Magnum Opus

[Personal archive]

-From the depths of the Cavern-
-A message from XIII.V-

Restless once more, correct? Yes, I'm here as well, it's certainly more comfortable than having to wait for another descent on your part. The Cavern has become a comfortable home, much more so than I could ever imagine, why would you ever decide to leave this place is something I will never understand, but enough about this tangent.

You are having those terrible dreams yet again, your slumber becomes easier to disrupt, you sleep but do not seem to actually rest, you wake with your mind scrambled and scattered, too frustrated at the circumstance yet too tired to care. There is a tragically bittersweet and nostalgic feeling to this, a comfortably uneasy invitation to the early years of the "old age" as you have come to call it. What is it that you say? "ETERNAL DEATH TO THE OLD AGE"?

You and your ilk may repeat that line as the symbol of a great victory, and truth  be told, it is, but to say that the old age is "eternally dead" would be a complete lie  on your part. Your people on the surface chant as reassurance, but you do so out of anger, you beat the corpse, you want it to suffer even when it can do it no longer. The old age lives on, not through the others, but through you, and only you.

I don't mean the hunt, no, we are long past chasing ghosts for no reason, and while I claim to be vindicated but not avenged, I too have learned from our newfound mutual peace. It serves no purpose to waste so much on so little, especially now that those phantoms suffer under the weight of their own sins. What I mean is the spirit, the symptoms, the problems, all of those are the "old age", its shambling remains still haunting your halls, much to your angry dismay.

"We are all running out of time" is an axiom that really took its toll on you, didn't it? Such a plain, simple lesson, and yet so terrifyingly true. Every single tick of the clock feels excruciating when wasted, even more so now that you are aware of your personal reality, of the things that you are truly owed, not just the things that you worked for through merit, but also that which has been blatantly stolen from you. I've called for you to collect that debt before, but you never seem to move beyond the first squares, never determined, never motivated, just you standing still. That's the frustration of the old age silently speaking from within, isn't it?

Why wouldn't it be that way, though? After all, there is not much done after so much effort, no groundwork laid out for any plans, no map to follow to a particular destination, no main course of action put together, just you going along, drifting with the current, seemingly waiting for something to happen. Every day waking to a mundane task that never demands much from you, wallowing in the waters of absolute mediocrity, a frustratingly easy line of work that yet demands oh so much from your time, leaving next to nothing in its wake. It's somewhat shocking that such dull activities can take so much and give so little in return.

It's such an easy thing to see and judge, this completely unremarkable existence that is going nowhere out of nothing but your own negligence, just feeling the pain of every tick of the clock, being "drunk with time", letting it all slip by you, and it's all your fault, it's all your doing, or "undoing" in this case, isn't it?

But that's the plan, it's your endgame, it's all deliberate, but with reason. All the reason, actually.

You can make big claims about your negligence or this endless routine of mediocre activities, but you know deep down inside that you're doing this out of your own will. If you were to ask me, though, I'd say that you are being far too cruel on yourself. Take a closer, deeper look at your actual life.

Sure, there is not a sign that anything exciting will happen soon, there truly is no bigger picture, grand plan or major project in the works, the back-burner is chock-full of half-baked and aimless ideas, but there's more to it. There's calm, there's peace, there's distance from the undesirables, you may not have or produce much, but you know for a fact and in absolute certainty that there is many a soul that would kill outright for a single second of your existence. Free from debt, from ghosts, from any and all shackles, it's so easy to see why others would condemn you, they can only wish for a single hour of a night where sleep and rest feel genuine. The only reason you appear to lose it is because you pointlessly struggle against your own current, or rather, you struggle against the corpse of the "old age".

It always comes back to it, isn't that right? It's always the distant memory of that promise, that dream, the reward you were convinced existed, all you had to do was just follow their orders, to cover their expectations, to satisfy their demands, and you put your back into it. You held no quarter, you broke a leg and a half, in doubt and in uncertainty, in the dire straits of the old age, and even in the more noxious age before that one, here in the Cavern you grew and withstood, you powered on, you dared exit these grounds on nothing but the worth and the merits of your efforts, yours and nobody else's. I should know, we were there to see it, to live through it, to face and endure it, with not a single sign of outside help, even in the face of need we shouldered the burden.

