Sun Jun 01, 2003 11:44 am
The weak are merely the stepping-stones for the pure.
It had been a conglomeration chiseled from torture, from the lust for pain and blood, from the need for those things he found truly amusing. The symbiote was one in the same -- for over a century, The Black Seraph had been aligned with the parasite. He had needed nothing else. Lives were but things he could waste, culture, manipulate, and then destroy, if only for the fun of it -- creatures meant nothing to him. They had meant nothing to him ever since he had become one with Shadowdancer.
And the pure?
He was the holder, and the parasite, his key. It had been his stairway to power -- multitudes of it. It would continue to be his path, his servant until death, his assured ascension to the Pantheon, and there, it would be his weapon and army. Gods would bow to him, he knew. They would bow, if only to offer false promises. Their heads would be his to display, to remove and brand as badges of cosmic omnipotence. It was a process that he knew would take centuries, but the day of his death would be the day he would be born anew in a throne above gods. Insanity meant nothing -- it was a venue of pleasure. Let them think it was a weakness. To Cecinifien Audmathus Xhevus, the Black Seraph, insanity was absolute strength. Those too meager to embrace the culture of delusion were worth as little as the sane. Their blood would be spilled in time.
The pure are but the servants to the purely evil.
Perhaps they all thought it was a sword. Perhaps they thought it a worthless piece of art, and if so, they would die in the grip of their lies. He knew what they didn't. Let them call him a fool, a beast, a demon. How palpable would their assumptions truly be when he was their ruler, judge, and murderer?
If there are corpses to be made, then let us pile them into pyres of proof.
Fires needed but a spark to birth them. Here, he knew, in the dusky breast of Myrken Wood, amidst the cattle of sun-walkers and falsified puppets, the flint would strike, and the fire would catch. He was patient enough to strive for precision.
It's only a matter of time, my lord, and we have as much as we need. Certainly, they did. And if only Audmathus knew how he was just as worthless as the masses.
If weapons could smile -- if parasites could smile -- then Shadowdancer would have surely been grinning.