Long have I plotted in my mind what would become my final moments in this city. This destitute, run down, desolate city of broken crowns, rampant chaos, and at times, belligerent inhabitants. I did not expect this sensation to touch me. Nor did I ever consider myself vulnerable to it. But like an arrow that has found its mark, its lethal cutting head has found home in the softness of my soul. My armor was only a display, so easily bypassed.
There is a fondness that I feel somewhat sick to consider I should be without. Without the turmoil of Andunor’s politics, the writhing of its Ilythirii who thrash about, as I once did, desperate to find themselves in the midsts of a choking darkness and the lash of a goddess who sees her followers only as rothe, to be slaughtered and discarded.
Perhaps it is a weakness that in my twisted heart I should feel the loss of my close companions, albeit perhaps temporary, or forever who could know what fate should inflict upon me? But in the quiet, where they cannot see me, I allow tears to run from my eyes. A soft sob of loss that I perhaps always harbored but never allowed to crawl out of me. It is a starved and wretched creature, but it is also beautiful. It is the core of all that I have loved, as forsaken as a word as that is.
I have fought so fiercely, both in blade, and in mind, to protect this thing that I have so deeply cherished. I have dipped my hands into dark waters, and pulled from it horrible evils, I have robbed many of their lives to protect this thing, to ensure its flame ever flickered as a rebellious light in the darkness of this wretched domain.
Why should I, an Ilythirii, write in such a way? Like I am some sort of wayward paladin? I do not know. But it has been my discovery that beneath the mangled core of an Ilythirii there is still a strong soul that desires more than the death we have been accustomed to consuming.
Fear, greed, and lust for power can only fuel the soul for so long before those things become stale.
Even in my state of wickedness, and chosen evil, there is a center of me that longs for something quiet and peaceful. That all these works should have an end that is more than merely a grave. That a legacy is left behind that is more than a memory but instead fuel to the flames of others. In these ways, it would be as if I never truly parted.
I still recall that warm beach which I stood on with John Salamander. The sun was coming, but had not yet touched me, and he offered for me to watch the Great Wheel turn with him. That each cycle should come and pass in some pleasantries, that I should be in the company of my dear friend and not instead drowning in an ocean which I insist upon attempting to control. To have grown old and ancient and at peace.
Yet in that ocean my people drowned. And I could not leave them to the void, not before, not then, and not now.
So it is to darkness I have sold my soul. Judge me, all those righteous gods, who sit upon their golden thrones, sacrificing nothing, risking nothing, to give powers to followers who know that in their passing, their end shall be light, easy, and soft. It takes no courage to be brave when you know your ending is guaranteed to the realm of pleasant valleys, golden dawns, and warm winds.
I know my ending. It is wicked, cruel and dark. I shall be cast to the Abyss with my goddess.
And yet, this is what I have chosen. For a cause more righteous than any blind paladin could understand. For a duty more pure than any helmite. For a vengeance fuller than any Hoarite could claim to have. The truest hatred, exercised over the course of millennium.
For a fate Correllon himself knows awaits him. A darkness he tries to flee from, but inches ever closer.
I leave this letter to be found, with my writings, this expression of my soul which is a small way for this torrent of emotion to find some release.
Lolth Tlu Malla.
Faeris Xun’viir.