• “Heed me, child.
    They called me Armonde, Champion of the Blessed Mass Crusades, for they seen me before as that noble man of All.
    However I am known now to myself as Drast, this infernal beast, and that is what you shall call me by.
    The name of my birth is to be uttered only in past tense, for I have long since laid that man to rest.
    The Temple blessed me for my acts of faith and sacrifice with a deathless mortality.
    They bestowed this gift to me for years of dedication and loss I endured for the sake of the temple.
    I know not my own child, my beloved dying while I was at war;
    my son stripped from me before I could ever set eyes on his face
    as I continued my fight against the enemies of All,
    the sons and daughters of the heathen Lord of the East.
    My return to his side was looking to be far more intangible
    than even my faith, so his upbringing became the right
    of an undisclosed convent far in the Southern Tribe‘s lands.
    There, the spawns of the South are known to casually dine on the meat of the faithful,
    our bones carved and crafted into ornamentation
    for use in communion with their spirit-gods.
    My fears dare not surface; even the most powerful of my heart’s anxieties could not bare the strain of my soul’s sadness.
    As payment for my devotion, all I wanted to do was die,
    for I am in pain always.
    Wounds I cannot even remember plague my flesh, shadowy thoughts tear my mind.
    They said I was to live on so I may carry out further acts of righteousness.
    They called my murderous exploits holy deeds, but I knew days past to call them sins.
    Sins I alone must atone for.
    I was not killing for my All, I was killing for the Temple and my own selfish ambitions.
    Even if it is true that I was indeed killing for my All, why would any god ask such a thing of his people?
    Their blessing is now my curse, for I am not to die until I slay a deceiver, who was to come as a false Son of All.
    Twelve male children I did strike down in my search of the false Paragon, each of whom shown great prowess uncanny for their age,
    no, anyone in all the land.
    I know full well their strength, for they battled honorably in their defense.
    All but the one‘s blood who I did spill last, who kneeled before me and refused to retaliate.
    He gazed into the eyes I wore so cold and smiled lovingly while saying:
    ‘I know not your reasons, but you must be doing that which is holy. This I believe, for no man sane would do this save at the command of his god.’
    I struck him down, as he was challenged and thus wrote his own demise by not acting against me.
    Yet I knew afterwards when I did not slump to the ground in necrotic slumber, that he was innocent.
    They were all innocent, yet they all died a blasphemer’s death at the end of my blade.
    Not one of the twelve I rendered unto death was this One.
    For I am still here.
    I refuse to kill a babe of any nature ever again,
    damned or saved,
    so therefore I am to never die as a man.
    I am to suffer until he meets his end, regardless how that is achieved.
    The tattered rags you see me in is a crusader’s funeral vestments,
    I wear this always because I am ever prepared to die.
    To lay down my life for redemption, death is my only penance.
    Peace for this man,
    this unredeemable creature,
    is not to be, as you have been told.
    For I am not allowed to be laid to final rest by gross design of my own masochistic will.
    I am not a martyr.
    A martyr?
    Is he not blessed with the gift of eternal rest for his noble sacrifice?
    I am by no means this kind of man,
    for I am no man at all.
    Prove it I shall, with my next chronicling.
    I confessed to a judge all twelve counts, and twelve times he did carry out my sentence.
    He said I was to be hung from the gallows,
    that I indeed was,
    as is customary in this land
    for unjustly ending the life of an innocent child.
    The Voices did not vouch for me,
    for they said my will was my own;
    ‘it is between he and the All.’ is what they claimed.
    Of all their hypocrisies, I confess that this was not an empty testament;
    even I agree with them on this matter in the purest of heart.
    I had a choice. I was to pay for my transgressions made against such innocence.
    After the first of my executions, I was proclaimed dead by a physician.
    Yet before they could cast dirt upon me, the fires of life ignited the battering winds within my breast’s furnace once more.
    And again, eleven more times I did perish. This I would not wish upon even the most loathsome of my enemies.
    Yet it was what I deserved.
    I would die infinite deaths, and even in the grips of madness I would plead to them
    to allow myself to suffer more on behalf of every innocent life taken in this world.
    Be it then or here, it is what I desire.
    The judge, in his eyes granted me mercy.
    Yet it was not the mercy I called to.
    After I passed for the twelfth time, he proclaimed that
    I had paid my debt.
    However, he could not ever release one branded for death back
    into the world of the free and lawful,
    As the All-Law states that
    ‘unless a prisoner was forgiven by the Temple,
    one marked for execution could not be set free without a Holy Pardon.’
    The Voices remained mute, to no astonishment of mine, as I now expected this of my former brethren.
    The judge decreed that I was to fight in the pits reserved for the prisoners who sought freedom,
    but could only earn it through bloodshed.
    Is it not a beautifully written poem of justice,
    that you should send a murderer to earn his freedom
    by sending him to kill for the pleasure of the masses
    who cried for his death but days before?
    If this is the way of justice, I say it is built upon mortal depravity.
    I am not to spit on the earth, for it would be too disrespectful a gesture to my very sputum
    to force it to fashion clay with the dust
    of this world.
    This world?
    O, whichever proper god will hear my cry,
    I wish to be taken from it!
    I live to this day only to serve the child I was to destroy,
    to lay down my life on his calling.
    Be it even for his own amusement,
    I would endure the pain that is passing
    and resurrection at a whim,
    just so I may find comfort in knowing
    that he shall not die by my hand.
    I will allow him to live so he may lay his own path and walk upon it as he pleases.
    I will allow him to live each and every time I am to perish.”