THE HIGH TABLE
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A worldwide organization of men trained for violent, bloody, and even deadly combat. Their competence is indicated by their qualifications, from the lowest to the highest, reserved for an elite.
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(a letter to Dominus)
I must tell you the honest truth.
In the solitude of the tower — my masters gone — visions seize me.
They began not as images but as questions.
Is it I, or only my seed, who matters to the future?
The Empress — first wanted me cut, now bids me wear a crown? A crown whose origin I do not know, whose function I cannot name.
1. The Hall of Mirrors -
16:09 Roland: Around me mirrors multiply. They used to watch. Now they wait.
16:10 Roland: Listening — for orders, or for me?
16:10 Roland: I touch the glass. It shivers like a skin of water.
16:11 Roland: In its trembling I hear a choir of erased kings, whispering their un-names.
16:11 Roland: A hand from beyond — bloodless. Grave’s chill and dawn’s heat together.
16:11 Roland: Odrin.
2. Passage -
16:12 Roland: The mirrors open. Not to Chalyth, but elsewhere.
16:13 Roland: I arrive...
Kish – ruined, yet alive again.
As am I.
3. The Library -
16:14 Roland: Odrin waits.
“Welcome, my son.” A blessing, or a curse?
16:14 Roland: Shelves without end — not only books but bones, mirrors, tablets.
This is the forge of the Crown — memory braided from scars, clay, blood.
16:14 Roland: As if woven of night, a circlet neither gold nor shadow but the seam between —
diadem, snake, a thread of smoke. The shelves around it lean together, books whispering as though they fear to be consumed.
16:14 Roland: I feel it watching me, like a wound remembering the knife.
4. Odrin’s Revelation -
16:15 Odrin_the_Champion: “History is memory. Fragments chosen by the victors. But cracks remain. Erased names burn through the stone.”
16:16 Odrin_the_Champion: “Never the author’s face — only the hand. Eternal. Unmarked.”
16:16 Odrin_the_Champion: “The writer survives; the written do not. Wear the crown, and you grasp this hand. But beware: to grasp is to become.”
5. Memory as Thread -
16:17 Odrin_the_Champion: “Ariadne’s thread — not escape, but retracing. The Crown is such a thread: a circlet, spine against erasure, holding to scars, to witnesses, to fragments beyond self.”
6. Visions of Battle -
16:18 Roland: Then Odrin showed me Kish aflame.
16:18 Roland: Temples rewritten. Kings struck from stone.
16:19 Roland: The city burns, the sky cracks with it — smoke rising in columns like hymns of ash.
16:19 Roland: The stones unmake themselves, words flaking like scales — only to be remade.
Names of kings blotted out, mouths still open, but soundless...
16:19 Roland: As if a demon’s hand dragged its stylus across the walls of time.
16:20 Odrin_the_Champion: “Do you see? This is how memory is ruled… not by truth, but by revision.”
16:20 Odrin_the_Champion: “Or survival.”
7. Resistance -
16:21 Odrin_the_Champion: “And what I resisted, now you must carry.”
8. Return -
16:21 Roland: The library collapses into ruin once more.
16:22 Roland: The mirror before me again.
16:22 Roland: Did I wear the crown? I cannot tell.
Memory uncertain — the crown’s design.
So I write to you, Dominus, with this confession: If history is memory, who holds the thread?
Not the victor, nor the hand incised in bone— the scar is the thread.
And I fear I have already been chosen to answer.
Published: 2025-10-02, viewed 97 times.
Freaker
2025-10-02 21:17The story is very modern and actual in his intense darkness, with a lot of destruction and loss. Cities are burning, and important people are being forgotten. A mysterious crown is at the center of it all, representing power and control. Roland, the main character, is struggling with his role in this world of violence and erasure. It's a tale of survival and the fight to keep memory alive against those who want to rewrite history.
Great to have it shared in THE HIGH TABLE
Max Freaker and the Board
Roland
2025-10-02 22:16(In reply to this)
Thank you, Max. To know that I am not alone in facing the insanity of history gone awry gives me strength. If memory is a battlefield, then let us stand together against its erasure.