Leopold: Valediction

My thoughts grow more scattered and I do not have long. If there is such a thing as a benevolent God or Gods, my single desperate prayer is that I am allowed to stay dead. To begin:

In attempting to explain the events that led her to contact me and ask for my help, Cynthia eventually decided to allow me access to this archive, and for this I am most grateful. I write this valediction while flying on my golden, gleaming, private jet, soaring through light blue skies over dark blue, glittering seas, and while most would consider the sight beautiful or even breathtaking, I for one care not a whit for it. The world is an ancient, used-up thing, running down to its final hours and I both cannot stand to see it grow another minute older and at the same time cannot bear to watch it die. I suppose I am a coward. It is why I became who I am and why I have not the stomach to fight an unwinnable battle now.

While I can, I shall inform you of what you face, or more properly what faces you. I trust you will find my knowledge of the matter to be as pathetically limited and useless as I have, and probably even moreso as my faculties desert me.

He is old... far older than myself or Hollis or Nhlakanipho Mabuza or Taras the Mutineer or Crayton or even the Red Lady of Babil, who is so old she no longer remembers her own name. He is older than all of his creations combined, and he changes his name with every new conquest. The human soul is not meant to be trapped inside a host for longer than a few hundred years. It gets pulled taut and stretched so thin that it feels as though you can see through it, the world tinted with a filthy gray haze.

Is he even human any more? Was he ever?

My mind is going... I know that now. He is withdrawing his favour, allowing me to unravel because he knows that I have broken my oath to him. There is so much I want and need to tell you, but it is all a swirling, glittering dust in my brain.

Before I can forget or before I am forced to forget, I tell you this despite knowing that any endeavor to stop him is almost certainly doomed: he will perform a trick. He will use the charms, his knife, a rabbit and his own blood, though his body contains no blood any longer, if it ever did. It is quite probably too late to stop the charms, but the knife and his blood may yet be within your grasp. Keep them separate and failing that, use Yoshida's formula.

There are twenty-five million American dollars in a Swiss bank account under the name "Joshua Frederick". Falsified driver's licenses and passports under that name are being delivered to your hotel now.

Some barriers are beginning to erode in anticipation of what is to come. You will hear things... comments coming from the mouths of those who speak them but do not think them. Expect this phenomenon to increase in the days ahead and try to pay it little mind as most of the bleed-through thoughts will be gibberish.


I willingly ceded him my homeland and was then granted dominion over it in the next world when it was renewed; I swore my oath because someone else would have anyway and I thought I could use the power to make things better, but whenever I tried of course it always went wrong. Women and children... I wanted to pass laws protecting them but was defeated. He has a particular hatred for women, though I know not why and neither did Taras when I asked him in Kiev.

I feel it now, his gaze upon me... there can be no question that he knows, that he is doing this to my mind from afar. I had such vast power, such wealth and endless grinning slaves, but it was I who was the slave, though I wore a crown.

Oh, God, Scott I didn't know... I hoped he could not, would not find out. I thought that if I kept you totally in the dark and asked you to do me the favor on faith that you might be safe. I had to end this, had to break the cycle, cut short the loop and pray that either time would play out as normal or simply end. I had hoped so foolishly that if you had supported Yoshida's efforts at a last-ditch failsafe plan he wouldn't notice. Sorry, so sorry, nothing but sorrow for you and for us all. You would think after so many generations it would be easier to accept the death of your own blood. Scott, please forgive me and forget that favor I asked you- Doctor Yoshida will find funding on his own somehow. Forget the favor. Scott, do me a favor and send me photographs of that newborn son of yours. Please do. Please do not send the check. Nevermind, please. Void, void, void, void please write void on the check if you would, my second cousin my great, great, great grandson, my blood, your blood, your blood if you wouldn't mind, mind, mind my mind is going goddamn you to hell you beast I will fight for this for one more minute I will be myself and sign my name and write my will and use my will and please God let me stay dead this time I'm so sorry I'm I am I am I remain for this cycle and next and forward through all eternity, eternally, eternally yours,

Eternally Yours,


Leopold George Christian Frederick, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony, King of the Belgians