We are the youth of a nation. The youth of a nation that never existed, the youth that never should have existed. We are the youth the world does not know about, and that the Mages do not want the world to know about. We are the harbingers of death. We are the Kanoi.

The word is meaningless to me, though I am sure it was picked for some reason. Yet though I know no meaning of the word, it fits. Don't ask me why, because I don't know. In fact, there is quite a bit that I do not know, of our past, that who we are, all of which the Mages keep from us. You, those gathered here, wonder how I know this, and I will tell you. They do not know of us, the rest of the world. In fact, if it is possible, they know less than we do.

Still your questions remain, of how I know this. I have been out there, as we all have, to do the errands that the Mages sends us to do. We go, and we end life, a life that affects many others. We go, we who should not exist, we who have an odd sort of life, and we do murder, as it is called out there. Why? Because they so will it, and so we do it. We are the Kanoi; we are their servants.

I do not know where we come from, something that all of us have pondered in different times of our existence, usually after our first venture out into the other world. That is the world that exists around us, those who should not exist, the world that is kept from us. Or rather, we are kept from it, until the time of which the Mages send us out. The world out there, they fear us. We are different from them; in ways I cannot begin to explain, in ways that I feel are not natural. They exist on this world, and it is nearly as if we do not. Or rather, as I stated, that we should not. Again, do not ask me how I know that, for I am unsure. It came to me in thoughts, before I was to be 'cleansed' of the sins of the world.

It came to me in thoughts that the Mages forbid, thoughts that I continued to have even after the 'cleansing.' That is supposed to bar us from thinking, from having intelligence, from having free will. Those words will be as odd to you as sure as the word Kanoi is to the outside world.

Why do I know the things I do, while all of you are oblivious? Why does the 'cleansing' no longer work on me? These are also questions that plague me. There are few things that I do know for certain: We are the Kanoi. We are slaves. We are the harbingers of death. I am Kanoi. And we, all of us, are of the Maelstrom.

::December 22, 2002 10:12 AM

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