The Last Othellan

If only I had known what was coming.

I ran for what seemed like hours on into the night. My feet tore across hills, woodland and, as the first light of day crept in, onto a horizon I knew far too well.

The sight that greeted me, however, was far from familiar. Othella was burning, the palace torn to the ground by flames as my eyes widened in horror. Help them. My mind screamed again and again. But the bitterness, the pain, the loneliness and the cold over the long years since I had left the only place I had ever called home welled up in my heart. My feet skidded to a halt on the damp grass and my body froze to the spot. I was more afraid than I had ever been. I wasn't going anywhere. Furthermore, I found to my disgust that I didn't want to. I felt almost detached from the place itself, and the people who raised me inside it. Nonetheless, seeing it burn was terrifying. I had never wanted this.

Transfixed with horror, I watched on as orcs streamed into a gap in the city wall. Then I saw her.

She was standing on the battlements, staring directly at me. Her flame red hair swirled around her in the wind, as the flames began to consume the upper levels of the city. She saw me. As I watched, her face contorted into a sickly smile. How could she be enjoying this – the destruction of her home?

Then it hit me with the force of a battering ram. She wanted this. She planned this.

A roar behind me shocked me back to my senses. Drawing my light sword, I quickly cut the orc's throat with as much venom as I could muster. As more orcs ran towards me, I killed them all, twisting my sword so it hit all of them in the throat. I stabbed, sliced and hacked my way through the creatures who had most likely killed what remained of my family by now, already trying in vain to redeem myself of that feeling of detachment from the place where I had grown up.

When they were all lifeless, I looked up to the city. The palace was disintegrating as I watched, and the town-houses weren't even visible anymore. A vile smell of ash and blood tainted my nose, and a spire of thick, black smoke rose for many miles into the cool morning air.

I couldn't stop it, not that I tried. Tears streamed down my face as I watched the last of the palace's turrets crash to the ground. My chambers had been in that turret, my window faced west. It had never been much, never a happy place, but it was home.

I stood for a minute or so, watching my old life burn away. The knowledge that I could never, would never go back filled the air. It was never my choice, a life of solitude, depending only on myself, but I had welcomed it all the same, it being preferable to the life I had lived in Othella.

 Now however, there was no choice at all. There was no going back. I wiped by eyes with the back of my hand and shook my hair back. What was the point of mourning something that I had lost long ago? I took a shaking breath and turned around. There would be no more tears, no more grieving.

Those I had thought I cared about had cast me aside many years ago. I had ensured my own punishment. What could I do for anyone else? I was worthless to anyone but myself, I had been taught that long ago.

Slowly, I walked away.

***

Waking with a start on the dewy grass, I sat up rapidly. The nightmare had been as vivid as it always was, the burning town, her  leering down at me, enjoying my pain, all recalled to me in sharp detail time and time again, the day my kingdom burned.

My bright green eyes met a pair of steely blue ones, looking at me in concern from a few meters away. I smiled at them, trying to brush off the panic that had temporarily settled on my heart at the nightmare. Luckily, Gandalf passed over my shock, smiling back cheerily.