Author: uNity
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T'was in the midst of a harsh winter's night that, stumbling around as quietly as a common mouse, I fell flat on my back, a contraption's fault, on which I caught myself inadvertently.
"Drats, said I, surely this is the work of Fate, for I am quite the nimble fellow!"
Aching and panting, I looked to my feet, and lo', there sat a jewel case. Nostalgia, in the ways of snakes who've long sought dinner, emprisonned me in it's grip and twirled around, inside my head, as I read, printed in fading colors of worn down memories, the words "Quake 2".
My mind, swift and cunning, threw open the lavish stories recorded and stored within, locked away for just such nights, stories made more extravagant by the passing of time and the rememberance itself.
Stories of a younger me, leg broken, blank cast, staring, concentrating, my gaze fixed upon the blinking reds and blues and greens of my computer's screen, as they animated heroic portrayals of ordinary people, made extraordinary by their feats in the world of the nether.
Another, of a friend I once had, dear and sweet, as most childhood friends are, and his sheer enthusiasm at the thought of my coming. In his basement we sat, and as he taught me, as I learned from him, our friendship grew, a growth so rapid it was only matched, nay, trumped, by my passion.
Yet more, this one of lessons, barely an hour, a game or two, not even three, a great of greats as only I could imagine their greatness, kneeling down, as an attentive father, and helping me reach the heights from which he'd already soared. His aid, obscure in nature, words of such wisdom they are bland and empty until, idle tuesdays and months of toil later, the deep hits and, as sudden as the first light always is, illumination, wisdom. Brilliance.
Others still, clans and groups, sometimes friends, sometimes not, enemies working together for a goal, the enemy of my enemy, as they say. And me, at the center of it all, rising, lucky and oblivious to everything, mostly lucky, rising incessantly until, as I sat faced with insurmountable odds and panicked, the great Gods, perhaps not Gods, smiled on me and cheered me on. Victorious, moments of greatness, fleeting, fleeing, as they become memory, as they grow wild with exaggerated emotion and baffling exercises in lack of humility, inner at least.
Then, bitterness, creeping and violating, inside me, working and bleeding, killing my will, bending it, the advent of Ego. Demons held no sway over me, yet Ego prevailed. And so, the downward ascent, for no spiral could contain it, began.
The elitist among us.
It is the rise I miss. The ascension. There is no going back. Much as a raped virgin, the twilight has passed. There is no going back.
T'was long ago, lost in oblivion, that I rose from innocence. How I wish I could go back, do it again, over again, always, for there was no greater joy than passion's discovery, and there never will be again.
How I wish I could go back.
There is no going back.
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