I found this fortress in the depths, alone in the black.
Its walls rose like ramparts reaching into the sky.
It stood before me, refusing to turn its back.
I faced my oldest foe with not a single cry.
I crossed roadless labyrinths and impassable chasms just to face it.
How wretched it looked; I lingered at the sight.
Its frailty held my eyes, and they refused to shut.
Was this truly its appearance?
What became of its force?
Of the fire beneath my rite?
Where had its grandeur gone—the beauty every myth once gave?
No bird crosses this air.
No flower breaks this earth.
Only an empty field,
emptier than absence itself.
My disciples gather behind me.
They have come too far to falter.
They will not leave me to surrender.
Our steps grow heavier.
Our gaze grows clearer.
We move toward its gate.
The fortress strikes first.
Yet it cannot prevail.
This is the last place left.
It, too, will yield.
Our cause belongs to us alone.
No hostile hand shall define it, much less touch it.
We are gods unto ourselves, answerable only to ourselves.
This is the last bastion of conformity.
The final refuge of desperate animality.
When it falls, it will burn, collapse, and be ground into dust.
The bloodsuckers will fade.
Our ancestors will rise in silent praise
before those whose inept hands could not bury them even in a single grave.
― Atrona Grizel