Egris,
Upon reflection, I am heartened by the fact that no deadline has yet been missed. That said, it was a coward's gambit, or at least a desperate one. Let us go with the latter. It'll bolster your ego without crushing my own. I had not the facilities or the wherewithal to contain or constrain you. I also could not bear the thought of you walking out the door never to return. Therefore, I leverage an entire province, something I know you know I care for, upon a return meeting. It does sound desperate when one puts it as such, no?
I do plan to return with the thaw. I'm hardly well. I'd made some progress and then experienced setbacks. You know the sort.
Do you, though?
I wonder. You were part of our lives for a short time. You have such a life of your own, power and adventures and responsibilities of a sort; blood and violence and a certain tedium as well. How much of it did you really experience in Myrken? The wild, uncontrolled magic. Did it touch you? Did it change you? I think you'd be much like I, at my worst (which is not a judgment). You'd want to harness it, to redirect it, to capture it and use it to fire industry and progress. I say it's for humanity, but in truth, it's about testing myself, about finding worth and value and autonomy. Freedom from doom and fate and the circumstances of my birth and environment. I'm not sure how to find freedom except for through exerting control, through proving that.
Oh, it's true with politics and warfare and everything else, but those are human creations. Simple logic shows the way. It's different with the preternatural.
How do you bear it, knowing all of that is out there? Knowing that no matter what conquests you might engender, there'll always be so much more? Another whole world that we can barely touch but that can touch us at will. I tried to stab it once, Egris. I spent a year's time training, learning, punishing myself in so many ways so I might become stronger. That's why I'm as good as I am, why I can stand to you despite being a mapmaker and governor and whatever else. I succeeded. After a year's time, I ran it through.
What did it avail me?
I lost everything I had left.
And for what?
Do you miss it? Do you long for it? Or can you shut out the noise with drink and companionship and simple, basic duty? March here. Put down that uprising. Secure yonder border. Again and again and again.
I hardly have the choice. It finds me. You found me. It finds me as well.
Of the two, I'm glad you found me, at least.
Glad is not the word I would choose for it. Then, though, is the question of choice itself. The entire point is choice. You see the dilemma? We lose in being passive and not fighting. We lose in being obsessed and devoting ourselves to the fight.
Have you yet figured out how to win, Egris? Or is it enough to shut our eyes and block out the noise? For others, perhaps, but for you and for me? For such as us?
Is anything ever going to be enough?
Glenn