XI.
Of Setting Suns and Rising Moons
[Dragomir - in the aftermath of the Battle of the Citadel 1214]:
Such an ending, i never foresaw: The heavenly cascade does little to purify the travesty of sodden earth - this mire of blood and excrement. Foul miasmas rise to torment me with visions of the inevitable, mirroring the fate of this mortally broken flesh. Of salvation there is no hope. And peace? The only such balm I shall receive is that which I find in this moment, just as the sweet rain wets my parched, broken lips and dilutes the iron-strong taste that shall remain with me now and at the end.
Glories I have known. I remember… or remembered. Their memory grows dim as shadows viewed through a diaphanous screen or reflections in murky and unbecalmed waters. Are these mine, these victories? Or are these but passing reveries - dreams of how I wish to be remembered and know that it will not be so?
I die a traitor to my chosen lord and, if I am even graced with the like, “recreant” shall be my epitaph.
[Command of the Crown Prince of the Void]:
Behold ye now the voices of the ten thousand thrice-damned.
Tell me not of great deeds you have dreamed, tell me now of the carnage, of the slaughter committed at your hand.
[Dragomir]:
I stand. Soft susurration beckons, (urgent and seductive). The chill encloses as the fog all about me. (Though seemingly alone), shadowed figures move in the mist and eyes gleam from somewhere beyond the entwined limbs of this arboreal enclave.
What sorcery? What vile mesmerist's jest now lays before me?
[Crown Prince of the Void]:
You ask for succor - I send you a sword on which to die!
You ask for vindication, I give you the means to end all life.
Equinox.
The thirteenth conjunction.
Alignment, alight from vernal injunction,
Embrace the tempest’s unerring compulsion,
Give succor to Shadow for callow light is hereby expunged.
[Dragomir’s Epiphany]:
From an unknown rampart, do I see
The advance of some unknown enemy
and I perceive that all exists within me!
[Dragomir]:
I will not take up this sword that you offer
I see the abyssic winds that rage in the Shadow
If the eternal torments of the void shall be my only succor
Let it be done!
No instrument of devils or divinities
Shall I be
I am of the earth
And the earth is me!
The voices of ten thousand thousand void-lost souls scream in supplication.
Innumerable, unknowable inflictions - this my beckoning damnation.
Bloodied at the stone foot of the dais,
Of She who reclines resplendent in silk and steel
Masks of destroyer and mother both adorn her tantalising form revealed
Now unto me:
[Prayer to the War-Goddess]:
Aid me, Mother War, you who have seen the fires of my soul.
Grant me strength to be stalwart in the face of such sweet temptation
And not be swayed from the course of unalterable end...
[Bellum Dea speaks]:
Embrace the pain of corporeal flesh
Return the soul to the temple of unrest
Stray not and seek no refuge
Drink deep from the cup that you cannot refuse
This prophecy that has now come to pass
Shall see that these breaths are your last
Savour each and every rasping exhale:
Your heralds to lands beyond the veil.
[Dragomir]:
I return…. the plains of existence falling away beneath my feet.
Stoic glee for now I am free
Though bound by the chains of mortality
Once again, I can see
The bodies of those that have preceded me.
For what have I fought and died?
I know not, though a servitor’s role denied,
(And) realised, that though significance resides
There is no great meaning to life.
None hath won, for all is one!
Seek not the shadow nor the sun,
For all is one.
All is one!
