30 day writing challange

Day 1

Prompt-
Select a book at random in the room. Find a novel or short story and copy down the last sentence and use this as your first line of your new story.

At once, all the warmth fell away, and the life passed into the moving air.

The shivering body had become motionless and all that was left was a corpse and a slave, who was a learned man with many talents including being a very competent doctor.

He leaned forward and gently guided his Masters eyes closed, saying a prayer for his passing soul. The Slave tried to ignore and swallow down the bile rising up his throat at his own self disgust for feeling so relieved at his Masters passing.

Of course he could not blame himself for any of it for he did everything he could, as was his duty as a doctor caring for his patient, to fully care for his Master however cruel he was over the last 20 years. His master had contracted the deadly bird flu going around and if he had called for his Slave sooner, he would have had a higher chance of recovery more so then any other citizen of this Egyptian city.

Alas, he did not call for the Slave for his own pride had gotten the best of him. He had always relied on his Slave for everything for he was capable of everything, delegating his work onto the Slave to organise festivals in Pharos honor, to design his home and use his architecture skills to work his lands and make buildings of importance, to act as a scribe and tutor his children in all the history of the great land of egypt, in the philosophy of the great gods and goddesses and the politics of the kingdom. He even asked his slave for political advice when dealing with tricky acquaintances and in more private settings used him as a spy and/or bargaining chip to please his guests as well as himself. However, after being caught in his dependency on the slave and mocked by his own prison guard, he vowed to ignore his slave and find multiple new people to rely on for work rather then be seen as weak for needing one and only one slave's help. So instead he had called upon the inadequate buffoons of the temple who called themselves priests, with so called healing skills to cure him of his ailments.

A lack of judgement on his masters behalf,  possibly a midlife crisis.

Some workers came and took his masters body away to be embalmed and mummified. The slave knew he had to go inspect his masters tomb and sarcophagus to ensure it was ready for his masters passing on, for he designed the whole thing himself and his own perfectionism called him to look over every detail.

He pondered why he cared so much for his masters safe passage into the next world, he supposed it was a mixture of sick loyalty after being used to his abuse for so many years, as well as his own superstitions for the afterlife.

Once the Slave's ministrations were done he went back to his room and he lay down on his bed. Slowly but surely the day replayed in his head and subconsciously a smile formed on his lips. He may not be a free man but he was free from his Masters grasp and was now under his eldest son command. A man who he had brought up and tutored, a man who grew up to be more loving and respectful than his father ever was and man who treated the Slave as an equal.

He knew he would be free soon.