Mea culpa.
Nov. 17th, 2009 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yukieJan has used this place before as a confessional, and tells me I am permitted to do likewise. For the sake of my own peace of mind, if nothing else, I will.
The tale is told that twenty-five years before the Greyland incident, a massive earthquake shook Lea Monde to its foundations, killing every soul within. If that were the case, the city whose streets I walked and whose heart I sought to grasp for my own would not have been one of standing towers and still-lit forges. The Spellsong is a powerful thing indeed, but in the face of the very earth moving beneath a city, what can even the strongest enchantment prevent?
I thought at first that Inquisitor Merlose's theory - that the seismic event might have released a poisonous vapour from earth and choked the city to death - was a sound one. I now know better.
She is not a foolish woman - far form it. But what truly murdered that city is beyond what any could ever have imagined.
The knowledge of it drove me completely mad. By the time Jan informed me of the truth I was already mostly mad, so the blame does not lie with him.
The truth is this:
Cardinal Batistum was responsible. The great and pious leader of the Reformed Church of St. Iocus, Batistum the Upright and Noble, Batistum the Holy, murdered that city with his own words. I was not the first of his men to reach out for the Dark and try to grasp its secrets for my own. When I was but a boy in the Academia, my heart nearly untroubled and my father not yet dead, they murdered the city. That Cardinal and his Archbishops, and the highest-seated officers of the Holy Order of the Crimson Blades, conducted a ritual according to a Grimoire they had but fragments of. In exchange for the lives of the Archbishops and Commandants, Batistum struck the deathblow upon each and every soul in that city. They blamed it on the 'cultists' of course, those deaths. Blamed it on a curse cast by the previous Sayyadin...that was Losstarot, incidentally. His appearance belies his true age...
...But I am getting off track.
T'was no earthquake, no venomous breath of the very soil that choked the soul from every man, woman and child of Lea Monde. It was a death-curse, and Batistum paid for it. Why else would he send us to fetch for him the Gran Grimoire? He thought it held the secret of immortality, the secret that might lift the curse that fated him to rot as he breathed, from his soul outward. There is no ill intent that can be sent out into the world without somehow finding its way back to the source.
I know this well.
The old man hated the Kindred beyond the telling of it. I would not have sought to hide what I am, were that not the case. I dislike vanity, and fussing about with malodorous dye is hardly my idea of a constructive use of my time. But fuss I did - had I not, I would never have achieved the rank I held. Had I not, Batistum would have looked upon the half-breed soldier before him and bid the tainted whelp begone.
I will no longer hide what I am. I cannot.
Batistum is dead now - the weight of his crime was too great for High Inquisitor Heldricht to ignore, and when he denounced Lady Merlose as a traitor and a whore, it was the final straw. Together with LeSait, she plotted against him, and his demise came at the hand of another 'dirty-blooded' half-Kindred - Jan.
Even the Cardinal - both Psychopomp and Carnifex of the Iocan Church - is not above Law.
...When I discovered the truth about the man - that what I had always suspected was true, that my doubts were not sacrilege at all but more than warranted - when I discovered that my Order were little more than butchers or pawns in the eyes of the man - I lost my mind utterly. I was well on my way to losing it ere I set foot within the City of Shade and Her embrace settled about my mind and heart, tearing from me any illusions I might have had about what shadows fell upon my soul. I denied those shadows again and again, and in the end they would have devoured me utterly had Agent Riot - had Ashley not struck me down.
...In the end, Samantha begged him to save my soul. So too did Losstarot... It was more than I deserved.
But here am I, no longer the 'dark angel' of the Crimson Blades. I fell as any such angel might, and the proof of my fall and my impossible resurrection lies on my back. The Rood is not mine to bear, but She has marked me as one belonging to her.
She took me to Her embrace - only the heavens know why. I am hardly the worthiest of sons...but She is the Lady of Outcasts, among other virtues, and I was one and Jan was one. Perhaps we were spared because of this.
And I am...of Her line. Distantly related, not a direct descendant as Losstarot, but I am blood of Her blood - remarkable, that. That one such as I should be...
...Forgive me. I know not why I've no capacity to stay on track. I suppose I am bemused. Bemused, still, and astounded that the two whom I wounded most of all, whose lives I stole without a second thought and whose souls I condemned to an everlasting twilight, forgave me without a second thought. Interceded on my behalf.
I am a knight, no more and no less. A knight I was raised, and a knight I will ever be. I am not the inheritor of Her veil, nor the keeper of Her secrets. And it is better thus. That I must ask why She should choose one and not the other proves that I understand nothing.
I confess this to you here because I must. That is what it means to be a knight. I understand now more than ever.
I would that my father forgive me for having become such a shameful creature.
I would that the Kindred forgive us for our baseless persecution.
I would that the City of Shade forgive me for raising my sword in the name of those who murdered its people without a second thought.
Lady, I am not worthy, but speak the word only.
