Chương 900: Day Eight Hundred And Ninety-Eight

Dear Diary, Fuck. Just when I think I've found out the worst things about myself, I realize there's even more.

'Change'. Not just 'Change', but Changing everything around me into 'my perfect paradise'. Not 'a' perfect paradise. Not 'the' perfect paradise. My perfect paradise. I've Surrounded myself with women who literally Worship me, who get off on whatever fucked up thing I can think of to do to them, and I kept blaming the Fates or the Norns or sheer random chance.

Even when I thought it would be stolen away from me at any moment, I still blamed others for the ultimate, intimate violation of my most beloved people's innermost selves. I made them love me. I made them want me, need me, crave me so much that they would put up with any amount of neglect, abuse, and infidelity just to be near me. I took the ones I love... No, I took the ones I lusted after and greedily craved, and warped them into simpering mirrors of my own lust and craving.

I destroyed the ones I loved, left them nothing more than puppets for my own amusement. I killed them, just as surely as if I'd put a gun against their heads and pulled the trigger. I destroyed them just as much as if I'd had Conrad throw them in his Machine, hollow them out, and fill them with unwanted, unneeded, unholy attraction for a walking lump of trauma and scars. Nothing I'd ever done, nothing I could ever do, could or would ever make up for that. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve.

Read this novel on Royal Road. I thought for a while of my long, lean, elegant Sidhe Lady, how she'd been the perfect ice queen before we met, utterly in control of herself and ready to do whatever it took to maintain her power and safety. Of how I remembered her last, breaking down at the mere thought of being 'banished' to her rooms in the Overlord's keep. Of my sweet, kind, adorable Ice Pop, Darling of everyone who knew her, who did her best to treat everyone around her with kindness and dignity.

I remembered how for months now, at my instigation, she'd done little else than vomit up everything she ate, all in an effort to bring forth a child she'd never given the slightest indication of wanting. I remembered her sweaty, disheveled, utterly corrupted and unable to do anything but shudder while I barely kept myself from devouring her, Body and Soul. Of my beautiful uncanny tigress, the queen of the murderfuck cult, bloated and clumsy with the cubs I'd filled her with.

Unable even to walk, where I'd crushed her hips until she sat, barefoot and pregnant in the Academy Kitchen, a trophy instead of the marvelous engine of lust and murder she should have been. Fuck, even now, maybe especially now, I couldn't stop myself from thinking, couldn't hide from the fact that it was me, not some alien entity, thinking of lust and murder as good things. Saffron. Oh, fuck, Saffron. My heart, my soul, my other half. Saffron. Always Saffron.

Only I couldn't even tell whether the Saffron in my bed, the Saffron I'd made Imperator, was the Saffron I'd played flirtatious games with at the door to my cell. Whether the Imperator Archmage Hero held even the slightest echo of that wonderful woman, or if I'd hollowed her out and filled her with all the secret desires I had, but couldn't be bothered to do the work for. All through what seemed like another night and day I hid at the bottom of the M-Space ocean.

The edges of voices teased at my mind, and I shoved my Blend higher until they forgot me again. It wasn't safe for them to be near me. To connect with me. To love me. To have me love them. I wanted to end those connections as much as I wanted to end myself yesterday. I tried, but my fucking recalcitrant mind wouldn't even do that, my greed overwhelming my ability to keep them safe. So instead I just hid. Fuck.