Foreword
They laughed at him.
You must know this first, that they laughed at him. Often and ardently.
It is rare when you are fully grown, to remember the sting of humiliation and how it reverberates through the body of a child.
It is pulpy and red, a rage made of tears, and it fills every inch down to the fingernails.
Then, as if that were not terrible on its own, once enough of it has been had, it settles into the base of the brain and changes it permanently. Almost always for the worst.
Victor was seventeen and that is not yet a man. Though at the time, it was quite close to it. The laughter should have pained him less if he were fully blooded, I believe.
It is easy when someone has wronged you to imagine they worked with wicked hands and spoke with a wicked tongue at every instance of your betrayal. But I cannot. Kindness comes too easily to me, and perhaps that will always be my undoing.
Educated men know that truth told by conquerors is a denigration of the defeated, but you must know how I have tried.
Even in the moments where I was not there to witness the quietness of despair, I recognized it in artifacts left behind.
I have rebuilt it here, in God’s image, through time, interview, and investigation.
Take this volume as the warning it is intended. I do not portend with the veracity of your old masters or the dark wizards within your field of study. I am but Margarite’s eldest child.
But a significant evil has happened.
And through your study of this book, I should greatly desire for it not to be repeated.
Elias.