This particular branch of my site has gone on hiatus. I moved all the entries to my main site at http://musesings.wordpress.com
I may occasionally update with a post from Caera there, but I am unsure if I will return here. She has become a very minor character and I have already finished the first draft of Blood Filigree, the novel she is the main character of. Thanks for reading!
And I remain. I cannot bring myself to embrace the shadow the way my company does, but I will remain in this darkness for those lost in it. One of the lightslayers, Gavin, surprised me. Once he realized I chose to stay, but out of compassion, rather than fear, he approached me like a man past due for confessional. I stay in this darkness for him now as well. I never expected either of the two lightslayers to accept me, let alone swear loyalty and protection.
Rhune remains out of reach, his companion. I doubt she will ever forgive the shadow word I placed on her.
The light’s absence left a hole in me, but I press on knowing I am not alone in that loss. I can help others forgotten in these shadows if I remain with them, remember them, console them. Ziel seems confident I will eventually learn to use the shadow. I do not think she realizes how unsettling I find it that the shadow’s cooling presence filling me scares me. A lifetime of belief that the path of shadow leads to evil and corruption, even a mad addiction is not easily overcome. I may live in these shadows now, but I do not think I can embrace them. Meanwhile, I try to convince and fight with myself over whether the light is inherently good and the shadow evil. Evidence supports amorality but so much training to overcome, so many lessons to unlearn, and in the end, I’m afraid the philosophy of the light would be right.
My memory clings to how good it felt to summon that warm glow, to watch pain ease and death lose its grip. To feel life flow through me and into those in need. How can that not be good? Why can I no longer call it…why can the forgotten no longer access it if it really is amoral?
I don’t have that answer, so I remain and elect to have neither shadow nor light, struggling with the addiction and craving that sometimes gnaws at my sanity. A thirst I use to resist and rely on the light to fill. A void filled poorly by memories, some of which haunt my dreams, at the edge of waking awareness.
If I can no longer use the light to heal wounds and sickness, I will use my will to heal spirits and console the lost.
–Caera
Pages full of lessons and memorized text have been recorded up until this point. This entry starts like yet another of these attempts at grasping for what has been lost.
Compassion, the final, and trickiest of the virtues. It can even be dangerous when not tempered with wisdom. In my strongest desire to return to the light, I have overlooked the others lost in this shadow with me. I have been locked in this room, but I know it is for my own protection now. And I think there’s more. Eran wants strongly to see me turn my back on the light. Many times now he has said it doesn’t deserve my loyalty. He doesn’t seem to realize what I have been capable of in my darkest moments crammed in that tiny, lightless cell. He hides it well, but I get the sense that he needs me to stay. The Light has already left him and if left alone again, he may never find it once more. I feel to continue my quest for the light’s approval is selfish and perhaps that is why it still evades me. If I go now, if I am accepted back, I will leave Eran and Ziel, and more lost and forgotten in these shadows. They will not follow me, and I cannot lead them out of the darkness. Isn’t it compassionate to stay where I am needed? Is it selfish to run to the light and leave so many others suffering in the shadows alone?
Ziel told me the story of her life, the one she has placed aside as someone else entirely. I do not know Eran’s story. I don’t think he knows it. But Ziel did not deserve this. She sacrificed her life and freedom for her people and those she loved. It would be naive to think there aren’t others lost and pushed aside into these shadows that are even less deserving of such abandonment. They are places I cannot go with the Light and to find the light now is death. The lightslayers would kill me and many would still be lost.
If it is within someone to go out into the worst of conditions to help those in most need, but only by living among them…isn’t that more compassionate than choosing comfort and acceptance apart from all of that and never really helping anyone? The truth is, I would feel guilty to leave such people in darkness, now that my eyes have been opened to them. I would feel like a coward to retreat to the safety and familiar warmth of the Light, like a child burrowing under her blankets to hide from…the shadows.
And what are the shadows really? I find I am no longer certain of their evil. I have tried so hard to convince myself that I can get the Light back, just like the sun that always returns every morning. Yet I ignore the other half of that metaphor. Is the night evil? In our teachings of compassion, we have learned that followers of the Light can do great misdeeds with intentions of compassion. Is the day good? Or are they both merely facets of life and mere tradition sees that good chooses light and evil, the darkness.
I have been in denial over that night a few weeks ago…but I have felt the shadow already. I think it is too late should I wish to return to the light anyway. It was divine shadow, nothing like the felshadow of raw arcane or a demon’s blood. This…it filled the hollow space left by the Light’s abandonment. It made me feel just as…embraced…only different. It was like a clear and cool night after a long day of hot sun. Perhaps they are only different sides of the same whole, a completed day together. Can there be good followers of the shadow? There are surely evil followers of the Light.
–Caera
You think it will change its mind for you, child? It has abandoned many before, never to return. No amount of purifying will bring it back now. It has left you in darkness.
Forgotten in the shadows.
