The X-Project

My apologies if this journal is not the place for such discussion, but it seemed to me that the subject of today's events is not yet one for the general population of the school.

I am . . . I do not think "troubled" is the word . . . but this Mistra group makes me thoughtful; the more that I learn of them, the more I come to believe that they are . . . something my home might have been, or might have become under less wise a guiding hand than Zz'ria's. We, too, took in children, the abandoned and the orphaned, and trained them to fight in a conflict outside the knowledge of common humanity; once, what seems very long ago, I was such a child. We, too, had strict rules and rigid discipline, and it might be said that we, too, were indoctrinated in our beliefs.

There were differences, of course; we retained our freedom of choice, and those who found the life of the monastery too harsh or restrictive were allowed to leave. But it is the similarities that I see tonight. I fought a man today who might well have been myself, in a different life; and although his soul is darkened, his mind shackled, there was yet that in him which yearned for better things, which regretted the path he had been made to walk. There was a desperation in his fighting that was not, I think, solely due to finding himself overmatched.

I . . . am not sure what to think about this; perhaps it would be best if I spoke to Nathan, when he wakes and is ready to do so. But I begin to feel a responsibility, not only to the children in need of rescue, but also the adults, who but for a chance turning of the Circle I might have called my brothers and sisters.