Albonium

Volume IX - Fall of Rome

Book XVI - The Human Condition

I - The Will

He swam in a great pool of dark blood, and fled from the light, and told himself that he had achieved another side somewhere, and emerged from darkness into different darkness, and emerged somewhere.

How did he live? He thought not of that, and thanked no one. There was no fate with him. His status was not a curse, and he felt prideful in living, even as each step he had was in immense pain. He was old again, and naked and weak, aching with soreness and broken fragility, and he bled.

What was he, cursed? But that could not be true, for he had been meant to die, and he lived. His God was real, and He told him to die.

He had a wretched body, and one that bled, but he cared not for pain. What was his name? He had forsaken his old, and his Fellic one was dead. He was nameless, and had brittle bones and only a few years, and his mind wandered, and turned to hate.

The hate towards what had wronged him and hurt him brimmed, and his morals lay unchanged, for what told him to change he felt hurt him, and it was this he called injustice, and he, the only just man.

Why did this occur to him? Was he evil? He hated all men, for he thought of the nature of Man as fickle, and ever-changing, and as unable to find true peace. Yet when he saw the eternity of peace, he felt fear and disgust, for it seemed that in order to find peace, Man had to be lowered, and his will to resist crippled so he could never achieve sin. Was not all sin the product of ignorance? This he wanted to believe, but when he knew that he was truly imperfect, and only harming the Fell, he had refused to believe it, for it seemed contrary to his happiness.

He realized something. Once he was only a young noble, and only thought of his wealth, and thought of Rome as the supreme good, and when he saw the evils of Man, and saw through visions the evil of two paths, that controlled by Lucius, who only wanted to use the Fell, and that controlled by Caesar, an autocracy of ceaseless oppression, he abandoned them both, and until he realized that he must have been morally shallow so long as he allowed suffering to exist, he stayed in the cave, and after that, he joined the Fell, which he saw as right, but then the Fell turned on him, and what he thought himself to be in relation to the Fell, as a leader was untrue, and only a fabrication of himself.

What did he see, when the Orc eyes turned toward him? They turned to see what was, not to enact what should be, and they did the same with Ulixes.

Why, he asked himself, and soon asking became desperate begging. Why did he ever help that child? How easy it is when one sees two armies fighting, whether they be Romans and Carthaginians, or Nazis and Americans, and not do anything regardless of the morality given by the two armies, and suffer no consequences! And that was the true innocence, untouched by politics, plays, and might, and the realization that one's actions were contrary, and that one had lied to oneself on the nature of something...

But his heart was one of change, and it saw idleness as evil, for it allowed evil to exist, and not seek it out. But he was called evil by Tharizdun. If only the world was clearly good, and clearly evil, and it would be easy, so long as one was good. But to that, to him, it seemed not completely known.

Was he evil then? Did he deserve to die as he was a monstrosity, as all men were? Or should he free his mind from this moral weight, and live the rest of his years in a cave? His pride told him no. And then no again.

He was full of hate, hate of what harmed him, and hate of his past self, and of all those who had lied to him, the Roman state, the tyranny of men who were of a disgusting and greedy nature, and the Fell. There was nothing but hate, and wrath was the hammer of justice.