End of the Week

[Meatslopper]

End of the Week

((This is a POV story))

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((This is a POV story))

Tradition is dead.

The fire has gone out.

And now I lament.

The Dark Lords retreat from the fire, the blaze of the Horuset blood and soul left to those who have never known real passion, whores like Xulia, and fools like Seranaus who bowed and groveled before alien feet, whose death I held my palm and left to a Master that should have swung that sword. They don’t care anymore. Those that I once served with everything I could possibly give, just don’t care anymore. They sit atop their throne and look down at those beneath them and expect them to fix it, as if it wasn’t ever their duty to do the same.  Well, why should I? Why do I need to be the one upholding your vigil, your values, your legacy? If the answer is Tarimra, when has anyone but me invoked his name, his cause? I can’t fight this rot alone, I can only lose and lose again, and again, and maybe that’s what I should do, maybe I should stand the lone Warrior, maybe I should cry to the heavens and battle in hope that something, anything will change here. 

But when given the choice between fighting for your House’s heart or mine, I think I have to choose mine, my home, my place, my part of the Empire and ours are not the same anymore. I’m left with that undeniable conclusion.

You let it die. 

All of you. 

And I am alone. Those that were once the kindling of our fire have been burnt away. Faelice was one of my greatest friends, and she left, I don’t know where, I don’t know why, but perhaps she saw the future, she saw the desolation of everything we had worked to create. The Lord Hazlem was a terrible monster, who despite my platitudes and respect, was someone I could not ever come to like, but all the same, she was the demon in front of our most sacred fire. When she fell, the Empire suffered a terrible loss. Vayek who ascended to the throne in her place, was nothing but a shadow, a shadow with a sharp edge but too afraid of losing battles to fight them without every perfect little piece, they do not need a shadow, they needed a ward, an arbiter, someone who did not bandy with scum for political favours, but someone who put them down. Emlar was my closest ally and friend, but she knew the tide more than any of us ever did, and I have no doubt that when she retreated into her research, she saw what awaited us, and still, her abandonment of her post stings me. But I understand, I understand now more than ever that preservation cannot come from the war we waged together anymore. The last stand, if ever there was one, is not within Horuset. 

Horuset’s defenders, its Masters of Doctrine. Are those who abandoned their post too? One, Tutki to a wretched alien who should be long dead if ever we were allowed to swing our swords, all the while, as he claimed, tradition was his motive. Where once I might have respected you and treated you with dignity, you burnt it down, and in what reality do you think you can build that up, that you should lead tradition into the future after you already abandoned it? Oh, and the other fostered a traitor beneath his watch to both blood and faction, all the while preaching his sight from the Sith Gods. You couldn’t predict that, could you, Luvane? You can’t even predict what your wife has done in your absence, and you certainly won’t enforce your wrath upon her, despite being etched into law if I tell you.

That leaves the rest. It leaves Rekhen, a traitor to his blood, to me. It leaves Sarias, a passive wretch of a Lord who has never made a single action in her life and coasted by on placidity, rewarded for a defence that I and my Warriors planned, a whore of a Twi’lek, Leive who’s blundered more intelligence than she’s ever known, allowed Apprentice after Apprentice to betray us, to betray the Empire? Then it leaves nigh the worst of Alienkind, Nivalis, who long has earned their execution.

And at that point, who is left? 

Who am I fighting for? 

If there’s a reason I should hold my vigil over a rotten tower of fetid wood, fungi crawling in every crack and seam. Who is it? 

The Lord I serve has never cared. Not for training me, not for legacy or tradition, just the enemy out there, who, for most of the time I’ve known her, has been the voice to tell me no, to tell me to wait, to tell me that an alien ought to stand in my way, to restrict me from making a difference. The one that scarcely has passion or emotion, who has driven it from their soul and with it the essence of the code.  No. I see an opportunity to place myself where I can still matter. My Orsus. There it is, still alive, its soul still burning. I can’t change this house, it’s already rotten, but I can build a new one, one I can call home, one that I can bring into into the true grace of the Empire and carve out a reality I can be proud of, I can hold the Republic back and hope in centuries that there will be a place for me again. 

Another heart of tradition.

Another soul.

Not this house of charcoal that I once called a home.

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