Part XIX: Forgiveness

By Dagoth Milos, Teacher of the Ash Mystic

She speaks of Sanurdipal with such passion in her voice, as if she and she alone will stop the slaughter beneath the world, and hearing it burns with every word. She speaks with zeal in her voice and it is genuine; it is true. She has warned me that if I will not follow her to Sanurdipal, then she will leave me to die, and we both know that will happen if I am left to fend for myself in my current state, but she doesn’t know what I know of Sanurdipal. She doesn’t know the man who it is in memorial to. She doesn’t know him and I thank all the gods of all the faiths that she and no one will ever know Dagoth Sanur again, for killing him was the only thing in my life that I can truly look upon and say undoubtedly, “I made the world a better place through my actions.” She doesn’t know him and she’ll never him. None of them will and though he has been canonized within our house, they will never know the man he was—not the legend that has surrounded him. I knew the man and I killed the man and I would kill him and again and again, because I have always said that there is only one thing I am good at in this world and it is killing monsters and he, he was the greatest monster I have ever slain.

I remember the first time I heard about Sanur. We were connecting a joint-operation with the Order of War to strike at Endusal with hopes of collecting Kagrenac’s Journals, but things didn’t go as planned during that operation. They went wrong. So wrong. So many people, so many good men and women died when we tried to sack Endusal. Everything we did was wrong. He was one step ahead of us no matter what we did and it showed in our casualties. So many of my brothers and cousins never left the Red Mountain and I fear their bones have been scoured to a dust by the constant storming and I know that I should’ve gone back for them, but I couldn’t take them all. I couldn’t. I tried to take as many as I could home with us, but we were getting picked apart one by one. Everyone was dying. Everyone was getting ripped apart by Sanur’s monsters. We had to leave our brothers, our cousins, our family behind in the place we hated the most, because of that monster—because of Sanur.

An Armiger is honest and every Armiger makes a promise never to leave a brother behind, but we did. We left a lot of brothers behind and we never got them all back. We’ll never get them all back. We just—we can’t. They’re just gone and we left them. We left all of them, because we were scared. We were scared of being left out there too; we were scared of being picked off like dogs. We were scared of him. He knew our every step, our every move, and he tormented us; he wouldn’t give us the luxury of simply overwhelming us and killing us all. This was more than war, this was Sanur at his finest: he was always a sadistic bastard and that operation was my first encounter with the infamous “General of the Sixth House”.

He was everything I hated about the Sixth House.

He was a monster in every sense of the word.

He tormented us as he picked us off one-by-one, man-by-man, and we all wondered if we’d be next. We all wondered who wouldn’t go home. We all wondered and you know, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wish I was one of the ones who didn’t make it back. They never came home, but that was it for them. They wouldn’t live to see the horrors that Sanur would unleash upon us at the Ghostgate and how bad things were until he died. Some consider me a traitor to my house for having killed the Priest who gave to me my first communion—who celebrated with me the First Sacrament—especially the General who broke the infamous group of Buoyant Armiger’s, Vehk’s Fury, the group I was a part of, but I would rather traitor to my house than to myself and I will gladly wear the chains of their condemnation for having taken Sanur’s life.

We of Vehk’s Fury regrouped after the failed operation and we began to act more autonomously, outside of the Grand Marshal’s battle plans, which earned us both respect and scorn from our brothers, but we got results. We moved as a team, as brothers, and we killed as many as we could. We would move throughout their territory and though Sanur knew of us, he could not stop us, because we moved with Vehk’s grace—we moved with the protection of a god, I swear this to be true, because we marched throughout the bowels of hell and we surfaced from them with our lives time and time again. We did to the Sixth House what Sanur did to us during that operation and we were glorious. We were heroes. We avenged our brothers even though we couldn’t save them, even though we couldn’t recover them, we made sure their deaths would be remembered by both sides of this foul war and Sanur grew to hate us more and more, but his potential for hatred was only matched by the twisted pleasure he drew from breaking people and I would discover that soon.

