My unwilling apprentice; I convey this log of intimate thoughts as a fleeting habit-- to stave the whispers which accompany the empty moments of passing time.  Hearken now, without equivocation, from one such knight who hath willingly turn his back to the words of his esteemed God.

There was a time where duty and ideal once filled my young heart with mercy and compassion, for the divine hath saw fit to bestow upon me vigor in service of those who were not blessed with such.  I will warn you now, and your prying eyes upon my damned soul: how cruel disillusionment may forever blacken the heart of man.  It was the very duty and ideal I once lived by which drove me to perdition, and by exchanging my loyalty to the world, inhumanity hath now aligned itself with wisdom.

Men, in our frailty, hath risen from our submissive tribute to the fire belching demons we dub dragons.  A skirmish ensued against such a creature soon after I donned the mantle of knight, and our lord instructed that we crusaders extinguish the unborn and the youth, lest they mature to their savage nature in reprisal.  As a naïve student of God's law, I saw no justice in such an order while my brethren culled the whelps; with shrieking yelps echoing in the cold lair of the felled matriarch.  'Twas a sickening event, as I hath witnessed the abject hopelessness within the eyes of one such creature.  A feeling so vivid to us who hath been, or rather hath stood between a victim and a monster.

A noble ideal to defend on behalf of those who cannot—do not be deceived, oh ignorant witness.  You see but a facet of the whole.  I hath defended mine own enemy you see; those eyes possessed an intelligence greater than mine, for what I had in vigor I lacked in reason.  It was not long after I hath provided her escape that I was pressed heavily by my own brothers, accused of treason for disobeying his majesty.  Are not all men the subjects of God's law?  And in their sanctimonious retorts, how convenient their pragmatism was to disguise their bloodlust, for they could not truly deny He who has shown and given us mercy.

In their zeal, it was known to me that such an act could only be absolved by my execution, and the struggle compounded with my unwillingness to harm my fellow man.  It was in the moments of my escape that I began to think that our fortune was made manifest by our acts, as it was my items and habits that hath given advantage against the pursuits of my assailants.  In the coming days, the black angel watched closely, for my demise seemed neigh between the cold nights and untended wounds contracted from my escape.  I truly should have died, and now, I truly wish I had.

Chronology: Etherius - 7211, 3^rd Waning Crescent