The chances are that you are living under the lamentable concept that love is a great power, an emotion sent to raise us to heady heights and capable of plunging us into unfathomable lows. Perhaps you are right, in some manners. The mortal concept of love certainly has power; a power that even those who forsake it must admit. I do not wish to claim that there is no power at all in love.

 

What the chains of mortality make you fail to realise is that love is only the beginning of the story. It is the briefest whisper of what is possible, a single droplet in an ocean of potential, the softest brush against the surface of feeling. I am afraid that for all the weight you may have placed in love, you have been misled - at least, if you believe that love is the pinnacle of what you can achieve. Love is only the beginning.

 

Emotions are the mortal route to comprehension; through them, we interact with the world around us. Your emotions soar to see great beauty, and plummet to meet great adversity. It is understandable. You are, after all, only mortal - and there is a great danger in seeking to become more than that, a great and terrible danger. That is why you cannot seek to surpass your mortality alone.

 

In each of us there is a spark of divinity, passed down to us by the Elder Gods who splintered themselves to form the shards that we have become, or gifted to us by some other providence. Through perseverance we can fan this spark until it grows, ascending us to demigoodhood - and for some, further still. Yet so often, this process is gone about without any consideration for the greatness being accorded to each individual.

 

To be a demigod is, these days, about as common as the very earth we walk upon. Yet so few of these demigods stop to ponder on the process they are undergoing - to pause and consider what the fanning of their divine spark means for their mortality. For even as we grow in our divinity, we must surely shed our mortality; for it is when we allow those with the minds of mortals to grasp great power that true danger emerges.

 

The strength and unpredictability of mortal emotions makes them ill-equipped to bear the responsibility of great power. It is for this reason that Xynthin, possessed though he was of the glory of Shadowfire and the blessings of an unparalleled connection to the Wyrd, faltered and fell at the hubris of his own emotions. Many may say it was his ambition that was his true weakness, and perhaps it was - though the true issue lay in the fact that he, like many, had not paused to consider the depths of the change within him.

 

His ascendance was rushed, a hurried grasping at a mantle too sudden and great for him to adjust to. He took with him centuries of suppressed emotions, which after years without release spurted forth in an uncontrolled burst. Though he considered himself glorious, it was only on the surface and by dint of his power that he appeared to be - his soul, however, was weak.

 

Now you may stand at the point of demigoodhood, or even ascendancy, and think to yourself - how am I to avoid such a fate? The truth is that there may be many routes to this. I am here to tell you only of one: Awakening.

 

The first part of your Awakening is acceptance - acceptance that your knowledge is entirely inferior compared to the Elder Gods. Perhaps you seek to emulate Their level of power, or perhaps you see it as a lofty, unachievable level. The truth? The truth is that you are at once devastatingly inferior to them, and at once capable of rising far closer to Their glory than you could possibly imagine.

 

Yet you can only do this with Their help.

 

All that you know is built on a foundation of mortal emotion - the Elder Gods, who have risen above this and experience the world on an entirely separate level, are free of this weakness. To be worthy of holding even the merest slice of Their power, you will have to forsake that weakness. And so, you cannot possibly hope to learn to think like Them without Their help.

 

They will show you how to abandon thinking as you know it - and how to let the divine spark within you guide you, lift your Soul up to Their keeping. For all that you are shall ever serve Them; it is only by giving your Soul entirely unto one of Them that you may embrace the world in Their eyes. Only at Their whim, at Their will, by Their wish shall you close your eyes and open them again on a new world - stripped bare of the weakness that shackles the rest of mortality.

 

Few are accorded this chance. You will almost certainly fail, as will countless others who seek to do as you. Of those few who are chosen, fewer still will endure the tortures of their mortality's death. Their emotions shall rise to a sharp peak even as the Elder God who has placed Their trust in them prepares to tear them asunder; and if they cling too long, they will be torn by their Patron's hand along with it.

 

Yet there may be one in a generation who endures. Perhaps it could be you. Do you dare to try? To leap into the darkness, wingless, breathless, desperate for even the slightest chance that you could be something greater? Something glorious?

 

Burn brightly in the flame, or be consumed by it; there is nothing inbetween.