The Isle of the Fell

III - The Second Betrayal of Caesar Part II

The Insurgency Continued, and the Convincing of Marcus Albon - 2295

From his home in the near-center of Rome, Marcus Albon stood, frozen with horror of what was happening to his city. Gardens and estates once beautiful and grandiose were reduced to patches of dirt and unexpressed, bare structures. The vision of the idol he admired, to the degree where one could say he loved him as one loves one's country, was struggling in this fateful night. And from the tall tower he owned, he could see Lucius and with him four legions, with Caesar nowhere in sight.

What could have caused such a man, of such courage and valor, to decide upon his will, to betray the very man who thrust forth the unity of his species, after the great devastation of technology, of progress, of the many billions that had vanished? Now Man had near-reset himself, and from him, from Caesar, did things set course and improve. Now Lucius was there, charging with the might of Man's greatest enemy, and his most avid supporter, his exiled Primus Pilus, Coriolus Gnaeus, him and this demon commander of name unknown, were fighting against Quintus, the right-hand man of Caesar, he who was closer to him than even Nepos, the Predecessor, the Regent, at Palatine Hill, the location of the Imperial Palace.

He heard a voice behind him.

"You are conflicted."

He knew he was. He didn't respond. Of course, a demon assassin was behind him. How convenient, to die on the day that shook the world, like the thousands of casualties as well..

The voice was grim, and spoken with clarity. It was not guiding towards an ideal, or suggesting anything, neither was it mocking or sly in any form.

That, in its own way, was convincing, and for that reason had become the strongest proponent. The blunt tidal of oration failed the intellectual minority. This, however, did not.

Slaughter, shouting, and the effects of the battle were seen and heard by him from the open window.

"You don't know why he caused this, do you? Why he cut off half the Empire, but didn't stop there, and sought to conquer all of Rome?"

The demonic being behind him sighed. Albon tried to refuse to listen. Whatever he heard, and was to hear must be a lie.

"To him, he is the champion of justice. Of liberty. Of freedom. Of nationalities, of the tolerance of multiple religions, the allowance of multiple cultures."

This being continued. "But of course, you know what none of these things are, or you have been taught in their inferiority, because you were never born before what was the Great War, where the civilizations of Man, in their endless misery, lived separately, poorer, wealthier, for each nation had chosen its own path, and some paths were more optimal than others. Of course, the leaders of those nations had power not always justly derived from the people, but nonetheless, these leaders, however cruel they may be, never ruled over Man as a whole, and so allowed the cultures of outsiders to persist. And through these various cultures, sets of differing loose rules that governed the social practices of the men in them, came the various codes of belief, of religion, of mannerisms and lifestyle. And after this great blast of thunder that wiped most of this from the surface, Caesar came from the dead, created a new Empire, and destroyed all progress before him."

Albon muttered quietly, yet directly and with strength, "Your kind made our civilizations become the dust of Earth."

He told himself, its words are poison. He is the murderer, the slaughterer of civilizations. He bows to a dark god, and his arguments made, he advocates for a race his embodiment destroyed.

The demon said nothing to counteract these arguments. He instead said, without the smooth appeal of the whisper, or the gruff harshness of the command, he said and merely yet wholly said: "And your race was not the first of its kind. You know nothing of the decision Lucius made."

He continued. "Eons ago, millions of years, these words fail to describe the distance between that time and ours. For it was a period of history that no longer exists, save in the memory of those who were there, even before their existence. Is it delusion, or is it ability?" He paused. "Caesar has probably said that there is no good or evil, only logic and the virtue that it leads to? It would be a probable belief of such a man, who knows all aspects of the ecosystem, and sees the evil of the prey in starving the predator."

Albon himself never idolized Caesar heavily unlike Nepos, but desired to learn from all figures of history and rival Nepos. Henceforth he never thought idealistically of a single individual such as Caesar, him or his past self, and interpreted Caesar concretely as a decently powerful political leader and a nigh-divine military one, and ignored the philosophical motives of him. From what Albon could understand, Caesar desired to unite Man, which was beneficial considering the chaos that surrounded him, as he was a member of the race of humanity. Was his attacker trying to mock him, or mold the words of Caesar into his own? And what was it referring to, the prey starving the predator? The king in exile, as his former nation transformed into a new republic? The death of the lion from his incompetence of hunting? The last Tsar Nicholas II, or the French Directory, overthrown because of a superior alternative?

