//------------------------------//
// Death 
// Story: More is Less 
// by EpicGamer10075 
//------------------------------//

Death was always uncomfortable to think about.

It was only natural, really, that a living being would fear death, but there was far more to it than most creatures cared to think.

Tianhuo was sitting on a beach, during what was otherwise a beautiful day, with the Sun high in the sky and its light reflecting off the shimmering water of the ocean. The lightly-coloured sand lay all around her, uneven by all the waves that passed over it and the steps creatures had across it, including her own as well as those of... the one that lay dead next to her.

The middle-aged Gryphon captain lay amongst the sand, utterly unmoving, with his body covered in many scars, as well some very recent precise wounds, both made by blades and by flames, and both letting his blood flow into the sand to turn it pink.

The air around them was calm, but hardly eerily so despite what had just transpired. There were somewhat laboured breaths coming from Tianhuo herself, but everything else was simply the mostly tame flames of her mane, tail, and wings, the slow, calm waves that rose and fell on the beach itself, and the light winds that blew across it all.

It truly was a beautiful day, but...

Looking back over at the dead Gryphon she had just defeated, the Longma knew her duty required her to do ugly things sometimes. No matter how many times she had to do this... she’d never feel comfortable with it. In fact, she always found herself disgusted by the feeling of taking another’s life, with all they time they’ve lived ending in mere moments, and all the time they had yet to live cut short. 

Looking back out at the early afternoon sky, she reflected on the way creatures viewed death. Every one of them was afraid of it to some degree, but it tended to be a subconscious thing, a faint sense of existential dread bubbling just under the surface of one’s thoughts, and they preferred to push it away by focusing on the present. It was a fair stance to take, but it often left them unprepared for the inevitable consequences of time reaching them and those around them.

Even beyond feeling the icy grip of death close in oneself or their family... Tianhuo knew that they never dared even thinking about what it would be like to wreak that pain onto another. It was truly a good thing that life hardly ever required that horrible feeling to be wrought upon someone, but there were always those few that it did...

Of course, being a soldier, and a Champion of her people at that, often forced Tianhuo’s hoof, and made her execute another creature to secure the safety of many others, no matter how noble their intentions. The Gryphon she had just killed was a warlord, and she could only stop him by killing him, but she did know that he was only trying to conquer others to take back the honour and livelihood that had been stolen from his species over generations of turmoil. It was a foolish idea, certainly, especially with how war was often the reason for that turmoil in the first place, but he had honour, and she respected that.

It was truly the least she could do to have a proper duel with him, and give him some honour in his death.