The Burden
Drakengard
What was it that coerced me into taking up this burden? The cold silence mocks me with its very lack of substance; no answers will I uncover within the depthless folds of black. False lights dance before my eyes; it is the very lack of external forces that prod the mind into these delusional tricks. Just as my ears hear the rain, it is, in truth, nought but my own blood. So, if not decided by the external, then what? What was the final thread binding me to this role? I have eliminated all forces without mine own flesh, so all that remains must be something within.
Which leads me to the old, painful debate; does the Blood make the Dragon, or the Dragon make the Blood?
Plainly put, does the Blood Memory make me who I am, or do I influence my Memory, make it my own? On a habit born of familiarity, I turn to look for a black scaled Element and a purple eyed Grey Dragon, to voice this timelessly agonising debate, but all that I see is black, pitch dark, mocking, jeering, and leering at me.
My questions die, stillborn, on my tongue, and instead I give voice to a rising, mindless shriek.
An endless cycle, awakening to awareness, pleading questions, and then descent into madness, plunging beneath the dark waves of insanity to escape the mocking Black, anything to tear its fangs from my flesh, to prise its gaze from my own, to feel anything but the pressure of Black, pressing down, down on my soul, crushing me beneath its weight.
My voice falters only when it becomes apparent that no sound is heard. The Black has even managed to stifle all sound, swallowing it all into the deep folds of its jet wings.
Why…Why…Why…?
The past has shown that Dragons are not meant for Goddesses, so why? Why did I not heed that most wise of teachers, why did I persist in this mummer's farce? Surely, my Seal is more secure than that of Angelus; the stakes driven through my neck and wings bind me tighter to this world, even as they divorce me more and more from the world of light, of life, death, shadow, and oh, endless beauty and horror. The world is flawed, but like a diamond, it shines still. And, like a diamond, it is coveted by avaricious hands. I hiss in a breath, the only way I know I have done so is that my body still lives, somewhere far beneath me, the tortured cage of flesh lingers where the soul no longer dwells.
There! Therein lays my answer, my reason, my purpose, my absolution! There is why I took this burden, there is my goad to withstand the Black, to bear my fangs at its pitch form and laugh as it shreds my soul into ribbons for its obsidian talons. How could I have let those images flee my mind, when all else abandoned me? I should have held tightest to those most of all! I can only blame the Black, and its foul machinations. In its hunger for my sanity, it must have driven all thoughts of living from my being. No longer! I remember now, and I shall not forget! With bursts of colour, light, noise, smells, pure memory, my own memories, not dead memories from my forebears, my memories again flow across the barren desert of my soul, bringing with them the rains to foster life once more.
With these memories, I forge armour for my core of being. Nothing will shatter my resolve to be, nothing will scatter these memories. They are me, and I am they. We are one.
This burden…
I took this burden, in memory of a blue sky, in memory of a mute prince and a Red Dragon. I took this burden for my friends, those who I hold close to me, even unto the End Times.
With these Memories held tightly to me, I scream defiant into the face of Black, and I laugh at its attempts to snatch away my resolve.
These memories are in my Blood now. Nothing will take them.
Nothing will shake loose my Seal.
I am the Goddess Seraph SealKeeper, and my Memory is both weapon and shield.
Any who would ignore that places their life at peril, for I will brook no interference with my burden.