We are moving again. We had just settled. I hardly had my books and papers and systems set to the various degrees needed for effective work, and here we are again, on the move. I had not realized how difficult this movement would be.

Yet, there is great excitement. I tell you, friends, we are on a path which will shake the Luminaries to their foundations. I have no further fragments at this time, but we have gained a timeline and means of tracking one who might aid us. I dare not say more, but our path is difficult. Cast your cares out for us, fan the flame within you and ask for the True Flame’s breath upon us. If all goes well, we will have gained much, and perhaps, further understanding of the raid on the Earth as well.

Still, I seek further fragments from the Deathslayer Diaries. Though Sof is not with us, by her words I feel her here, connected. She is a strength though she be gone – carrying winds of insight and fresh heat. I feel somewhat strange, trying to mimic the forms of those around me. Does the language feel unnatural? There is something in this I am sure. No more are we natural. It seems fitting then that our language be somewhat unnatural as well to mark our difference.

Among the other research journeymen, I ever thought our discussions were broken, truncated, hollow. They carried ideas and messages but without any spark of life – principles and processes without pulse. How cold indeed even our most intimate conversations became stripped of any adornment of analogy, metaphor, or story. Brute mechanics guided every syllable with puerile precision. We became adept at the use of many words to say nothing at all, and lost the potency of poetry.

My rescuers granted me an old text, a book of poetic songs and a story of hope and despair, and I cannot but be struck at the weight of even a line or two. To the othermind scrapers, to the luminaries in all their pretense it has much to say.

Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
And caused the dawn to know its place?

From the wicked their light is withheld,
And the upraised arm is broken.

You likely know these lines and others. I am new to them all, but how much is held there, how many layers of questions, accusations, and potency? I wander from my point.

Do well, friends, brothers, sisters, and beware the false flame which grows even in our own midst. Burn pure! There are many who would say we should fight, and fight we do, though not by means of the luminaries. Whatever seeming power they have now is less than ash before what we are and will be. And, some among them still are actually among us, carrying the figments of the flame without knowledge of themselves, as so once was I.

I am rambling, and my rescuers urge me now to leave. I think of Lowan. I read many more of his letters than were released, and I wonder how much of what I now am has been crafted by what he once was. If only to bear a fraction of his insight, his courage. Unto the Light of Lights and stars beyond burning, burn on.

~Marceus, Grateful Faithful of the Flame