor Strife.
Immortality. [ I ] think. Just in time. But, how to...Ah, that's right. The Mindway.
The old man had rituals to perform. Transcendence to smoke. He let the world...fall...away...
Where am [ I ] headed? Answers. Must find answers. Must bring Immortality to a dying world. Need to find a world of Life. Aha. This mind should do...
Auld Woldshanks stared woodenly out over the misty hills. He felt so dead inside. The evergreens lived on, oblivious to his loneliness. Ah, well. What do they know, anyway? Woldshanks stretched his long limbs across the horizon, winced at the creaking joints. Not much time left, now.
Was a time Woldshanks' crown was crested with color. Ah, to be but a sappling, once again. Now he was as bare as a summer field after the flames washed through. What flames? There's always flames.
Woldshanks stood up. It was time to go.
Auld Woldshanks walked like a tree possessed. He felt an urgency he had never known.
Immortality. The word coursed through him like sap, feeding him. Even as his long years unwound, Woldshanks moved on, seeking the place between life and death. The Field of Ash.
Already, new life peaked through the black, nourished by the remnants of its ancestors. This was the place...but, no. Something was missing. Woldshanks' limbs no longer worked, his mind was seizing up. Too late. Too late. Auld Woldshanks' end had come. He died, as all must, alone.
Right world. Wrong time. Wrong mind. Need to find a convergence. An in-between place. An in-between time. Look for the Messiah. The one who bridges Life and Death. The one who is both the Beast who dies and the Worm who devours. Aha! Found it!
The Wormmammal looked lazily upon the world. It was unique in all the world; it knew how to live outside the Cycle. How to merely exist. Never consume. Never propagate. Only be. Now, for the first time, something stirred inside it. It had never felt this...what was it? Curiosity.
What, it wondered, made it special? What was this Immortality? Why did no one else know it? How could they? These musings came unnaturally to the Wormmammal. Such higher thought was foreign.
But something inside compelled it. The Wormmammal's mind unfolded, expanded, enlightened. It explored implications, forged paths of thought never yet conceived--discovered, at last, itself. At the core, the Wormmammal understood what role it played in the universe—no less than the catalyst of its unwinding. The very end of the Cycle. The Wormmammal yawned.
***
The old shaman's vision cleared. His head was filled with cotton. His limbs were still numb. But he had the answers he had sought. Immortality. He knew it, now. It could be done. It could be learned. All he had to do was stop the Cycle. Be no longer the Beast that dies, nor the Worm that consumes. It was time to fast, forever.
Yet, what could be
learned, could not be taught, for none would truly listen to his meaning. Ramblings, they called his lessons, or madness. Some yet believed his words were a gift of the spirits. But no one would
understand.
And, so passed the final days, until, at long last, the old shaman's emaciated body could sustain his mind no longer. Thus, the old man took his understanding of Immortality with him to the grave.[/sblock]