It was with great fear and anguish that with my right hand following my left I carefully lifted myself over the stone wall, fearfully frigid in its solidity. Though the cold of the air clenched my tendons into silence, bid them tighten and pull, still I climbed up the rocky outcropping which lay between myself and escape. Behind me I still felt the presence, that grim determination that comes with things that are but should not be and I felt the fierce hunt of the night-shrouded figure that stalked me across the moonlit moors.
Once it had all been simple, in a time that seemed an eternity but was but a brief passing of hours. As my belated footfalls had carried me beyond the edge of civilization, into the cold night searching for that which was lost, that cold treasure that could only be found by moonlight, the flower called Maigar that grows only under the cold light of the moon and withers and dies come morning. This sacred blossom was worth all things, this wonderful petal that aided well herbalists such as myself. The potent nectar of the Maigar is the draught of the gods themselves, and, properly combined, can stave off the fearsome spectre of death from even the worst cases of the plague.
As the green stems of the fragrant grasses crushed beneath my feet as I covered the flat plain I heard the cry of the nightthrush, singing its warning to those that would consider it a meal. My steps led me ever towards the mountains, towards those still and silver-stoned sentinels that guarded the north against the winds of winter, bathing our valley in a chill not so frigid as that of the other lands surrounding us. Deep within my cloak I shuddered, seeing my breath, almost like my soul, escaping from my parted lips. A lonely call of a prowling wolf thrilled me, but I was reminded that times were not yet bad enough that they would hunt human rather than the game which was still plentiful in the forests.
The silver light of the moon coated the ground before me, leading my steps, and I followed the trail that it made on the grass that was already crushed down by the passage of others, though I wondered not who might have passed before me. A faint breeze from behind carried the calls of the evening festivities, as the autumn revelers still refused to retreat to the warm embers of their fires that kept their beds inviting and supporting. Once again the nightthrush called, but was choked, strangely, into silence.
I glanced behind me, and my breath came up short, as I was not alone on this night-visited moor, but had a companion that seemed to be my very shadow. Staring, I found that his robes, blackened as if in some fire, whipped in wild tatters about him, caught in some strange breeze that I could not face but could only fear. I felt the dread of the beyond take me, plunging my soul into darkness as I recognized the embodiment of Death, the reaver of souls, he that I had so often fought and won. Perhaps now he had come to end the threat that I posed to his business with my medicines, to wipe free of the world one who had made a life's struggle of fighting his own grim persona.
As the shrouded figure again began to stride towards me, though perhaps he had before been moving and I merely had not recognized this fact, I turned and felt my boots beat a path against the cold grasses of the plains, feeling that one could escape destiny if only one could outrun it. The wall of the cliffs bore up before me, those small foothills of rock that preface the mountains themselves, and began to climb, and there I was before I began my reverie.
At last my numbed and blistered hands reached the top, my feet finding purchase and pushing me once more over the lip of the barrier. Here the wind was worse, and it caught in my ears for a moment as I glanced down behind me, breathing heavily. Yet there was none behind me that I could see, and the shadow of the very mound I stood upon must be cast upon the location of the grim harvester beneath me. Even now, if Death obeyed the rules of pursuit demanded by reality, he was climbing the face of the outcropping just as I had done, and I foresaw much more unyielding stamina in his bones than in my flesh.
Desperately I dashed away from the lip, climbing over hills and into depressions as my muscles screamed in entreaty that I might stop and allow them to recover after the climb. Yet I could not give in to the force that my body exerted to simply call me to slow, to stop, to rest for a moment and then a moment more. Somewhere behind me Death moved, growing ever nearer, and only in flight could I escape.
And yet all was for naught. Falling over a root that had chosen to bisect my path I looked to see the spectre of destruction before me, not behind. He stood, silently, in a small copse of trees and from the cowl of shade I saw, or thought I saw, twin pinpricks of light, like those of two distant suns. He glanced at me and I shuddered in fear and pain. I wanted to shout for him to take me, to end it, to rail against the injustice that he should hunt me so. But my voice was mired in labored breathing, and my lips were frozen with cold. But there he stood, quietly, appraisingly, as if to see my worth. I gazed back unflinchingly, biting back my fear, anger beginning to warm and remove the power that he had over me.
Then, with a woolen rustle, he turned away from me and I followed his gaze. There, in a plot of moonlight, beneath a lightning-blasted tree, there grew a patch of that golden flower that I knew to be my goal. It was rich in bloom, richer than any such blossom I had ever before chanced to come across, full in its healing medicine. Death moved slowly, with the grace of eternity, and plucked one such flower with a hand formed of charred bones, and placed it lovingly into a fold of his robes near the breast. He turned back to my prone form, a small sun flared as if to wink, and then he was gone as if he never had stood before me.
Carefully I gathered the Maigar blossoms and placed them into the pouch that had managed to remain on my belt throughout my trials. Slowly, achingly, I wrapped my cloak tighter about me and began the journey home at a much more sedate pace. In the next days a plague would break out in my village, and with the medicine of the flowers would grant all surcease from the illness that would abandon them to continued life. Sometimes I contemplate my night's run, waking from the depths of sleep, and believe that even the visage of uncompromising doom, harbinger of disaster, reaver of souls, might, in fact, hold some compassion for the mortals that are his to claim. This troubles me until once more I manage to sink into the graceful and enfolding arms of slumber.