The Light's Rebuttal

[Valannor 6345]

[!] The following letter would be written in address of that deathly Vicar of Xion - the parchment carrying a mote of warmth and charity, cold and scornful to those who dwelt beyond the light of the Heavens.

 

Spoiler

This post serves as a response to the following

@Sorcerio

 

 

 

 

 

In address to the Vicar,

 

I found myself somewhat excited by the prospect of your letter, given the intellectual debate it seemed to promise - and yet, I find myself wanting, for what has been delivered is naught but inanity posing as enlightenment. The tongue of the ignorant, professing to understand that which long has been lost to it, scorned by the Light for the primordial sins which it has enacted upon the realm. The stench of hypocrisy woven into every stain of ink upon parchment, in aims to thwart a foe and cause you have twisted and profaned all your own. 

 

Many of you hold fast to the belief that your works are done with a righteous mind, that the hordes of foreign demons and despots should have no foothold in the world of men. Yet you do so under the delusion of words woven by an intricate mouth of gilded lies, for while you assert the influence of fell gods should be removed, you seek to replace it with a seething light of the same covetous nature. This has led many good men, who in darkness covet the light, to be waylaid by seemingly noble allure, for they do not know the true ambitions of those they serve. 

 

It is curious that you, an adherent to the primeval ways of Xion, would rebuke our mission. Is it not spoken of in the blackened texts of your Lords that it was Iblees who enacted the First Sins, and transgressed upon the mortal realm in errantry? Is it not decreed that the influence of Ruin, insidious and conniving, is to be challenged at every turn by your folk? It is the mission of the Morninglord that all fel influence be eradicated from the realm, be they god, mortal, or immortal. My blade falls the same upon your kind as it would the baleful Inferis scourge, the blackened tendrils of Ruin, or the bewitched Lykan. For were it not for the First Sin, and the war upon Aegis, the stain of the Betrayer would not have besmirched this realm’s splendor; all sin, and all vice, is born of It. Thus it is the mission of the Order to scour the whispers of Ruin from the hearts and minds of all, so that existence might return to those blessed days. You are correct - we wish to restore the Light, ineffable and impermeable, to the realm at large. You call it seething, covetous, scornful; the Light scorns you, for it is but a reflection of all that you have lost, and all that you could have been.

 

I have seen, firsthand, the way in which these things of ‘virtue’ look upon man. We are mere playthings to them, puppets whose strings they seek to pull for a moment, only to select a favorite few as their chosen toys. I have watched men and women, saintly and virtuous all of them, denied entry to salvation because they did not adhere to the creeds laid out by your ‘gods’. And yet those who enter paradise do so simply as slaves bound in eternal service to the warmongering whims of the one they foolishly serves while they were still living. Does it not raise the question that death may be a means to gain the spirits of men as tokens for the gods to barter and wage? Why else would we be afflicted with the throes of martyrdom and death, only to be ushered off to the very seats of the same ones who permitted its touch to remain upon our souls? And yet you make yourselves vessels for its power, whilst claiming to act on behalf of man — it is sickening. 

 

And so too have I seen what awaits us all, should the Light prevail. Do not conflate the Lion for the Mongoose - the warden of the Soulstream, She who governs the fate which lay after our passing, for He holds dominion as sword and shield of the Maker, not as the gatekeeper of one’s eternal fate. You mistake the nature of the divine for malice and childishness; the divine are primordial, ineffable, their beings unknown by mortal or immortal. Who are we, to fathom the primal aspects of the Heavens? One can try, and one may even partially succeed, but the divines are wholly alien in thought and soul. Even I, who hath glimpsed the raw and all-encompassing radiance of the Lion’s Sapphire soul, cannot know His plan in any way that mortal or immortal minds could truly understand. They are to us as we are to insects, and a thousand magnitudes more. Can the ant comprehend the thoughts and whims of you and I, who’s worlds are wholly different from their own? That we might even know a mere fraction of their aims and truths is a miracle, and one which promises hope for a world to come, and a world that could be, if it were not for Ruin. 

 

The Lion’s aim is for the Descendants to be able to choose for themselves how they would live - and so too is such our duty, to protect the right of mortal man to choose at the expense of ourselves, for each and every blade amongst my ranks is martyred in the fires of Ruin’s sin. You speak of our charge being sickening; and I rebuke your deceit, your hypocrisy, as you sit upon your throne of manufactured benevolence and deceit. Is it not the Dark which must subsist upon unblemished mortalkind as parasites? You feast upon them, devouring body and soul, destroying realms and families, and you would claim to act on behalf of man?! That is truly sickening. 

 

Your deeds leave the work half-finished and worse-off, for in place of those banished powers you assert the might of yet another threat to mortal autonomy and prosperity. Darkness may have initiated the battle in the days of old, but the Light perpetuates it; for the darkness, man can look at, but it is the blinding light which drives his vision away, concealing what it truly is. 

