Note: this is an IC journal. It's only posted here for your OOC reading pleasure and anything in it should not be common knowledge, being kept in the privacy and confines of Morgan's home!
The pages seemed home-made in the dexai traditions of bookmaking. A certain estalar had made sure to give its covers an unique touch, even though she did not know what their intended use would come to be.
Chapter I, 18th March 308 AC
A reflection on matters most unparalleled
Today, I begin anew with reminiscence - it has been more than two years since I have last sat down to write, my previous entries lost to my own lack of caution. Admittedly, everything lost requires another book of its own, but today is not the day for rebuilding of the past. Indeed, the Holy City's burn and the smoking, rotting, defiled leftovers have taken myself on a whirlwind of events much more worth pondering on than anything before.
Though I did touch on an expectation as such in my previous entries, it was highly misguided. The countrylands, all as one, sing of the fame and fortune, even the roots of honour that I had so direly wished to be reigned by. Upon my arrival, witnessing the rusty cogs shrieking about the chaotic but elaborate mechanisms of the City quickly brought me to realise even the strongest whiskey would not wash down the bitterness of a false dream.
But why so awful and sour, one would ask. Truth be told, the path down the cobblestone roads between the tall buildings did not begin as such, not for me. Embers of hope lit through and down upon Greygate isle: my taking place within the purple-and-gold furnished halls was the most prime feeling I'd ever felt. Taking up arms of steel and a newly sharpened blade for the regal that was this City in its entirety was a piece long lost replaced within me.
Furthermore, my drive was recognised by those around me. It's as if the shine brought down upon my person reflected from me and toward others, enough for Seraphina von der Ebene to be the one to take up voice and say, to me, that there ought to be more service of my being within the knighthood schools. Though I would not accept anything but her own blood-cast cape, as if fearing her lack of guidance would show me stumbling and tripping the road ahead.
With the Violet patrols and training sequences keeping me on the streets, much like the beginnings of the training to don the Bloodcast, I began to see to familiarising myself with the citizens. The touch of their ever-alarmed gazes upon the steel armour was the very first thing to tell me something was direly, deeply wrong. Even the sweetest and pure-hearted woman I've met to date held a certain tremor and unease about me, as if only waiting for me to do something vile.
Soon enough, their fears would materialise before my own green eyes in the matter of weeks. The merciless punishments given to folk most desperate, the unlawful, unjust and most selfish actions of my own brothers and sisters in metal. I'd watch them with unease so rattling to barely keep from coughing up my own blood. And to then feel heartbreak at the realisation: I have done as much in my past and will undoubtedly follow them in their step.
Yes, I did feel the City's finest change me. It wasn't too long that I, too, did anything but give chase and beat down on the lost, forgotten and downtrodden, in a sick, feverish dream that it would make them change their path instead of retaliate further. And so on and on it went, the wheel of ever maddening ailor sort of justice. But then, I found my hand on another beacon of hope, seemingly purely by chance, but illuminating nonetheless: Rhonwen Cavia Kade.
It was as if all had fallen into place once more. I realised how strong the memory of my arrival to the shining city was - of the bounds that I felt a necessity to be reigned by, and yet how strong they made me. The very person of Rhon brought me to believe that all was yet not lost - the Kades could bring Regalia to change so easily, so long as they were led by her genuinely bright soul. The realisation of my calling came so suddenly - as her Palest, I would urge her to act on the realm's true best interests.
However. Many have overestimated their ability to shape history single-handedly and I was one of such. In the ever growing conflicts between the peerage and the commonfolk, the law and the freefolk, despise threat to existence itself, I felt a sudden disbelief for the very people I'd hoped to reason with. While the Lord Chancellor felt a rise in his pantaloons on the contemplation of seeing me nailed to a post, I, in turn, swore to bring my dedication to those who truly required it.
At a similar time, Rhonwen had decided to pull the carpet from my feet. Though this came as a crushing weight - especially hearing it as indirectly as one would be able - it ended up only strengthening my realisation that there was strength in having none left in the higher world for me. No reigns to guard the hope for eventual justice, but instead the opportunity to act it as soon as possible, here and now.
And so, while the guard commanders deem it necessary to storm through free bays, wounding and seeping deeper despair onto peoples already unfortunate; while they then return to their city to pursue more self-aiding deeds than the smugglers of the Crookback ever did; while the highest and most fashioned attire-wearing men do their best to secure their estates of the clicker attacks; while only those who can barely afford to eat are those to repair the streets…
I sit here, with my ribs digging into my flesh, disfigured from one of such ethereal attackers. This chapter should come to a close now, for I hear a beloved sweetness unlocking the front door, but lest not disbelieve, my journal, when I say I will soon heal to begin a hunt, whether it be clickers or monsters of an entirely different kind. And I'll be sure to tell you how it goes.
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