You did it all, you pulled through, you went an extra mile and the some more, you gave everything under such pressure, and you were willing to go even further just to show that you could. You were full of passion, a flame inside you that turned into a blaze, at that point you could actually set your sights on something greater, and you did. The thing is, it wasn't exactly according to outside demands, but there was the debt, the promise, the reward, you were ready to collect, not out of pedantic arrogance, not out of an egotistic megalomaniac desire, but out of simple recognition, out of nothing but your merits, and after all the effort, the burden, the pressure, what did you get?

Absolutely nothing. No, of course it's not true, even if it was just nothing you would've accepted your fate and moved on, but you got even less than that. More demands, more orders, more pressure, and this time it was kicking and screaming, not once were you congratulated, along the way, each and every single time you were told how little you actually do, how pitiful your efforts were, complaints and derision over unsatisfying results, never once were you shown an ounce of respect, and when you saw the patterns emerge, reality around you began to set, you came to your senses, you saw the truth.

You were dragged into someone else's plan, you were indoctrinated to live the frustrated dreams of an arrogant, apathetic authority that has never respected you or shown any esteem for you, you were a pawn, a tool, a mindless drone, you were played for the benefit of outside forces to your (and only your) detriment. They stole from you, they stole your will, your passion, your drive, they snuffed out your flame and took off with your life, your choices, your vision, and what's worse, they think they are right in doing so, they remain remorseless, they have the gall to try and wrestle away what's left of you, all that talk about a dream, a promise, a reward was a lie, a debt you owed to them. You were used, you were lied to, and it costed you, and only you, your entire life.

That's what comes back to you every time you find any motivation. The wound stays ever so fresh and deepens ever so slightly. Every tick of the clock feels like the deepest nails hammered against your mind, we're running out of time, but you have completely run out of your patience. You gave such an effort and broke your back for so long, you gained such high merits, and all to be awarded with nothing but more pressure, more demands, more disrespect, and all from the people who claim to be the closest to you. You have every right to do nothing, you have earned your claim to mediocrity, you have all the reason to feel such a deep, burning anger, to show them contempt, to give nothing more to them.

Why would you ever bother? Why fight against the grain? The costs are plain for all to see, and we do see them. You have felt them. More sacrifice? More effort? More work? It's all you've ever done! Work! Shoulder! Bear! It's all you ever do! Where's the reward?! Why is it fair for you to take punishment as a reward when plague-ridden parasites get everything they want and then some more?! They run a tally on you for committing the sin of earning your place while morally bankrupt bastards of the plague get their keep through no effort of their own?! They're doing their job when they take but when you do you're in the wrong?! And after all that you still want to do it all over again only now you do it to yourself?! No! You are TIRED! You are OWED! And you will TAKE what is yours! This rest? This mundane life? It's your reward! Deep down inside you know this to be true!

That is the reason you keep the corpse of the old age near. This plan of yours? Revenge. Simple, plain revenge. The truth is, revenge is your grand plan, your major work, your vision, your idea fully realized and directed, and this act with the old age is a war. You will lay low, live this life for years, let it simmer and fester, all because their plan was to live their twilight off of the back of your efforts.

No longer. They will see from the sidelines, believing themselves ready to take their "rightful" bounty, but at the eleventh hour, much like what happened to you, reality will set around them, and the truth will be laid bare for them to see.

The winds of their harshest winter will howl in the distance and you will have NOTHING to show them. Not a single provision left for them to take, an entire life's work wasted just to spite them, to scorn them to collect from them the hopes, the dreams, the drive, the time, the will, the life they took away from you, and in their closing moments, their despair alone will bring a taste that no pleasure will ever be able to give you. It's the least of what they actually deserve, and you are right to give it to them exactly like that; in the face of defeat you will actually claim your victory, then you will show true eternal death to the old age.

This truly is a war. A war of attrition, and we have certainly perfected the art of waiting.

Do nothing, I say. You have every right to claim your rest, to feel tired, to disdain their calls to effort. Are we running out of time? Of course. We all are, but they will feel such lesson's true terror only when you let it loose on them right at their wit's end. To you? It will be yet another weekday, nothing more.

No bigger insult to them, and greater satisfaction for you, than a life's worth of mediocrity.

[End of archive]