Editing Geshtinanna (section)

=Kadsirin Returns=

Pain. Pain is all that I know. It is my mother, my father, my brother and sister. My best friend, my worst enemy, my lover.

It has ever been thus. Though occasionally the ghostly after images of something, some different time dance at the edges of my perception, I cannot take hold of them. My god, the Emperor of Mankind, has forsaken me, for in my arrogance, I dared question His omniscience... Dared supplant it with my own meager collection of knowledge. Such a price mankind will pay for that. Such a terrible price.

At times in the darkness, I stumble upon a shred of my sanity. Always feeble, always fleeting, I latch onto it like an animal being washed downstream, desperate to survive the unending torrent. It is in these moments that I remember a name. A name born of some other place... A dark place.

Geshtinanna.

Then the laughter comes, and my respite from madness is at an end. I hate the laughter. It is the only thing I feel anymore. Hatred for that hideous cackling and the abomination from which it sallies. Hatred for myself, for it was my hand that brought about Its birth. She is always watching, you understand. Watching, waiting, laughing, prodding at my broken form.

I hate Her. She has left me in the dark now... Something else has taken hold of Her attentions. Perhaps a planet to devour, a genocide to commit... I do not know. I know only that I welcome such rare mercies. In the black void, I am numb. Drained of emotion, ambition, desire... Even my hatred for Her ebbs and slows as I take every advantage of this moment to steady myself. In all the eternities that I have suffered here, never has an opportunity such as this presented itself. I am alone. She is not here to torture and mock, to blaspheme against the holy Emperor. As I consider this, anger wells up in me once more. Different than the hate I am so familiar with, this feels... Righteous. Furthermore, it is not directed at Her, no... I realize that I am angry with myself.
No, not even that... The heat is not coming from within. This anger presses down on my mind from elsewhere. It exhorts me to right the wrongs I have unleashed upon this universe.

"Get up," it says, "Get up and fight, Roland."

"I cannot!" I wail back at the void. "She has broken my body and my mind. I am as nothing before Her."
And then, such searing pain, white hot like the bellies of ten thousand burning suns, consumes me. It is not Her. This pain is different... It sharpens my mind and blows away the coiling mists of madness like a furious gale. 

"GET. UP."

The words tear through me like a bolt round exploding in my skull. Hot, painful awareness washes over me; agony and the stench of iron. For the first time in eons, I open eyes that I no longer have.

I am alive.