((Hooray! Another story! I just love writing theseAnyway....this story is a little bit different from my others, in that it is set up as a journal entry. A really long journal entry.
This should help explain things though, for anybody wondering about what in the heck Nulion is up to right now, with all this Legionnaires business flying around. It's been confusing! Gotta keep in mind though, this is a large entry from Nulion's PRIVATE journal...nobody is actually reading this in-character, tee hee. Also, it's worth mentioning that the idea for this came about from talking with Cylie, and hopefully sometime along the line, she can write a story that parallels this one!
JOURNAL BEGIN
16.MAY.29480
I've...really done it this time....
In my lifetime, I may have done some admittedly idiotic things. Once when I was 6, I remember clearly having slipped into this old, abandoned building down the street from mine with a bunch of friends...we'd thought the place was haunted. Creaky, old, covered in cobwebs...the place had to have been built several hundred years before; how could a little kid *not* believe there were ghosts hanging around? Bad luck for us, the police driving down the street just happened to see the glint of our flashlights flying around inside the house through the windows, and they were waiting for us as we came out into the sunlight...
I'd felt awful about it, and cried for hours on end to my parents...I'd never meant to do any harm. I just wanted to see some ghosts...
Things have changed an awful lot since I was that young...I've been on Rubi-Ka for about five years now. The past year though...has been challenging all that I know, all that I believe myself to be. Nothing has challenged me as heavily as what is happening right now...
The clockwork of a human mind works in different ways for each individual human being; it is what makes us so unique. One man might think something different about, say, salad dressing than another man with a similar background. For one, it might remind him of warm summer days before being sent to prison...For the other, it may remind him of the prison itself. Some things about Rubi-Ka can alter and distort these very core foundations of our minds, and things that sounded insane elsewhere can be considered the most sane thing to do here. That is what I'm experiencing now...
On Rubi-Ka...as we all know...there is a curious absence of permanent death. On other worlds, we are born...we live...and we die. Here, we can live a hundred lives before we actually die of old age, as battle-scarred grandfathers lying in plush beds, by then the elixir of notum all too familiar to our tired senses. Sometimes, you are forced to think of death as a viable option when wanting to get something done....After all, it isn't permanent, right? It can be done painlessly....One shot to the head, and all the victim would ever feel is a slight nausea, and the numbness of the body that comes along with a reclaim wakeup.
Even if it isn't permanent....that doesn't make it right.
Cylie springs to mind immediately....And every single day, I feel worse...and worse....about what I have said to her, and the things I have felt forced to say I would do to her. She's been such a good friend to me....and then I turn around and do this. Damn you, Volcatius...
All of the time spent with that man whispering into my ear...all of the months spent fruitlessly feeling around in the dark for answers had...taken its toll on me. Every night, I would go over in my mind all of the different ways I could get to him....how I could rip the nerve center out of the Legionnaires, and bring everything to a close...
Months of hiding from a man I couldn't see haven't been helping me either....maybe in the back of my mind, what I really wanted were answers, and revenge....I wanted to make him pay, I wanted to return all of the anguish he has put me through...And that's not even taking into account all the other things he has done, to all of the other people....
I have spent so much time dreaming up schemes that could never work. My imagination ran wild with the things I might learn from this self-proclaimed "God". With each new thought...I craved it more. I'd do anything, anything at all to find out more...
I'd finally gotten my chance not long ago...Staring out into the Old Athen canal, where those children were found dead....I heard him again. Each time, it feels like something from out of a dream...whispers from air, drawing me nearer....All of the time I had spent trying to beat him hadn't gone unnoticed though. He knew I'd intended on plotting against him. He just...he knows these things....Even at night, I feel like he can watch me sleeping. Watch me dreaming.
I'd done all I could do....and then simply gave in. I had never felt more puppetlike in my life...Listening to his word as if it were law, and agreeing whole-heartedly to whatever schemes he would involve me in. It...had to be convincing. It all had to be so utterly, completely convincing....I just couldn't fail.
As I heard him speak....I thought to myself. What would I have to do, to get to the very heart of him..? How far would I have to go? What would I have to sacrifice to get it..?
It did scare me....and truth be told, it still does. If such an innocuous first request from my new Lord could cause so much strife...then what would come next?
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