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Epilogue
It is late at night presently.
The great, torn and tumbled ruins of the Black Chapel surround me with
their flat, ultimate blackness, and Kes' tomb looks down upon me with a
benevolence that never ceases to touch me in some way. The single
candle that lights the parchment flickers slightly with the breeze like
a great, golden snake. My thin fingers cast terrible dancing shadows
into the black rubble about me.
This is a place of utter
quiet and calm. No one comes even near these ruins; they still emanate
a terrible, cold evil. Only the wind and the elements visit this
Black Chapel anymore, and the occasional midnight-black raven. I
feel an odd kinship with that demon now; bent to the will of a now-dead
god, we are two demons forever damned to our wretched existences.
We are observers anymore - outcasts, alone. But, like the sorrow
of Jaysin's defeat, it is not a joy to me that we are together in our solitude.
And of course, I come here.
This is my favorite of places. Here is a site where no one comes,
and in the absence of the cacophony and confusion of humanity I find peace.
This is the first time in many, many years in which I can find peace in
the absence of violence and chaos. At times I could convince myself
to remain here for the rest of eternity. But I cannot exist in extremes
for long. My existence is like the universe: from peace to chaos
and back again like some perpetual pendulum. And yet in the middle
I find only stagnation and confusion. My existence is both pure and
contradictory: I cannot exist at any point for long, my soul forever in
transit; I am forever in search of purity, and forever denied contentment
once purity is found.
Do you think me devoid of
anything pure? Not so. I am more pure than any human I have
ever met, and I have met many. I have been etched and carved and
purged and fired in the smithy of the universe and its chaos. The
universe has worked its art upon me many times over and will do so many
times again.
So, what is your final judgment?
Do you think that I am a madman or a sage? Am I villain or victim,
murderer or murdered? I am all of these, but you are something more
than I will ever be: mortal.
I am the Rouge of Rouges;
I am the Master of Thieves; I am the Immortal Blackness; I am forever.
But what does all this mean? In the vastness of eternity such titles
are little more than infinestimal motes. In the curse of my existence
I have begun to comprehend eternity. I am a tiny pinpoint poised
on the edge of an infinite chasm that is greater than all the heavens.
And with every day, bit by bit, I feel myself moving to the point where
I will tip, and fall in.
And I do not know whether
to fear or welcome the fall.