My beloved Sapience,

I am coming to the impression that some of you may be upset with me. This is, honestly, very fair. It's been quite the turbulent week.

I do not have insults for you, at present. I have no intention of belittling your values or goals or individual approach to the task at hand, though I do mildly wonder if perhaps it has been forgotten in your outrage.

Instead, I wish to open my own conduct up for scrutiny. I would direct your attention to my newspost as Duiran first marched on Sterion, where I noted that I hope you knew what you were doing.

(It was this. This is the direct result of that decision, one short year and a half ago.)

I direct your attention to my many newsposts assuring the world at large that there was no act too degrading, too profane, too taboo, too sacred that I would not willingly walk that ground. What, precisely, do you think I meant by that?

I appreciate that you all have things that you hold sacred. Pursuits, duties, oaths, and ideals. I do not share them. But they are yours, and clearly something you are willing to kill and die for.

This is my hill to die on. Everything that happened this week was planned for from the start. Even your outrage.

You will kill me, I?m sure. I accepted that consequence when I started down this path. I have tread upon things that you hold dear, but I must impress: you cannot end my life in a way that matters. If anything could, it would have been the Ylem detonation, for I was the bait and the heart and the target of it all. Yet here I am.

Do you know who can end me in a way that matters? And has proven it, with Her captured Akkari, Duradalis, Earthen, the sickness of the Progenitor in the first war of Night, the claiming of both the Malevolent and late lord Arian? Ohlsana.

You will forgive me if I consider Her the greater threat than your rage.

So you are welcome, Sapience, for my contributions to protecting your free will for another evening. You are welcome, for your freedom to be enraged with me, to feel the sting of betrayal and anger of loss, to stare down your noses at me and judge me by the values of your homes and your values. Spinesreach will not be beholden to these judgements; we operate with no values but our own, despite your better efforts.

You are welcome for the rage that you are still free to feel.

Failure was never an option. Not today, and not tomorrow. We did not do it your way, but we succeeded.

We will succeed again. And you will live.

And yeah, I deserve it.

The well deserving,
Public enemy number one,
And eternal voice of Reason,
Inkh, the Chair of Spinesreach

Post script; feel free to reply if you like, but I don?t really do long drawn out public arguments.

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 22nd of Severin, in the year 505 MA.