We moved to bases randomly so that Sanur wouldn’t be able to plan for us and I remember when we stepped into that base; it was an enclave being used by contemplatives and monks, not soldiers, not warriors, not agents of the House, but we were angry. WE hated them with everything we had and we killed them all. One by one, we cut them down even though they offered no fight. One by one, we watched them die. One by one, they fell down and we joked about how we loved them running, because it gave us a chance to throw something at them as hard as we could or what they’d look like if we cut that ‘eel-face’ out. We thought we were heroes because we mowed them down, but they weren’t fighters. They weren’t warriors. We were animals and we killed them because we were angry. We killed them even though they did nothing to us, even though their ltitle enclave posed no military value, but we hated them and they had to die, so we slaughtered them like animals and we laughed as we did it. We cheered as we’d cut them down, like this was what our lives were all about, like this is what our brothers died for back during that failed operation. I knew those men who died; that’s not what they died for. They never would’ve even fought for it. They fought to protect the weak. They fought to protect their home. They didn’t fight because they wanted senseless bloodshed and that’s how we honored their memory, all that bloodshed, all that murder, all those crimes that I can’t escape, all of it was our sick way of trying to honor the dead. We pissed on everything they stood for and everything they believed when we went into that enclave and butchered those monks in their name, but all actions have a price and the price of my actions that day was the infinite hatred of Dagoth Sanur, as I had been the one who cut down his son, Dagoth Neris, and made him beg for his life even though I knew he was going to die like a miserable cur like all the others. I wanted them to suffer like we did and I made them suffer like we did and that’s what made me a monster. I didn’t focus my aggression on military combatants, on the Lost, or on anyone in particular—just on anyone wearing their colors and Neris, he was barely old enough to have hair on his chin and I cut him like a dog cause I hated him more than anything else in this world, cause I hated them all more than anything else, and I’m sorry, Neris. I’m so sorry, but I can’t change the past. I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t. But wherever you are, Neris, I want you to know, that I was wrong—I was so wrong. You were just a boy and I cut you down all the same, because I didn’t care about right and wrong; I just wanted to feel back in control. I just wanted to feel like my brothers were being avenged and I took it out on you and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

I remember that look on your face as you saw me lower my spear as you sobbed on your knees in front of me, begging to be spared. I remember your disbelief. You thought that you and you alone were going to be a survivor from all of this, but you weren’t, Neris. You weren’t. I put that spear in your gut and I ripped it out to watch your intestines fall out, like the Lost had done to Tervur. I wanted to see you suffer like they suffered, but you didn’t do anything wrong. You were just a kid trapped in a world you never should’ve been involved in and I killed you for it, and there is nothing I can do to right that wrong. I killed you, not because you had hurt me, but because I knew hurting you would hurt them—and I am sorry, Neris. You would be old now, Neris, maybe even old enough to have finally passed on anyways, but I didn’t give you that choice—that opportunity—because I was angry and now I stand here with centuries of hindsight and you are my biggest regret, Neris, because you were innocent and you died because I couldn’t control myself.

I say it’s because I was angry, but that’s not the truth. I killed you because I was a monster. I had become your father was, Neris, and when I killed you in that massacre because I wanted to hurt them as much as they had hurt me—I didn’t realize what I do now. I didn’t realize that it’s not me, it’s not them, it’s the people like you who got hurt the most. It’s the people like you who always get hurt the most and I was the one doing the hurting and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Neris.

Your father was broken by your death, Neris. The famed General of the Sixth House became obsessed with me for what I did to you and he hurt me, just like I hurt you, but it pales in comparison to what I did to you. He took from me my identity, just as I took your dignity and he took from me my lover, just as I took from you everyone you knew in the enclave. He took from me my humanity, just as I took from you, your life, but there is a difference between us. I was a warrior. I knew what my life entailed and I chose it willingly. You were a child in the care of monks and you had no choice, but I took from you just as though you did, and I am sorry, Neris. I am sorry that I wronged you as I did and I know that no words will change the past or my actions, but I believe that so long as I remember you, I will never allow myself to become as I became. I will never again become a monster like I was, I swear it.

I remember when I first engaged your father face-to-face; he was not what I had anticipated. I expected a monstrosity with a thousand eels from his face, but I met a man who was more than the eel growing from his face. I met a man who took from me everything, just like I took from you everything. He cast unto me the Second Sacrament and I was forced to leave my home, my family, and the man I had given my life to and who had his given his to me, because I could not allow him to be the one forced to kill me. I could not bear the thought of Llevos being the one to hold the knife above my heart and our last goodbyes being followed by the destruction of both our hearts, even if only mine in the physical sense.

Your father watched me as I wandered the Red Mountain, tortured by the growths which felt like fire everlasting, but he did not intervene even as I inched close to the brink of madness. He enjoyed watching it. He enjoyed knowing that I was wandering alone and lost, wracked with agony, because in his eyes, it was justice for what I had done to you, Neris. It was his sense of justice, but there can be no justice for a crime so great, only vengeance. There is no court in all the planes that can pass judgment on a transgression of that magnitude, but he thought himself as being worthy to judge me, and that is why he took his revenge and did not seize justice at all. He couldn’t, nothing can for such a tragedy, but he did try, and his hubris was his downfall.

He decided that simply being allowed to suffer forever as one of the Lost would not suffice, so he elected to offer to me the First Sacrament and I took it, because I had no choice unless I joined the ranks of the Lost, and I know now that it was merely a step towards his goal of punishing me for my crimes against not his house, not even him, but you, Neris. He offered me his own flesh so that I could be spared the madness of the Lost, because he did not deem that to be sufficient enough for my crimes. He did not think that suffering in agony as the tumors grow and burn forever was enough. He wanted to me in all of the ways I had hurt him and he did. He hurt me just as I hurt him.

