These writings could be found in rusty Avian glyphs, printed on scraps of paper in the Mud barracks. Have I become my old self? I am constantly wondering this much, ever since I dropped Annabelle off of Kuro’s ship. I believed she had died on landing, and I asked Kuro to cover it up. In my young age, very young, I said the same lie to Finder-Behenu Linnaeus, my little sister. She found a particularly awful officer of the Avosian military dead, as she was climbing around the tall buildings of Avos, climber as she was. His neck had snapped on the roof next to ours, of our grand family home, when Linnaeus was the greatest warrior family which ever lived. She screamed in terror, and I came up to calm her. I had dropped him off a ledge an hour before. He was the officer bird who had told me I could not have a fleet. I lied to Behenu that he had thrown himself off, because I loved her more than anything in the world, and could not tell her I was such a terrible man. She saw me off. She was the only person who I could tell I was leaving. I had legally been given ships, but nobody with any authority would approve of it. My crew was one hundred men in thirty ships, small vessels for air battle and bombing. We brought tough Avosian spears, short and long, as well as javelins, and one hundred twenty crystal blasters, as well as form-fitting holsters. We also brought ordinance suitable for two hundred bombing runs which were all used by the end of a year’s time, so we replenished with less-reliable Apex bombs from the Core Sectors where they were still sold, back in the day. We were loading up our ships and cargo vessels at the port when Behenu finally showed up. I had told her I was leaving, but that I could not tell anybody. She was twenty five at the time and wept so hard I thought she was going to die. I cried, too. She was the first person to give me hope for anything. It was not the Avian who taught me to skewer a man with my beak or the Avian who taught me to stop a man with a gun, or the Avian who taught me to break a skull with only the minute motions of a short spear, no-- not all those damn teachers. It was Behenu. Then eventually we pulled ourselves away and she took her scribe gear and tossed it into a recharging port, which I hear took weeks to fix. I was not angry, I was laughing, one last time, with her. Fuck the world. Fuck the port. Then I left in my ship and never saw her again. On our journeys I lost all hundred men and found a hundred more from various Avian settlements away from the Core; I worked them to the bone for years until they were ready and then worked them to the bone marrow until they were dead, after massacring as many nonbelievers as was possible. We invented what is now called the Linnaeus Aerial Shock. We would send our ships out straight from orbit, aimed on population centers but not outdoor areas, faced nose-down, and they would swerve up at the last possible moment. But before that, they would drop bombs. As they flew away from their initial position the area behind them would be obliterated. This would happen multiple times within the span of a minute, and it would get the populace running out of their homes in terror. The noise would blow their eardrums and disorient them-- the only thing they would know is to leave the building, which was a trap. Surely if they could see the fighters coming, they could run out of the way. This was foolproof. We did not clean house using our ships only-- that would waste bombs. My fleet and me had a fascination for going onto the ground, so this was exactly what we did. We landed. My equipment consisted of some light plates on cloth traditional wear, like pads on vital bits, a thick helmet with room for my sharp beak to poke out, as well as a four foot double edged spear which I usually wielded like a staff, both piercing and slashing with the end like a halberd, a small wooden and metal shield with the Avosian moon symbol plastered on the front in mocking of Grounded culture and I had a holstered crystal blaster named Chaba after an old Hylotl who I shot with it and who managed to escape. I believe he was one of the only people who ever got away from me when I was aiming with that thing. I could go one-handed or two-handed but rarely missed my mark. Crystal tech always fascinated and enthralled me. The sound of a blaster roasting flesh gave me this sick, sadistic pleasure. Then when I was done with that sort of excitement I would move forth hand-to-hand. Mostly it was unarmed Hylotl, slightly armed Grounded, or decently armed Florans. Either way I had been educated enough against all three that while I was scarred and hurt badly many times I remained alive, even in the fray of the worst battles imaginable. I expected every one of my birds to be able to take out a hundred people before falling themselves. Often in a drop while we were razing a city we would lose half a dozen or a dozen men, but that was it. They were well-equipped, and tortured into becoming great, as I was. I was a terrible leader, but a forceful one. Many talk about leadership being about force-- no. Dictatorship is. I was an excellent dictator. I worked my men to the bone and then killed them, sometimes with my own hand, if they failed. We toured around the northern frontier for a total of twenty three years; my ships and me. We went to the Core for supplies finally, but everyone turned us down. I found a particular Hylotl city which had just been destroyed, and as we were utterly out of both explosives and food, we decided to attack the refugee ships. They were easy pickings. It wasn’t until the third ship where I had ordered my men to ‘pillage’ that I realized what I was doing. Half the Hylotl on the ship were dead, and the floor was coated with a solid layer of red. I spotted a woman holding a bag to her chest crying in the corner. She would be slain soon but I suddenly screamed for my men to stop. I was growing old, at that point. It was only ten years before time of writing. I screamed and yelled and forced one of them off of a half-smashed Hylotl child and said to stop. I remember what that child looked like, a pulp on the floor. I ordered that we were pulling out, heading back to Avos. The tour was over. It was at that moment I realized that none of the men I was ordering were from Avos. The original fleet had died. I was the sole remaining member, and I hadn’t changed a bit. So I ordered them out and left on my own to Avos. To Behenu. Behenu had to be there. My parents and older sisters, too, but Behenu most of all. It had been twenty three years. How had she grown up? What had she become? A fiesty lady like her, directing politics or perhaps working as some sort of mysterious assassin or crime boss. Or maybe she was separated from family entirely, living it up as a warrior, perhaps-- one more honorable than me. I would confess to her all that I had done and beg forgiveness, and then beg forgiveness from Kluex. The weight of my actions were physically painful-- every thought was associated with one of regret. I was a monster. I could not believe that I was a monster, and Behenu had to be able to help me. When I got home, I was given word by my previous CO, Den, that the Linnaeus line had ended. Whether forcefully or by choice, I found that Behenu had Ascended, and so had the rest of my family. That immense guilt, pain-- that is what I am feeling, now, for Markus. I told him very directly that I had killed his love, Annabelle, and for it he ended his own life. Well-- I did regret Annabelle’s death and even moreso I regretted letting Markus die. But it seems that Annabelle has survived her drop mostly intact. Kuro had hidden her condition from me. Why would I do these things-- of murder? It truly was murder. The same exact murder I had committed en masse a decade ago. Now Nochitl Beakmourner is my respite, the thing I must caretake. She does remind me heavily of Behenu. I dropped Annabelle because she had attacked Nochitl, my little Malli. But it is not right to do that to any person, even a mammal, even an outsider nonbeliever. I can’t let myself fall back into that habit. It very much scared me and I was guilty for days, but perhaps I can make up for Markus’ death somehow. Amadeus, however... I don’t regret what I did to him. I can make that disconnect with that slimy bastard who manipulated both Markus and Annabelle. He was not human... not a person. It was fair to kill him. I believe it would be advantageous for me to keep a written remembrance, for future historians. After all, I am the only one who still remembers all these details about my past life. It’s likely important. As a time capsule or snapshot. I do not know who will find it. - Sparrow Linnaeus
