At least he'd die knowing his last act on this earth would cause the thing across the fire untold amounts of misfortune, given the hope that the boy could figure out what to do with the knife in time.
“What's so funny, you old fool?”
Was he smiling? He hadn't realized it, but it was too late to hide it now. “I just can't believe my luck, I guess. I did all you asked, and you failed, so you're here to blame me and do me in. I guess no matter what I had no chance of winning, did I?”
The smile, seemingly buying the story, grew and nodded. “So it would seem. I guess you weren't the right man for the job.”
“Ha, well, you picked me, so one wonders who the one is doing a poor job.”
The thing was at his throat in an instant, leaping the fire like a cat and squeezing down with a strength one wouldn’t expect from a frame so small. “You are not near as wise as you believe, you worthless old man.”
All the old man could do in the face of such evil was laugh. “Nor are you, my stupid friend. You think yourself to be the one in control, but you haven't got a clue.”
The hooded thing was certainly not smiling now as it uncovered a shiny, mechanical hand. It reached up to the old man’s face, gripping it like a vise as it pulled him forcefully from the ground and released his neck. The quiet air filled with the soft crack of bones breaking to accompany the pop of the fire.
Still, despite the pain, he laughed harder and harder, the situation too amusing to be ignored.
In a rage, the thing tossed the old man back through the tips of the flames. He landed terribly on the other side, his old body nowhere near the shape needed to escape such a forceful and malicious toss unscathed. Still, broken and dying, the old man laughed harder than he could ever remember. He laughed hard enough to erase his pain. This thing had no clue what it was up against.
The thing was livid now, annoyed and consumed by hate for the old man and his useless laughter. He realized the stubbornness and senility of the old bastard would never let him tell it anything it needed to know. He was far too pleased with himself. There was nothing left to do but finish him and be done.
With its other arm, one of natural flesh and bone, it produced a sword, the likes of which the old man had never seen. It was long and thin, curved all the way to the tip. Where a normal metal blade would be was what looked like the purest diamond or crystal, so clear and perfect that it was almost invisible, were it not for the distortion of firelight as it moved around. Another weapon of Power? Perhaps, but different. The others he'd seen were both good and bad; here there was more than bad. Here there was absolute nothingness.
The nothing consumed him, breaking him into a million shards of emptiness. The feeling so all-consuming in its vastness that it made him want to die just to escape it. At least in death there was the hope of something more. Here, facing this thing and its horrible weapon, there was simply a void. And that scared him terribly.
“Oh no, old man,” the thing said, reaching into his mind. “With this, there is no death. Nothing beyond. Nothing but… well, nothing.” It laughed as it spoke. What did it mean there was nothing? Please, gods who hear his prayers, don't let this feeling last! Please let it be over and never come back!
Again, the thing saw his thoughts in his terrified eyes. “God can't hear you. God is dead. Prepare to enter my fate for you, as I am the only god you need to fear, and my fate for you is an eternity within the hell you feel right this moment. Behold! The all-encompassing void that is the Est Vacuus!”
The thing was at him again, blade in hand, stabbing the end deep into the man’s body. It never came out the other side. It just seemed to disappear with every inch that was plunged into him. The action brought more of the same, disgusting emptiness. If the creature said anything else, he couldn't hear it. All he saw, all he heard, all he tasted, all he felt, everything about him was filling with a crippling sense of nothingness. No hope, no joy, no fear, no pain, nothing beyond nothing, and back to nothing again.
His head felt as if he was falling in every direction at once, at speeds faster than he thought possible. Each iota of his being was consumed by the feeling of destitution as he went. He could barely get the thought through his head that this kind of torture was not worth the joy he had just felt at his attacker’s ineptitude. A joy he couldn't remember feeling anymore. There was only the clarity of the void.
To his enemy’s eyes, it appeared the opposite was happening. Each part of the frail body collapsed towards the hole made by this terrible weapon. Soon, his feet left the ground, hanging lifelessly as his torso fell inward into nothing. His head, once full of mirthless laughter at the misfortune of others, began to shrink and condense like air from a balloon until it fell into his chest as well. After a few moments, the blade devoured the man like the bottom of an hourglass consumes the top until all that was left was the attacker and a dying fire.
To the victim, there was only nothing, until even the acknowledgment of the
