(Scars do not appear to be cause of death –shock ... - Bad Request

meaning?”
Lhar pressed the bacon slab into his bowl with a spoon, “Exactly. See, we of
the Bleak Cabal know the multiverse makes no sense. We accept it. You
don’t see us running around trying to convert reality to some sort of order
like the Guvners, or break it down to chaos like the Sinkers. We don’t try to
force reality to obey our arbitrary whims like the Sign of One,” he snarled as
he mentioned that last faction, “Plenty of people try these so-called
philosophies, and many see past the words and realize how empty they are,
how hollow and self-deluding. The Bleak Cabal is the refuge of the outcast,
the sanctum of those the other Factions have failed.”
I looked down and was surprised to see the bowl was half empty already.
Idly I picked the slab of fatty bacon up with my fingers and began chewing.
The salt and the grease were therapeutic somehow. Nourishing. “So you
reject all the other factions because you respect the truth behind it all, that
there is no meaning to reality.”
“And therein lies the risk of madness,” Lhar said. He dabbed a piece of bread
into the bowl. They served bread? Where did I miss that?
“Then why should I live, then? Why should I die?” The words were still odd
on my lips. That I needed to die. “Why do anything if there’s no meaning?”
“That’s up to you, cutter. It’s the burden that we all must carry: that we are
responsible for our own fates; that we must struggle with our own
madness,” he leaned forward, then, a half-smile on his face, one that looked
almost genuine, “But you didn’t need to chase after some grandiose ideal to
turn around and try to walk out of here to give room to someone else, did
you? A fancy philosophy didn’t compel you pick the smallest bowl so you
could leave more for others, either.” Gods damn it he made me sound like a
sap. A pat on the head and a sweet for being a good boy? I toyed with the
idea of socking him in the face.
I licked the last of the gruel from my fingers. It tasted awful, but I was oddly
hungry for another bowl, “I suppose not. Then again, a merciless world is
what breeds the need for mercy in the first place, and a hopeless city is the
perfect font for hope.” Ugh. Maybe I should’ve gotten a crack in the jaw
myself. Swallowing a few teeth would be the perfect remedy for the martyr
complex these guys seem to spread.
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