I pen these words out of spite.
Not for posterity, not to seek the understanding or empathy of those who will come after. Not to justify any of my past actions. Nothing of the sort.
I simply refuse to give another the satisfaction.
Time and again my self-styled high priest, Bertram, has crawled before me, begging. He claims it would be some great sacrilege to let the tale I might tell go untold, and he would be so honored to be the one to write it.
Rubbish. I know his secret. I know what keeps him bound to me, where so many others have left me to rot. He dreams I shall rise again, some day, and he thinks to rise with me.
Bertram, my dear, dear Bertram, is a fool. But he is a useful fool and I need him. So if the tale must be told, I will tell it, and I will tell it right.
My name is Telth, though it is likely you know me by another. I have worn names as other men wear suits of clothes: with little thought, and quickly discarded once sullied. Among my peers I was Endist. In this place I am known as Fallen. But Telth is my name, my true name, and the only one I have ever honestly earned, with the simple graceless act of being born to it.
I am, to the best of my knowledge, the final survivor of the first pantheon of godhood upon the continent of Elda. I am the last of the Seven, and a god no longer.
Yet I, at least, survive--if you are gracious and call this meager existence I cling to survival.
At least I have not been completely abandoned. Not yet. There are six of them, now. They are the last and there will be no more. Of all the thousands who once promised eternal servitude for one divine favor or another, six remain. And even they no longer retain any true faith, merely some morbid sense of obligation, or greed, or ignorance. Perhaps even pity.
In any case they are fools, for I am now no more holy than any lice-ridden beggar they might stumble over in the alley behind this ramshackle excuse for a church. Less so, I should think, if the beggar happens to say his prayers every sixthday.
I suppose I should be thankful. They bring me my meals, provide me with the simple priest’s robes I now wear. They speak with me, when I will it. If I ask for a thing, they do their best to see it done. Oh so well do they care for me, my six little priestlings.
But long gone is the worship. Beneath the kind, attentive exterior, I know they do not care. Why should they? I am but a pale imitation of what I once was. A broken relic of a failed experiment, a sad reminder of a past gone to pasture. Whatever they may claim, I know they suffer me like some doddering, senile grandfather, come to live off his children in his old age. I see it in their eyes. I speak, they smile and nod. Yes, Father. No, Father. Don’t you think it might be time to die now, Father?
Forgive me if I seem bitter. Forgive me if I, who have supped on the worship of a hundred thousand faithful followers, have some small trouble subsisting on a diet of tasteless gruel, stale bread, and the pity laden prayers of six paltry souls.
But no. Not yet. I admit it may come to that; whatever my intentions in putting my story to parchment, it may well devolve into nothing more than the pathetic mewling of an old man unable to forget the taste of power. But not yet. Not until I have told the tale of Telth the small, the frightened, the powerless.
Not until I have told the tale of Telth the slave.