'I don't even know why I write this to you. You can't read it, you're dead. In a way, that's an enviable state, all your problems are over, while mine just keep growing larger. My Raymond, I've often been bitter about your death, and I've worked so hard to reverse it, but I can't help but think… selfish as it is, that my life would be easier if I had no hope of ever returning you to life.

Maybe, cruel as it may seem, I could have found happiness if you'd just… if I couldn't… ugh, I've faced so many dangers but I can't bring myself to scratch out a few words! Why did you have to die?! It wasn't fair! God's bones, I sound like a child, don't I? Like I didn't spend years of my life on the unfairness of human supremacists who used me to enrich themselves. I should know better than most of those who live, that life is almost never fair. But damn it, if life has to be unfair, can't it just once be unfair in my favor? Is that so much to ask?

Evidently so, because you're dead and here I am, twelve years after I laid you to rest in the sarcophagus in the outer sanctum of my temple, I'm barely a few months in, and already I'm thinking my life would have been happier if I knew you would just stay dead. That hope that I can have you back again drives me forward, even while things have gotten far more complicated than I ever dreamed they could be.

Never did I pity you as much as I do now. How simple things must have been when my race existed only to kneel at your feet, and how complicated it must have become when you wanted to save me, my people, and your own all at once, and couldn't be sure that you could save any of us at all. In the end, the only one you didn't save was yourself. You died a hero, before you could see me rise to be the villain.

I believe… I believe you'll despise who I've become, and I am going to have to spend the next eight years learning to accept that. Slave trader, destroyer, butcher… mistress to thousands of people who bear my collar. How can I dare to expect anything from you, even if you are brought back, except utter revulsion? I hope I'm strong enough to bear that burden, if you can come back… can I watch you turn from me in hatred?"

"I'm damning my soul to bring you back, and it would be easier if I knew I wasn't going to be alone, but even that is complicated. I have come to love my slaves, and I don't mean just the petty sense of power over them. I love my Kaiji, my Priceless, I love seeing them all grow from the despair I've taken them up from… and yet I can't do the one thing I know my god commands.

I can't trust anyone free to follow their own will. I can't, I can't, I can't! There are traitors and spies, there are people hoping to use me, people wanting to take my body to their bed so they can get at the wealth beneath my feet. The ones who don't just want to fuck me, but also want everything I have as if it were theirs. Marriage proposals… how absurd is that?

I'm a human hating bitch, and yet I have a slew of human suitors, one of which genuinely loves me, but is more useful to me as a possession… Sado. God's bones I wish that man could keep his eyes and tongue to himself. He's brave, strong, if he'd been born in the west, you'd honor him as a hero of humanity. Here? He's another slave in the House of Aiwenor, and another reason I hate looking at myself in the mirror and throw myself into my work. I was so cruel to him… I don't know how to make that right.

Then there is Rasgen, another human, a good man, vivacious, a little wild. He just wants a good time and a good life, but he's diligent and works himself to the bone for his city, he's the only human in this city who keeps the hours I do… and I have the benefit of being a priestess of the god of death to help me with that. I don't know how 'he' does it. I like him, he likes me, but for him it is a business arrangement. I co-rule the city with him and leverage my wealth and success to keep it safe. Would he make the same proposal if he knew I planned to take everything? Maybe not, but this way I have a chance at keeping him alive.

My Kaiji, my Priceless, my Freyjin, my Pain Children… all my Breakers, their families, free and slave alike… I have come to accept that things aren't easy anymore. They look to me to lead them, and though I think often about you and what you might do, in the end I can only do as 'I' would do. If this damns me, if I am judged after surrendering everything to my god… maybe he'll let me see you returned to this world.

What a reversal that would be? You rise to life to see 'me' in the gallows or carted off to prison for all that I have done. Maybe that would be more cruel than leaving you dead. I have no idea, not much makes sense anymore, not much except one thing.

Uniting my empire, and readying them to destroy something that does not deserve to exist in this world. That makes sense, that is the only way to protect the people here I've come to love, before I have to say goodbye to them. I pity them, they have no idea how little time I'm likely to have with them before the end. Kaiji thinks I will rule for a thousand years. Priceless thinks she will serve me till she is old and gray, Sado harbors not-so-secret dreams of a life with me.

But when the Triumvirate falls, nothing will remain the same, and as for me… I doubt I'll ever see Mict'arratz ever again. Hopefully they will forgive me, as I hope for your forgiveness also.

Goodnight, my Raymond, wherever you are.

~Nua Calen Aiwenor