Power

Come, listen to me speak, but know that my words are not for the weak. My words are for the brave, and for the alive, and if you would survive, hear my prophecies:

I have watched the skeletons of the dead exhumed, and their bones bore the scars of the slavers’ chains. And I have seen the slavers live happy lives, dying warm deaths by the fire.

I have watched the innocent on the gallows crying out to God, pleading—Why, why, why! And I have watched them fall through the blood-soaked boards, strung lifeless for the laughing crowds.

I have watched the sword raised for false prophets, and watched the best of a generation sent to death upon the killing fields, their honor, mere decoration for their twisted corpses.

I have watched the courageous lose everything to the cunning of evil, and I watched their killers eat bread and cheese, drinking wine on the great picnic fields fertilized with blood.

I have watched the strong give their freedom to cowards, liars, and the depraved, and I watched as the treasuries of the corrupt piled with the stolen riches and gold.

I have watched neighbors turn against neighbors, those who had given them comfort and nourishment through tragedy and calamity, for nothing more than momentary gain.

I have watched the good turn their backs on their friends for nothing more than cheap titles, sending their loved ones to death so that they could walk among nobility.

I have watched the brave, like you, go down fighting, and I have seen the bodies of heroes ground to dust, and their names erased forever from the ledgers of history.

I have fallen to my knees before kings, begging for mercy for their subjects, only for their gaze to turn away, as the roads piled with the dead and the destitute, dying of hunger.

Fools have doubted my evocations, now they are dead, for when the cursed oracle speaks, past and future are one, and I, the caster, conjure from beyond the reach of the living.

I have watched these crimes, as will you, and you shall remember the words of the prophet, speaking to you: all of these were and will be done, not for money, nor fame, but for power.