Into The Darkness

I took 3 steps forward, and fell to my knees. Was it over now? Had I
come this far just to die right here, standing at the mouth of what I
had been searching for my entire life? I clasped the pendant in my
hand, tight enough so I could feel its points digging into my skin. All
this suffering, all of this pain, and I still didn't know what the
purpose of this damn trinket was, didn't know what my purpose was. I
thought of all that I had sacrificed, all that had been taken away from
me, and I wept.

I don't know how long I stayed like that, sitting on my knees, feeling
them grow numb under me, as I sobbed into my filthy hands. When I
looked up again there was an odd quality to the light, it was growing
dark yes, but it was also growing?thicker, as if this new light was
flooding around me and it carried with it a great weight, a great,
heavy, sense of loss. And I suppose that it did?how many before me, had
fallen to their knees here? Fallen in vain, weeping for loved ones and
lost possessions, knowing that all of their sacrifices had been, in the
end, for nothing. How many minds had been broken here? Shattered, as if
a mirror had been cast onto the black, jagged rocks that surrounded me.
I believed my mind was still on the side of sanity, of rationality, but
then didn't all the crazy people of the world truly believe they were
sane? Maybe my mind had slipped, fallen into some deep recess of
insanity, so deep that I myself didn't realise it.

All this thinking was going to drive me mad, if I wasn't already, and
so I decided the best course was to do instead of think. I was here
now, and my life seemed to me like one giant arrow, growing thinner as
my free choices grew smaller, ending in a point, that looked directly
at the cave ahead. At what point had I realised, realised that as I
grew closer to the truth, my choices and actions became less free will,
more the decisions of some higher order? Invisible to me, but
controlling me, guiding me, forcing me to this conclusion. Was I
controlled by this damn pendant, like Gollum and his Ring, blinded from
rational thought by this arcane object? I didn't know, I didn't think I
would, I would die here, that much I was certain of, this was my
calling, and this is where I would end.

Again I am thinking instead of acting! I look down and see a crimson
pool has begun to form under my legs, spreading slowly but surely, a
literal metaphor for the life that I feel draining from me. Even If I
turned back now, I would get halfway back, if I was lucky, and then I
would die. I had no choice but to attempt this, to carry on with my
journey until its conclusion, maybe die with my head wrenched from my
shoulders, as my father had on this same mountaintop. At this thought a
new bravery ignited within me, giving me the strength to rise to my
feet again.

I began to walk, slowly, dragging my one ruined leg, towards my final
fate, towards the end. Maybe now the choice was mine, maybe this would
be the first decision of free will in my life, the decision of whether
to live or to die. But could I choose? Or would whatever existed beyond
here have that choice? Was there a choice for me or just a choice for
the shapeless evil that resided within, could it pity me and let me
live, or destroy my sanity and then my body? There was one way to find
out, and I suddenly had a burning desire to find out, on my death be it
or not. I walked forward, into my fate.