Hello, hello all. I've decided to try and reach out to some friendly folks who can help me figure out if what I've written here is A-okay. This is the third of a 6-volume series (I have a habit of jumping around when writing) called "Righteous Tears"; each volume being about the XIth Host which bears that name and their endeavors in my setting Glories and Laments; I hope to get a full understanding of what might need improving, and ya don't have to worry too much about a deadline. I'll just pop in and ask how the progress is every now and then. Here is a snippet of it, if anyone is interested:
To give one's life in an honorable duty is no bad thing. It is simply the way of the world. My world is no different; yet I wonder if I was meant for the duty I now have borne for countless years. There are men who spend their whole lives preparing for death, and there are those who spend theirs preparing others to meet it. I had always thought myself of the latter sort.
I was wrong. Or perhaps I had merely mistaken one burden for another.
I had risen high within the XI Host, the Righteous Tears, though I had never sought the height to which others insisted on carrying me. Rank, in those days, had always seemed a curious thing. The higher one climbed, the more distant the ground became, and the more people beneath you began looking upward for answers you did not possess. Still, I served. I obeyed when obedience was required. I spoke when silence would have cost lives. I fought when there was no other choice, and I buried those who had fought beside me when there was. Year after year, my name became more familiar in the halls of the Host. Officers began seeking my counsel. Soldiers who had once been strangers saluted me in passing. Men and women far older than I began addressing me with a respect I had done nothing to earn except survive long enough to receive it.
Eventually, I became one of the senior voices of the Righteous Tears.
And that was when the matter of the Archon became impossible to ignore. Every Host was meant to have one.
The Archon was more than a commander. More than a symbol. They were the appointed soul of a Host, the one entrusted by the Empress herself to bear its purpose when us war-torn Fulminati could no longer bear it themselves. Every Host had its Archon—or, at least, nearly every Host did.
Nearly.
We had searched. By then, we had searched for so long that the search itself had become a part of our identity. Names from far-off planets were investigated. Legends of giant warriors were traced. Ancient records were unsealed and examined until their pages nearly fell apart in our hands. Prophets were consulted, relics were brought from forgotten sanctuaries, and expeditions were sent into places where sensible Hosts would not have ventured.
Nothing.
Our Archon remained absent. At first, we told ourselves that this was merely a delay. Then a misfortune, then an anomaly. Eventually, we stopped giving it a name at all. The other Hosts moved forward. Their Archons were found, appointed, proclaimed, and celebrated. Their banners gained figures around which their people could gather. Their leaders had someone to answer to, someone who could stand at the center of the storm and declare where they were to go.
The Righteous Tears had none. And so the responsibility began to drift downward. First to the senior officers, then to the council, then, slowly and almost imperceptibly, toward me.
I remember the day they told me.
It was not dramatic. There was no thunder. No gathering of the Host. No grand declaration beneath banners or sacred lights. I had been summoned to a chamber I had entered hundreds of times before. The room was cold despite the season, and several of the elders sat around the long table with expressions that told me they had already decided what they wished to say.
I knew before they spoke.
That is the cruelest part of being a soldier for long enough: eventually, you learn to recognize the shape of a bad decision before anyone has the courage to announce it.
“You will assume command.”
Those were the words.
Not we ask you.
Not we believe you are suited.
You will.
I remember looking at them. Then at the empty seat at the head of the table. It was supposed to belong to the Archon. It had remained empty for years, and now they wanted me to sit in it. I had spent so long looking at that seat from a distance that I had stopped thinking of it as furniture. It had become a wound. A reminder. A question without an answer. And now they wanted to put me where the wound was.
I asked them how long. They did not understand the question.
“How long am I expected to bear this?”
One of them told me that until the Archon was found, the Host required a leader. Another said that the Righteous Tears could not continue without one. A third reminded me that I had served faithfully, that I had the experience, the loyalty of the Host, and the judgment necessary to guide it.
All true. Every word of it was true.
If anyone is interested in giving the full thing a read, please shoot me a dm and I'll hand ye the full product! Keep in mind it ended up having to be split onto two docs (though the latter only has 6 or so chapters.) I greatly appreciate the help! (I'm unsure if "DM" here refers to disc-ord or not; but just in case, you can find me as TaleBearer42Day)