I will not fear...
Fear grasps my guts and won't let go. Fear draws the present moment into an excruciating eternity. Fear becomes part of the blood pounding urgently in my veins, the air that I'm raggedly breathing. New doses are delivered with every blaster bolt that explodes in the masonry near me. Fear is everywhere. I cannot escape it.
Fear is the mind-killer...
'Killer'. Some part of me still finds the time to accuse when I send a shot screaming towards its lethal destination. Unlike the rest of me, it ignores the fact I target the source of another bolt. That in shooting it, I remove a risk to myself, and to my friends - the friends I dare not allow to trust me, the friends I dare not let die. Another part finds time to be scornful of the scruples of my friends, as they send stun-bolts while I send death. I keep my fire wide of the area where my friends are clustered, and seek to whittle away the edges of their foes. I must protect them from what I may become.
Fear is the little death that brings total annihilation.
Annihilation is all. My memories of why I am here, of why I am here in the dark, lit only by the progress of death, have faded to nothing. The past is dead, the future not yet born. It's not even clear to me why I have taken cover, why I should care that the blazing death should not find me, and why I should respond in kind. As I leap from behind one wall, sending blood-red light towards those who are, for some reason, my enemies, I evade another shot, which blows a crater in the ground behind me. Elation fills me, and I don't know why.
I will face my fear...
Fear drives me for cover again. I slam into someone's arm. Their hand convulses. In the red flash of light, I see the face. Contorted. Angry. Terrified. Unknown. My own hand squeezes, and ends him. His face does not have a chance to change before death finds him.
I will allow the fear to pass through me and over me....
Death strikes the wall above me, hissing as it destroys the rock in rage. Another squeeze of my hand, and a brief lull falls over where I stand. Without distraction, the fear grows in me again, sinking its claws in my throat and my stomach, throwing me up against a wall, making me gasp for air, which brings more fear.
And when it is gone, I will turn my inner eye to follow its path.
And then he is there, whispering in my mind, and the fear is destroyed where he treads. All emotion, all anxiety, all weariness cannot face him, and I am renewed. The fire begins again, and I dance out into it once more, adding my blaster to the chorus.
Where the fear has been, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.