To the City at Large or to Whom It May Concern:
Perhaps I shouldn't rely on something like this--this secrecy and anonymity. It's bound to be another curse and we--myself included--are bound to regret it after the fact, but the compulsion to say something is entirely too strong. I have little hope of actually receiving any help, but I still find myself writing this letter.
There was happiness once in my life and in my house. It's over now. It's broken so completely that there is no hope of restoring it.
The secrets of my family that burden me are nearly more than anyone could bear. They are horrors of the darkest and basest kind. My father despises me, I know, and that's the beginning of it. So does my half-brother (whom I only some time ago learned was my half-brother--he despised me before all the same). I have enemies at every turn; every hand is against me.
I've no shortage of acquaintances, though I don't know how many I can call 'friends'. They're fond of wealth or danger or scandal and nothing more. I can use them and dispose of them as easily as my enemies use and dispose of those they come across--and I know this of myself. I have my reputation and it is amusing, but perhaps it proves that I am my father's son.
I fear for those who know me, because to draw too close to me is to fall into the same shadow that covers me. I fear for the well-being of my sister even though she isn't here. I know that shadow looms very near to her. I fear daily for the
mind-- health of
my servant-- someone very close to me. I don't know what I should do without him. I fear, at times, for myself, but that's inconsequential.
I fear even more for the world itself--my world, at least. Because if those enemies rise up, as I know they will, they mean not just to destroy me but to destroy the world as a whole, to bathe it in blood and cast it into darkness. They seek to rule over the wasteland that will remain--why, I don't know, but they seem to both want to rule and destroy the world all at once. And they will do so by any means necessary, whether it be money, power, science, or even superstition and black magic. And all this hangs over me day and night--the knowledge of it if not the threat of it; the threat of it if not the truth of it.
And, so far, I've been helpless to stop it. I've been chasing after a monster that I can only find by its shadow and I can't catch it any more than I can stop it.
What can I do?
Yours very sincerely,
~Driven Out of Paradise
[ooc: This is anon--as if Cain is ever really anonymous with this tl;dr and writing style. Please. He'll deny it, though, if you try to call him on it. Also, yeah, no filters because, idk, curses.]