There you are, the earliest days of my shitty little life have now been recorded. I’m growing tired. Sick just remembering them. How could someone that pathetic have survived a year, let alone decades more? How could he have even avoided being lynched, let alone had his name celebrated for generations as a hero?
There truly is no justice in this world.
At this point we’re past the very early legs of my journey, and hopefully you’ve gleaned a fair bit of solid—if scattered—information about me, the state of the world back then, the bare basics. There were other factors shifting Anglyn around that time, of course, ones that were too big and distant to come up in a story as monomaniacal as my accounts here. I just didn’t notice them at the time.
In retrospect I realise what they were, and was half-tempted to emphasise them in these other writings, but decided against it. It wasn’t until this next stretch that they became strictly relevant, after all.
From this point onwards my journeys would become far less scattered and lacking in focus, even if I didn’t quite realise it myself. I thought at the time that I’d done nothing but waste my time for those months of course, and it’s true that I didn’t manage any great material gains over their duration. What I managed instead was much more important.
I gained the skills of a cockroach, or a rat. Really just pick a difficult-to-exterminate pest, they all work as a decent enough comparison. I became a problem that perpetuated its own existence, and this ability would serve me well as I moved on to start drawing praise, power and, most important of all, money out of the world.
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That’s the trick, at the end of the day. That’s what separates an heroic legacy from a shit one. It’s not the deeds you do, because a thousand great ones will be attributed to you no matter what your involvement in them actually was. It’s just a matter of living to the end.
Nobody remembers men who die halfway through their own story. It’s the one who survives one event, then another, then another still. It’s the one who keeps showing up in enough incidents and epic disasters that his name becomes synonymous with them.
There is no such thing as a hero, but there’s a thousand shades of illusion that can pass for one. This is the story of how I became one of the most convincing that’s ever been recorded. If you’re reading for catharsis, to see me get my just-deserts in the end, then put the book down now. It doesn’t happen. I’m sat here in my shitty castle, lounging about and sipping the finest wine money can buy as I note all this down, knowing the church is reading through all my memoirs to ensure they uphold a flattering image of the world and all the cunts ruling it.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I never got what I deserved. I got what other people deserved. The credit for countless great deeds and courageous acts, the admiration of the masses, a lifetime of endless luxury.
This is an epic hero story, and behind the curtain this is what you’ll always find in a real one. There are no heroes. Bear that in mind, and remember to look at anyone who’ll tell you otherwise with suspicion. Heroes control you, they make you placid and docile, they make you weak and reliant. Heroes are useful for the people who exploit you and the people who take what you have.
Heroes are robbing you blind, and you’re too busy cheering them on to even notice how little you have once they’re finished. Keep reading if you must, but I’ve made my point already. This is what a hero looks like when you view them honestly, this is what they all are. I’m one of the greatest who ever lived, that much is true.
Most of them are even worse than me.
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