[ongoing side thread] Reccollections of Self

[Dan Hawkins]

Do you know what it's like, to see eternity, to know it lies behind and before you, and that in all the most fevered dreams and wishes, all you do is but dust and shadow in the grand scheme of things?

It's how I feel now. I once had Power, with a definitive Capital, My words held sway over nations, At my command Star systems lived or died. With my own hands and steel i slew component souls of the Stellar Intelligences, and in at least one case, the final Death of Song of Unending Void itself.

I can feel it, returning slowly. It's much as though I remember new things, capabilities I once had, and retrain myself to utilize them.

The knowledge of what I cannot do still weighs upon me. I'm not strong enough to protect them yet. That battle was a desperate throw of the dice, something I could only manage once, through the Grace of the Unconquered Sun. Even then, it was almost not enough.

i sit here now, replaying that battle, knowing just how close a thing it was, that those foes are still out there, and that should I meet them again, I still cannot end them for good.

I catch myself thinking that more and more, looking for Final solutions. That isn't the way of the Star Marshall, it is the path I walked as a First Age Solar. This diplomacy wears on me. I have not the patience, or skill anymore to truly deal with the Court, not that i ever enjoyed it when I had before.

Thank God for Althea. My Daughter, my adviser born again to this life, the one who convinced me to walk away from Power, and not for the first time. Even in the recesses of my memory, a specter of yet another world, another Age, long forgotten by all.

I can almost remember.

So many more important things out there that need doing, aside this introspection, but it must be done.

I'm not alone, i have my mates, my allies, my loves and my Daughter. I have my crew and the crews and officers of my young fleet.. I must shepherd them all. I must be ready to sacrifice.

We are all bought and sold in our own ways, be it with Order and justice, Chaos and anarchy, Life and Death, or the material comforts of the world. Even the very thrill of pushing existence, that moment between life and death, all is currency in this regard.

I must make sure we are not needlessly spent.

I can feel the tugs of Daniel's heart, so nearly subsumed by my own. I watch him, watching his daughter as she matures in this command. She's no child, by any standards, but of all, that bond with her reaches beyond so much, that It is my will too, to protect her... Blood is truly thicker than water.

Nova Corona, "New Flame"I was Christened that name upon my exaltation, directly by the unconquered Sun, all those millennia ago.. Did he know then, what would happen, what Effect it would have? What I'd do in his name to the Cosmos, to myself?

It doesn't matter. The Past is immutable, it cannot change. Only the Future is yet to be written, and I will see it done.

I am the Chosen of the Unconquered Sun. I bear the mark of the Dawn, the ending of the Long Night, of New Hope, light rekindled across the vault of the cosmos..

I will not fail my duty, not ever again...

,,