Thrice Bitten, Forthwith Forevermore Shy.
Ruminations, or The Morality of Conflict.
Is he defined by his physical design, or the soul bound to it? Is he merely the sum of his parts, or the culmination of his achievements? Dare one even assume he is nothing more than a miserable pile of secrets? Consider, if you will, that the subject of what a man is, is secondary to what defines a man. For we rarely focus upon the material, the stone from which grand marvels are carved, but rather upon the method, and the skill of its creator.
A century past, there was one such man whose soul was tempered in the fires of the greatest conflict one might face; The conflict of good, and evil. For it was unto him, a trained knight of the Brotherhood of Light, a grand task was cast down: To reconnect the land of man to that of the angels, and of the Father Himself. In such regards, he had felt justified in his actions, however cruel, or greedy, or vengeful. There was no moment of remorse when his barbed whip sawed through the jugular of the Lycanthrope Lord, nor did he shed a tear when he cast his crucifix deep into the ribs of Camilla, Queen of the Vampires. No second of remorse for his brethren who had died upon similar quests, only a passing glance to reach amidst their rotting corpses to tear free their most treasured belongings. As his power grew, and his will hardened yet more and more with each slain foe, he remained assured that his actions were still justified.
But in the real world, the lines of morality are blurred, and memory a plaything of those that would deign themselves gods. For it is unto this end that even at the end of everything, that the land of man was rejoined rejoicefully with the golden gates of God, that Satan, the serpent himself, had humbled himself in haughty indignation before Gabriel’s hand, that he was denied his one true wish: The return of his wrongfully taken beloved. Nor was he even offered a secondary wish, that being to ascend with her in heaven. Instead, he was left below, amidst the animals, and the beasts, in the chaos and devastation that he had sewn upon the earth.
In an ironic sense, upon the mountain of the Necromancer’s land, where the sun and moon and stars were mere tools of mirrors and broken dreams, all that was good in Gabriel ascended to the heavens, much like the founders of his order. While all that remained below was a husk of a man, and even that turned to ash as the cold corpse of a child, though plagued with vampiric ailment, hung limply in his arms. Gabriel was no more, and what stood over the smoldering corpse of one who would see himself strike the word of God, and all life, from the annals of history, was delegated evil manifest.
Now, it is understandable that without conflict, one finds themselves discontent, and disheartened. Within the ruined remnants of Camilla’s rubble-strewn castle, this shadow of a man sat atop his throne of bittersweet victory, and beheld the sickly truth of the world. For, in his quest to slay the Lords of Shadow, he had mistakenly assumed his foes were the source of a tumor, and with their violent removal, one might expect the cancer of Lycanthropy, Vampirism, and Necromancy to shrivel up and die. However, this immediate diagnosis was incorrect, and they were more accurately the first patients of a plague, and though their corpses were burned free of the disease, the epidemic would continue to spread.
At first, he had lamented, for his quest had yielded no fruit for either him, or the people of this world. But what challenge, what achievement would there be in forever slaying the dregs of darkness that slowly crept into his castle, with their heads bowed down in praise? For even atop a million of their corpses he would be seen as a monster still. Their willing subservience brought with it the title of Prince of Darkness, and as they slowly filled the corridors of the Bernhard Castle, this ‘Prince ‘ found himself wondering what purpose an army of such magnitude served. Consider, then, that these were an extension of his being. They were, as he was, a fundamental, and ever-present, cog in the great wheel of things.
They were neither good, nor evil, for such things are trifles in the face of the natural order of things. Is the night evil for swallowing up the sun’s rays, and denying the crops their needed light? Is the day evil for forcing the bats, and creatures of the night, to cower in their abyssal abodes?
Rather, what was truly evil was a will to upset the natural order of things
The Brotherhood, much like his previously misguided self, sought his demise, but then what? Should their chosen paladin or cleric exorcize his blood-soaked form, then they too would find themselves atop his still warm throne. The cycle would continue, albeit less stable, until eventually, the wheel of time would career off, and either one man, or one monster, would find itself stumbling the wastes of a broken world, wondering if it was all, truly, worth it.
To every chess board, there is the white, and the black. To every coin, there is the monarch of the age, and the symbol of his land. To every species, there was its prey, and its natural predator. He was the storm of the human race, the conflict to which man would temper himself against. The Brotherhood of Light would cast themselves, bound not by caste or heritage or race, but by goal, upon the towering walls of his castle, and would fail every time. The forces of darkness, corpses, and demons alike, would choke upon his tightly held reigns, before being set free upon the villages of man to raze them to the ground, lest those born of Adam forget whom their ever-present adversary is.
Therefore, the balance would continue evermore, and all would be as ordained in the world of both the natural, and the unnatural, until the end of time itself.
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