I remain, yours in newly-reborn faith,
-Roméo Guildenstern
The tale is told that twenty-five years before the Greyland incident, a massive earthquake shook Lea Monde to its foundations, killing every soul within. If that were the case, the city whose streets I walked and whose heart I sought to grasp for my own would not have been one of standing towers and still-lit forges. The Spellsong is a powerful thing indeed, but in the face of the very earth moving beneath a city, what can even the strongest enchantment prevent?
I thought at first that Inquisitor Merlose's theory - that the seismic event might have released a poisonous vapour from earth and choked the city to death - was a sound one. I now know better.
She is not a foolish woman - far form it. But what truly murdered that city is beyond what any could ever have imagined.
The knowledge of it drove me completely mad. By the time Jan informed me of the truth I was already mostly mad, so the blame does not lie with him.
The truth is this:
Cardinal Batistum was responsible. The great and pious leader of the Reformed Church of St. Iocus, Batistum the Upright and Noble, Batistum the Holy, murdered that city with his own words. I was not the first of his men to reach out for the Dark and try to grasp its secrets for my own. When I was but a boy in the Academia, my heart nearly untroubled and my father not yet dead, they murdered the city. That Cardinal and his Archbishops, and the highest-seated officers of the Holy Order of the Crimson Blades, conducted a ritual according to a Grimoire they had but fragments of. In exchange for the lives of the Archbishops and Commandants, Batistum struck the deathblow upon each and every soul in that city. They blamed it on the 'cultists' of course, those deaths. Blamed it on a curse cast by the previous Sayyadin...that was Losstarot, incidentally. His appearance belies his true age...
...But I am getting off track.
T'was no earthquake, no venomous breath of the very soil that choked the soul from every man, woman and child of Lea Monde. It was a death-curse, and Batistum paid for it. Why else would he send us to fetch for him the Gran Grimoire? He thought it held the secret of immortality, the secret that might lift the curse that fated him to rot as he breathed, from his soul outward. There is no ill intent that can be sent out into the world without somehow finding its way back to the source.
I know this well.
The old man hated the Kindred beyond the telling of it. I would not have sought to hide what I am, were that not the case. I dislike vanity, and fussing about with malodorous dye is hardly my idea of a constructive use of my time. But fuss I did - had I not, I would never have achieved the rank I held. Had I not, Batistum would have looked upon the half-breed soldier before him and bid the tainted whelp begone.
I will no longer hide what I am. I cannot.
Batistum is dead now - the weight of his crime was too great for High Inquisitor Heldricht to ignore, and when he denounced Lady Merlose as a traitor and a whore, it was the final straw. Together with LeSait, she plotted against him, and his demise came at the hand of another 'dirty-blooded' half-Kindred - Jan.
Even the Cardinal - both Psychopomp and Carnifex of the Iocan Church - is not above Law.
...When I discovered the truth about the man - that what I had always suspected was true, that my doubts were not sacrilege at all but more than warranted - when I discovered that my Order were little more than butchers or pawns in the eyes of the man - I lost my mind utterly. I was well on my way to losing it ere I set foot within the City of Shade and Her embrace settled about my mind and heart, tearing from me any illusions I might have had about what shadows fell upon my soul. I denied those shadows again and again, and in the end they would have devoured me utterly had Agent Riot - had Ashley not struck me down.
...In the end, Samantha begged him to save my soul. So too did Losstarot... It was more than I deserved.
But here am I, no longer the 'dark angel' of the Crimson Blades. I fell as any such angel might, and the proof of my fall and my impossible resurrection lies on my back. The Rood is not mine to bear, but She has marked me as one belonging to her.
She took me to Her embrace - only the heavens know why. I am hardly the worthiest of sons...but She is the Lady of Outcasts, among other virtues, and I was one and Jan was one. Perhaps we were spared because of this.
And I am...of Her line. Distantly related, not a direct descendant as Losstarot, but I am blood of Her blood - remarkable, that. That one such as I should be...
...Forgive me. I know not why I've no capacity to stay on track. I suppose I am bemused. Bemused, still, and astounded that the two whom I wounded most of all, whose lives I stole without a second thought and whose souls I condemned to an everlasting twilight, forgave me without a second thought. Interceded on my behalf.
I am a knight, no more and no less. A knight I was raised, and a knight I will ever be. I am not the inheritor of Her veil, nor the keeper of Her secrets. And it is better thus. That I must ask why She should choose one and not the other proves that I understand nothing.
I confess this to you here because I must. That is what it means to be a knight. I understand now more than ever.
I would that my father forgive me for having become such a shameful creature.
I would that the Kindred forgive us for our baseless persecution.
I would that the City of Shade forgive me for raising my sword in the name of those who murdered its people without a second thought.
Lady, I am not worthy, but speak the word only.
I remain, yours in newly-reborn faith,
-Roméo Guildenstern
no subject
Date: 2009-11-18 04:18 am (UTC)I forgive you, Roméo.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-18 04:31 am (UTC)I will endeavour to be worthy of that love, again.
-R
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-20 02:35 pm (UTC)And man I didn't even notice he'd done that XD; goddammit all the coolness in my work happens when I'm not paying attention!
(also Hi ♥ i miss ye~~~)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-21 02:24 am (UTC)