Sacha had known Imperator Wend for a long time. Before Wend rose to power, the pair had been friendly. Not 'friends' exactly, for Wend's force of personality already gave her an air of authority that made it hard for her to have friends. But they had perhaps been comrades, and Sacha had looked up to her.
Wend had a way of warping the world around her. It was a kind of gravity that drew people into her orbit and crushed the unwitting behind her event horizon. Sacha had always thought it was down to how she saw things; the forces of history had born down on Wend and crashed upon her again, but the waves had broken upon her and she remained standing.
After fate has wrecked itself upon you enough, you started to realise the world was malleable.
On the day that Wend was crowned Imperator, with a simple wooden circle placed on her head, Sacha began to write her a letter.
"Wend,
I know that, in your mind, you are the hero of this story.
I know you would never say it out loud. Perhaps you have never even said it to yourself.
I know that you have every reason to be the way you are. I know your every action is motivated by justice. By fairness.
If the gods, demons and people of these lands do not recognise what is *right*, surely someone must teach them? And you have the will to do it.
Cool motive, still tyranny.
And cool is not the same as interesting.
So what? You're a hero in your own mind? Meh, I say to that. Meh. You may see yourself as the goodie, but you see everyone else and their suffering and their joy as inconvenient background.
For all your complexity, perhaps because of it, you still see yourself as the only real person in the world.
You have complex motivations? Good for you. But you are still imposing your motivations on people they will harm. Motivation, after all, is sometimes just another word for selfishness.
And that is *boring*.
Yet still, I want the best for you.
So here is how I oppose you. Here is how I resist.
I do not dignify your dullness by becoming your nemesis. Instead, I build the community I wish you had had. And I defend it.
And when you come for us and I stand in the wall against you, perhaps you will see the joy we protect and perhaps it will seem real to you.
Or perhaps you will choke on it."
Sacha burned the letter and scattered the ashes to the winds. Perhaps the sky would whisper its contents to Imperator Wend.
Or perhaps she would find out its contents the hard way.
Either way, Sacha did not owe her an explanation.
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