Isyra: The Last Outpost

I've never been my very own person, my very own being. In the beginning I was merely a part of a real person, a young man born into privilege and power; the things he never wanted. He loved a girl he wasn't allowed to have, he yearned for a life that was below his station; and yet he wasn't content in the idea that he could have it. I was still a part of him then, I felt the same as he.


But then we split apart, slowly... I began to have my own feelings, my own ideas; I fought for control and I lost in the end. Expelled, I was all but killed in his fear of what I was; twisted and deformed when I was first born I couldn't blame him. But I was angry then, so angry at everything; at him for rejecting me, that girl for never looking at me with the same eyes as she did with him, the world that spawned me... and deep down in my core I was angry at the man who caused this all to happen.


Bleeding to death in a manner of speaking and consumed with hate I was seduced by the siren song from a vast distance. It soothed my hate and my grievous wound; it made me feel as though somebody could understand the twisted creature that I was. I went to it, I traveled across universes in numbers I could never calculate, all to find the source of this song...


I found it in a dead little universe over one hundred twenty trillion years old; it was a huge crystal obelisk. When I tried to touch its surface I was consumed whole... and there I met the one who sung that song, the siren. Then I learned...


I was blasphemy, I was sin. A bastardization of the Human essence, composed of nearly all that was dark and evil; I had no redeeming qualities. But more than that I was composed of equal parts of two forces that should never have existed in balance; and then they weren't in balance, the Life Force that composed one half was damaged and burned, a good piece destroyed by the one who spawned me. I was on the brink of destroying myself, the very nature of my being was going to kill me.


I didn't want to die, even when I knew what I was; a monster and a freak that never should have been allowed to exist. But still I was too angry, too full of hate; I was blind to my fate when I became its bound servant. In return for my service I would be allowed to live, the damage would be repaired. I would be allowed to seek my revenge against those that had wronged my damnable existence, but at the same time I was to do its bidding.


Its bidding, it turned out, was something I did with relish; at first, that is. I was capable of making others suffer, I was capable of taking out all the pain, the anger, the hatred for myself and others on beings who did me no wrong. I made the lives of countless millions hard, I made them curse their own existence, their own fate. But more than that I enslaved entire populations, I turned worlds inside out as I spread my influence amongst their populations.


But even as I reveled in the carnage, the destruction, the testament to my own power... something inside of me took away from the pleasure. It was a feeling, deep down inside that I was doing something wrong, something terrible. Oh, I tried to ignore it, I tried to push it away... but it refused to simply stop. I could live with it, I thought; I could live with the weight of my sins if it helped release my pent up emotions.


But even as they were released that feel creped deeper inside, the void left by them was being filled with something far worse.


The campaign that I waged at the bidding of my new master was long, it was bloody, it was Hell. Worlds were destroyed, entire populations wiped from reality; their souls weren't even spared. My master desired them all, and so I collected them with a sword that was given to me, a sword made of the same black crystal that my master seemed to exist inside of. To this day the screams still haunt me; the screams of the damned, their wails of terror and strife as they were sealed within the blade that I carry even now.


But if that was not enough I gained a following. As though I were some kind of messiah the people whom bowed to me worshiped my being with almost a fanatical drive. I unified them, yes... but I also killed their families, their friends, their neighbors... I was no hero, no savior, no god! I was a killer bathed in the blood of the innocent, a reaver of souls that fed the desire of a master whom used me as a pawn.


The guilt, the despair... the horror at my actions. It was all building, it was all growing. The fire in my soul was dying, the hate and revenge that I lusted for was exhausted; only the guilt remained. It was something I could never understand, something that I could never grasp; why did I feel this way? I was all that was terrible and evil in a being, the darkness that so many cursed. I should have enjoyed it all, I shouldn't have felt this way.


But I did.


Even if I don't sleep there are times when I let my being wander, where I "dream" in a sense. And as time wore on my dreams grew more disturbing, closer to the reality I wanted to run from. The faces of the beings I killed haunted me, their wails echoed off the hollow essence that made up my form, the guilt took on a voice of its own, screaming at me.


