Meditations of Diocletes

[Hierophant]

Meditations of Diocletes, I
Hziran 7788 'When unions of love are formed'


Ah, and so it has come to this pen in my hand and this paper in front of me. What do people even write in these epitaphs of their personal life, and who will even read it? Is it intended as a message to the self, the self that many do not realize in themselves, much like myself?

Whatever the case, we are at war now. No more am I a glorified city watchman, but a soldier, a true soldier. I have stared death in the face and to my remorse, walked back alive with my friend on a Janissary shield. I have heard malcontent in my fellow Agasians, and I say to them keep that chin up. We are the true sons of Agaslakku, the prodigal brother. Iakmes is nothing more than a pretender, and it will be proven in the battlefield.

I came to Ephia's Well from my hiding hole. Telling myself that I am loyal to no one but the Sultan of the Maribid Golden Lands. Golden Land. I first heard this term from a citizen of this Ephia, from one close to the Wanderer, Bajica Gilleni. He went on an arduous ordeal of erecting beacons of pure light to guide our Way, and I have held a deep rooted respect for the man ever since. I am remiss to say we do not know ourselves too closely as friends.

When I arrived, I was filled with fervor. Yes, some might have witnessed my shameless bowing before the many esteemed Ashfolk of the League of Purple. To my surprise, however, the Ashfolk are not any more or less prominent than the peoples that make up this young and wounded lion. In response, I stifled my instincts and began to shift my allegiance to my Bey, Sorazin al-Komayyad.

The Fourth Legion was not all that I expected but I had lost all I cherished long ago, before even the calamity that befell the Rings. It begins and it ends with the barbarian; the Orc, the Torc, the Fork in the road. I have composed myself well, I think. Despite coming close to the edge many times already, I have been kept in check by my new found friends, my new found family. I even found the strength to loosen my wedding ring and say my proper goodbyes. I have forgotten what the faces of my children looked like, and I have forgotten the touch of my beloved wife.

There was a fellow soldier, the one mentioned above who did not return from Har'pas. His name was Kroggnought and when I was tutoring him in writing, reading and our Penal Code, he made his wants known well; the man wished a wife, and I could have entertained this as a friend and encouraged him. But I knew no woman would ever love Kroggnought, not in the way he wanted. Not in the way my wife loved me. Was this a sabotage of the most foul contention I had uprooted his hope in? Instead, I pushed the Penal Code closer to his chest and told him so, 'That is your wife now. Love her true.'

I am sorry, my friend. I am so sorry.

[Hierophant]

Meditations of Diocletes, II
Hziran 7788 'When unions of love are formed broken'


No one would ever let me feel shame in this Ephia's Well. Even as I mewled to them like some defeatist, some weakling, some vagrant they would always pat my shoulder and let me soak my eyes. I am not ashamed to have wept in quiet, but I am ashamed to have felt ash in my cheeks and the cold iron of captivity. Was I not the man Diocletes Diadys? That is, of course, Soldier Diadys to you.

Diocletes Diadys was not the name I was born with, but it is similar enough and a nod to the many inklings of awed, inspired and momentous deference I began to hold for my new-found Ashfolk masters. I remember the doubt, of the thoughts many I surmise thought then. We, survivors all from lands none the same who have fought, clawed and cried our way into the Maribid Sultan's embrace, we? To be ruled over by these beings so small, almost sickly looking in their Ashen grotesque.

I came from a land that by our countenance today, thought yesterday hills of stone that would never falter, never fail. How wrong we were, and how small our world began to seem as all the dooms and perils of the Great Ring befell us in all its antiquities to our small minds who lived for long in desolated bliss. So long we felt that wretched ignorance, that we had forgotten what it truly felt to belong.

So yes, today I am happily a citizen of this Ephia's Well; a friend to its peoples, a servant to its protection, a shepherd of fragile peace. True peace in our time will only be felt and known when all that is wretched, that is monstrous, that is treacherous is swept back whence they came and the banners of Baz'eel & Ephia's Well, of its bravest and peculiar Heron flutter over the Great Ash. Waradim at its borders, Agasians upon the field and our Martyrs known to all. The day this city falls, will be the day my heart breaks.