Easier

There is no escape. There is no escape. There is no escape.

Though my legs carried me through the woods despite the entrails falling out of my abdomen, a voice in my head repeated that chilling truth.

There is no escape. There is no escape. There is no escape.

"You don't know that!" No one responded to my hoarse exclamation. Of course. There was no one around to hear my last words. Well, no one around except my relentless pursuer.

"Please..."

This time, I did not even bother looking back. He was there, right behind me. My broken body, desperately clinging to life, tingled from head to toe. Through blood gushed out of me in crimson waterfalls, I stumbled onward, feeling no pain despite being in the maw of death.

Could my voice be heard anymore? Even by the witness to my sure demise? How pathetic my last moments will be. Why would I not stop begging and pleading, as pointless as it was? If I had spared my vocal cords from the strain of my tortured screams, would I be able to deliver last words amounting to more than the ragged breaths heaving out of my chest?

Even when I finally fell on the ground, my body still twitched, in search of any way out. My broken arms dug into the mud like the front limbs of a small animal. A futile exercise, but what were probability and chance to a man mere seconds from death? With my path ahead more certain than ever before, even the smallest motion was a new possibility. A new hope.

Was this what I wished for when I decided to become an adventurer? Was this the price of my quest to become a hero?  Was this the destiny written in my stars by the cold hand of fate? If this was all that, then so be it. It was time to face the end tailored just for me.

I turned around and faced him. At last, my body stilled as my vision and mind faded into nothingness.

There is no escape. There is no escape. There is—**