[PointZero]

2211 AC
pg. 1

All I remember is flames, and the subsequent heat and screaming that an entire village burning to the ground produces.
I think it was bandits. That's what I've told Autumn. But in truth, I don't know.
I was young. A lot younger than I say I was.

Blood covered the ground. I remember what a blade piercing and tearing into flesh sounds like.
The crunching of a bone. The feeling of an errant ember touching skin and burning it.

I remember being frozen in fear, stuck inside the house I had lived in all that time, wondering if today was going to be my last.
I was hallucinating, I think. In the mess of flames, a wolf so charred it was black was staring at me.

Run, my instincts screamed.
You must run.
You must find an exit.

But there was none.
The Wolf and his maw opened wide, and clear as day a new edict imprinted itself into my system -

Fight.
You are afraid, so fight. Do not run.
Fight, until you are incapable of doing so.
Fight, until your victory is assured.
Fight, so the one upon the ground dead is your enemy.

I propelled myself forward without a minute more wasted.
Through the shadow, with a strength I did know I possessed.

I screamed. I yelled. I cried. I bled.
I did not see who tried to stop me.
I simply kept punching, the fires of what I once knew heating my back.
I kept punching until my knuckles bruised,
and until I was out of that village.

And I think that's when it started.
The fire of that day cast its ember in my heart, but so too did an anger and rage.
A burning hatred for the terrible luck that fell on my family, and for the good fortune that landed on me to have survived.

From then on, I think he has always followed me. It's just a little funny.
But it makes sense that the day I died,
he answered me.

Like for those briefest moments,
As the ice ripped the last vestiges of warmth from me,
I was finally in his maw.

I told 'Tesi that I'd write a diary.
I don't really know how to write one.

I guess this is a start.

[PointZero]

2216 AC
pg...?

Control is an illusion. Freedom is an illusion.
"Endure" they tell me. "Survive" they tell me.
"For him" they tell me.
It hurts.
"You're needed here."
Am I?
How much more?
"Your endurance is not a virtue."
It really isn't.
"Adding on to your suffering does nothing except break you,
and turn you into the tool you have despised desiring to become."
You're right.
How much longer?
We push, we push, we push, we push - forward.
Backward.
Everyone around me keeps moving on with these losses.
How long has it been since you sacrificed yourself for me, Cola?
Losing you has been an anchor on my heart that sends it into the dead sea.
And I sit with my anger. I sit with my suffering. I sit with my frustration.
How long has it been now since she took you from us, Galahad?
You were the person I put my hopes on the most.
I sit and contemplate how fucked up living to endure an endless war... so that we can die to fight another one is.
I think, often, about when I had that experience with death.
I think, often, often, often... about how much we've all had to endure since then.
My body is in so much pain. That's just what happens, I guess, when you're not enough.
I'm starting to break. In a way that can't really be 'fixed'.
Why am I alive, instead of the both of you?
The children are doing well, at least. Liora will be happy to be an older sister. I hope.
Freya should be happy for more nieces or nephews and so on. ...I hope.
I wonder how long it'll be, now.
Until I can finally die.
I've got a longer road ahead of me.
And a chat with Vinaska to make.
No more endless war. Need something more permanent.
I don't know how much more I can endure.
That's the least I can do.
Fighting's all I'm good at even if I'm hardly good at it, after all.
Might as well put it to use in a way that makes it so my children don't experience the same suffering I am.
Let me have my rest, when it happens. I've fucking earned it.
Choosing 'good' is so difficult. I'm still trying.