No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We must all walk a path of our own. We are all eventually going to be alone.
The life of a Suidlander is all about being self-reliant. From the moment they are born, they are born into hardship. To the rest of the Commonwealth, to Maelstrom, we are dirt on their feet. Land they can step on.
They came to our lands with their promises, their gods and their powers, granted by that unholy tar. They killed our friends, our families. They stole our lands. They crushed our spirit. And now, they say we should be thankful to "Her Excellence" for embracing us into the Commonwealth, for bringing "Glorious Unification" to our uncivilized territories.
I was the first born in one of many families pertaining to the Abahlali. Nomadic tribespeople of the lush Vanaheim Savannah…or at least its what Volvangar calls it. To Suidland, it is Groot Wei. To us, it is the Idlelo Eikuhlu.
Life in Idlelo was and still is difficult. We Abahlali can not stay in one place for too long, otherwise the land will stop providing. Movement is life. From a young age, I learned to hunt, learned to track and learned to kill. I learned to cook and provide, all under the guidance of my father.
As the years passed, my father told me about us. Our name, the name of our homeland all came from a now extinct language our ancestors used to speak. But when the first settlers, the Verstote, discovered this land, they found it more convenient to sacrifice our language for the sake of unity, for the sake of communication.
It was through that sacrifice that our language merged with theirs, the language of the Outcasts or Verstote-Praat, to become Suidland-Praat. The language of the Southland. The language of Suidwes.
With time, the Abahlali and the Verstote began to grow closer. The Verstote built settlements…the Abahlali built roads between them. The Abahlali discovered minerals, lush fields, forests and other riches, and the Verstote reaped them. But when the time for sharing came, the Verstote only provided crumbs and leftovers. It was this that drove a wedge between the Verstote and the Abahlali.
And wherever there was a wedge, the barbarians on the north, the Ystervius warriors, the clan of the Iron Fist of Volvangar went. They came to Suidwes and, to our disgrace, saw more value in the Verstote, who built up walls and defenses, than the Abahlali, who built roads and bridges.
The war was cruel for both ends. Ones efficiency ended where the other's cunning started. One relied on conquest, while the other relied on stalking, ambushing, until they figured the techniques of the Abahlali and defeated them.
For all their accumulation, the Verstote ironically lost it all. Their piled up Dust, their crops and their metals, all were now for the Ystervius and the Ystervius only. But just like the Abahlali, they lost their most precious possession: Liberty. Now both are forced to coexist with the same title, reflective of their collective defeat: Suidlander.
My father was always resentful towards those in the cities and the villages. In them, he saw the vivid image of our defeat…the vivid image of his stolen relatives. And that hatred was always catalyzed at one person: My mother, daughter of a rich merchant from the city. But in his mind, the biggest revenge he could enact against her was to raise me to his image.
His plan came into jeopardy when my….brother was born. In his eyes, his treacherous wife had decided to wage war on him with his birth. And so, blood was spilled.
The spillage of blood is not permitted amongst the Abahlali unless absolutely necessary. For his crimes, my father was to be exiled to the Yggdrasil Marshlands…home of the Seraphim.
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. And so he perished, full of hatred, denied reconciliation. But without him…we were free. My brother and I were free. And with that freedom, came a dream: To live far away in peace, just the two of us.
For that end, we began to search for work. We left Idlelo's care for the chaos of the cities. The streets and sidewalks do not treat the Abahlali well. The jungle of stone and steel is cruel with those that it was designed against.
"You do not belong here" they told us. Even if this once was our land
"You have no right, we are not the same" they screamed. Even if we are both part of Suidwes.
A kid not embraced by the tribe will eventually set it on fire to feel its warmth.
For the sake of my brother, I resorted to crime. I broke into stores, I stole from the carts and caravans of the Collective. I would feed, drink and learn from what I found in the crates I stole…and sell what I could not.
A life of hunting, tracking and killing in Idlelo had taught me to fend for myself, and it was that which I tried to teach my brother, so he could better protect himself if I ever left and didn't return. But what that life didn't teach me…or him was that we always left tracks.
That who lives by the steel dies by the steel. But life gave me a second chance. We were both still young…and the new leaders in Volvangar were growing more and more ambitious, and a young hunter, smuggler, robber and killer was too good of an... "investment" to pass on. I was offered the choice between prison, and eventually, execution…or the Reaper Corps.
I didn't see my brother after coming out of court. And I thought that I would not see him again. The first days were tortuous. Being the new kid and being from Suidwes meant I was always the easy prey for the drill instructor. But with time, the drill instructor became my spotlight, and with that spotlight, I climbed the ranks. And the more ranks I climbed, the more spotlights I gained. And through those spotlights, I began to seek new ways to hunt.
And one day, I discovered it. The power of the flame. And what fed the flame? Sweet liquor. Sometimes with dishwasher soap…sometimes with tar, sometimes with nails. The more I explored the flame, the more I had to explore the liquor…and the different things I could combine it with.
It was this expertise which led me up the ranks..and into a spiral from which my body and mind would barely recover. I was named a Reaper at 22 years of age and I already had liver complications…and lots of other things.
It was the flame which kept me going...and the flame only. For every step I took towards it, its full form took 10 steps away from me. And sacrifices eventually had to be made.
A Reaper always wears a mask. For their soul is to remain pure, untainted by the horrors of battle. But were that face of metal to fall into the hands of the enemy, only the flame can preserve that purity.
I feared that, in all these years, my brother would have ended up being a sacrifice for the flame. But one day...after 12 years of being apart, we met again, under the wing of a new Arbiter looking after both of our teams. Arbiter Minerva was the first one to give me a hand. Then….My brother... and her new found partner, Or-...Pygmallion.
It took a lot of strength. A lot of pain. A lot of effort. But at last, it was all getting better...It was all getting better!
Cipher breaks in tears. A light shines through a little gap between the curtains, illuminating a part of the darkened apartment….as the sobbing hit the insulation, not to be heard by anyone.
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We must all walk a path of our own. But nothing in that path prepares you for the company of an echoing memory.
