30th of Winter, 514 AV
Don’t make this choice, Mateo. You’re better than the wants of the flesh. You were born and raised to know ethical standards. You’re the hero of our age – look at all that you have been blessed with. You have a home, a family, the riches of the Zeltivan trade, and even the love and blessing of Goddess Syna. Why would you want to throw it all in the gutter for the sake of the occult?
“What if I told you,” he said, “that the family given to me is built on requisite? My son, Miguel, he is so strong and kind. My daughter . . . Josephina, she is beautiful and wise. Yet – I have known from their conception that the life they would have in store for me would never be my own. I cannot lust nor love my wife. My children have been raised to believe in a forgery of me. I never threw them away for the occult. I threw the occult away for them.”
A vision of despondency; a dream of a fall. Something like that – right? Something like that always haunted him.
“Mateo,” his companion called to him in the night; a lad by the name of Vladim, who was born and raised in the Great Plains of Endrykas. He was a foreign fellow with a bit of a dialect to go along with it, and the guttural way in which he did . . . everything had always amused and disgusted the Ethaefal in equal measure. “Yes, Vlad?” Mateo asked. He’d always shortened it, and because he knew it annoyed him. It had become a great hobby of the man’s to irritate and impress people in equal measure. It kept him sensible, human.
The man never said anything, mostly because he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been accompanied by Vlad in a hundred years or some far off number that he couldn’t very well describe. It had been a long time since he died, yet he remembered some things clearly even now. He remembered the love and the pain of his previous life, the ambition and excitement that came with the rise of the Zeltivan city-state. He remembered death, arriving at what must’ve been a set of many golden gates, in a land touched always by the sun. To him, this world had become like dementia. It was difficult to transition from paradise to purgatory.
A part of what made the life into this new world intimidating was the lucid dreaming and the malefic visions he’d experienced that still connected him to the past. The sad thing was, he could never be certain as to whether anything he dreamed had ever really happened. Sometimes he believed that he created his own, false past in his mind as a mechanism to protect himself; better to create your own false truths than desperately seek answers in the dark, or so he believed, and thus stories were born of children and the occult. One thing he had been certain of was that he always had a strong affinity for the taboo. It was much the same as it was now – simply, more dangerous and fearsome in magnitude, but more subtle in nature. He would hire and plant agents in circles of Leth, Dira, Nikali, Ivak, and other fringe beliefs and observe. He wanted to approach the broad topic of what they did . . . how they did it, and the expense of their belief. Back then, he was so timid. He was afraid of breaking his connection to Syna, though by his half-baked devotion he had already begun to destroy their bond.
From God to Servant, he had become the spoiled child who acted with wickedness under the moon but played mannerly under the sun’s rays. He always did the best he could to skirt along the edge of danger, retaining his connection while still satiating his craving for the darkness. That was back then. He was a bad person with a weak heart and he was afraid of being punished for it. He was wealthy and successful but only in material possessions – there was always a dark, gaping hole consuming this man’s psyche and his connection to God.
In this new life, Mateo had become an attorney with the Ravona family, merchants who had lost much of their stock in a recent investment failure, people eagerly and competitively seeking a regaining of their fortunes. He had personally known one of their founders in his past life, or so he told this family, and relaying that "knowledge" to the don of the house had earned him some level of respect. He’d gotten the job only days after putting himself forward, becoming an agent of their trade collection since the moment of first consignment. He was assigned to investigate circumstances regarding trade disputes, offer and sign deals and contracts with merchants and other businesses, protect the legal interests of the family, waiver documents, so on and so forth. This life surrounded by legality and principle had only been marred by his wild nightlife. He would observe people, shadow them, investigate their lives and their surrounding peers – he had begun yet another plunge into espionage and secrecy, this time without a single moment of hesitation.
The moments he experienced at the fall of the sun, the rise of the moon . . . they lit up his life that had been so marred by anxiety and echoes of the previous. He had become dependent on his intrigue, his curiosity, to the point where it had become a drug. He dreamed and aspired after secrecy. It was the dawn of his ambition, one that transcended protecting the rights of fat and happy maritime Lords.
