T H E B L E S S I N G O F T H E C U R S E

Lambs,

I was there that day, the hood of my robes pulled over me as I shouldered my way through the crowd outside your arena gates. I observed as the starborn Daughter of Delusion threw Her cloak of confusion over your tongues. I watched in disgust as you, Her own play things, delighted in your curse. Like children kicked in the head by a mule you mumbled nonsense and babbled to one another in excitement. I left before you began slaughtering one another to please Her, I had seen all I could stand to watch.

That night when She blotted the stars in the sky to bring that same insidious curse upon me, it is my shame to confess that I was afraid. The curse had been forseen, the seers had confirmed that much, but the nature of the curse was not known until the appointed time She graced my lips with Her touch. What witchery was this? When it did not pass, my worry grew until, in my horror, I fled to the crown tower of the fortress. I needed to commune. Fear clawed at my mind as I hurredly ascended those stairs. When I reached the exposed platform at the top I began the incantation that would carry me away to that blessed Holy City on the fringe. The words would not come as I willed them and the strength of my knees began to fade. I stood there helpless, staring up into the starless expanse. Then I fell and the blackness consumed my consciousness.

I woke feeling as though no time had passed at all, but I came learn that the attendants had been unable to wake me for three days. Three visions I brought back with me, two you may know.

When I first lost consciousness before the veil of darkness She cast over the heavens, I saw a being I cannot describe crawling upon a jagged rock floating in a sea of blackness. I stood frozen before it as it observed me with an alien intelligence I had never known. As I looked, a halo hung about my head. The creature touched my lips, then touched its own and the halo dimmed. Again, it touched my lips and its own and the halo dimmed. Thrice it touched me and on the third the halo cracked, not in whole but in part.

The being and the rock vanished and I saw spread before me a vast expanse. There was no light, no sound. All-encompassing cold surrounded me and panic filled me as my senses reached for something, anything, and found nothing. In the empty abyss, the voice of my Lord was brought to my memory, "Grandue Xeh'ria speaks with My voice. Oppose him, and you oppose Me." Finally, I began to perceive what yawned out before me. For a time, a time, and half a time I watched the events from this day to that unfold. Bloodsworn Gods of oppression and lies, I have seen Your days numbered as the sands in an hourglass. If you were to span the cosmos to take its measure, greater still would be the difference between your deservings and your receivings. You, Lightbringer, have bruised His tongue, but He will crush Your head. Your Bloodsworn with cry aloud and tear His hair at the injustice until the Righteous Fire, too, is snuffed out in that Final Battle and 'the Justice that was' who became 'the Justice that is' becomes 'the Justice that is no more'.

So mote it be,

[X] Grandue Xeh'ria, Keeper of the Crown

[A small octagon encircles a raised "II" here, inscribed in thick, amethyst ink]

Penned by my hand on the 10th of Miraman, in the year 885 AF.