Thoughts in Disarray

Originally Posted: 11/18/07

The chambers are empty, their death spilled from long barrels. It burst through flesh and bone and freed the souls of all the folken who lived in Tull. There is a sadness in that death, but nothing so profound as what I have encountered before. It seems like a millenia since I was born, but it may have been an aeon, perhaps only a score of years. Time is funny here. It stretches and contorts until it becomes as meaningless as the spoken word. This is no place for a child, no place for nascent life to foster and grow and mature. This wretched world where nothing is linear and everything is justified with a bullet. Where reality is subject to perception and nothing more. This is no place for a child.

But aren't we all children? The children of some God, or some Force, some Creator. I think that we were, but we have forgotten the face of our Father. Or perhaps, perhaps he has forgotten us. Left his blessed in this blasted wasteland and gone off beyond the Western Shore. Maybe toward Avalon, maybe all the way to the Gates of Dawn. I do not pretend to know the will of such a thing. Nor would I want to. Such knowledge is for learned men far greater than I. I deal in words, and in death. I put a stop to Time for those who cross me, and may whatever God they choose guide them to the clearing at the end of the path.

Est Sularis Oth Mithas, my honor is my life. What is honor, though? I care little about the philosophy behind it, say sorry. I mean what use is honor in this world? A world where men are stabbed in the back, where lies outnumber truth, and where it is better to reign in Hell, than to serve elsewhere. Do the knights and the gunslingers then perish when their Oath, their Measure, their Code mean nothing? Honor is of no use to a world like this, so must we be of no use as well? There is purpose in pondering this, because if words mean nothing and time means nothing then Honor is all I have. Est Sularis Oth Mithas indeed.

I saw ransacked Heaven. I watched it falter and die before the scourge of light. It vanished with a discordant choir of charyou tree, a cruci-fiction, a silent plea for mercy. I could not tell over the din which struck the final blow. All I saw was the aftermath. Dead, wasted, divulged of vestments and left naked, impaled upon the stake. So much sadness, and for so little.

She is gone, but the song lives on. Rampaging daemons, slow muties and zombies. Horros in numbers too great to discern that fell upon her, ravished the sweet meat of her body and tore the larynx from her lycanthroat in a shower of gore. They painted Babel red with her, and in the end I stood there at the twisted gates and thought of Tull. I thought of Mejis and Narsal and Sodom and Solace. I thought of Hes and Jador and London. Of all the places and the people I have brought to an end. But not like this, ye Gods no, never like this. You will know them by the trail of their dead, and the only comfort you will take is in the knowledge that if you are behind them, you will not become one of their dead. They didn't leave nothing...but the baby, and this is no place for a child.

The end of an era. You say true, I say thank ya. I am a man, or so they say, and if honor and words and time mean nothing then I suppose I shall continue on sheer desire. For man is nothing if not stubborn and the desire to live is principal among his basest needs. To exist, to continue, to trod forth and plunge on through. He ignores beauty and life. I did, until I found the child in the remnants of Old Eden, in the wake of their onslaught. Now perhaps I will stop to notice it, but not for too long. I'm late, you see, for a very important date. Someone has to stop them, and if not Man then who else?

Long Days and Pleasant Nights,
S.R.