The Aeterna Empire

Chapter 15.2 What was Inevitable

Perhaps Abhdan's hardest lesson to pound into me was man's powerlessness in the face of divine truths. My brother accepted the teachings quickly, but I railed against them. Death was the first one, and the last was the Ancestors themselves. What is a man to a god?  They are inevitable.

His lesson struck me as I was forced to sit in a cage and watch Izthark ride up and hand over the tied-up general to the Aeterna. He wouldn't look me in the eye, nor did I wish him to. There was no gratification to be gained. He had told me from the start his side wasn't as clear cut as I might have wished it to be. 

I slumped down and let them blindfold me in silence. My defeat was complete.

I'm tired.

I could yell, I could bargain, beg, plead, scream, rant, beat my fists on the metal bars, struggle against the chains binding my ankles and wrists behind my back, or even appeal to what might pass for reason or morals among these foreign men around me, but I cannot. I can't even pull up the will to try. What would be the point?

"For what its worth, I am sorry about what is about to happen." I heard, but I didn't know who said it. So lost in the grave was I that it could have been me who uttered the final words for all I knew.

Nothing more was said since. No one needed to. I gambled and lost.

My cage clanks open and someone is shoved in and cuffed to something. This is repeated twice more nearby.

One of them was the chancellor. He was yelling and bargaining from the start, appealing to anyone and everyone to let him go. I heard the high priest by his prayers to Kasus, and for the one I had the pleasure of sharing my cage with, well, of course it must be him.

"Be quiet. You are just being pathetic." Caius hissed. "Are you a chancellor or a child?"

"Thats rich coming from you."

"Oh?" Caius wondered with a hint of glee. I could see the smile spreading across his face. "Is this your true colors showing?"

"Look you sick little man-child!" The Chancellor snapped. "I have spent longer than your insignificant life kissing up to you, and to your family, but no more! I'm not going to give my power I have worked my whole life for to a family that has done nothing for it! When I am done appealing to the Aeterna, then I will escape this hell, and Kes will be mine! When I am done I will be dancing on your corpse!"

When the Chancellor was done in so far as to take a breath, Caius burst out laughing. 

"Y-you think this funny?!" The Chancellor demanded.

"Haha! Yes! Oh yes! Dance! Rage! Seethe!  In your final moments show who you truly are!  You talk yourself up as someone great, but when the time comes you are exactly what you are! You are truly pathetic. You could have just killed my brother and I and taken the throne, but instead you invent lies and justifications, excuses really, to overthrow my brother and put me on a throne. Did you think that is what I wanted?! But you are so weak you attach yourself to real power. Haha. Now look at you, clinging onto a new power at the first chance! Parasite."

"And yet for someone so powerful, here you are."

"I am powerful because I am here even in my failure accepting it as mine. You can't even do that. Parasite."

I insert myself into their bickering, more curious than anything. I ask, "You weren't in league with the Chancellor and high priest?"

Caius pauses, surprised I was there. Then chuckles. The Chancellor replies, "No.  This idiot was angry with me for it! I give him the throne and he-he chastises me!"

"What?" I ask, confused.

Caius says, "I accepted the result for what it was, but it wasn't how I planned to do it."

"What did you have planned?"

"I was going to take the throne myself by stabbing you in your sleep." Caius answers without breaking stride. "I don't need some parasite's excuses or justifications, but my own will. I wanted it, so I was going to take it myself."

"Of course." I sigh. That sounded more like him. He has never been one for extravagance. Stabbing me in my sleep would have been more personal, more satisfying to him.

There is further bickering, but I let it go, no longer interested. It didn't take long anyway before I felt the heat of the sun beating down on my shoulders and word came that the Aeterna was ready for us. 

The carts carrying our cages rolled down a hill for a short time. From the hubhub around, the beating of drums and stomping of feet, and from just how far the noise spread, we were in the midst of his army.

"Be careful of the armored one in black. He can bypass walls." Caius whispers to me.

"We've met." I reply. "And she is a Cynn-Blood."

Caius pauses briefly as the meaning of that sinks in. Where my usual conclusion was despair when facing the hopelessness of our circumstance, his approach was strikingly different. He chuckled before laughing into the sky. "Oh! We are dead! Hahaha!"

The carts stopped abruptly, keys cranked in the locks, the iron bars swung open, and feet pounded into the cage. Metal claws unlatched me from the side and dragged me out in silence. I heard nothing from Izthark. The High Priest demanded the 'heretics' unhand him. The Chancellor turned surprisingly optimistic about his chance to negotiate for his life with the Aeterna personally. The general growled and put up a bit of a fight, but didn't muster up the strength or will to make more than a token effort. Caius randomly switched between complaining of pain and laughing like he was drugged beyond his senses.

The bag was  snatched from my head and in the blaring light of the sun, I saw horrifying perfection.

We were near the edge of a cliff overlooking the capital city of Kes. We were high enough to see all of it and the four armies around it. Above it was the sun, and standing between us and the sun, overshadowed by its glory so that we were in his shadow, was the Aeterna. On his right arm was a golden gauntlet with a gem encrusted into the palm and upon the wrist it weaved like a snake around and around his arm from his wrist to his shoulder. The gauntlet around his hand was not completely covering as armor, but small and thin as bones overlapping and encricling each finger. Beyond the gauntlet he wore little else. No shoes or sandles, no cloaks or hoods or shirt, and nothing but loose white pants. His hair was white and went down past his shoulder blades like rivers going down a waterfall. He was strong but not herculean, with a strong, sturdy posture broken only by a slight, curious tilt of the head as he gazed down.

He turned to give us his attention, and I gasped.

The Aeterna eye's glided over each of us one by one. At last he locked eyes with me, and he grinned, even as the horror  of knowledge took hold of me. Izthark stood nearby, not as a prisoner, but among the army rubbing his wrists and avoiding my gaze. The Cynn-Blood stood out in the open with the face of her helmet pointing directly at myself and my brother next to me with a dark intensity parallel to the sun's light in my face.

Adam the Aeterna said, "Welcome. Here you are, generals, priests, and kings, in judgement to answer to me. This is the end of your dynasty and I will decide if you are worth joining me into the dawn of the new world."