Ver's Struggle

He gripped the dagger, the dagger that now had so much meaning in his life. All of the pain and anguish he had gone through was embodied by the dagger.

As a knight he had used it many times to vanquish accused enemies of the Venar. It had saved his life and the lives of his comrades on countless occasions, not only as a weapon but also as a tool. He remembered the day he had received it as a gift from the parents of his betrothed. It was given to him as a token of their pride in his achievements as a knight, and to show how happy they were to have him marry their daughter.

It was a symbol. It was a curse. It was a subtle reminder of his past.

He put it to his chest. How ironic that this would be the way he would die, by his own hand, by the tip of this very blade. All that it stood for, all that it once meant to him no longer mattered.

The people who cared for him the most, the people who gave him the knife, had deserted him. His fiancée would not have him as anything other than a loyal subject of the Venar, a Venar knight at that. Only if he maintained the ruse, the very ruse that had enslaved him for so many years, would he ever be worthy of her love. She didn’t really ever love him; he knew that now. All she ever loved was the principles and people he stood for, not the real person on the inside. The audacity to question the legend, the epic, was too much for her to handle, even if it was the step he needed to take. She was too comfortable with how she lived her life, and didn’t want to accept anything that would challenge that. Of all the people in the world that once loved him, which he once also loved, it was her withdrawal that was the hardest for him to take. She was supposed to love him for the rest of her life, and he her. She was supposed to be there in the good times and the bad, and they would stand together against the storms of life. When trouble hit, when the very meaning of his existence was in question, it was then that he needed her the most. It was then that she had betrayed him.

Now his life was destroyed. The memories just came flooding back into his mind once again, as they had on countless other occasions. Her leaving was just the beginning of it all. After he vocalized his thoughts and feelings about all the Venar stood for, he had been stripped of his rank and drummed out of the service, he had been shunned by his former circle, and he had even been brought up on charges of treason. It was only after his sister had thrown herself at the mercy of the court that he had been spared. Instead of execution, they had exiled him to the northern continent. And here he had been ever since, trying to eke out some manner of a living.

In some respects, life on this new continent was better than life among the Venar. He no longer had to worry about the lies, the treachery, and endless rules and expectations, especially those that had been placed on him as a knight. He was among these “barbarians” now, people he had fought against in his northern campaigns. Their livelihood was very different from the Venar’s. These people did what they wished, partaking in all sorts of pleasures and passions without pause. He liked it because it gave him something to enjoy about the world that had done so much to hurt him. He knew some of these activities may even be damaging to his health, but he no longer cared. This was all he had to live for anymore, and he was going to make the most of it.

But deep down inside, even amongst all this pleasure he was now able to experience, he was dead. Life no longer held any meaning for him, and so here he was, ready to kill himself. He held the dagger away from him, ready to plunge it in, ending this miserable existence. He focused all of his strength and energy into the dagger, and with a great thrust he pulled it into his chest.

It stopped. A few fingers’ width away from his chest it stopped. Even when there was nothing to live for, even when he wanted to kill himself so badly, something inside was keeping him from doing it.

He broke down and wept.