Shattered Fate

I have seen things this day that my conscience could not countenance. In a spasm of iron, my numinous search has become petty. What do I know of these other creations, above whom I tread?

I have seen a man dying - wrecked with sores, wretched in timelessness of despair, begging mercy, from a stranger. From me. His breath, fetid like my hubris; his defeat, as total as my ignorance. I couldn't stand to see him, and so I looked away. He still lived. And no matter my guilt I did not bend down. He was full of death, and the vermin poured forth from his wounds; his face was skeletal and bloated, waxy and peeling.

What can I know of the suffering of age? The failure of the corpus, the blotting-paper skin, the tunnels of the parasites, the weeping blisters and smeared vision. The greatest suffering I have known, and it was not my own. Who but I has known only what was chosen freely? I lifted it up from the road, summoned almost. If I did not create it I embraced it. And when my hair fell out and I walked a continent it was my doing. It was the price I paid for my quest and at any time I could have given up. Would that he had the same.