The transition happened dizzyingly fast. I was toppled abruptly from my throne of glory and fell howling and shrieking into the depths of ignominy, finding myself transported to the very limits of degradation, only degradation has no limits as I was shortly to learn. This was the lesson that life was about to teach me. One minute I had been a demigod, the next I was this shambolic unkempt bear-like creature lolling lopsidedly through the Great Northern Forests with a pathetic ‘please like me’ look in its pink watery eyes. Sometimes I’d force my way into peoples’ living rooms as they watched TV late at night and they’d run away screaming at the sight of me. Then I’d have to run back into the embrace of the dark forests again and beat a hasty retreat before the authorities were called.
There had been a time when I had been great but now my greatness had fled away from me. It had left me. There were cracks in the vessel and the greatness was running out in every direction – I couldn’t contain the greatness any more, I couldn’t hold it. There was no way for me to recover it once it had been lost, no way from me to get back even the smallest drop of it. The precious Fluid of Greatness ran out in all directions onto the forest floor and the small woodland creatures that lived there came to lap up what they could of it before it was soaked up into the loamy earth.
The decay-function had gotten into me and now I was this poor ungainly shambling creature that no one could stand to look at – a misshapen bear-like beast with an oddly human face upon which could be seen that pathetic pleading expression which puts everyone off so much, a needy expression, begging to be accepted, craving that feeling of belonging, craving that feeling of being part of some human group however lowly. It seemed to me that my former greatness had been an illusion or dream or some kind of oddly dislocated memory that had gotten lodged in my head by accident. Even the street drinkers would have nothing to do with me shouting with incoherent horror and loathing as they saw what I had become. I was no longer welcome in their circle.
“It is I,” I cried out to them, “It is I oh my brothers do you not recognize me? I am the Immortal Warrior. I fought by your sides in the Forever War, back in the Dawn Times. Do you not remember me from the days of our Glory? Do you not remember how against all the odds we defeated the Hordes of Ahriman and freed the earth from his filthy corporate dominion?”
But they knew me not and bade me leave, some of their number spitting at me and trying to strike me, only they could not because of the effects of the unclean liquor that they had inside them. Sadly I moved on, slowly turning my back on these trusty former comrades of mine – as I rightly or wrongly saw them to be. My head was full of memories of a bygone epoch when our stars had shone brightly overhead in the timeless mythical night sky and degradation had yet to overtake us.
“It is I!” I cried out to my friends in a strange mewling voice that I could not recognize as my own but which issued forth from my mouth nonetheless. I was as horrified as everyone else. Repulsed beyond belief I turned to run but realized that it was no good. I could not run from what I had become and yet neither could I bear the horror of it. I remembered again those days of my Greatness when Immortal Warriors from every corner of the Earth had flocked to my side to join me in the last desperate stand against the Forces of Corruption led by the Chief Archon himself but the memory was no longer mine. I had lost the right to it.