Don’t make this choice, Mateo. You’re better than the wants of the flesh. You were born and raised to know ethical standards. You’re the hero of our age – look at all that you have been blessed with. You have a home, a family, the riches of the Zeltivan trade, and even the love and blessing of Goddess Syna. Why would you want to throw it all in the gutter for the sake of the occult?
“What if I told you,” he said, “that the family given to me is built on requisite? My son, Miguel, he is so strong and kind. My daughter . . . Josephina, she is beautiful and wise. Yet – I have known from their conception that the life they would have in store for me would never be my own. I cannot lust nor love my wife. My children have been raised to believe in a forgery of me. I never threw them away for the occult. I threw the occult away for them.”
A vision of despondency; a dream of a fall. Something like that – right? Something like that always haunted him.
“Mateo,” his companion called to him in the night; a lad by the name of Vladim, who was born and raised in the Great Plains of Endrykas. He was a foreign fellow with a bit of a dialect to go along with it, and the guttural way in which he did . . . everything had always amused and disgusted the Ethaefal in equal measure. “Yes, Vlad?” Mateo asked. He’d always shortened it, and because he knew it annoyed him. It had become a great hobby of the man’s to irritate and impress people in equal measure. It kept him sensible, human.
The man never said anything, mostly because he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been accompanied by Vlad in a hundred years or some far off number that he couldn’t very well describe. It had been a long time since he died, yet he remembered some things clearly even now. He remembered the love and the pain of his previous life, the ambition and excitement that came with the rise of the Zeltivan city-state. He remembered death, arriving at what must’ve been a set of many golden gates, in a land touched always by the sun. To him, this world had become like dementia. It was difficult to transition from paradise to purgatory.
A part of what made the life into this new world intimidating was the lucid dreaming and the malefic visions he’d experienced that still connected him to the past. The sad thing was, he could never be certain as to whether anything he dreamed had ever really happened. Sometimes he believed that he created his own, false past in his mind as a mechanism to protect himself; better to create your own false truths than desperately seek answers in the dark, or so he believed, and thus stories were born of children and the occult. One thing he had been certain of was that he always had a strong affinity for the taboo. It was much the same as it was now – simply, more dangerous and fearsome in magnitude, but more subtle in nature. He would hire and plant agents in circles of Leth, Dira, Nikali, Ivak, and other fringe beliefs and observe. He wanted to approach the broad topic of what they did . . . how they did it, and the expense of their belief. Back then, he was so timid. He was afraid of breaking his connection to Syna, though by his half-baked devotion he had already begun to destroy their bond.
From God to Servant, he had become the spoiled child who acted with wickedness under the moon but played mannerly under the sun’s rays. He always did the best he could to skirt along the edge of danger, retaining his connection while still satiating his craving for the darkness. That was back then. He was a bad person with a weak heart and he was afraid of being punished for it. He was wealthy and successful but only in material possessions – there was always a dark, gaping hole consuming this man’s psyche and his connection to God.
In this new life, Mateo had become an attorney with the Ravona family, merchants who had lost much of their stock in a recent investment failure, people eagerly and competitively seeking a regaining of their fortunes. He had personally known one of their founders in his past life, or so he told this family, and relaying that "knowledge" to the don of the house had earned him some level of respect. He’d gotten the job only days after putting himself forward, becoming an agent of their trade collection since the moment of first consignment. He was assigned to investigate circumstances regarding trade disputes, offer and sign deals and contracts with merchants and other businesses, protect the legal interests of the family, waiver documents, so on and so forth. This life surrounded by legality and principle had only been marred by his wild nightlife. He would observe people, shadow them, investigate their lives and their surrounding peers – he had begun yet another plunge into espionage and secrecy, this time without a single moment of hesitation.
The moments he experienced at the fall of the sun, the rise of the moon . . . they lit up his life that had been so marred by anxiety and echoes of the previous. He had become dependent on his intrigue, his curiosity, to the point where it had become a drug. He dreamed and aspired after secrecy. It was the dawn of his ambition, one that transcended protecting the rights of fat and happy maritime Lords.
