Thus Spake Zaranephilpal/AbyssalsAndChoice
Nephilpal replied on Tue, Oct 20 2009 10:31 AM
To be an Abyssal, you are consciously saying "I value my life above the universe. I am willing to murder everything and everyone everywhere rather than die." It is the most supreme act of selfishness imaginable, and it is the beginning of your own doom and quite possibly the doom of everything unfortunate enough to cross your path.
Choice is requisite in this for two reasons: 1) When you stand upon the plain of dust and ashes that was Creation overlooking the yawning silent mouth of the Unmaking, your hair and cloak dramatically swirling back behind you in the chill moaning breeze, all alone, you know that this was your fault. Your choice. And here you stand in the final moments of time, victorious, if you can call it that, and you can't blame your dead forbears, your dead gods or this awesome cosmic force that is about to eat you. The ground cracks and tilts into the pit and you remember that moment when you said yes. Maybe you regret it. Maybe you laugh as your flesh and motes rip from your being. Maybe you cry. Maybe you just take it all in stoically. But you said yes. And it's your fault.
2) When you kneel under a fiery and wrathful sun that condemns your very existence as a blight upon his perfection and the world he so loves, your corpse-pale hands stained with blood and worse, you squint at the glare and mouth apology after apology. You said yes, you didn't want to die -- who does -- and yet you knew this was the price. You said yes, and you're sorry. You were wrong. You should have died. You should have gone quietly into the darkness so that life went on. And you're sorry. You're so sorry. You don't deserve to live... and OH MY GOD... light... hope... power... grace... Blessed is the Highest of Holies! Blood sizzles from your fingers in the searing nimbus of gold that envelops you, cauterizing the wound of your caste mark, radiating from your eyes and mouth and coiling upward, seemingly infinitely to a sky that welcomes you. You said yes, and now you can tell the darkness NO!
