To He who speaks of me as if He knows:

It is my recommendation that in Your words You speak softly of me, if at
all, lest You remind Your children of the swords they once wielded. The
swords which You took from them and delivered, with care, into the hands
of their enemies.

If You seek to slight me for the sake of Your own pride, know that a
cartographer tasked with mapping the topography of my concerns would
bury Your low and insignificant plains beneath a legend which translated
all the symbols of my more pressing concerns. Whether or not I should
buy new laces for my boots, these are growing thin. Is my house becoming
dusty, that would be unbecoming. Who has been feeding my beloved pet in
my absence, Areigna, do you still throw her apples?

For the briefest of times, You presided over a city of wolves. With
sharpened teeth they hungered to gnash and tear at the throats of Evil.
And You, Lord, the best You could do with these righteous teeth was turn
them upon themselves. You squandered their potential in a catastrophic
and deliberate manner.

In my time among Your people, three Archprelates departed the Church,
citing as their reasons Your incompetence and inability to commit to any
meaningful course of action. Two Caliphs departed the city: Two Caliphs
instituted by Your word by their word deemed You incapable of even the
simplest of tasks.

Your response to these departures, which I awaited - each time - with
bated breath, confirmed my suspicions that You do not now, nor have You
ever valued the stability and empowerment of the righteous. You
installed a child Caliph and pitted him against an idealistic but
largely submissive Archprelate.

In this Caliph, this puppet of low moral and intellectual fiber, you
entrusted the future of Your people. Your inability to right this
mistake made possible a Dark Age within Shallam that ensured the entire
population was embroiled in all manner of petty squabbles and focused
only upon destroying themselves.

Your steadfast refusal to be held accountable for Your missteps, to
instead blame those missteps upon your followers, caused a rift in the
politics of Good, a rift so large that - to this day - it has not been
mended. And rather than address this, You bring up the names and
memories of the departed and blame them for its growth.

For all of Your missteps that I have been blamed for, Lord, I have
walked a thousand miles in Your shoes and I will say that it is a shame
that Your path is always circular.

To the faithful, I say: No servant of Light must bear the burden of
serfdom in this Kingdom of bankruptcy.

And to You, Lord, I say: These faithful, who have in You invested their
faith, have mismanaged their funds, and You have squandered it.

And I say: Go then and take Your trophy. Make of Yourself a great
nation, because there is no greater shame than the one carried inside
those who march the standard of the Right only in places of safety.
Those who would stow that standard away and hide their faith, lest it be
trampled beneath the hooves of Evil.

Perhaps one day history will tell of a man who saw the folly of a God
and said, "No." and who denied the indulgence of servitude to champion a
return to truth. I suspect, however, that I will instead be derided and
erased from Your histories. And for that, I am grateful, for I would
rather be relegated for eternity to the emptiness of the cosmos than
languish for one day in the fullness of Your grace.

For You are nothing to me and I pray, only one thing: Let me be nothing
to You.

Now make strong Your convictions and do with me what you will. For the
strength of Your word cannot pierce the armor of my faith or break the
shield of my will.

He who loved the Righteous and was hated,
Dread Redeemer of the lost Qasharim,
Ovid al-Aqsa


Penned by my hand on the 24th of Phaestian, in the year 568 AF.