Treatise to Sermi

[satin 7600]

Spoiler

Anyone can read this.

 

Sermi,

 

I gather, from your bounty on Villorik, that you took enjoyment in your cursing me. You have taken a part of my soul. You have stolen that which makes me what I am; my heart, my emotions, my piety. The word you used was ‘husk’.

 

But, already, what I write is untrue. I am what I am, despite what you have done. My heart withers even as my intellect bristles. Sometimes I look back prior to your cursing me, and it seems that every emotion is felt in spite of, that is to say, that our mind eternally wars with ignorance, with doubt, with rage. What you have done was intended as punishment, but without identity, without humanity, you have reduced me to a perfection of sorts: you have introduced to my mind an order and purity hitherto unmatched, save in moments of religious experience. For what can be more divine than the truth? It is imperfection that makes us human. But it is what little we know that makes us what we are.

 

I write to you for two reasons: to thank you, and to explain to you why you will fail in your purpose.

 

I am now moved by what I think to be logic and intellect, and by objective truth. These are clean things. I cannot be wrong if I am moved by reason, and if I make a mistake, it is due to things I did not know. This is true of many people, too, but they may also err due to things like sin, or emotional attachment. Doubt begets understanding, which begets compassion, which leads one astray. But you have freed me from these things. So, for this, I thank you. You likely did not intend for this to be the consequence of your curse, but you could not know better. 

 

And now - your mission. Your simple desire to climb. Your infinite ambition. Your ‘One Truth’. You might think that, being removed of all but calculation, I would choose to endorse your line of thinking. But I do not. Those who engage in the Climb - Shadowspawn, Daemons, Iblees - do they succeed? Do they grasp that highest rung, the divine rung? No. How many times have the plots of the ambitious been undone by the actions of the pious, of the principled? When I look upon you, I see a woman in hiding. A coward. Even by your principle - Might makes Right - I see that you are wrong. I see one who must pay others to fight their own battles. And your undeath is further proof of this. You have given up your soul to Iblees. You have perished, and been reborn; fallen from him like a spark from a flame. A golden wind will blow, and you will soon be snuffed out. 

 

You will fall, as countless other, more competent versions of your kind have. For now, you are like a sailor wrecked at sea, clinging to the wood for fear of sinking to Hell. But your grip will eventually give way to the waves. You are a soul too far gone. Even the air you breathe is dead. You think yourself capable of Godhunt? You cannot even kill one Priest. You cannot even defeat one woman.

 

You thought I intended to join the Warlocks. The Warlocks! What folly. A Warlock may be worth five men in battle, but they are worth a hundred sinners in hell. I have always acted for reasons I knew not, spoken words I do not understand, pursued ends that I can neither fathom nor bear. That is what piety drives all believers to. And your accursed cult is all too understandable. You are driven by base humanity. You are driven by instincts and desires foreign to me, now. You have taken from me my emotions and feelings: and so, you have ruined any chance of my joining you. It is the imperfection of humanity that leads them astray, and it is their heart that is imperfect. But I have no heart. And so I do not feel punished. I feel freed.

 

I wish you well, Sermi. You have unwittingly blessed me. If I was capable of pity, I would pity you. But I am not. I feel nothing, as you intended. And I will feel nothing when I sever your head from your shoulders, and crush your skull beneath my hammer. We, the pious, will slaughter the Shadow, and bathe our feet in the blood of the wicked. 

 

- Serwa