Legends of the Fall
Epilogue
There was a time, once, when things were good, pure. There were no wars, no famine, nothing to hinder us. But as people had spread out, building themselves up and securing their wants, there became a need for such things. There was a need for war, because human nature does not allow for peace. There was a need for famine to show us just how much we could do on our own. There was a need for stumbling blocks because, in our perfect world, there was no way to truly live without falling down at every step. The world prospered sometimes, then fell, then rose again: the never ending cycle of insanity. But how many times can you fall down before you realize that you can’t get back up? For us, the time had come to find the answer to that.
The cities had come and gone, burned, fallen, shattered, ‘til there was nothing left but the smoldering ashes of regret and frozen memories. There was nothing left for us anywhere; we’d destroyed it all. But they rose up, rebuilt the world, rebuilt society. They were the heroes: they had saved the fallen. They hid behind that veil as they went about their business: deceiving the very people whose lives they were endowed. They were Aether, and they were the enemy. They were our enemy. In every establishment there is one worm, one person who sees through the lies enough to know that the actions being committed are wrong. That is our job. We are Nyx. It is our job to discredit the enforcers of our world, infiltrate without being seen, destroy without leaving traces. It is our job to take back control.
Though stories circulated about the wrongs committed by Aether upon the people of the world, there was no proof. They spun words of torture, and vulgar occurrences: the ending of innocent lives, the thievery of all things moral. The tales faded throughout the generations, morphing into campfire ghost stories. They were no longer the now, the present. They were the past, the never.
Times had changed; people had outgrown it all: all the teachings, and the beliefs, and the stories. It all still existed, sure, but it was like a crib, a safety net. Eventually, you would grow out of it. There was one perpetual thing that would never fade away with the stories, however. It was that gnawing sensation at the base of your skull, the dull ache in your heart, the bullet through your head: death. It was the one thing that could never be proven either way. But no one could cancel out the fact that maybe, just maybe, their heroes weren’t who they claimed to be. Whatever the case, it never went away, and you never outgrew it. In these times, these torturous days, it loomed around every corner, always waiting to pounce, like a wolf on its prey. Some believed they could outrun it, escape its deadly vise. But not us.
We were so unafraid to die.
The cities had come and gone, burned, fallen, shattered, ‘til there was nothing left but the smoldering ashes of regret and frozen memories. There was nothing left for us anywhere; we’d destroyed it all. But they rose up, rebuilt the world, rebuilt society. They were the heroes: they had saved the fallen. They hid behind that veil as they went about their business: deceiving the very people whose lives they were endowed. They were Aether, and they were the enemy. They were our enemy. In every establishment there is one worm, one person who sees through the lies enough to know that the actions being committed are wrong. That is our job. We are Nyx. It is our job to discredit the enforcers of our world, infiltrate without being seen, destroy without leaving traces. It is our job to take back control.
Though stories circulated about the wrongs committed by Aether upon the people of the world, there was no proof. They spun words of torture, and vulgar occurrences: the ending of innocent lives, the thievery of all things moral. The tales faded throughout the generations, morphing into campfire ghost stories. They were no longer the now, the present. They were the past, the never.
Times had changed; people had outgrown it all: all the teachings, and the beliefs, and the stories. It all still existed, sure, but it was like a crib, a safety net. Eventually, you would grow out of it. There was one perpetual thing that would never fade away with the stories, however. It was that gnawing sensation at the base of your skull, the dull ache in your heart, the bullet through your head: death. It was the one thing that could never be proven either way. But no one could cancel out the fact that maybe, just maybe, their heroes weren’t who they claimed to be. Whatever the case, it never went away, and you never outgrew it. In these times, these torturous days, it loomed around every corner, always waiting to pounce, like a wolf on its prey. Some believed they could outrun it, escape its deadly vise. But not us.
We were so unafraid to die.