Even in my dreams I couldn't escape what I had done, what I felt. I couldn't live this way, I just couldn't... and so I tried to throw down my sword, to renounce my master and its ways, hoping that it would lift the the guilt, the shame that I faced every moment of my life for so very long now.


The pain... oh, the pain I felt as it punished me, as my master made me bow before it. It had nested inside me, it had bound itself to my being in a way that it could bend my will to its own through a pain I had not felt before in my entire so called life. I could feel my two opposite natures boiling at one another, tearing me apart from the inside out on a level that beyond beyond sub-atomic I wished so desperately for it to stop, but I knew that everything would continue...


I wished that I would just die, then and there. Then, maybe, I would have been free of it all. But I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't brave enough.


I gave into my master, I vowed my loyalty once more... I took the sword back in hand and I fought in its name, to build its kingdom. A kingdom founded on the power it drained from the living, a kingdom that was crafted from the bones of the dead, a kingdom where I was to be a faux god to the survivors who would rally under my name, their desire for power and greatness blinding them to the fact that they were slaves.


That we were all slaves.


I hate myself... I hate myself for being weak, pathetic... I hate myself for what I have done, the sins that will never wash away. I hate the guilt, I hate the sorrow that I feel deep within me. I hate the false power that I control through the will of my master, a master whom I hate. I hate my very being, I hate the nature of who I am that binds me to slavery, I hate those who spawned me, those who rejected me.


I hate the very day I was born.


Why was I born? Was it just to suffer? Was it to make others suffer as well? Was my existance just a quirk, an accident that had no meaning to it, that had no prospects of ever finding happiness? Why was I born?! WHY?!


I can't answer that... I doubt anybody can. It's one of those questions that stands there, mocking you with its presence for as long as you exist, taunting you with the knowledge that you can never answer it.


I had no purpose even as I ruled a kingdom; I was too lost in my own guilt to see a point in going on. I returned to my homeworld on a whim, looking to see if maybe, somehow, I could see those whom I left behind. I didn't know what I would do if I met them, met him... saw her. But I didn't care, anything would have done. But even as I came close I knew something was wrong... my homeworld was burning.


They were rampaging, they were killing, they were enjoying it all so much. Everywhere I looked there was death, destruction, mayhem; it was like looking at my own work. I shuddered, a feeling passing over me that I had no felt before; if I were Human I'd of been sick. My past was being destroyed piece of by piece, my memories being invalidated as buildings were leveled and people killed. The familiar feeling of hate came back, then... hate for those who dared to ruin a world which gave me life, no matter how much I hated it.


They were there, I could feel them; the one who spawned me and the woman we shared a love for. I went to them, I went as fast as I could... but it was all for nothing; he was dead when I got there, slain by the weapons of the invaders. And she... well, she was taken by their leader, their little red prince as a trophy.


I had nothing, then. No connections to the past, no desire to live in the present, no hope for a future. Everything was gone, everything was destroyed. I had nothing at that moment, I was literally nothing; just the ghost of a dead man. And those with nothing look for something, anything to hold onto to, to take for their own... to use to tell themselves that THEY EXIST.


And for me, that was hate. A bitter, seething hate that grew inside of me, that pushed the guilt and sorrow out of my mind, out of my consciousness. It consumed me, it ate away at all that I was; the fire was back and it burned with a brightness that could rival the stars. If I couldn't have anything but my hatred, then I would have to return the favor... I would destroy all which that little red prince held dear with my hatred. I would leave him with nothing but hate for me... I would let him be consumed in the same fires that consumed me.


And when that day came, then maybe the guilt would return for my sins... and maybe I would feel even more when I looked back and saw the price that was paid for my hate. But you know something...


I think, maybe, I could "live" with it. Because, you see, after I made him pay, after I burned the whole of his empire to ashes, when I brought death to the vastness of what I now know as the Keeper Empire... I won't care.


I won't be able to care... because I plan to not exist after that. If his empire is to burn I know that it will take all that I have, all that I am... my hatred is all that's keeping me going now, and when that source of hate is gone, I plan to go with it.


Maybe then, after I have been crushed into near nothingness, when my life is fading away and I come face to face with oblivion I will be able to answer a question that has been burning in me for so long now. The one question that I've wanted an answer to for so long...


Why was I born?