A Prince’s End

I don’t remember how it happened. Well, not exactly. I remember it was a sunny day though, the kind of perfect day you don’t soon forget. I was on a stroll though the dockside market. I had wanted to find an exotic ornament for my daughter. The afternoon sun danced across the sea and onto my skin, a light ocean breeze tempering its heat. Radiance. I walked in cadence with the sounds of the market, the calls of the gulls, and the clanking of my trailing guards’ armor, an unexpected, almost symphonic rhythm. I was smiling, not at anything in particular, just at the beauty of the moment.

Suddenly, the symphony died. All sound evaporated. I was deaf. My vision began to blur. I spun around to alert my guards, but they had disappeared. I tried to shout out, but I don’t know if I made a sound. My vision was all but gone. Blurs and flashes of black. The next step I took failed me. A shockwave shot ferociously though my frozen body as I hit the cobblestone. Total darkness. I was blind, deaf, paralyzed. I felt hands on me, hurried touches - civilians trying to help. Soon that was gone. Complete and total blackness. Then, out of the void, came a whisper, a whisper that echoed through the darkness. I don’t know if I was hallucinating, dreaming, or just dying, but I heard one final sound before the end. A child’s voice, a girl’s, not unlike my daughter’s. “Valar Morghulis.”