I-b

I fled through the forests, and you followed me. I struggled and dragged myself through the deserts, and somehow you kept apace. I don;'t remember how long I've been running from you. Years? Decades? Lifetimes? When it started, I was young; I had a place in the world; I had a name. Since then my muscles have caught fire, burning more with each aching step; my heart has grown colder, and I've done things that before would have repulsed me; my lungs have become blackened, charred by the smoke of a thousand nighttime fires; and my skin has gone grey, bleached by a hundred years of moonlight runs. My mind has atrophied, and I'm making more mistakes now than I care to think; then again, you've been making even more. I know you're dying, but so am I.

Sometimes, I forget why I'm running, but never for long. I still have the scars to remind me, and I can still hear the voice o your father, dying, pleading for his own life. I was his God then, and I was a vengeful God. I'll never forget the horrors that I brought upon you, how I tore your family apart. At the same time, I'll always remember the countless horrors that man had visited on me.

There was something you never knew: We were at war, your father and I. In the eyes of the world, her was the 'maverick general', the greatest soldier of all time. I saw a side of him that you never witnessed though, a side darker and more cruel than even my most wicked of dreams. I fought many a battle against your father, across many seas, and over many lands. I've shed more of his blood and he more of my own than that of thousands of faceless men in thousands of nameless wars. He destroyed my family, and so I destroyed his.

I ended his life just as quickly and with as little doubt as any of the other thousands I had taken. We were at war, your father and I, but now I have no one left to fight but you.