Datascrape XVIIa/fxi: “Awakening” - Admonition Missive

[th3#afk]

https://youtu.be/Sk-xRz9eAqc

Acquisition Agent: Wyrmwood 78

Veracity Rating: 12-Alpha

Subject: [REDACTED]

Action: Monitor

Cross-reference: “Urmal”, [REDACTED], [REDACTED]

Entry Begins:

Falter not, wither not.

Those words have lodged firmly in my mind. There have been endless words and fanatical ramblings – enough to last several lifetimes – and most are just background noise. That statement, though… it carries weight. Enforced inactivity leads to a degradation of body and mind and so I must keep both active. The first comes with physical recovery. The other will hopefully come from committing some of my myriad thoughts to this journal.

How long have I been here? Days, certainly. Weeks, perhaps. Months? Possibly. I no longer know. There has been much pain, but I know that pain must be endured so that the body may be reshaped and that is what is happening. There is pain, at times excruciating, but I endure. I must endure. Because if I don’t, who will there be left to dole out retribution for my loss? Rodin’s death at the hands of the warband will not go unpunished and must be addressed. I swear it.

I have so many questions that have no answers. Who brought me here? Why was I spared when he was not? What happens next? All I seem to have are questions and time to think about them. What is time, really? When you get down to it, I mean. Is it even a real thing? Is it just a construct of a social system that has an obsession with its own mortality? What other species counts down the seconds to its own oblivion in the way that the Imperium of Mankind does? Such limited scope. Such narrow vision. Entropy is an inevitability: why bother wasting an existence waiting for it when you could be living?

It seems I have a second chance, including the opportunity to think and come out with the same foolish rhetoric of my new companions.

It’s ridiculous. I’m a fighter. A soldier. I’m no orator or scribe given to flights of fancy. But things change. People change. I should be dead, but I am not. They talk to me earnestly of the Grandfather’s gift, of what I will become to them, but I fail to see the appeal. These people brought me here and I will play their game. For now, at least, we are travelling the same way, flotsam and jetsam borne ever-onward by the unrelenting tide of time.

There are choices ahead but I will not be distracted from my core objectives. I will avenge my brother and I will pay my debt to these people. Once those duties are discharged, what happens next remains to be seen. Thoughts of the way forward don’t burden me, neither am I afraid of them. He always said to me that there was no fear that cannot be overcome, no belief that cannot be challenged, no hope that cannot be dissolved in the acidic bile of truth. No, there is no fear.

There is something, though. Trepidation, anticipation, excitement… the breath you draw before you dive, not knowing if you’re going to surface after you hit the water. The step off the cliff-edge, trusting that the fall is not going to smash your body to smithereens. The thrill of continued existence against all the odds. It’s invigorating and gives me strength and purpose to do what must be done.

I have already survived against all likelihood. I will endure and I shall not falter. My brother, you will not be forgotten.

Falter not, wither not.

Take a breath and jump.

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