[It was the dream of my dead lover to accomplish the goals of the Helusheol. That group saw heaven as a never-ending orgy. Flesh fusing together, knowing each other, before separating as it moved on to another joyous experience. And for the rest of time there would be nothing but pleasure.]

[The prophesy stated that this would only come to pass once the sacrifices had become so costly, so appalling, God would be jolted out of its long slumber. The leaders of the Golgulth feared that this would only make the ancient power angry. And so it was, the priests were slaughtered during a rite.]

[My lover didn’t share the Helusheol’s religious leanings. She was of the opinion that God either didn’t exist or had abandoned his creations. The idea was to use technology to reach paradise. The problem of the neglectful God would be overcome with ingenuity. Such is the way of the Azenthon.]

[The enterprise ultimately failed. The goal was good. I have come to believe that the wrong god was picked. My lover failed, dying for her dream. And I was forever changed.]

[In my grief I took up the needle and surrendered to the flesh dolls. There are times when I long to return to those days. Wandering in a haze, a need to forget guided me.]

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[I walked the heathenistic streets of cities that have not known sanity in millennium. Places so torn with frenzied need that they were no longer recognizable as the centers of civilization they had once been. Even the music in those metropolises was a danger to the mind and soul.]

[Money was needed for survival and the pursuit of pleasure. It was only natural that my newfound ways would drag me into dark enterprises. I helped warriors do to themselves what the battlefield had failed to do. The products of certain alchemists are so good at killing the worries of the mind. The body eventually follows.]

[Those that had been slaves bid me to make spawn upon which they could revel in brutality. Their coin was worth the effort. In the end I did it for pleasure.]

[I spent many years running. I will never do that again. And so, I won’t run from what I am. I won’t run from the things that I did, the lows to which I fell.]

[It was in the ruins of Ellum that I found my salvation. A purveyor of those substances which I worshiped had a facility there. A night with a spawn was all he charged for a vial of the stuff.]

[Something was wrong. I knew from the first second that something was wrong. The rush failed to come. The visions came. I fought them, but they came anyway.]

[A thousand eyes stared at me, into me. My mind and soul were laid bare. I saw my dead lover. She said nothing. But I could still hear her.]

[When the vision ended, I was still terrified, because I knew that I was forever altered. Escape and slow suicide were no longer an option. My pilgrimage, my search for the truth began.]