you

You

Nothing.

Brune was nonstandard, but nonetheless unimpressive. Generations of Bythrusians immigrants, arriving at a large island, forced to contend with the monsters, the snow, the godlessness, and the existing populations. For what? The promise of farmland? Things quickly just settled into fiefdoms, again, as existing lords got fed up with some tax policy or some toothless slavery restriction, and decided to set up slightly further away from the main administrative hub of Auralull. And so it went for a hundred years, a gradual filtering away, until the man assigned by Bythrusia to rule Brune, Casse, grew too big for his britches and elected to force the population to make him a god. Fortunately, he was operating under incomplete notes from a prior attempt at ascension, he failed miserably, was overthrown, and the new rulers managed to gain independence from Bythrusia.

The god Libri was created, then, and Holstram showed himself, but that doesn’t matter. The gods don’t do anything useful, which feels rather counterintuitive, as you’d expect them to be the only ones capable of doing anything useful. Doesn’t make sense why Casse would want to ascend to godhood, either. What do you get, immortality, more efficient channelling of magic, maybe some precognition? For the most part, souls still exist after death, so why bother doing anything in life? That was probably the realization the usurper, king Reimond, came to. Once the forced religious services, the blood sacrifices and the hordes of undead were dealt with, why pursue anything more? Just languish, die, and languish some more. That’s what’s happening with Bythrusia as a whole, they’re languishing, breaking apart, and dying. That’s what Callister and Northpoint academy seems to be doing, accumulating knowledge for no purpose. That’s what all the farmers, all the smiths and artisans seem to be doing, what Libri seems to be doing, artlessly going through the motions. And yet they all pull you towards them, towards their inertial soullessness, and you have to assert, no, I have a soul. I am better than you, you say, as you stand at the cliff, and perhaps through narcissism, or through an inertial fear of death, you step back.

You’re inept, and foolish, tired and directionless. The sky opens, and you are wet, your shoes grow soggy in the damp, muddy grass. You grow annoyed at yourself for wearing such a nice shirt to stare across the channel, when you knew it’d get soupy. You laugh at your ineptitude, and cry. You are a microcosm of the world, and neither can improve the other. If they could, neither would’ve arrived where they now are.