There is some oddity to writing to myself and to some unknown other. I have heard that at some more magical time, men and women wrote diaries and memoirs to be shared with no one, and they poured their very souls, unabashed, naked into those pages. My life has been too much filled with the idea that nothing at all is private. As a member of the Deathslayer Corps, linked with the people of the Flame, we have no notion that our emotions or thoughts could be hidden for long in the presence of a coordinator, or, more directly, of the speakers – rare though they may be.

More, within the society of the luminaries, what was mad to the ancient world, has become commonplace to us. Othermind scrapers, biotechnical integrations, even brainwave pattern recognizers. There is so little sense that anything shared, written, or even momentarily thought could remain for long in the realm of only one’s intimate space. There can be no true individuality in our hyperconnected world – but I cannot yet say whether this is a great loss or a great benefit. So still, I write to you – you who I do not know, whose face I will likely never see, whose hand I will never hold, whose heart I will never feel beat alongside mine. Who are you? Flame only knows indeed who will read or hear these thoughts, this story of mine, fragmented as all stories until the High God enter it from beyond and make it beautiful.

Perhaps you will know from whom I have stolen this line of poetry, though I do not know its source myself other than the Colonel who quoted it upon the broken shore of that fateful day of the raid. I awoke in a hastily posted tent, structured with shielding radiance from four protectors. My Captain was looking through a breach in the tent out across the carnage of the field.

“Why is all around us here, as if some lesser God had made the world?” Was all he said, and by his tone I knew it to be a quotation of some kind. It was not his typical brusque manner, his factitious though philosophical way.

The Colonel responded with something close to the phrase I previously used, though I cannot recall it perfectly. I wonder why the question remains, but its answer slips from me.

Nevermind. I leaned back in my bed and listened to them argue for some time, feigning continued sleep. My body ached as it never had, and weakness was a close covering around me, tight like a blanket rolled around me before bed as a child.

There had been no further attacks is what I had gathered from the officer’s talk. No assault, only orders to gather in pockets along the front. Some scouts had inspected the artillery and weapons which had fired upon our descent and found them unmanned and automated. The raid had been against an essentially lifeless beach in a distant corner of abandoned Africa on an already almost abandoned Earth.  

Fights over the quality of the intel, the losses for nothing, and many other things would certainly flow out of this, but the Colonel had some sense that there was more. Why were we gathering in particular locations? There were some further arguments about maps and avenues of approach, technical and tactical geographic details. I slipped in and out of consciousness a few times before finally I was noticed.

“Hey, Deathslayer, you come to?” It was my Captain, broad face grinning with relief, “Too bright to burn out just yet soldier – you’ve more life to give – more death to slay!”

“Not sure I’m not carrying death along with me.” I said, or something to the effect. I don’t want to seem as though my memory were more perfect than it is.

“Well, we’ve got a reprieve now, a recall and redeploy order. Scouts found no signs of life here, so we all have our orders for rendezvous. Some few are remaining. Can you move?”

I tried to sit up to the violent complaints of every fiber of my being internal and external. Captain reached a hand forward and paused, eyeing me. I nodded and let him grab the back of my arm as I swung my legs over the edge of the medical cot. I groaned loudly as I tried to step down and almost collapsed, but the Colonel swept in on my other side and the two men lifted me up.

“No doctor?” I said, knowing the reason why, but still somewhat nonplussed.

“You weren’t injured per se. It was near a burn through.”

I knew it to be true, knew the symptoms, knew the outcome of a true burn through. Even this close could not have been healed. For all of the Sons and Daughters there is a limit, a point at which the flame within us burns through us. For the Sons it is rarer to burn through by overuse, though it happens. Yet for the Deathslayers it has become, if not commonplace, at least unsurprising. Among us we have talks of the flicker, the modulation of the power nearest to burn through but just shy. Many of my sisters have had visions, some gloriously bright, others of horrors and despair. The stories of the flicker are each unique in their displays, yet there is an underlying sense of continuity which we cannot feel but connects us. We do not speak of this to the Sons, not normally.

For the Sons a burn through is not the same. I heard one lightrunner speak of his brother protector who flared with immense power just before a powerful and devastating burn through which left his shield in place for days after his loss, granting enough time for the remaining members of the squad to call in aid from the nearest planet system. Adversaries sought to breach the shield with everything from small arms to hastily made QEVs for a full two days before giving up to watch, and after the third day retreated when reinforcements arrived.  

It reminded me of Sephina, though she too flickered before the fading of her light. The words we use to try to explain what is mysterious sometimes make me laugh, but many of the Sons speak reverently of the flare as we Daughters speak of the flicker. Whether through flicker or flare, those who survive are honored, and perhaps more those who burn through to the verdant lands beyond. If you are of us, you may understand, else it is the musing of one long since lost in the swimming sea of her own culture and language.

The Captain and the Colonel more carried me than I walked to the rendezvous point some few hundred paces away. We approached a group of roughly one hundred of the Sons, who milled listlessly. The first to notice us stood and shouted, “The Deathslayer lives!” I remember being quite confused by this, but my confusion deepened as all the Sons turned toward us and cheered in varying words and phrases and shouts of joy. It was a cacophony borne from what I did not know at the time, but would come soon to know – just how few of my sisters had survived.

              Those who flicker are honored, and those who burn through, but I was somehow neither. I had no vision, no true understanding, no great insight. I had been awake and healing, and then I was unconscious. It is difficult not to make myself believe that I ought to have burned away earlier, that I should have done more. This fire in my chest is not of the power but of guilt, and the shame that maybe, just maybe, had I given some little more, then more of us would be here. A little more from me might have meant some smaller bit from one who was lost. In short, am I to blame?

*Note* Unintelligible script and reference in a language I do not know follows the last question in this fragment. I will see what I can manage to translate, but perhaps it was the only means by which Sof thought she might maintain some level of intimacy to her thoughts. Whatever powers of intellect and capability I have, may it be submitted to the Lord and Light, revealer of mysteries, if it be His way, then I shall walk it. We make our way now to a rendezvous of our own, and the danger is great. Pray for us, brothers and sisters, as the Flame guides.

~Grateful Faithful of the Flame, Marceus