The Madness of Kariel Mir'eranu

Someone here is lying to me.

I have no memory beyond these dark walls. I try to think, to search my mind, to grasp for any shards of memory that may be left, but my only reward is blackness, blankness--and the searing pain that seizes my heart and pumps poisoned fire through my blood. 

All I know, by instinct, by some primal knowledge written in my bones, is my name: I am and always have been Kariel Mir'eranu. Kariel for the slain, Mir'eranu for the slayer. Such is the nature of things on the plane of the curse of flesh. Predator and prey. Victim and criminal. Thief and beggar.

And my mother is the one who calls herself Lightbreaker, that too I know, in the dark scar on my palm and in the black blood that sometimes bubbles to the surface. That knowledge too is written beyond memory, with pure instinct in my cold black blood itself. The Lightbreaker who gives me life, the Lightbreaker who protects me, who teaches me, who lets me know what is true and what is illusion.

And yet some things don't add up. Some things don't make fel sense.

My mother tells me I've been here for a long time, that I made my way here freely after being betrayed by a motley rabble of former "friends" --Denouncers all, members of some ghastly criminal horde called the Argent Crusade--and left to die after being savagely attacked by a drunken Orc. They saw him coming and threw me in front of themselves like a living shield, a sacrificial victim on the altar of their own cowardice, and then the villain was upon me, grasping and tearing and kicking till I lost consciousness and memory.

My body is still covered in bruises and half-healed scars. The scars turn black.

But what doesn't make any sense is the presence of this idiot captive of ours, the sour and unrepentant Denouncer, who calls himself Brick.   I could swear he's been here just as long as I have, because I don't remember ever being here when he wasn't always hanging around feeling sorry for himself (and Gods only know why I haven't killed him myself by now, something always stops me, I even was so bold as to encourage my mother the Lightbreaker to spare his life), but he claims to have only been here for just over a week, when it's clear I've been here for months. Years, even. 

What's more absurd is that he claims to know me, he claims we were once friends, but he calls me by a stranger's name--Vlasta, or something like that, it's ridiculous, who does he think he's fooling? That's not even an Elvish name. He insults me to my face, claiming I am a Denouncer, a slave of the false Light, and that I was taken here by force, against my will (how is it possible? that I could ever go against the Gaze? Against the True Gods?) and that I came at the same time as him, just over a week ago. 

And it would be so easy for me to laugh at the very idea and run him through neatly with my sword if it weren't for one inconvenience: every time I look at him, every time he speaks, my blood runs a bit quicker--almost warm, blood isn't supposed to do that--like the time I drank dragon's blood in the woods before bringing the beast's corpse back to Mother for my ritual. And when he starts telling stories about this invented "past life" he likes to claim I lived--comes that very same pain in my heart and veins as comes when I try to look into my own lost memory. 

But I haven't lost everything. I see images, flickering like dying embers before my eyes now and again. And I know these must be memories, because there's nothing like them around here.

I see pain.

I see destruction without purpose.

I see rent flesh, the agony of spirit trapped in corporeal bodies, 

I see a black scar like the one on my hand carved into the earth, a horde of chaos overwhelming a marble city--

And in that city I see a little girl--no, she has no excuse, she's almost a woman--turning her back on her father and leaving him to the slaughter while she runs to save her own life--

I see soldiers, beating and murdering their own. I see an innocent boy sprawled in a pool of his own blood. I see rich and powerful men clad in red velvet and gilt-thread robes, sneering and spitting at me as I pass by. I see handsome and valiant men in shining armor, looking blankly at me in confusion as they turn away, and walk away from me, their arms entwined around other, smirking women's waists.

I see nothing but misery and evil in this world.

This is why I serve the Gods. These memories are not lies. This world must burn, be ERASED from memory in cleansing fire. This world has had its chance and failed. This world must pay the price. And when it is done we faithful will live on as aspects of the Gaze, and the impure, the denouncers, the heretics, the hedonists, the betrayers, will be ANNIHILATED.

Let this whole world burn. Let me strike the match.