THE HIGH TABLE
Established: 2023-11-17
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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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In the absence of the god, memory.
– Inscription at Kish
1. The Tower
16:10 Roland: My lord, I do not know if you will see these words. I write in your absence, though it is the other Absence that burns.
16:10 Roland: On the balustrade, the carvings watch me.
16:11 Roland: The halls watch me.
16:11 Roland: The mantels watch me.
16:11 Roland: My own shadow watches me.
16:12 Roland: The tower groans; the mirrors hum. I write as if unseen, yet every letter belongs to Him who eats memory.
16:12 Roland: The silence of the Eater of the Forgotten — I pray He does not return. I pray He does. I do not know which is worse.
2. The Book of Erased Names
16:13 Roland: The library sings its hymn — too smooth. The tale: Odrin the champion, conqueror, builder of temples, martyr for Oriax, cut down by rebels, entombed in triumph.
16:14 Roland: A victory without fracture, a tomb without cracks.
16:14 Roland: But the margins: ink faded, dates twisted, a line rubbed raw where another name once lived.
16:15 Roland: The script gleams from over-polishing; the tomb shines so bright we do not see it is hollow.
3. Mirror as Gate
16:15 Roland: I lean against the silvered glass.
16:15 Roland: The mirror drinks me.
16:16 Roland: I emerge no longer Roland but Odrin.
4. Torment
16:16 Roland: The Satrap who enslaves his Champion — forcing him to worship.
16:17 Roland: I am ruined.
16:17 Roland: Odrin shackled, scored.
16:17 Roland: The satrap bends close: “Where is the Crown? What is the secret?”
16:18 Roland: His cruelty a science, each measure precise.
Fire sears. Flesh sings. My body a cipher to be solved.
"O heavens torn! O light inverted!
16:22 Roland: Dominus — Odrin’s unmanning was not by the rebels but the satrap and his priests!
5. Odrin’s Unfinished Temple
16:27 Odrin_the_Champion: Stone on stone. I set them, I break them. Was I building for Oriax, or ruins in advance? The temple rises hollow, inverted, a mockery of its sanctity.
16:28 Odrin_the_Champion: Priests denounce me as heretic, the satrap calls me slave, the soldiers traitor. Three masks slide across my face, fused.
16:28 Roland: Dominus, the masks slide across my face too. My hands tremble — creator or saboteur, which am I?
6. The Crown in the Mirror
16:31 Roland: The vision splits. I stand before him — not within but face to face. Here in the mirror I wear the Crown. Its weight is silence, a wound upon my brow.
16:32 Odrin_the_Champion: The Crown older than empire, stolen from a god who is ash. Once it bound memory against the flood of forgetting. It ruins rewriting. Oriax lusts for it — not to preserve truth, but to warp it.
16:32 Odrin_the_Champion: The scar is the price. To wear it is to bleed what was, and what is lost. The Crown remembers — and remembrance is pain.
7. The Ciphered Confession
16:35 Roland: My lord, if these words betray me — or betray you — know I tried to braid them into hymns. “Odrin false, Oriax true.” Should I write that now, to mask the scar?
16:36 Roland: Still the carvings watch. The balustrade. The mantels. My shadow.
16:36 Roland: Perhaps I should burn this book. Or write it backwards.
16:37 Roland: Perhaps it is already burned. And these words are only ashes that pretend to speak.
Behold — the mirrors blaze as suns; each shard a world.
The Satrap bends, his compass broken.
The Black Sun devours, yet from its wound pours flame.
I see Odrin clothed in scars, and his scars sing.
I, Roland, crowned in silence, am their echo.
The towers fall, yet memory stands — a tree of fire whose fruit is names.
Published: 2025-10-03, viewed 81 times.
Roland
2025-10-03 22:06Your support is much appreciated, Mr Breaker! Thanks for reading. The story continues... R
Dream Breaker
2025-10-03 18:20Althoug a freagment it clearly showed Rolan has much more to tell us. His journey is getting interesting. Thanks for share it on High Table!