Iracun was smiling.

The words were coming out faster, slowly morphing into something beautiful. Tomorrow, he knew, by tomorrow he'd be done. Just a few more chapters, all of which he could write. Sleep had only besought him for a few hours the previous night, just a mere five or so of the dark non-death; he could accept that. Acceptance, he knew, was key to allowing himself to change. For the better? Ah, but was every change that significant? He didn't know, but he didn't want to.

There was something missing.

Rakdos.

Iracun needed to obtain the Rakdos signet--which he did, of course, but how? Ah, to think back to when one was young...even the old forget, and this memory lies beyond him. It must've been easy then, for if it were hard he surely would remember it. Significant things were known, of course, so for those of his students wondering where Rakdos went--ask yourself, what is so easy that it can be forgotten, and yet so hard it was a task to be completed?

With everything I have done in my life, it is easy to say that I am a man of honor. Iracun Rumpig, t'is I, yet here I have been speaking about myself, rather than for me. Allow me now to taste the skills of the universe, without erasing these words of mine, and tell a story akin to this dilemma.

What is wholly evil and terribly complex, yet easy enough for the mind to forget?

For that is why Iracun shudders in his sleep, thinking back to himself on the days of his trials. There, to complete his task, he had encountered a problem that he couldn't truly answer. For him to hold on to who he was, to hold on to the truth of his being, he would have to let go of his desires. To accomplish a task so cruel that he couldn't breathe thinking of it meant to let go of his being. He couldn't hold onto both, yet you cannot possibly know what it meant for him.

A task like Rakdos doesn't go away in the minds of any, yet it never truly surfaces. When thinking of it, Iracun, finds that he cannot even remember why it was as it was. No, I cannot remember--there is no hiding the difference between us, for I am him, and he is I, a writer writing about themselves; a character in a novel of my own creation; a truth written in whole; a mere part of a being that has become something that I cannot explain.

My head aches as I write this, for the memories of my younger years return to haunt, eating away at my soul, breaking apart my heart as I tear into this story. Tearing at myself, truly. This recollection is wholly true; no altercations can I make that would disguise the ugly truth.

"Grandfather, why do you look upset?"

A deeply rooted sigh escapes him, filling time as it came. "I'm so older now," he told her. "When I was younger, it was different...I cannot take this truth into my heart without remembering what it was I'd done. I remember, Zelia, a truth that weighs heavy on me. I need your help, take this from me, take it away like you do with so much, with the stories I tell you that you forget--how does your mind allow you to forget such importance? How might I forget?" He was begging so formally, as though she were higher than him, and for once he allowed himself to not be cocky because he was feeling something in his chest that he hadn't in such a time.

It ached and he trembled, shaking before her. Something wet was on his cheeks. Oh, it hurt, being in such a state of unrest, yet he knew it was true. It burned inside of him, in his joints, mostly inside his chest and his throat. The head rose, swelling, the air trapped, unable to escape, unable to enter. The day prior, he'd had a false memory of horrors in his mind--now, he had a true memory, one where he'd taken the lifeblood of a pure being, destroyed their chances of life. One where it was real. A reality of death that he wrote, fingers shaking, words unsteady.

In the Rakdos trial, Iracun couldn't just break open a seed. That life wasn't the same, it didn't hold the properties to be sentient. But anything with life could do, he was told, as long as he had taken their lifeblood. The blood that held life, that which was from the pure-hearted, those were the requirements. But it was more than that--Iracun was a man who broke open seeds for fun, but a being? That was different to him, something he wouldn't know himself capable of.

She was holding him, yet not, her body held far away and just one hand on his shoulder. It was comforting yet killing him. He wanted to scream out that she didn't understand, yet he longed for her to know her pain, to feel her, for her hands to reach into him and grasp the fragile bird of his heart, stroking the feathers as she did his shoulder, yet he turned away from her, casting her out with a scream that filled the room.

"No!" Iracun shouted, standing up, shoving the child to the ground. He fought against himself, restraining the passion in him, restraining his emotion. "No." There was a great silence, then he could hear the screaming, someone innocent, someone young. Iracun felt it in his hands, the life he'd taken, and he fell to his knees in a fit. "No..."

Her voice was gentle, but she didn't move close to him again. "Grandfather, please-"

"Leave me," he pleaded with her. "I cannot go on. Look at me! Look at me, Zelia! I've done wrong in my life, and why do I make myself remember it? Why the bad, and not the good? Why does a good man do bad deeds?"

"Grandfather-"

In one great heave, he shoved the table. Paper spilled out, spreading across the room. She yelped, going down to pick them up, the ink yet hardly dried on most of them, smearing and mixing. They were lost, like his mind, crowded with the memories of an old man who wanted to forget yet forced himself to remember. For so long he had tried to suppress the memories of his wrong--of the nightmares that left him awake and in a stupor, of his feelings...oh, how his affection came and went, leaving him only to return again.

"I don't want your fucked memories, Ira!" he shouted to himself, banging his hands against his knees, against the ground. Smack after smack and no relief came. The air grew stale, tasteless, and he spat. Zelia's breaths came fast, from a fear, but he could never know what. Me? Or my past? Iracun held no difference between the two in that moment.

Age wore through him. When he was young, his passion guided him--moving him forward, keeping him going, going, until he was gone. Reckless, that was the guy, going head first, without too much thought. Thoughts came with age, he'd discovered. Passion was all Iracun had left, dissolving into his being.

"I didn't want to remember, Zelia," he told her. "I wanted to forget so much. The small--" Shudders of air, gasps, tears and tattered memories. He could not bring himself to that moment where he'd brought it there, placing the blood on the table. He'd left with the signet but without himself. A deep breath; in, out. "That was me. I am me. Who I was to who I am, Zelia. I do not want this. I did everything they required of me. I did everything. But I am not what they wanted me to be. What I had, what I'd done...it did not turn me into what they wanted."

Iracun remembered it's eyes--staring up at him. Eyes that were innocent. It was one thing to kill in a memory, another when it wasn't alive, yet his stomach heaved at those brown eyes. At the gasps, the squeals, then the cold. Cold, for only warmth could be alive. Cold, for what was done could never be undone. Cold, for the bitterness he would hang inside his chest and the repressed remains of a mind wrought with a sanity that killed.

When he breathed, he breathed in the air of a killer. When he screamed, is throat gave way only to high pitched air. And when Iracun rose, he rose on trembling legs. When he moved, he moved with the passion of a young man. It overcame him, something he could not name, something he could not know, something he desired to rid himself of. So he wrote on the back of his hand, writing the words of his sins, the words of an aging man wanting to make amends with what he had done.

This is my being; wearisome wrath and desperation.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes," he whispered. "And now I will go on," Iracun took his quill and ran ink across his hand, "knowing what I have done, and knowing why, and knowing what I have since been capable of. I am aging, Zelia--I am tired, but you knew that, and you are not stupid, though you will never be like me--be happy you are not me child! Be happy you do no carry my heart! Be stupid as you are. Stupidity for you is the bliss I will ne'er enjoy."

She nodded slowly before handing him a bundle of papers, all out of order. Without another word, Iracun began to pick the rest up and continued as he'd been.

Iracun was not smiling.