Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

"They have chosen to throw their lives into the caldron of all-consuming hatred. I grant them their wish. It is the last time wishing will ever bring them anything. They will live out their existence wishing and hoping, endlessly lost in the darkness they have imposed on their own minds-in their own self-loathing. But they will never be able to harm us again.

"They believe that those who are free cause all of their hardship. They blame us for their woes. They attack us, saying we are the root of evil because we exist, because we are prosperous, because we are happy. They wish to destroy us so that they may have the world be the way they wish it."

Richard turned his attention to the followers of the Order already in that other world, already at the other end of the gateway that was open. Those in his world could hear as well.

"I grant you your wish.

"You now have what you always claimed to want, a world in which your beliefs rule. A world without magic, without free men and free minds. You can believe as you wish, live as you wish.

"But you will not have us as the excuse for the misery you create for yourselves. You will not have us as an excuse to fuel your hate.

"You will be without any enemy but your miserable selves. Your world will be yours to rule as you see fit, to crumble around you as you wallow in your own hate.

"Your children, witness to the senseless cruelty of your willfully ignorant beliefs, will in time hopefully change your world for the better, will make their own adult lives worthwhile and joyful. But that will be entirely up to them. They will have to choose for themselves to use reason rather than force to deal with each other. Like anyone else, they will have to make choices as to how they will live their only life.

"This world will be ours.

"This will be a world without the teachings of the Imperial Order. Without those who wish to use force to impose those beliefs on us. Without those who would murder us for wanting to choose how to live our own lives.

"This world will be a world with all the imperfections and uncertainty of life, with all the consequences of poor choices, with all the hardships and failures that life presents, but it will be a world in which we have a chance to make what we will of our lives, a world in which our lives are our own and our achievements are our own, a world in which man can learn, create, accomplish, and keep the products of his mind and labors. This will be a world of liberty, a world in which people have the right to live their life as they wish, to believe as they wish, as long as they follow reasoned laws and do not use force to impose their will on others.

"Not everyone in this world will succeed, or be happy, or even understand how to make a moral life for themselves. For now, though, for those of us who are living, it will be a world without the followers of the Order.

"This is a world of life. Life is what we make of it. We may fail. But for the time being, we will have the freedom to succeed or to fail. How we honor that freedom will be up to each of us.

"Perhaps our children will throw all this away, wanting to sink back into the misery of faith, of wishing, of force, but that, too, will be the world they create anew for themselves. That will be their choice, their life. They, too, will have to suffer the consequences if they fail to mind the lessons learned through our struggle. That is their responsibility to themselves, to their own lives.

"But for now, for those of us actually alive, those of us who exist now, this will be a world where reason is free to allow us to live our lives, lives without the beliefs of the Imperial Order to blight us.

"Despite the harm those in that newly distant world have inflicted on us, I will not kill them. I don't need to kill them. My responsibility to myself and those I love is to remove the threat so that we may live. I have done that.

"Our revenge will be to live lives filled with love, laughter, and joy.

"We will turn our attention and precious lives to the meaningful matters of life, to those we love and care about, to our future.

"Those of you in the newly distant world can look forward to what you would have brought us: a thousand years of darkness.

"I expect that you shall forever worship that to which you no longer will have any connection, or any possibility of a connection, that you will forever pray for an afterlife with the Creator in the spirit world, but you will be forever cut off from any world but your own. In that distant world you will have your own lives, and after you die you will be dead. Your spirits will no longer exist. Your souls will extinguish along with your lives.