Ex Libris Morte
22-06-2007, 00:45
I've seen a few threads about amateur authors who've written stories and poetry, but I thought I'd post a bit of the story I've been working on for a few years, as I just got offered a substantial amount of money for the manuscript.
Don't look at me, I'm as surprised as you are.
Music comes and goes with the tide of years, as do the faces of the people, all the while drawing closer to the end, to a demise both seen and invisible. A finishing. Last call for drinks. So many faces, so many languages. He could speak several, but rarely did anymore. He had traveled the length and breadth of the world a hundred times over, scouring the continents for the reason he still existed. Why did he still live when he should have died in the forty or more lifetimes he lived? Walking the hidden paths, seeking the shamans and witches and gypsies, riddling them as surely as they riddled him, questing for guidance among the wise ones. Fortune's misbegotten promise. Alive but unloved, seen but unknown, the traveling stranger. He walked the lands of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, lands distant and far and reached only on foot, or by boat. None of the conclusions he had come to made sense any more, falling short while he continued his journey in search of knowledge. He wore through shoes and sandals, and walked barefoot, all the while passing ever-changing chapels and temples and capitol buildings, watching and listening as the politics and religions changed and moved ever forward, recycling, rehashing and reusing the same broken ideals. Broken, at least, to any who knew more than nothing.
He watched as the histories of entire nations unfolded, some gaining place in the records of mankind, to be pored over by historians centuries in the future, some swiftly fading into distant memory. He saw the same histories and stories become legend, before being rewritten to include past leaders of the nations currently in power. History is written by the victor.
Playwrights, poets, musicians and writers creating their life's greatest works before being laid into their graves. Mathematicians and scientists poring into arcane works to reason their way into the future. Shakespeare, Galileo, Newton, Mozart, Michelangelo, Leonardo. All of them living and dying as he observed.
Papal authority handed down through the ranks as Pagans gave way before Catholicism, as Catholicism gave way to Protestantism, and as Protestantism gave way to Agnosticism and even Atheism.
All of which, of course, lead to the destruction of everything known, loved, and recorded. Swords and spears losing out to longbows and tactics. Black powder cannons, arquebuses and eventually musket balls eventually decimating any fair war even as rifling was eliminating them. Soon after came the handguns, the mortars, the bombs, all leading up to the culmination: chemical and nuclear bombs and missiles guided by live camera feed through transparent cones topping the rockets beneath. All of it had gone the way of the dodo as the plague of destrachan swept through their neat little cities of stone, wood, metal and glass. It was all my fault. Could he really be held responsible for the events that occurred by his mere presence? He had spread the disease, anything his hands touched, everywhere he'd slept, in every home, field and orchard grew rife with it. He brought out the worst in things, he supposed.
He was responsible, and the blame was his to bear. He was the carrier of the disease which had brought mankind to its knees in mere weeks; but even that wasn't quite it at all, was it? That was just the role fate had dealt him. It was all in the cards. He couldn't help but revel in his destiny, leading an army of destrachan to the battlefront, leading brother against brother, father against son, mother against daughter and vice versa. Raise an army of them to bring low that which was tall? He had, and he had loved it.
Don't look at me, I'm as surprised as you are.
Music comes and goes with the tide of years, as do the faces of the people, all the while drawing closer to the end, to a demise both seen and invisible. A finishing. Last call for drinks. So many faces, so many languages. He could speak several, but rarely did anymore. He had traveled the length and breadth of the world a hundred times over, scouring the continents for the reason he still existed. Why did he still live when he should have died in the forty or more lifetimes he lived? Walking the hidden paths, seeking the shamans and witches and gypsies, riddling them as surely as they riddled him, questing for guidance among the wise ones. Fortune's misbegotten promise. Alive but unloved, seen but unknown, the traveling stranger. He walked the lands of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, lands distant and far and reached only on foot, or by boat. None of the conclusions he had come to made sense any more, falling short while he continued his journey in search of knowledge. He wore through shoes and sandals, and walked barefoot, all the while passing ever-changing chapels and temples and capitol buildings, watching and listening as the politics and religions changed and moved ever forward, recycling, rehashing and reusing the same broken ideals. Broken, at least, to any who knew more than nothing.
He watched as the histories of entire nations unfolded, some gaining place in the records of mankind, to be pored over by historians centuries in the future, some swiftly fading into distant memory. He saw the same histories and stories become legend, before being rewritten to include past leaders of the nations currently in power. History is written by the victor.
Playwrights, poets, musicians and writers creating their life's greatest works before being laid into their graves. Mathematicians and scientists poring into arcane works to reason their way into the future. Shakespeare, Galileo, Newton, Mozart, Michelangelo, Leonardo. All of them living and dying as he observed.
Papal authority handed down through the ranks as Pagans gave way before Catholicism, as Catholicism gave way to Protestantism, and as Protestantism gave way to Agnosticism and even Atheism.
All of which, of course, lead to the destruction of everything known, loved, and recorded. Swords and spears losing out to longbows and tactics. Black powder cannons, arquebuses and eventually musket balls eventually decimating any fair war even as rifling was eliminating them. Soon after came the handguns, the mortars, the bombs, all leading up to the culmination: chemical and nuclear bombs and missiles guided by live camera feed through transparent cones topping the rockets beneath. All of it had gone the way of the dodo as the plague of destrachan swept through their neat little cities of stone, wood, metal and glass. It was all my fault. Could he really be held responsible for the events that occurred by his mere presence? He had spread the disease, anything his hands touched, everywhere he'd slept, in every home, field and orchard grew rife with it. He brought out the worst in things, he supposed.
He was responsible, and the blame was his to bear. He was the carrier of the disease which had brought mankind to its knees in mere weeks; but even that wasn't quite it at all, was it? That was just the role fate had dealt him. It was all in the cards. He couldn't help but revel in his destiny, leading an army of destrachan to the battlefront, leading brother against brother, father against son, mother against daughter and vice versa. Raise an army of them to bring low that which was tall? He had, and he had loved it.