“Get up,” she said harshly, tapping her boot lightly against his back. Amathlan felt himself stir out of his slumber, the darkness of the cell obscuring any details he could make out. Another kick came at his back, this one much harder. “Get. Up.” She insisted again.
He got up.
“What do you want from me?” He asked, as though lamenting the fact that the dead had come to haunt him, and not simply just lamenting the dead. He had only just turned to face her (or the form of her, for she was certainly dead) when he felt her shove harshly at his shoulders.
“I want you to fight,” she demanded. “Stop sitting there and waiting. You are wasting. Fight.”
The request was so absurd to him that he couldn't stop the laugh that passed out of his mouth. Fight a ghost. I truly am losing my mind in this place.
“I will not fight you,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “This is ridiculous.”
He wasn't given the chance to decline. She hit him again.
“Fight.”
“I will not.”
“Fight.”
“This is a cell.”
“Fight!”
“I am tired of fighting!”
"I am tired of fighting!" Mallossel shouted at him on the field of battle, on the field of corpses left behind at the end of the war. Where crows pecked at flesh and foe, and where the scent of death and blood was so thick that it hung heady in the air. But he was not prepared to take that for an answer.
"What? So you fight this war and flee?! What of those who perished? Is it not our duty to see their sacrifice worthy of something?" He demanded of her in a sneer, drawing himself up to his full height. As if he could tower over and intimidate her, his sister. Her gaze clouded over like a storm on the horizon, like the clouds of ash that rained down upon them and blocked out the sun.
"Think you I know not the gravity of sacrifice?! I have died a thousand times for my men and still rose in the morning to die again! You are selfish, brother of mine, and you will pay dearly for it! I pray only your own vain sacrifice goes not unheeded by those who you claim to love."
There was a long stretch of silence between them as Amathlan stared defiantly at the eyes of one who had said the very same to him an Age ago; the irony escaped neither of them, and slowly his beloved phantom stood up straight and backed once more into the shadows.
“You were never the fighter, Amathlan, and I mean that with the utmost sincerity. You never should have taken up arms. Not even for my sake.”
He wished he could be insulted. He wished that some form of his wrathful pride would rear its ugly head and lash out at her - but he couldn't. She was right. She was always made for war. He was not. That was a reality he had long stifled. One that he took upon himself in a vain attempt to make himself the savior, to see his sister safe. And on all accounts, he had failed. He had failed.
