My father died yesterday. He was a great scholar, and a warrior too. He had walked and fought beside the Battle Kings, wielding his power as they did their star-forged swords, felling creatures that would one day become legend and myth. It was his hand that wrote the first Codex of Power, and his teachings that set me upon the Path.
He was the greatest man I had known, and most likely will ever know, and yesterday I watched him die in his own filth, the hands that had once bent reality to his will crooked and twisted.
When the sun had set, I lit his pyre with the magic he had given me and watched his flesh turn to ash and ember. His vassals wept and the bards sang mournfully as the fire threw sparks high into the night, while the priests intoned their great rituals, assuring me with soft hands and voices that his soul had found its way to the gods.
They no doubt mistook my silence for mourning, but then they had sat with me and watched as time stole both his mind and the life from him. In his final moments of lucidity he begged for release, and I granted him it. And now my father was no more for Death had rendered every part of him meaningless.
Death.
It rules our lives, reaching into them with impunity. Even now I feel the subtle fingers of its murderous handmaiden, time, closing around my heart. When will they tighten and send all my dreams and achievements into the fire of oblivion?