"Molecules and atoms, light and energy, time and space and matter. The way the world is made. The truth is all around you, plain to behold."
It is said that runes ought to remain undeciphered, for those words to remain the secrets of the deep cosmos. That if one were to read them, to speak those forbidden words, the consequences would be cataclysmic. That they would invoke an unpredictable and mighty power.
The Abyss has decided that I should bear these runes, marking my body and gleaming like the pale moon. For so long, this power had laid dormant, but I cannot let it be wasted any longer. This is my birthright.
I speak the words. I let it rise within me. Consume me. It awakens! Passion, talent, power incarnate.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
A terrible beauty is born.
I am the strongest of the Syndicate. I alone stand at the pinnacle, chosen by fate. My powers burn like fire, and fire does not distinguish between friend and foe. Even its smoke blackens all who would stand before it. But if I were to burn, you will all burn with me.
I destroy and I create.
I no longer walk in sunlight, but only in the shadow of moonlight. In the impossible silver daylight that illuminates the secrets so aptly hidden by the sun's blinding rays. To see the familiar world revealed, truly, in its stark shadows.
The night speaks to me, it whispers in cadent tones, dull and bass to screeching soprano. It chants secrets into my ears, and I listen.
I see, finally, with perfect clarity, so much more than just the here and now. Time shifts at my call, showing me visions of years past and present. I see the shadows that play on the walls, I see them dance and trace out all the things that are yet to come.
You can call me crazy, but you are blind to all that I can see.
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I am my father's son.
With my First Offering, the spellbook that was my father's and his father's before him, I proved to all that I was favoured. I had laid it onto the ground with meat and spices, and allowed my father's blood to sit atop it all. He, who's magic had first guided me onto my path.
With a whispered prayer, I had watched, with the night reflected in my eyes. The blood thickened and turned as black as the shadows that so oft stalk my dreams. It howled, and my veins howled with it. Blood runs thicker than water, but these shadows run thickest of all. Me, tethered to him and the beyond, forever.
When I came to my senses again, my tome was stained with the mark of Abyssal power. A single word had been carved into its spine, Sacralexicon. The pages now tremble with a will of its own. It yearns to be read and it opens before my eyes. Its words alter my body and gift unholy knowledge to my mind. It is as if I am born anew. I am a vessel, and Necromancy is my voice. After so many years, I see once more his smile. His correcting claw.
On the darkest of nights, it feels almost as if I am a part of him. Of my father, and of something more. Something in this world, but not of it.
Why do they say that only time will tell? Because space is silent. A vast, empty expanse... at least, to you.
By will alone, I shape the world. How can you tell illusion from reality? I ask, and it becomes so. I believe, and it becomes the truth. The fabrics of reality may not break, but it does bend. And it bends for me. I learn to twist it into elegant patterns, fold it into ever more complex layers. These fabrics were made to be shaped by a well honed hand. A hand like mine.
The powers of entropy, of necromancy, can cause any structure to decay into chaos or be reborn once again.
Look! See how the buildings crumble into ruins as if worn by the passage of centuries. Watch as these Clans turn against each other, their minds fracture as unseen enemies begin to spawn from every shadow. See how that rain reverses before it hits the ground, falling upwards and soaking the air, yet never sating the parched lands. Behold, rooms filled with oscillating polygons, where every entrance leads to the same place as every exit.
And do you see, how the flowers long decayed suddenly blooms as though it were young once more? The fresh breath of life, breathed back into the dead.
You can call me crazy, but I am so much more now. I'm not just powerful, I am power.
"I, with my party, did conceal our unease, as we were betwixt the Devil and the deep blue sea. Avaunt you foul demon Umbra-Eyed Crow, thy grasp on this plane faded long ago. From whence you came, there you shall go, I seal thee away, Umbra-Eyed Crow." - Diablerie
"You stop fearing the Devil when you're holding his hand. I coughed and choked, and drowned on moonlight, which tastes like oil and steel and salt and mist. And then, just like that, just when I thought he was going to kill me, suck the air out of my lungs and make me a devil too, he lifted his hand, and... it faded away. Sunshine, if I ever disappear, please tell people that I ran after the Devil, trying to get my soul back." - Brume