Prince of Time

Chapter Forty-One - Finem Before The Wall

“So what’s Plan Nine-two?” Zeno asked Teliwen as she led him down the street.

“It’s a plan that’s been on record since the beginning of Etheron,” she answered. “Only the highest levels know what it contains. It’s nicknamed “the last stand of Etheron”.”

“But what is it?” Zeno insisted, lengthening his stride to keep up with her.

Teliwen stopped short and looked at him thoughtfully.

“I suppose I could tell you,” she considered. “After all, I highly doubt you’re a traitor.”

“I’m not the traitorous kind,” Zeno promised.

“I know you’re not,” she smiled warmly. “Alright. Come with me. I’ll show you.”

“You’ll show me?”

“Yes,” she grabbed his hand and pulled him after her. “Quickly! I should be on the walls.”

Tobiah stood on the walls, looking out over the valley below Etheron. As far as he could tell, Finem had chosen the only sensible tactic for attack. From where they sat, he could bring siege weapons within range of the city and send a front line, though with difficulty, up to the walls themselves.

 The sheer scale of the army was staggering. Even incomplete, the tents and fires went on forever. A dizzying number of soldiers had united beneath Finem’s banner of destruction and death and a new world. They were goblins and mountain men and mercenaries and minor nobles and ordinary people of all kinds.

  Tobiah imagined himself amongst them, Finem’s pet prince in a black uniform, honoured for his power and told to unleash it upon this city with all the force he could muster. He pictured himself sentencing the world to an end, spiralling people through time, his strength protected by Finem’s own powers.

  The idea disgusted him, but only because he knew it should. It was a superficial feeling, purely surface. Tobiah had learned that the surface feelings tended to be the ones he should abide by. The ones deeper inside of him, the passionate ones, were dangerous and wrong.

  A hunger rested inside of him now. It was a restless urge to go and be. Not to be a prince and gift bearer of a minor country, scarcely larger than a city state, but to explode his powers and his self across the universe.

  It was a desire Tobiah had competed with for years, the yearning to be wild and free. He constantly felt caged, in the wrong place, as if he were imprisoned within his skin and could, given the space, explode out and become one with the atoms in the air, racing without space or time to hinder him, everywhere, everything.

 Death had always appealed to Tobiah. He heard theories of heavens and hells, of endless waiting or of deep oblivion. Faith wasn’t something that bothered him. He knew of the gods and he knew they existed but he felt no inclination to worship them for this.

  But if Tobiah believed anything, he believed that death came with liberty attached. Dead, he could be free from this body and this life and the constraints of this world. Dead, he could be out of control and invincible, a million atoms twirling in the air.

  He would be growing inside of trees and crushed in the hearts of mountains and burning in the centres of stars. He would be in the air and in the people. He would expand and grow and live as wild and free as anything can ever live.

  That was what Tobiah longed for. He longed for the escape, because humanity came with too much pain and too much fear. He fought not to be human. He fought to be free.

Teliwen led Zeno to a storehouse, through the windowless rooms filled with food and supplies. The air was fresh and clean but Teliwen led him deeper and deeper, beneath the city.