Reflections on the Dįvonësë War: The Dįvįnë Will Bear Witness to Fate

Chapter 15 - A Time to Change Gears

42nd Day of Ope in the Third Month of Snow's Fall
4372 A.G.G. (261 Years Ago)

The Municipality of Bastion, The Deep Cities
The Continent of Hesijua

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On the Subject of Killing and Motivations

It's important, I think, to understand that not all killers are the same. There are those who would kill because they feel it's the correct thing to do; they believe in its rightness. There are those who would kill out of necessity; to protect family, loved ones, their homelands or themselves. Then there are those that kill for the thrill. For the love of it. They revel in the slaughter; they're thrilled by blood and anguish. Those who are always chasing the next high. The world's true monsters.

Some would say that most people have the "killer instinct". That we're all born with it. I don't believe that. Not all people have the ability to manifest that type of violence into reality. Not many could bring themselves to end another's life regardless of the circumstances or the particulars. The truth is that most people are inherently adverse to violence. It's the natural way of things. It's like the old saying that lingers among my people; the Knights of the Order: You can always find ammunition on a battlefield.

People would have you believe that in the face of adversity, when a person is left with little other choice, that they'll take a life in favor of extending their own. But I have seen that theory put to the test, and more often than not, seen it disproven in both men and mer. It does indeed take a singular type of person to tap into that kind of...darkness.

And there's no doubt in my mind that I'm one of those singular people.

Even after having my mind altered by drugs and drink; after being forced to change my nature with suppressive heka; after years of denying my nature; after fighting and struggling against what I was and removing myself from the things that seemed to vex my soul, all of it was for naught once I found myself standing before the old man within the depths of the Grand Spire. A man who was the embodiment of all that I hated, all that I was and all that I feared that I'd become. With ease I allowed myself to once again fall into the primal. And it was in that state of mind I lingered after I killed the Old Knight. I can't tell you how good it made me feel to hurt him. Euphoria distilled. My personal opiate. My...joy.

Yet despite all of that, I deplored the fact that I was compelled to do it.

That part of myself that I'd tried to keep buried for so long had once again been borne free. Fight had once again won out when flight would've been the smarter solution.

I had nowhere near the magickal ability or wherewithal needed to reconstruct the weave that held my anger at bay for so many years. And without it, I was as terrible and woeful as any of the monsters I would later find myself hunting as a munificence. I was the grotesque, who longed to be human again. And the horror of what I was, threatened to grow to vast new heights in the immediate aftermath of the impact of the thousands of tons of wicc that came crashing down atop us in the under-gardens.

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Samahdemn

The lower levels of The Spire were almost completely decimated by the overpressure from the flash fire caused by the mass of superheated boulders that crashed into the earth. The flames spread at a frightening velocity. Before I knew it, the protective wards I had surrounded myself with had completely collapsed under force, heat and the power of gravity. My spell weave had done just enough to save my life. Just enough. However, I still found myself undone and flung about like a rag doll. Everything was covered in flaming death. The sound of it all happening at once was deafening.