The Truth of Waterfalls
By Rinaldo Yuasa

This book is the diary of a soldier in service to the Yuasa family, and details his experiences in the battles against the easterner's invasion of his homeland. It was published early in 215 by an underground press; the Yuasa family is still trying to track its printer down.

Possession of this tome is worth **** Research Point per session, on the subject of ****. You may only use points from one book on this subject in a year.

When I was a little boy, I used to think being a ranger was the best thing in the world I could be. It turned out I was right; I was the fourth-born child and my eldest brother was everything a Yuasa youth dreams of being. My youngest uncle was a ranger, and when I was fourteen years old and glowing from my first stolen kiss, I was packed up to his outpost and squadron.

It wasn't a bad life, and it had a full measure of the excitement a child dreams of at night, especially when we were patrolling our eastern borders. There were long slow evenings and tiring marches through mud that threatened to suck us beneath the river, but it was all balanced out by the thrill of covertly observing our enemies, of slipping around an army to strike at their supply lines, of carrying essential messages to His Grace. And through it all, I was proud, proud to be a ranger and a Yuasa. Quick and twisting like the river, always flowing, always adapting to our environment.

And then one night the river ran out of ground to flow over and I discovered that the river may survive a waterfall but those who ride it are crushed. I watched from a hilltop as my lord sent the army we were all so proud of to drive back the eastern invaders, and I did not understand as the soldiers fell to their knees before the beasts. Dealing with the atrocities of the war before now had been one thing, but horror almost overwhelmed me as the legions of pike accepted some sort of benediction from the eastern priests and then turned and savagely began to attack us.

Andreas could barely order us to retreat with the rest of Lord Faust's troops when His Grace commanded it. My uncle and commander has always been a relaxed and jovial man, but his knuckles were white and his eyes glassy when he finally dragged his gaze away from the slowly moving army and we moved away.

That night, we had the duty of calming fears and worries of our less experienced brethren in arms. That night, I did not sleep, and I heard the nightmares of many and my comrades kept their confidences. That night... that night was the beginning, I think.

And now I dread sleeping. I can see the ghosts hovering around me when I close my eyes and something watches me from within when I sleep, something cold and alien. I am stiff and unbending before it and I can not twist my way from its vision, its grasp.

There were eyes last night. There were as brown as a dog's, and just as flat. I could see the rimming of fur beneath them and the rimming of fire under them and there were a thousand needle-sharp teeth in the maw that opened to consume me and the wind howled out of the moon.

I woke up. My sword was in my hand; it never left my side now. I didn't know when they would come for me, when I would be sent on a final run near the enemy lines to gather intelligence and I would look up and see those eyes... in a beast's face, embroidered on the robes of the priests, it didn't matter. Something would happen; it would come; it was all the same.

And then, when I stumbled back from the river, we had orders. Last night, I killed my brother.

Driving a blade through his gut, that I could do. But I couldn't leave him to die alone, trampled underfoot by other soldiers, his bone-shattered flesh breakfast for the ravens. So I cradled him in my arms under the shelter of the hollowed hillside, with other refugees singing and rocking and betting and drinking near me. He told me how splendid his new masters were, and spoke to me of my childhood, how proud he''d been when I'd joined the rangers. I was incapable of speaking around the pain in my heart and when he eventually died, he left bloody handprints on my face where he'd caressed me and whispered farewell, and forgiveness.

Andreas found me half-dead. He bound my wrists and promised to take my brother's body home to our parents. He sent me to a church theurgist in the Yuasa warzone on a mission of mercy - the Yuasa, needing mercy! I coughed up blood marveling at how the past could take us away from ourselves. And then, healed by the grace of the Light, I set out to find the Witch of Seiguntou. I'd heard a little about her in passing years, that she had magic fit to save the Crown Prince, and I hoped she could explain to me what nobody had explained: why the Aten mattered so much to my people.

I didn't find her, but I found other things instead. I found a cult that obsessively followed the movement of the Aten armies, circling around the structures of stone erected by the eastern priests like the shyest of camp followers. They said what I'd already heard by then: that we were descended from the desert people who served the Aten. They said more: that the Aten were our destiny, that the Aten created us. I reached inside and I found the eyes watching... but I did not believe that could be true. Even if it had been, we escaped, we came west, we created a land for ourselves.

I found the organized denial of some of the lesser lords as they struggled to maintain their fields and crops with a staff of only the obsessively loyal. They scoffed at the onpouring of easterners; they were Yuasa, they were the river. But even a river can be dammed by enough sand; sand drinks water. Those who did not flee were nourishment for the thirst of the Aten.

It rained last night and I watched through a telescope as the magics of the Aten flared around one of their thrice-damned pillars. This morning it was clear and I could see the trickles of sand that spilled from around the base before I fled with the rest of my band of observers.

I can not deal with the dreams anymore. They come even when I am passed out from alcohol and I do not trust myself when I dream of them and I am not in my right mind. I wake to find myself gnawing on my wrist, blood streaming over my teeth from the scrapes and gashes. There is an aching inside of me to understand still, understand what happened to my brother, to my sister.

I understand now. Andreas came to me last night and bade me follow him. I hadn't seen him since we parted ways over my brother's body, but he was still my commander and he laughed like it was old times again and I missed old times so much. He led me into a Yuasa army and by the time I realized that they were not my brothers anymore, I no longer cared. The dreams, the dreams of the eyes and the endless structures, they were all that mattered. I felt as if every step of my life, from my dreams of castles on the hilltops to my night-time training among the forests, every step brought me to where I was tonight, where I am now.

There was a priest before me, eventually, and he bade me lower my head for his benediction. When it was given, I raised my head and I looked into his eyes and I felt understanding wash over me.

The gods walk among us. We are their hands and their tools, and we are the honored ones. I have spent my life longing for this; every woman I touched, every man I killed, nothing filled my emptiness like the absolute understanding that there are gods walking the earth. Once I gave my allegiance to the hierarchies of the Yuasa but that was only a temporary fulfillment, an incomplete substitute for the terrible joy that comes from giving oneself over to a god. My erstwhile comrades will understand one day, I am sure. I will help them.