I used to be a ruthless man in my youth. A greedy little runt. Never looking beyond bottom lines and personal gain and for that I am sorry. But for some things I do not apologise. I still find man to be a sorry excuse of a being. A bottomless well into which the hopes of gods are forever cast, never to return. I do not hate man, I pity him. For he is a feeble beast, capable of brilliant ascension and uttermost horror but seldom the clarity to choose wisely between the two. Pardon me reader if these seem the last ramblings of a faltering old mind. My mind is as youthful as it ever was though my body is weakened by time. I have lived through things I would not wish upon my bitterest of enemies and yet my mind has steeled itself and stayed strong. Or at least I think so.
As I said, I was a cold and calculating thing and it was this moral deformity that lead me into the line of work that made me a small fortune. In the shining glory of Smyrna and Constantinople I lived and worked in the dank shadows. I pawned off works of art to the highest bidder, effectively selling off the great culture of Asia Minor. At the time I may have rationalised what I did as providing a service to noble people that knew how to appreciate exquisite cultural artifacts but I see now that it would not have mattered what I sold and to whom as long the price was right.
It was this social degeneracy of mine that lead me to flee with as much money as I could the troubles of Smyrna. I should have burned in its flames. Cruel but fair is the judgment of our future selves and woe to the man that fails himself as an old man for he shall be cast into non-existence. I have to live with the things I did and I can only hope that in the balance of my judgment my evils will not outweigh any selflessness I may have shown. I fled to Athens and slowly resumed my loathsome work there with a fledgling gentry almost literally devouring anything I could bring over. It helped that some of my clients were military men. The imperialist Greek army did most of my dirty work while I was in Greece. Soon I had enough funds and influence to try and get back to Constantinople and maybe even Smyrna to build again my foul business.
I booked a ticket on the Orient Express and that was what condemned me and enlightened me. I have seen unspeakable horrors, O reader, the human form twisted and mutated until it is a mere mockery of its former self. Innumerable human lives treated casually as we treat dirt and dust. I looked into Insanity’s gaping maw and felt irresistible forces pull me in. I cannot pretend it was my resilience that saved me, nor my cunning, though I had plenty. It was sheer, dumb luck. I was a mere plaything in the infinite playroom of gods and though I was occasionally rattled, I was never broken.
On that damned train ride I met a group of what now only seems as a group of broken and insane folk. People that had been poked and prodded once too many by the gods, their minds now lesser than what they used to be. I cannot blame them now, I used to, for surely they suffered much more than I did. They never trusted me and how could they. Our lives became inexplicably entwined on that train after facing a vile creature which at the time terrified me but only because I did not yet know what was to follow.
I saved them and I am ashamed to admit that I felt vengeful that they did not recognise it. As if the goal of selflessness was profit. Such an imbecile I was. I helped them time and time again, facing unspeakable terrors with them until a horrible accident befell me and I was left with incurable wounds. They left me without a second thought and I must admit I blame them too for what I did next even though I take most of the responsibility. I betrayed them to enemies that then seemed inconsequential until I found out that bigger things were at stake than our little insignificant lives.
What fools men are. And our enemy was the biggest one. I took great pleasure in killing him and enjoyed it even more the second time around. I kept them safe from danger and they did not even know it, let alone acknowledge it. In the end, when I had stopped caring for my life we faced cruel, cavernous intellects beyond the planes that any mortal should ever be allowed to inhabit. Elder gods that no living thing should ever have to face no matter how heinous its crimes. And yet we survived.
I left them and everything else behind. No kind of normalcy could ever be expected after that. We never really became friends. Necessity kept us together and now I felt that I was needed elsewhere. Smyrna pulled on my soul and now I knew what I had to do. Since then I have dedicated my life making sure that no man will ever have to face what I did. I have uncovered every possible kind of artifact imaginable that channeled powers that should not be and made sure it would become unusable.
I am a man that has made his peace with how the world is and with himself. I hope I have redeemed myself and I hope I leave the world in a slightly better shape than when I found it. May no man ever see the things I have seen and if they do, may the gods grant them mercy in the form of insanity or a swift death.
Smyrna, 11th August 1953