I remember how my group kept moving even after my disappearance and your father, he used his men to kill them all, except for Llevos. Llevos could not be allowed to die. He had to live or your father’s plans for extracting more justice would have failed in their infancy, but they did get Llevos and your father made me watch as they tortured him. He made me watch as the man I loved more than I loved myself was broken bit-by-bit and piece-by-piece; they made me watch as they cut from him skin, flesh, bone, whatever they felt like and I had to watch and scream even though he could not hear me. I screamed with all I could for him to hold on, but he couldn’t hold on forever, and I remember when he was at the precipice of death, your father allowed me a chance to say my goodbyes. I thought it was an act of mercy, but it was not. It was no mercy of your father’s, Neris, he possessed no such thing. No, he allowed me to see and speak to him so that my lover would realize what had become of me and he did. He did see what became of me and he screamed with what little strength he had left, that I had become a monster. That I had become one of them. But I wasn’t one of them, I was still his. I was always going to be his, but Llevos didn’t see that. He only saw the slow transformation I was undergoing and how I was going to be one of the Eel-Faces that we killed so many of together and as his screams stopped, I watched him die. He had clung to hope that I was out there somewhere, holding out for him, but there I was before him, one of the monsters we had slain so many of together, and he just—stopped holding on. He just couldn’t do it anymore and I screamed into the void that I would kill them all for this, but there was no—power—behind it. I was broken and your father had been the one to break me, just as he had broken us during the Endusal Operation, but this time was much different. This wasn’t about him feeling powerful or his hubris, it was about hurting me as much as I had hurt him and to hurt me as much as I had hurt him, he hurt the person I cared the most about, just like I hurt the person he cared the most about, you, Neris. You. You were always the thing that kept him from—losing it—and I made you beg for your life even though I knew I would kill you in the most painful way I could think of, because I wanted to hurt him, like he had hurt me.

That’s the thing with war, Neris. It’s never about the two people who are fighting. It’s about the people in the middle. The people we hurt to hurt the people we’re actually fighting. And do you want to know why I killed your father, Neris? I didn’t kill him, because he hurt me. I didn’t kill him because he killed Llevos. I killed him, because I had to stop the hurting. Not the hurting I felt, or that he felt, but the hurting that I did to you and that he did to Llevos. He was in so much pain, Neris, and I knew if I left him alive, he would hurt more and more people like you and Llevos. People who have nothing to do with the conflict in question, but people who can be hurt to hurt the people who have things to do with the conflict in question. I couldn’t allow more people to go through what you had gone through, what Llevos gone through, I couldn’t, and he was going to do that to more people. He was going to do that to anyone and everyone, because no matter justice he tried to extract from me, it would never be enough—there’s just simply not enough pain he can cause me to make up for what I did to you, Neris, and I knew that if I didn’t stop him, he would do it to others because he had to do something to cope with the pain of losing you and that was just trying to get justice that can never be got.

If you’re out there though, wherever you may be, Neris, I want you to know that I did not take pleasure in killing your father. I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t feel satisfied. I felt hollow, because I had destroyed him in his entirety and his death was the coup de grace he so desperately needed and even though I consider him to be the greatest monster I’ve ever slain, I hope you know he didn’t die an evil man. Whoever he was before I did to you what I did, that’s not who he was after. He died a man whose entire existence was pain; he was like one of the Lost, but unlike them, he never truly let go of who he was before. He let go of his titles and his accolades, of his honors, but he could not let go of you, Neris, and that is why he had to die and why I had to be the one to kill him. I had to be the one to do it, because I’m the one who turned him into what it was he became. I’m the one who made him into more than a sadistic general; I made him into a monster who knew only pain and did what he could to alleviate it however he could, even if it meant hurting more people and creating more monsters.

Killing your father, it wasn’t justice for Llevos or for those who never came home—it was forgiveness, because I could try to extract that justice just like I had before, and it would only continue the cycle of hurt. So I had to do the hardest thing I had ever done before: I had to forgive him and that meant being the one to spare him his pained existence through the mercy of death. I hope wherever you are, Neris, you understand that. I didn’t kill him, because I hated him. I killed him because I forgave him, because he was only a monster because I made him one. He was only a monster because I couldn’t forgive him for killing all of those people and I wanted justice, just like he did. He was only a monster, because of what I did to you, Neris, and that is why going to a place devoted to his memory pains me, because the man he died as, the man I killed, is a result of my greatest failure and that was you, Neris. That was always you and it will always be you.

If I had just—forgiven enough to forego my hubristic search for justice which was no different than a quest for vengeance—then you wouldn’t have died the way you did. You would’ve been allowed to choose your path in life, right or wrong, good or bad, whatever it may have been, you would have been able to choose, but I took that from you and I am sorry, Neris. I only hope that wherever you are, you can forgive me, because even though I can forgive your father for having taken everything from me, I can not forgive myself for this. I thought I could find forgiveness in Lord Dagoth, but I realized I was searching in the wrong places for forgiveness—it was never about him. It was about you. It was always about you and I pray that wherever you are, in whatever life you’re leading, if you’re leading any at all, you can forgive me, Neris.

Regardless of whether or not you can forgive me though, Neris, I pray for you. I pray you find safe passage in your journeys and that your next life is as full as this one should have been; you deserve that more than anything else.

-Dagoth Milos, Teacher of the Ash Mystic