Pondering My Core

Writing, in anticipation of whatever later form it may or may not take, is quite a different beast to traditional pictorial art. There's...less skill, more will. You have to choose to say something; it's very hard to write on and on about nothing at all.

Or is it? Or is it perhaps more difficult to paint a picture that doesn't have a message, sketch an arc that deviates in any way meaningfully from that classical golden ratioed spiral?

Every day, Cole wonders why he picked this trade. Why it picked him, if you must be sentimental and spiritual, but that doesn't change the fact that the picking was done nonetheless.

It's very convenient, all things considered. The words speak for themselves; any different technique of handwriting will produce the same final result, when read out as narration, and so it's no great continued strain upon his hands.

It was always easy. Had always been, rather. Always a puerile, idle activity. Whenever anything happened, good or bad or completely mundane, Minoth could bury his head in his notebook and set to scribbling and, by and by, people would learn to know that oh, that's just Minoth, he's a little distracted, he's got so many big ideas.

That was the way mercenaries interpreted it, anyway, and militia members and Addam and Lora and all the rest. They let him on with it, and enjoyed the fruits of his labor nigh constantly - he knew because they told him so.

Amalthus...didn't like it half so much. He was quite disapproving of any distractions that would find their ways into the hands of his primary tool.

The Blade that was Minoth could serve many purposes: intimidation, protection, the role of a confidante kept at arm's length. Purpose was the only goal, the only pastime that could be allowed for. And that, perhaps, was why Malos had needed one so dearly.

The question came, always and yet not nearly frequently enough to mean anything, why did you write the story of the Aegis War like that? Was that really how it was?

The epic comes pretended with a purpose - two, in fact. To get it across to them, Cole says. To show what the world was like.

Yes, to give a portrayal shot through with emotion and verve. To tell a truth, if not the one and only. To deliver justice, as they say, upon Addam's name.

That was purpose number one. The other, purpose number two, was to use that dried-up old sack of flesh dragged around by its Core for the one thing people had always expected of it: telling, for once if only once, a damn good story.

What is it, to write? What is it, to tell a story?

You give of yourself. You put what's in your mind down on the page. You take the collective input of all your experiences, good and bad and screwed-up and red-flagged and based and blessed and fleshpilled, and make it an output that's palatable, resonous.

Intrinsically, it's about hiding. Nobody wants to know that Minoth hated Amalthus, that Cole doesn't know, no longer knows, if the man is even worth hating, up and through to this present day.

People like a happy ending, a softsoap thing. People like when the dissonant families come into concord. People like when none of the struggle was in vain.

So people shouldn't like Cole, with that Core a flashing signal of all the useless vanity of a man who no longer exists, not with any measure of lingering youthful trepidation. So many untold stories lie dusty in the bookends of the playhouse. Considering that side of the truth, Cole is, basically, an enemy of the state.

Maybe that's the fault of the experiment. Maybe that's what made things this way. Or, maybe, there were always alternative instructions written into the Core. Maybe it simply can't be helped.

It is but a trophy, a decoration, a prop.

Now, it's not even a tool.

My morality is bound up in it. Who am I without it?

No one, probably. There's less empty will, more vapid skill. But does that even matter?

No. Of course not. Because I yet write on. And it's very easy to write on and on about nothing at all.