Part VI: Regrets

By Nevena Dals, Apostate

I haven’t seen the sun in what feels like years, but it can’t be that long, but it might be—I don’t know anymore. I don’t know how long I’ve been down here or how long I’ve been hitting that damned pipe. I hate that pipe. I hate it so much, but the pipe makes it all cloudy. Makes it so I can’t think anymore and that’s all I really want anymore. I don’t want to think. When I think, I think about how I threw my whole life away because I fell head-first into exactly what every member of the Order of Lore is trained to defend themselves against: the manipulations of the unnatural.

Cerebel wasn’t meant to be—maybe he wasn’t even real. Maybe I was just lying in the fetal position in some cave for who knows how long, but it doesn’t matter if he’s real, not real, or if I just had a brain hemorrhage and somehow that was my reaction to a near-death experience, but I do know that he ruined my life. He ruined everything. I was a Scribe Curate and my work was universally approved by the Convening Curate Council, what is to say I wouldn’t have one day become a Disciple and even the Diviner of the Order of Lore—nothing. Nothing except the fact that I’m dead to the Temple now; I’m just another Scribe who went too deep and never came all the way back and now, now there’s no going back, no matter how much I want to. ALMSIVI knows I wish I could go back to the life I had before—before—all this. Before I had those visions or dreams or whatever they were, but it’s too late now. I’m nobody but a body for hire these days, because what use am I to anyone or anything anymore? That’s all I’ve got left. I’m nothing but a body for the cretins of this ‘undercity’ to crawl on top of, but it’s okay. They crawl. They poke. They prod. But it’s okay, because maybe this is what I was meant for. Maybe this is what’s been my destiny all along: to be nothing. Nothing of substance, nothing of importance, just—nothing.

Thank the Three for the pipe that makes me feel like just that—nothing. I took Cerebel to be more than he was, but that’s okay, because here in a moment—I won’t feel a thing anymore, at least not for a while. I won’t think. I won’t dream. I won’t even see the face of the s’wit I knifed in Beggar’s Hall—I’ll just be—free. Free to not exist—even if it’s just for a little bit. I suppose this is as good a point as any to stop—the pipe is hot and I’ve got the skooma ready. Goodbye world, at least for a while.