ndness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is
hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up
and not know what they had lost. But such has been the story, for I have
lived in the City of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted to
be brought upon them.

Perhaps, in those days, there were a few among men, a few of clear sight
and clean soul, who refused to surrender that word. What agony must
have been theirs before that which they saw coming and could not stop!
Perhaps they cried out in protest and in warning. But men paid no heed
to their warning. And they, those few, fought a hopeless battle, and
they perished with their banners smeared by their own blood. And they
chose to perish, for they knew. To them, I send my salute across the
centuries, and my pity.

Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish I had the power to tell them
that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their night
was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For
that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness,
through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will
remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may
wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not
men.

Here, on this mountain, I and my sons and my chosen friends shall build
our new land and our fort. And it will become as the heart of the earth,
lost and hidden at first, but beating, beating louder each day. And word
of it will reach every corner of the earth. And the roads of the world
will become as veins which will carry the best of the world's blood to
my threshold. And all my brothers, and the Councils of my brothers, will
hear of it, but they will be impotent against me. And the day will come
when I shall break the chains of the earth, and raze the cities of the
enslaved, and my home will become the capital of a world where each man
will be free to exist for his own sake.

For the coming of that day I shall fight, I and my sons and my chosen
friends. For the freedom of Man. For his rights. For his life. For his
honor.

And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word
which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die,
should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this
earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory.

The sacred word:

EGO