7456
title One Day More
MuddyCake
A Philosophical Tract for the Higher Classes :: :: Esteemed reader, you hold in your hand the result of years of living amongst those in question, and the understanding of their pains and sorrows, their joys and loves. As a foreword, I beseech you, respect and honour your fellow man. :: :: True Love :: :: True love, a subject much covered, a subject much misunderstood. For if love, such an abstract an emotion, is to truly be understood, it cannot be categorized as a subject. Nay, it must be realised in its full, and given due respect as according to its status. True love can give a man strength to perform great deeds, even sunder mountains and return from the cusp of death, if the moment requires it. True love can meld the hearts of a people into one and give them resolve to overcome the shackles of oppression and find the light that we strive to seek. :: :: The intoxication that it brings about is as heady as an ambrosia as any mead or ale, and the wondrous effects of it can make a man feel no hurts. This tenet is one of great virtue, and as such, a warning must be given. Dare you interrupt the course of love, be wary lest the concerned crush you in their righteous vengeance, which leads to the second of my thoughts. :: :: Righteous Fury :: :: The anger and fury of the oppressed and righteous is something to be feared. The tyrant always fears his subjects, for his life depends on the very subjects that he mistreats. They can hold the tyrant's life in their hands, and their anger, so righteous and majestic, can bring down the very heavens with their shouts combined! I have been party to anger of this sorts in my journeys. I partook in a revolution, a group of students barricading themselves and fighting the cruel rulers. They shone with such radiance and purity that I was blinded with tears when they fell by the hands of cronies and lackeys. :: :: Their examples lead to the masses, the citizenry who had for centuries been mistreated by their rulers, to rise up! Oh, how those lords and ladies trembled in their castles while their guard deserted them and took up the cause of the martyred students! I can still hear their furious chants at night, the torches and firebrands of revolution filling the air with fire and brimstone! One day more! One day more, they chanted! :: :: Blind Devotion :: :: I once met a man, a lawman, named Iaver, and he spoke to me on my journeys. We talked of the law, and its enveloping presence. He told me his life story, and now I shall relate it to you in his absence, for he took his own life in an event I shall recount to you. :: :: Iaver was born in a jail, a gutter rat, his father having abandoned his mother, and his mother soon passing of illness. From a young age, Iaver had a healthy respect for the law, and decided he would earn his place in society from honest work, for the only way to make his way in life was to become either an enemy of the law or an ally of the law. He vowed never to step wrong, and to become the best he could ever be, in the name of the Law. He knew that both a criminal and a lawman were outcasts, one and the same, both feared and respected by the the society they inhabited, a solitary path. Growing older, he gained a reputation for being fair, just, and above all else, an incorruptible weapon devoted solely to the Law. So great were his deeds that despite his background, he rose up to become the commanding officer of his region. But so great was his devotion to the law that he failed to take into account emotions, for his had been so long neglected that he had forgotten how to love and hate anything other than his sole mistress, the Law. :: :: After he spoke with me, we parted, and went our separate ways. Months late, I returned to his town, and inquired about him, and to my sadness and regret , Iaver had perished. Many in the town mourned his passing, for he was the epitome of a righteous man. I learnt the circumstances of his death; an escaped prisoner had spared his life twice, once at the very barricades that the students had died at, for it seems that he had joined their ranks in order to quell their uprising, and the second time in the sewers, where he had pursued that prisoner. The prisoner pleaded to him for time to save a man he had rescued, and Iaver had agreed, but not before extracting a promise that the prisoner, and honourable man, would return to be arrested once his task was complete. However, when the prisoner returned, Iaver was nowhere to be seen. It was later that day when his note was received by an orderly at the lawman's offices that they learnt he had taken his own life after broken his promise to himself, and to the Law. :: :: His devotion was blind, his love and hatred bound by his mistress the Law, the only thing he could ever truly love. I say, fear this kind of man for if you anger his cause, he will pursue you to the very ends of the earth. But respect him too , for his kind can only be found once every decade or so, the passion in him enough for a hundred men. :: :: Abandonment :: :: The shunned man is a man full of emotion, so the saying goes. You can never tell what is going on inside his mind, for he is too well-practised at masking his true self from those around him. Pity him, for society has ignored him, shunned him, abandoned him to the dogs. But he still holds on to something, holds on to life . They are sustained by emotions so strong that to place a finger between it will surely cause the loss of more than just the finger. My friend, a harmless beggar once told me: "Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men?" In that moment, I could see the fires in his eyes, and his withered body seemed whole and vital one more. I shied away from him, for his grip was suddenly as strong as that of a vice, but as quickly as the moment had come upon him, it left again. :: :: Such is the strength of abandonment, and the grudge held against society. But they cannot be faulted, for it was us that shunned them, and made them what they are. Every time I see a beggar, I think of that man that I knew, and the words he had spoken. :: :: Greed :: :: The emotion of greed is the first step to damnation and corruption, for once greed sinks her fangs into a person, she never relents, and the man, no matter how virtuous or honourable before, becomes twisted, and some may say, evil. Take the Dwarves of the land, who when cursed by Iblees became what they are now. Now, reader, if you are a Dwarf, I mean no offense, I am merely a scholar putting quill to parchment, but the lore is the lore and it cannot be ignored. I therefore call upon you to relinquish any anger you feel towards me for this statement. Greed can make you do horrible things, take for example, the evil deeds of an innkeeper and his wife, who had extorted money from a poor woman whose only crime had been trying to feed her young daughter. Lying to the woman, they gained more and more, but were still not satisfied. Soon, they turned to a life of crime to gain the goods and wealth they so greatly craved. :: :: Reader, I admonish you, do not make the same mistake as the innkeepers for they died painful deaths, and their fate could not be envied by most. Take heed of this, for I myself saw the hanging, drawing, and quartering of the innkeepers. :: :: Afterword :: :: Esteemed reader, I have presented the thoughts that have crossed my mind after my journeys, and now I hope to impart to you the knowledge I have gained from my experiences. I have partaken in sorrows and joys myself, and been moved to tears by the deaths of great men and women, whom I greatly respected and loved. :: :: The author is a man by the name of Ignaeous l'Arnan, also known as Goldy. His whereabouts are unknown, but his thoughts are.