A Selection From "Confessions of a Heretic: The Inevitability of Recidivism" [-RESTRICTED-]

=I=//Extract File "Confessions of a Heretic: The Inevitability of Recidivism" [-RESTRICTED-]

Authenticate Clearance...

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=I=AUTHENTICATED: Welcome Inquisitor.

INQUISITORIAL CENSURE FOREWORD: This is a selection of illicit text. Despite that, these passages seem to be relatively inert and  are an effective tool as a cautionary tale from a man of high station, brought low by his own digressions and indiscipline. Very often, we cannot analyse the mind of the heretic, in many cases because there is not much of a mind left, either psychologically or physically. Yet, the subject matter and author of this text possessed enough presence of mind to describe his descent into corruption and the price of accepting the vile in search for the beauty of truth. As with all censured texts, you must remain on guard, "Vigilant always!"

BODY (Selected): Sometimes, for our own sake, we should simply accept we have looked deep enough into the chasm of tumult. Unless, of course, it festers. It ebbs at the sanity of your subconscious, planting small spores which blossom into questioning fungi. Read through pages of the proscribed texts again, then again, to find the deeper meaning. You know there must be more, there are tantalizing gaps that you lust to have filled. Yet as you reflect in the dark of your inner mind's eye, the lust goes unrequited, as though it spurns you for being unworthy, for not being mad enough.

So, you adopt the cloak of insanity, only for a time, to disguise yourself and gain your entrance into the court of shrouds. Then, when you have had your fill, and for good measure and odd pleasure you over consume. You realize it is time to take the cloak off,  but now, when you try to remove it you will cry out in pain! You tug at it but it feels as though you are ripping at your own flesh, and you no longer can tell where the trappings of insanity ends, and the old self, naive yet uncorrupted, begins.

Then you weep alone in the alleyways of that strange city at the bottom of the pit, where the grotesque denizens pay you no more heed than a false holy-man does a beggar after a sermon. You see two roads, equially grim, diverging into a bloody and dark wood. Either painfully remove that which has become your skin and be scarred forever, or embrace your new home, where you may blissfully forget what you lost, except in dreaded and terrible cold sweats in the night where you scream stabbed with the memory that you were once a creature of the light. ///END TEXT SELECTION///