I had written this on another website back when i still thought dialogue tags were professional and not amateur, so um yeah ignore all the 'hiss' and 'growl' and whatever weird synonyms i used. I present to you my story:
The air whisped around in short breezes as I stood in front of Taltale Manor. Tonight, all the suffering, all the pain he'd caused me, would vanish with his death.
The front door. No, that'd be too conspicuous. He'd been preparing for this day for years now ever since I vowed revenge, becoming the paranoid old man I had called him on the night of her death.
With a darting dash upwards, I easily run several steps up a decorative column and leap upwards, grasping for a shadowed window-sil. I barely catch myself with my right hand just as my left hand loses its grip, causing a small chunk of the window sil to fall to the groun below.
No mistakes. This has to be perfect. Ten years. Ten years I've been learning how to kill just to take my revenge. It seems petty. Many refused to teach me simply because they know revenge won't bring her back, but in the end I triumphed against them all.
I carefully clamber onto the large windowsil, albeit with slight struggle, and start to lift the glass upwards. Locked, as I suspected. I quickly draw my blade, twirling it and quietly but efficiently slamming it into the wooden crevices of the side of the window. With a satisfying snap, the latch shatters.
I slowly lift the window up and slip in, closing it on my arrival. The room is dark and lightless, with not a candle in sight. I feel my way to the door, opening it a crack to peer inside. But the rest of the house is shadowed as well, while beams of yellow light lit most of the manor just outside.
My eyes widen in realization of my mistake, with the entire house suddenly becoming engulfed in yellow light. Strange devices much like a candle, but from metal and glass, line the walls.
"So you arrived."
My brow furrows in anger at the sound of the old man's voice. Somehow he's learned to harness the sun, creating flameless candles. I had heard he became a reclusive inventor, but this... this is an abomination against nature itself.
"Show yourself. I have not come so far just for a simple magic show. I demand blood!" I shout, my anger boiling over much as it felt when she died. I draw my cutless in a twirling motion from my right hand, flipping it and catching it in my left.
"There will be blood."
A simple phrase, and yet it somehow feels like I was shot to my core. This is the one man who can instil fear in me, the one man I have yet to triumph. And he accepted my challenge.
Suddenly the flameless lights flicker like dying flames, with strange energized sounds crackling from the manor. A large center platform opens up in the entrance room, and I quickly leap down the stairs to face it.
But rather than the man I had come to known, there was a machine of brass and iron. Not blood and sweat, but oil and sparks. But I know he's in there somewhere. He wouldn't accept my challenge just to be a coward. He's already been a coward once already.
And without saying a word, the vaguely humanoid machine springs to life with a powerful smash. I barely slide to safety, ducking back to see a portion of the wooden floor to be shattered. This machine has the strength of a thousand men, or ten very powerful ones.
I quickly thrust forward into the machine, my blade emitting a dull spark at contact with the brass. Suddenly an unknown current of some kind travels up my blade and into my body, forcing me to the ground in fits of seizures.
"Always the fool. This is the future. Not blades or guns, but rather suits of iron and brass! This is what it's like to be CIVILIZED!" A distorted voice comes from a strange ribbed device from the machine's head. As it finishes its sentance, it smashes its fist down onto me.
"You act like you've experienced real PAIN, but you've experienced nothing." The machine calls out again, stomping down onto my limp body once more as I spurt out blood.
With deep, heavy breathes, I regain my vision just long enough to say something.
"You think, that I haven't experienced pain?" I groan, using my sword as a cane to prop myself up. "You think, that because she didn't love you, you had the right to KILL HER?!" My eyes burn with fury, as I grip my sword normally once more.
"Well here's a word of advice! Next time you kill someone's mother, MAKE SURE TO CLOSE THE LOOSE ENDS!" I shout as I lunge forward with a flury of devastating strikes, cutting into the knicks and crevices of the machine and severing rope-like extremities.
"And yet you KNEW that when I called you a paranoid old man, and when I said I'd hunt you down and kill you, I was telling the truth!" I shout in a barely discernible blood curdling scream, drawing my revolver at the same time and firing a shot just as I pry open the center of the machine's chest with my blade.
...
But suddenly, I'm stabbed through the side by a rapier.
"So uncivilized. So PATHETIC." The old man growls, withdrawing the blade and letting me collapse. "I have done years of scientific advancement in just a few, and bullet-proof cloth was one of my first creations."
I reach for the revolver, only for the rapier to slam down into the back of my hand. I yell out in agony as he begins to slowly twist it.
"The era of the blade and gun is over. I'm civilized, like humanity should be. I could easily take over a small country with my inventions alone, imagine what I could do once I mass-prouce them!"
Civilized. Uncivilized. There is no real difference. It's all subjective. I thought I could achieve something here by being the better man. By the ideal civilized man defeating the man who admires him the most, it strikes the most satisfaction and the most fear within them both.
But I was wrong. My mother was not perfect, but she didn't deserve to die for sleeping with a different man. And she didn't deserve for her son to see it happen.
And I'm DONE with right and wrong, civilized and uncivilized, strong and weak!
The old man makes the mistake of releasing his grip on the rapier, allowing me to quickly tear my hand up to the hilt of the rapier and rise to my feet.
"That... You..." The old man can only mumble in shock, quickly drawing his gun.
"I thought the era of the blade and gun was over?" I grin from ear to ear, pulling the rapier from my hand in one swift motion.
A gunshot rings out in my ear as I sway backwards. Blood spurts from the shoulder wound and my vision constricts. My heart thumps faster and faster as I slowly walk forward, too obsessed with the old man's death to not savor the moment.
Another shot rings out, this time in my chest. I nearly collapse from pain, but quickly go back to my grin. To see someone you hate terrified, there is no better sensation.
I quickly grip the old man's gun with my wounded hand, switching the rapier over to my left. The old man impulsively fires off another shot, the bullet traveling through the hole in my hand from the rapier.
"Like father, like son."
And with that, I thrust the blade forward