 

Are we then to lay down our arms and offer no resistance as you would slaughter and bereave? Are we then to sit back and allow you to take our lives, corrupt and condemn all that lay untarnished by your corruption? You admit yourself that the Dark was the aggressor - and the Light is, above all, a reactionary force within this realm. We perpetuate the Great War through our survival, through dogged refusal to surrender as you would drink from the soul of man as victory wine from a chalice. The Darkness might be pleasant to look upon, as too are the whispers of betrayal, the saccharine delicacy of deceit and personal gain to the detriment of another. It lies. It promises. It hides. It steals. The Light shines brighter, an eclipsing radiance to shine over all else, but it does not need lies. It needs neither promises of grandeur nor immortal being. The Light is truthful, to those who might see past those lashing tendrils of solar power, the same power which courses through my very veins. The TRUTH is not always pleasant, Ashspawn. You of all individuals should know this. 

 

If you truly wish to expunge the foreign powers which hold sway over mortal men, then you must be willing to uphold that same vow even in your works and your deeds. Renounce your hollow servitude, however gilded it may be, and claim your seat among men so that together we might end the scourge upon us. Yet be prepared, zealots of Golden Sun; for soon I am to sweep across the land like the shadow of night, and when my work has come to fruition, there shall be no sunrise left to call upon. 

 

That you would propose we break our vows and turn our blades upon our charges is laughable - and it belies a darker truth, and shows plainly the insidious nature of your silvered tongue. You are the same as all of Xion are - and like them, you are in truth helpless to alter the course of fate, trapped by doctrines which serve only to harm and debilitate yourself. You have succumbed to weakness, and in desperation, scramble to find some manner of control over your bedamned fate. Know this, Vicar; Hear my words.

 

My Order has long stood against your covens, and your fel idols. Long has it endured against every profane incantation, every blackened hex, every haunting curse. We have driven the Arch-Drakaar to flight in terror of the rising light, and made known our truth; Bring your shadows, bring your darkness, it shall make no difference. We are inevitable. Like the future itself - unyielding, to march forevermore thereon. It moves forward as we always move. Every second an earthquake. Every heartbeat a thunderclap. Lift your heads, and bear witness to the most glorious of truths;

 

None can battle the DAWN we herald. Not even Ruin can halt the rising of the SUN. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Werew0lf 12019]

The Dark God considers to make a divine, godly rebuttal -- he ponders the thought, and realises that mortals are too below him. Malik sauntered off, still in his emo-phase. 

[TeawithFrisket 2625]

"The Sun Never sets..." an Elfess mumbles as she reads from her wagon.

 

 

[Morigung-oog 2305]

"With order comes tyranny. With the sun comes searing heats that damages even the most innocent of life. They are blinded by their own light. Quite humorous, in truth."

 

Chuckled an elf, shaking her head.

 

"The Paladins betrayed me. You've sown chaos and violated creeds that would have heralded disconnection back when the aengudaemons gave even the slightest of shits for descendantkind."

[Sorcerio 4595]

And in the fiery heat of the rebuttal, a response was penned by the instigator:

 

Do not impugn my honor by proposing I am of the Xionist flock, for they have long-since faded into obscurity, mentioned only in whispers by madened cabals who cling to shreds of forgotten knowledge. But such identities remain beyond this exchange, for I have doted upon the thoughts encapsulated within your letter, and have found them to only confirm my gravest of fears:

 

You assert that the gods are to man as we are to insects, and that we are to forfeit our will with only trust that man’s best interest will be maintained. But this is fallacy, for men and the gods were made alike; only in light of the cataclysm of Aegis have we grown to see them as beings of greater power than we, for they have woven that delusion deep within our hearts and minds. In truth, it was man the gods most feared and coveted in the beginning, the Enemy greatest of all, hence his instigation of chaos among the Brothers of Old. He, too, was of the Light, even though his dominion came to darkness and corruption in the end. But that primordial desire to rule and have a domain of his own, it lingers in the hearts of all who are born of The One, and this is evident by the many suffusions of boons within our realm, each one a desperate scramble to claim dominion over mortal men. 

 

We may not fathom the ways of the gods, but do not fall prey to the belief that they know us better than we understand ourselves. Your Lion claims he is for man, and perhaps that is his deepest intention, yet he knows not our ways nor can comprehend our potential, for he is not of us. How can he say he cares for our freedom, when he has stripped freedom from other men who have dared to stand against his mission and pursue their own path? He seeks to control that which he does not understand, and thus his vision of freedom dramatically contests our own. 

 

So tell me, Espouser of Gold, what shall your Lion do when all is said and done, and the last resistance of men has been banished beyond oblivion? Do you truly believe he will cast away his hard-earned dominion? No – he will seek to preserve it, to make it everlasting, as any despotic power. On that day, the farcical shroud of mercy will be cast aside, and free will shall be left as a smoldering remnant in the wake of a seething light. Man will have forfeited his freedom, and we will be left as slaves. Even now, you are played as a pawn upon a board, bound to the whims of an oath which, though perhaps you share in sentiment, are not written by your own hand, but by another, distant one. I do not wish for man’s fate to be woven by a hand who shares no part in it. 

 

Your words are condemning, but they shall not stand against the might of Man. When my deed is done, then I shall rest, and shall not return. Divine and demonic, light and dark, none among them shall linger any further in our world, and there shall only be Man to stand against the Void. But until then, you have only to see me rise to the height of my mission and creed; and it shall be greater than any yet mustered among the descendants, nor those who dwell in our lands. 

 

Thus is my promise unto you, O’ Scion of the Light. Know it well. 

 

— Vicar of the Flame in the Shadow