22
Antomír savored the pain, the blood flowing out of him from countless wounds. He no longer worried about the nature of those wounds. He had, for a fateful moment, when he was pierced through the first time—a moment of shocked indecision had cost him his life. Again.
But the intensity of this sensation was worth it. Before, blankness had lain behind all of his half-felt perceptions in the Realm of the Dead. Every time he had thought he remembered a taste of fresh venison falling off the bone or thought he heard a woodpecker torturing an oak tree, the memories were like mist burned away by the sun. Now, as he lay propped against a boulder, he reveled in the flow of blood, the fiery agony of every moment of his spirit-body’s final fading away. Every moment, as he bled out, was a glory.