Use it. As if I have anything better to do while locked up in this tiny room. As old and shabby as this whole building looks, this little room is at least better than the cell. Is this more of my family’s doing? Or are these two really clueless about how I came to be, well, nearly dead, according to Ziel. I can’t feel the Light anymore and I only just realized how cold and lonely I feel without it. Empty. Ziel said to give up. Embrace the shadow. No one gets it back once they’ve lost it. My time in that cell, I am ashamed to admit that the light had every right to abandon me. My family won. Is this some sort of mind trick then? They set it up to push me even farther away? Somehow…I feel this is separate. Regardless, I refuse to believe the light has abandoned me. I must pay my penance, purify myself, and then the light will return. I have to believe that. If I must do it from this tiny room in the dying land around me, then so be it. I will not let them win. I am not forgotten. Just because the light has left doesn’t mean it will not return. It always returns with the sun. It may be after sunset now, but the sun will always rise in the morning. This ruined village we are in, I saw it when I tried to leave. It looks like one of the many human ghost towns created by the scourge. That means that I am most likely somewhere in the northern section of the Eastern Kingdoms. The taint is not heavy, however, so I believe I am not as far north as the plaguelands.
I heard voices downstairs just now, there are visitors. I cannot hear well what they are saying but one started to come upstairs, talking about me. If they were speaking in Thalassian I could catch more, I think, but my Orcish is not good enough to make out and piece together from another floor. I did manage to hear the one on the stairs a moment ago ask them why they were keeping me. Clinging to the light was weakness, he said. Nonsense. Why do so many see this as a path of weakness. Weakness would be to just give up because I don’t have what I want. Weakness would be feeling this empty hole the light left in me and giving up on ever feeling its warm comfort again. Weakness is what happened to me in that cell…I don’t know if I can do this. I can do this.
Respect. The first virtue taught is respect. While the Holy Light teaches that awareness of the self and the universe is a goal, one must also see the connection between others and the universe. Destro respect tenacity compassion respect tenacity compassion respect tenacity compassion respect tenacity compassion respect tenacity compassion respect tenaci_________________________________
Respect
The first virtue taught is respect. While the Holy Light teaches that awareness of the self and the universe is a goal, one must also see the connection between others and the universe. Destroying other’s happiness and severing other’s connections with the universe is not serving the world’s well being, and therefore not your own. The practitioners of the Holy Light are not naive, however, and understand that trial, conflict, war, and suffering do happen; but they strive to make the universe a better place in spite of these hindrances.
Tenacity
The second virtue is tenacity. The adherence to this virtue is, incidentally, the part of training under the Holy Light that weeds out the unfaithful, as true dedication takes years. Fresh-faced acolytes often lose hope and the true meaning of the Holy Light when they realize that it takes a lifetime to serve the philosophy. The world is much bigger than one lone soul; and while the world can change a soul in a day, it takes much more time to change the world. Only through tenacity can a servant of the Holy Light hope to affect the universe. If some young students feel like this is an impossible task, others take heart in the realization that if you truly believe there is a connection between the self and the universe, one cannot help but affect the other, no matter the size. Affecting the world can include anything from teaching and instilling hope in others to joining with other like-minded individuals to work together to create a bigger change.
Compassion
After the first two concepts are mastered, the student can take on the final virtue: compassion. The connection between the self and the universe is strong, but it still is only one connection. If a follower of the Light serves another to increase his happiness, his bond with the universe grows stronger. The happiness he receives by helping someone also strengthens himself and the universe, and he is able to affect the universe even more.
Compassion is perhaps the most powerful — and yet most dangerous — virtue.
If someone is too compassionate, he can give help where none is needed — or wanted. This oversight can hinder one’s growth and happiness. For example, one may help another with a seemingly impossible quest, when such a quest is not actually out of the abilities of the one making the attempt. Thus, Compassion (However well intentioned) has resulted in that person’s inability to grow as the quest was essentially “done for them”, hindering their growth and happiness.
Some helpers can be awkward and do more harm than good with their actions, increasing the suffering and unhappiness in the world. A well meaning follower of the Light may rush to the aid of an adventurer and wind up gaining too much interest of those attacking, and thus force those they try to help to rush to the follower’s aid.
This is why compassion is taught last; only the wise and those fully understanding compassion may identify who is truly in need and who can grow on their own.
Note: The definitions of the three virtues are as they appear in the wow lore wiki here and are a product of rote memorization on Caera’s part. They are not her own words (nor mine).
I remember the days after my world was turned upside down.
My thoughts churned on themselves and I did not know where I was
supposed to go, or even what I was supposed to do. Eran dragged you
from your death, scarred and broken, bone-thin. There is a reason.
My only blessing in the days after my death was an empty book that
I found and wrote in. I woke, and I wrote, and I remembered. It helped
me move on and continue living where the Light and fate would have seen
me dead and silenced. This book is for you. Use it.
Ziel
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