text: I can feel it, you know. The taint on Saidin. The male half of the true power has become covered in something, like scum on the surface of pond. I know what is coming too, madness. Insanity. I would not bow to... to "Shai'tan". That I said aloud, and finally I had said it. Some believe it is bad luck to speak the Father of Lies' name aloud. I'm too far gone to care. *Beware, they're watching. They're watching us*. The world was slowly being torn apart by the madness of my brothers. My sworn brothers who had embraced Saidin, who had been the greatest Aes Sedai of an age. Men were naturally stronger in the One Power than women, and it showed in the fury with which we wreaked havoc upon a helpless world. *The dead, the dead see me!* We had gone to Shayol Ghul with Lews Therin Telamon, the greatest of us all. We were his hundred companions, and I marched proudly at his side to contain the Dark One, to put him back in his prison. It was a great and bloody fight, but we won. Barely. We put him back in his prison, Lews Therin sealed the most powerful of Forsaken, the thirteen, in the Bore with the Dark One. *And now they're watching me, watching us, watching the world shatter and break and fall to pieces and oh by the Light they're watching*. And then the Dark One, in his last act upon this world, struck back. He rendered them insane, all of us insane. Of the hundred and thirteen of us who went into that black pit, sixty eight came out. We were all horribly insane. *I'm* insane. It's a sick thrill realizing that I can't be rational anymore. Some days I can just feel the eyes of the dead upon me, other days I can see them. *AND THEY ARE WATCHING ME!* But no matter. I've found them you see. I've found some more of the Forsaken. Those who were not locked away in the pit with *the dead, the dead the dead the dead the dead the dead the dead the dead the dead the dead the dead the dead ENOUGH*. I won't, I won't let the insanity claim me. I won't. I'm stronger than that. I. Am. STRONGER! I am. I know I am going insane, it's a horrific thing to know that. Didn't I already say that? Oh god is my memory going? No matter. No matter at all. There are thirteen of them in this valley, and thirteen hundred trollocs. And Myrddraal. The trolloc's twisted leaders who bear blades forged in the depths of Shayol Ghul. Quenched in black waters and the blood of innocents. Men, women, children. It's said there are Myrddraal who prize blades quenched in the blood of children, they say those blades cut deeper into the souls of men. I breathe out, and reach for Saidin. Of the thirteen down there, seven are men. They immediately look up, shocked, surprised, but not terrified. Not yet. They don't know who I am, because they aren't dead. *Because the dead know, the dead are everywhere and they are watching me. They will watch me KILL THESE FORSAKEN BEINGS!* A shriek of pure fury crosses my dried and cracking lips, as the fury of Saidin flows through my veins. There is nothing quite like it, channeling. You're more alive than ever you could possibly be, everything is just... more. Not the dead though. When I channel the dead are quiet, the dead don't look at me when I channel. It's moments like this when I'm lucid again, when I'm embracing Saidin. It's why the world is breaking, men who go insane can't stop themselves from channeling, and the best kind of channeling is to take as much of the One Power into yourself as you possibly can, and release it in a blow of fury. We don't use balefire anymore, not since we learned what it does. It's in moments like this that I can realize balefire is wrong, that it simply unmakes things. And the stronger the balefire, the more unmade something is. It can undo things people did in the past. Lews Therin Telamon put everything he had into balefire once. Every drop he could channel. His army was destroyed around him, utterly and totally destroyed. I stood at his side, ready to die with a curse on my lips. His balefire was so strong it undid what the enemy general had done. He remade his army. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. Such power, so easily abused. I rain fire down on the valley, and the trollocs burn. They burn and burn and scream. The Myrddraal scream as well, and they burn too. The thirteen Forsaken don't burn, they danced through the flames, and returned the gift of death. They began to throw lightning and fire. They turned the air to water and raised barriers of rock to drown me. I blasted forth pure fury, and screamed as I shot lightning from my hands. It's the rage that really made it work. I cleansed the air and shattered the walls, I blew through the shields of one, then two, then three of the Forsaken. I cackled aloud and rained fire down on them still. We fought for hours, hours. Slowly, inexorably, my shields were weakened. My counters came slightly slower. My ability to hold Saidin withdrew, but still I hurled death from my hands. I ruptured the earth, and it swallowed three more of them whole. They fell into the pit, and I closed it on them. I could feel the two men's channeling snuff out. I could feel it when my shields collapsed and my skin began to crackle, then burn as the remaining seven hurled themselves at me. Two of the women had linked, and were more powerful than before. I howled, and began pulling forth Saidin from my sa'angreal. I obliterated the two who had linked, pulled their bones from their skin and crushed them to powder before the eyes of the other five. I just wanted to kill those five. That was my desire. I knew I was mortally wounded, my burns were that severe. My eyes were gone, melted into my face. My hands were lumps of blackened skin and melted flesh. But you don't need eyes to see with Saidin, and you don't need hands to throw lightning and fire and most importantly, death. The madness crept back into my mind then, as I approached death. I could feel the eyes of the dead on my burned skin. I could hear them whispering, like a chorus of mice. But I could hold that in the back of my mind. I could focus, and with focus I could ignore even the blistering agony that was my body. I defeated an attempt to end the battle by one of them. He shot forth balefire, I deflected it with the corpse of a Myrddraal and then rapidly expanded the air in his lungs. His chest blew apart in a spray of blood and bone and gristle. Two of the men broke and ran then, the last two. Leaving two more women, who had linked to try and save their skin. The two men opened a gate to another part of the world, I opened a gate through their heads. The edge of a gate is sharper than the sharpest razor blade, and stronger than steel. They crumpled, their bodies falling to the ground and their heads disappearing to wherever I had opened the gate to. I didn't care anymore. Two more women, two more. *Two more women, and two dead. Twenty dead. Two hundred dead, no two thousand, no two million. Standing there. Watching me. Why, why are they watching me? WHY WON'T THE DEAD STOP LOOKING AT ME!* I screamed aloud again, and pulled through more Saidin than I could safely handle. The two women died screaming as I boiled the blood in their veins and ripped their beating hearts from their rib cages. I collapsed, suddenly unable to channel. I had done it, I had gentled myself. I had pulled more Saidin than I could handle, and I couldn't channel anymore. But I could still feel Saidin. I could still feel the taint. I rasped a breath out of lungs that no longer worked, and fell over, burning. I could sense what I had done, and I had done terrible things. For hundreds of miles around me there was nothing but desert. Rock and sand, baked dry. Massive mountains rose to the west, and the dead danced circles around my body. There were living things, but horribly changed by the magics thrown around. Harmless snakes now had venom that could kill a man in literally the span of a heartbeat. Lizards that now would attack anything they saw viciously, and try to eat it. Tiny, minuscule pools of water still remained, but they were nothing compared to the vast lakes that had once given this region a name that translated to Fields of Water and Life. Now it was a waste, and I laughed dryly as the pain blazed through my body, took one last rasping breath, and died.