survival

I am walking through the woods, a large sword strapped to my back. Behind a thicket,, the beast, and my enemy, emerges. He is large, half man and half wolf. When his blazing, yellow eyes meet mine, they automatically burn with a red fire of hatred, whose blaze of malevolence can only be matched by the blaze in mine. I remove my sword from its case. He gets out his archaic mase. I hurl myself toward him, wielding the sword and screaming the ancient battle cry of my people. He begins swinging the mase, and I can hear the wailing of its sharp spikes piercing through the air, the wailing of impending death. As I take a wide swing of my sword toward him I hit the mase, and metal on metal collides with a resounding clash. We stop for a moment, to stare into each others hate-filled eyes, fire begetting fire, hate begetting hate. Then we move, detaching our instruments of death. He swings the mase around again, this time low, so that I have to do a backflip to avoid it. I hurl my sword at him again, this time he blocks me his shield. His mase comes down so fast that I duck and it still scrapes the top of my head. I cry out in pain. He counters this cry with a deep and gutteral malicious laugh. I touch the scrape on my head and feel blood. This feeds my fire like kinling. I move toward a tree, and the mase that is meant for me deeply gashes a tree. I am almost certain that I can feel it screaming out in pain amongst the other oaks, and for a moment I feel regret, for having to do this, for us all having to do this. But then this wave is replaced by another one as the mase swings toward me again, the will to survive. I run a few yards away, to a spiny tree, and as I begin jumping up the branches, my back is toward him, and I can hear death's sound, in the form of a mase, but I know that I am not going to die today. It only takes a moment for me to turn around, block the mase with my sword, which would have instantly ripped into my large intestine. My enemy has a look of bewilderment in his eyes when he heards the metals clang, and if there's one thing I have learn, it is that bewilderment makes you vulnerable. So I seize the moment, I let the mase drop for only a second as I catch its metal chain with my sword and begin wrapping it around. It makes an odd sound, one that I have not heard since. My enemy is holding strong and fast, trying to retain his grip on his only significant weapon, but for however strong and fast he is, I am that much stronger and faster. Soon he lets go completely, but not before getting out another mase, smaller, but still deadly. And I say to myself, I am not going to die today, as I swing my feet around the tree branch and impale him so hard with his own mase, and even harder with the blade of my sword. Just before his eyes roll into that vacuous space of eternity, I see them, at the same level as my eyes. And they are not burning with fire of hatred, but rather, they are aglow, with the light of the times that have come and gone, with the light of knowing that he died trying to save his own life. He was not angry or vengeful . In truth, he would have done the same to me. He knew this. The only differerence was my time line went on further, and his had reached the end.