Memoirs of a Fallen God

Part 2: Prologue

I have been betrayed.

Those who claim to love me most; those who claim reverence, worship, loyalty…among their number ranks a thieving traitor. Perhaps they are all in on it, I do not know. I can trust none of them, now. Even my twilight has become a thing of broken vows and shattered truths. Fitting, I suppose.

I awoke this morning to find the dust around my little pile of wrinkled pages disturbed. Suspicious creature that I have become, I assumed the worst. I was correct. Between two of the parchment pages I found a thin grey hair. Such a small thing, to mark so great a breach of trust. Yet no hair has graced my head since I fell from the heavens in light and fire. It must, then, come from another.

My room is sacrosanct. It has always been thus; I am fit company for no man, save in the smallest of doses. Yet someone has entered without my leave, pawed and fingered through my pages as I slept.

How dare they? Have we fallen so far that even the sanctuary of a man’s private musings must be subject to pillage and theft? Have they so little regard for me, so little regard for what I once was, that the simplest of requests have become a thing to ignore at leisure?

Why do they not simply kill me? I would not fight them. Why must they twist the knife with such pointless and petty betrayal?

Yet I dare not even complain. Not outside these pages. Already I suspect they see me as doddering and near senile; my claims would no doubt seem the paranoid delusions of an old man entrenched in the erstwhile memory of his own relevance. I’ll be damned long before I give them that satisfaction.

I may have let them read it, had they thought to ask. I may have even smiled as I turned over the pages of my little store of memories…No, I will not lie to myself. I would not have given up my story. Far more likely that, had they asked, I would have ripped the pages apart before their eyes, grinning all the while. The memories are mine. Why should I share them? I do not want their pity; I do not want their praise. All I want now is to be left in peace and quiet until this faltering, failing body breathes its last. Is that truly so much to ask, after what I have given?

Damn them. Damn them for making me trust, for making me hope that these few, these last and final few, they might be different.

Damn them, for making me care.

What next, then? Shall I act the spiteful devil I am become; shall I feed these pages to the flames, now, and never set pen to another?

No. I think not. This once I shall not act the petulant child. Instead I shall spite them once again and continue my tale. Not for my priestlings; surely not for my cowardly thief of thought. I shall write for Telth and Telth alone. You see, I have found a thing, in the penning of these pages: memories, left buried and untreated, are apt to fester. The memories I have uncovered in these pages are black and rank with rot. Better to bring them out into the air, for a little while. Better to let them breathe.

So I will finish my story for my own selfish reasons, though we are come to the darker chapters. Telth’s childhood, such as it was, is now well and truly over. Now the young man must pick up arms and fight. Black days lie ahead, I fear. Here we will speak of war: of deaths uncounted, of battles lost and won, of friends found and friends lost, of great glory and great shame, of deeds both fair and foul. 

And yes, there at the end of it, of the death and birth of a god.

And should my dear traitor think to breach my sanctuary once again; well, he may find, weak and mortal though I am become, I still know a trick or two.