The Last Words

[Vickarius]

That small piece of text is very loosely based on my upcoming project (if it is ever to be finished), and I post it here hoping to inspire others with it.
I'm sorry for any spelling errors you may encounter.

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The Last Words

On the uppermost section of a building, two men were standing, one in front of the other. Their weapons were both pointing to the sky.

All around the scene, a torrential downpour was provoking a menagerie of noises, rendering almost any other sound useless. But what would someone be doing under such a stormy sky? Perhaps one of those men was a guard, and the other, a thief? Maybe it was a sparring session between fencing students? Or a fight started by a duped lover, angry towards the one who took away his girlfriend?

The two pitiful scraps of being were already soaking wet. One of them, dressed in red clothes, ran a hand through his auburn hair, as if troubled by a thought. His hand ended up holding one of the pitch black horns that adorned his head. No doubt - the guy was a demon. His dark eyes never left his opponent's, that stood just across from him. This one was clad in a greyish armor, a medium-sized cloak flowing down his back, and he stood with an elegant posture. With his brownish hair flowing in all directions, he didn't seem imposing, nor fazed.

"You don't give up, do you?", said the demon, scratching the top of his head.

"No, and you won't either."

"Such a sad predicament..."

The light-armored man shuffled his feet, feeling uncomfortable. "We should cut it out. From the very beginning, we walked down the path that led us here. You made your decisions, while I struggled to fix the damage you caused. But I'm not in your shadow anymore."

"But... if we would always walk down this path, why bother struggling at all?", spoke the redhead, walking sideways from the another man and looking far away, to the horizon. "I made some bad choices, but it really doesn't matter. You already know me and also, that I could never have chosen another path. In the end, I am no more than a beast, driven by instinct."

The swordsman lowered his weapon and looked down, saying aloud: "That's another dilemma. If you are evil, what explains your existence, at all? Why be born evil to die evil, while all the time retaining a conscience? That makes no sense!"

Slowly, the sky calmed down, and the rain gave way to a drizzle.

Now, both men could talk without the need to shout. The red clothed figure retorted, averting his eyes from the landscape, and looking at the cloaked man: "Our current predicament makes much less sense. We're here because that woman predicted that you would face me in battle. On the exact instant that I discovered it, I resorted to my cunning and resources to prevent it from happening, to no avail. You became more and more obsessed to stop me, and just look where we are now! But what would happen if I didn't listen to her? The results probably would be the same! It's futile, all of it."

The brown-haired man positioned himself at the demon's side, and started to search for answers in the somber sky (or perhaps, into himself). "How can someone make the right choice? We do not know for sure the full consequences of our acts. Also, it's impossible to choose anything without being influenced by someone or something: a thought, an emotion, a mood, our past actions, other people's input, our actual conditions etc."

"But, at the same time, we can't simply avoid making a choice, because it's already a choice in itself." The demon talked to the skies. "Our imagination is what plagues us, in the end, because it makes us hope, or even believe, that things could be different. Heck, with the power of imagination, we could even be friends!"

"But we're not friends", said the light-armored man, looking gloomily at the weapon in his hands.

"No, we are not", replied the demon, the shadow of a smile crossing his face for a second.

With this, the pair walked again to the center of the arena and, after two brief gestures of acknowledgement, the ultimate fight started.

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Thank you for reading, and feel free to comment or post any positive criticism, if you wish!