Inveniemus Viam aut Faciemus
Sometimes we choose the path we follow. And sometimes our choices are made for us.
In a small tiled room, deep within his tomb, the Warminister sat in utter silence. His wrists hung off his knees, his hands broken and shattered with splintered bits of bone piercing his knuckles. Small rivers of blood trickled down his hands and arms, intertwining with ebony tattoos and forming a small pool on the floor. Simon’s head hung low, his eyes shut, accompanied only by the echoes of his own thoughts and strategies. His mind calculated...adding, subtracting, evaluating…wiping away some phantom. Wiping away sorrow, and anger, and the memory of fallen friends.
The first lesson of warfare is that no matter what their rank, the foremost concern of a warrior is how they will behave at the moment of their death. Only after having accepted this fact can a warrior truly reach greatness. The way of the warrior, moment after moment, is the practice of death. Victory. Defeat. These are mere impostors and illusions. I know death’s secret. To conquer death, one must become death…one must wield his scythe. One must fill death’s quota faster than their enemy can, and death will leave them be to do their work. Death always knows who is going to profit him most…
Others speak for the best in humanity. I have endured the worst. I am tainted by blood and rage and death. That blood and rage and death comprises the armor that will sustain me and those who stand by me through these ordeals to come. The past is indeed prologue, and the future I behold is war. War against the Brood. War against Hammer Bay. War against those from On High. This is what I have become…and I make no apologies. Whatever comes, I and mine will not go like lambs to the slaughter…but like tigers.
And in surviving the meantime, I can only hope that the star-crossed lovers realize the freedom they’ve been granted. I can only hope that Talbot realizes my actions for what they are. And I can only hope that the severed branches of my family can, somehow, someday, be mended.
Sometimes we choose the path we follow. And sometimes our choices are made for us.
And sometimes we have no choice at all.