Epilogue: The Way to Eternal Sorrow
One thing is clear from a number of sources: the Forsaken schemed against one another with almost as much fervour as they schemed for the Shadow's conquest… these people wanted power, and the desire became an obsession.
- excerpt from 'The Forsaken'
And so it was that thirteen otherwise ordinary Aes Sedai turned to the Shadow, and were reviled for it. They were the thirteen who survived the Dark One's deadly regimen of winnowing out weakness amongst his servants; they were the thirteen whose names and crimes would be remembered for all time and never forgiven; they were the thirteen who were sealed in the Bore with their master, and who awakened three thousand years later to find the world greatly changed from the one they remembered.
And how did they feel, as they slowly emerged from their prison, from their long sleep? We cannot know for certain, but it is somewhat pleasing to think that they were contented with what they found. That the world did indeed still know and fear them as the most powerful people to have ever lived, where they would otherwise have been forgotten along with the rest of the Second Age. That, in the end, was all they wanted – and that was all they got.
After all, in the end, they had won. If they hadn't, who had? Lews Therin Telamon? For all his arrogance and 'moral superiority', now he was just as hated and feared as they were, perhaps more so. The Aes Sedai? Thanks to the Forsaken, they were still a shadow of their former selves even thousands of years later, wrapped up in their own greed and self-importance despite knowing no more than infants, allowing politics to dominate (and ensure the failure of) their every action. The Dragon Reborn, Rand al'Thor? His fate was as doomed as Lews Therin's, and it was clear that he was about to crack from the pressure at every moment.
Yes, in spite of everything, the Forsaken were perhaps the only ones to come out of the War of Power ahead. But they knew their work was not yet finished. After all, one thing still eluded them – the power that they had sold themselves to the Shadow for in the first place. The world itself still did not belong to them. Their war had started anew, and they would fight harder than ever, despite having more than they could have ever dreamed of in their old lives. They wanted more. They needed more.
For they knew what those fools deluded themselves into thinking was an untruth; that there was nothing else in life worth fighting for. Either you had everything, or you had nothing. They had tasted the forbidden fruit and now they could not stop themselves from trying to get more, to get it all. Death was nothing for them to fear any more. After all, they served the Lord of the Grave. But also, there was the simple fact that life was not worth living if they did not achieve their goal. To go back to their miserable origins, to a world that stifled them and would not allow them to be anything other than they were born to be – death would be preferable to the only alternative.
Yes, they were selfish, they were despised, they were psychotic and probably insane and everything else people said they were. But what did it matter? An insane emperor was still an emperor. As long as they had the power they craved, they didn't care about anything else. It was all they lived for. Every day of their existences, they felt its absence; and it burned them.