Albonium

Volume X - The Seeds

Book XVIII - Division through the Dream

I - Prefect Rome

Sejanus looked out to his city. It was his city. He ruled it.

The people applauded the Emperor. His Emperor. He chose him. But it was too obvious he was there. They had all been taught the history of the First Rome, after all, and why it had fallen, and why the world before the Great War had fallen. That was Nepos' doing, as was Polonius'. He wished they thought not.

He walked to the mausoleum of Caesar, Nepos, and Polonius. He walked to the tomb of Polonius. He was a man, who excelled at his rule and his subjects. But was he great, as were Nepos and Caesar?

He starved millions, and founded a bureaucracy which stiffened the military of Rome, and hampered it, so that tens of thousands of lives were ill-prepared against their threats. The children of his reign had become skinny, and they were accustomed to poor rations, and if this war ended, or if it became perpetual, would remember days of waiting. And when the bread lines were stagnant, what did they do? They talked to themselves, and talked themselves out of anything, and waited, and continued to wait, for there was nothing else to do, until they had waited too long, and they revolted, as there was nothing to lose.

But still, they always believed there was something, and this something was their Roman pride, and the belief in an eventual victory, and so long as this seemed at hand, their political and moral minds existed, even as starvation slowly overtook them.

To the north, there was a similar man, and to the south, many, but this he did not think. What was Polonius? A tyrant, and one who starved many, and in the future, if things became bright, and the people became carefree, and they lacked great hardship and suffering, they would turn to the past more, and deem it more barbaric in their vacuum, and call him a cruel leader. And of Polonius, and of everything he did, after he inherited from Nepos, after he attempted to unite Rome, and make it an eternal state as he was disgusted by the world before the Great War, after he put hate within Mageor and the Elven, after Rome began to strain and stretch, and after he was killed by his closest circle... Sejanus knew not why. But he knew that Polonius had been a good man, who served the empire as best he could, who enslaved the Fell, who set siege to the Elven, and who made the bitter defeat of every enemy the joyous victory of Rome, and that he had to be him, but not only him, but to surpass him.

There was an immense weight on his shoulders. What was corruption but the complaints of one who did not have power, who saw the error in judgment of the high? And then the error became a mistake in virtue, where one believed one's rule was necessary for the state, and so made error.

II - The Traveller

He hurried as quickly as he could, which was slowly, and with many stiff motions. He was moving to the southeast.

There were ships, and there were plains. But what were they, but blocks of time, which thus depleted what he had? He cared not for them. What did he care for?

Once, he prayed to Jupiter, and then Athena, and then Neptune. Then, he prayed to the God of Abraham, and then the Buddha, and then Brahma, Vishnu, and others, and to each he cried, "Give me my land, and my people, and reverse my agony," and nothing happened, and he wept alone.

What was he, and what was he doing? Why did he live? Because he hated those who had died, and felt himself better than them. He told himself, These aches I feel, they give me strength; they are a god pounding fire into my flesh, and soon I will grow wings like a dragon and fly, and kill everyone and everything.

In his mind, then came Bibac, god of the Sky, who would give him wings if he ate a thousand grains of rice, and then there was Flimsor, who assured him that anyone who hated was the worst of all evils, and that they would burn eternally, and to this he became satisfied, and then came Florace, who told him that with each step, he became ten times greater in height. And so he journeyed onward, and his pride became madness, which told him he was right, and became a necessity.