These thoughts could have surfaced within Albon, but they did not fully, though the unconscious understood partially, for the demon continued his speech again.

And it explained, it explained fully, the events which transpired from the first timeline, and what led to the second.

But this failed to move Albon fully. For in the end, here was the specimen that laid dust to the height of Man. The height had a great many flaws, and these flaws were what Lucius wanted to restore. Yet these flaws were necessary, they were organic, and Caesar, through his doubled life, had destroyed them. But to him, he recognized, as Lucius and Gnaeus had, that after these causes of great genocide, and great depravity of human life, came the request of redemption, of reconciliation. Lucius desired to overthrow the autocracy, and reform democracy, and to him, Albon was his Brutus. Through the means of Tharizdun and his force, the Fell, he had found the means to do so. Without the insight of his journey, the confidence and means provided would have been impossible to obtain.

But Albon was not nearly as convinced as he was troubled. For, fortunately or unfortunately, he failed to see, or managed to be logical and recognize as false the possibility of reunification with Tharizdun, for Tharizdun had viewed them as a blight, a foul bacterium which had to be purged, and for near eternity, had never stopped in this everreaching quest to do so.

It would follow, therefore, that humanity could never truly accept the union of orc-goblins and manifested demons. They tainted the state, and served to be nothing more than the common enemy Man would unite against. There would always be prejudice, there would always be discrimination, ignorance amongst the masses, and where ignorance was absent there would be division and constant quarreling, for when the individual could yearn in the direction they chose to yearn, that direction frequently benefited themselves at the expense of others, and so censorship was required at the creation of ignorance. The state was a balance of ignorance and infighting, and this was the way it would always be, had always been, since the seeds of greed were sprouted into Man by Tharizdun, and had allowed Man to rise the way it had, at the expense of millions lost to the crusades, to the purgings and cleansing of social hegemony, where entire groups, based entirely on worldview, were sent, and there they were gone. And Marcus realized this, it would always be this way.

Yet he questioned this, because he refused to believe in the nonexistence of hope, and so remained conflicted. The demon had not said anything for a time. He turned around. It was not there, for it, unlike Kaylashee, had failed.

Seeing that he could not retreat fully, despite the safety of the keep of the palace, Quintus stayed within its entrance. To withdraw would be to relinquish control of the city, and that he could not do.

He put himself forward, openly, and proclaimed, as his last, desperate gamble, "I call for parley!"

He was desperately out-manned and out-rescourced, but, as he was who he was before, with the slowing of the mob, said, "Romans, citizens of former nations, listen to me, lend the paramount attention. This feud we fight over, what is it fought over for? I defend Rome not for its beauty, nor its principles which I agree to. It is not for ideology that my actions lead to. It is for the symbol of Rome, the uniter of Man in the past, the uniter of Man in the present. And in this great action of great burning, the Roman streets are smitten and depraved with soot and dust. Now we align with the enemy we once faced. Cato was an honorable man, slain wrongly by the folly of Nepos. And Nepos was untouchable by the senators, for he was the heir of Caesar, it is believed. And both Nepos and Cato spoke of the Committee. But then, Nepos could have been stopped by the senators, he was a man of youth and ambition. He is but a lowly legate, and even if he truly is the successor to Caesar, there is no exception by Roman law. And he was imprisoned by me, as seen."

He continued. "Felix Lucius is a wise man too. I know him well. He was convinced, not by manipulation, but by belief and information. He hath stated Caesar's despotism, the chains of autocracy that enslaved such a multitude of cultural nations. Yet Caesar is not a tyrant. I know him well. He did not abolish the senate, nor did he fall to decadence. He was a listener and man of the people, the many, as the greats Stalin, Lenin, and Napoleon had done. Caesar is an honorable man, the uniter of countries and the preserver of cultures. He was not a president or a minister, but he was chosen by your European Union, the body of votes and democracy. You all followed him, as goals, his cause, what caused this rebellion, perceived tyranny? Caesar is a good man, himself the founder of this state. Yet he is far away now, in a land too away to defend us suddenly. And although Caesar is a good man, was his blood ever held divinely? Nor was the sweat of his feat considered elixir, and the carpets he walked on were plain. He is not a man of sacred flesh, but with flesh of the capable form."

"Men have lost reason, lost hope, lost guidance. What is this, the betrayal of the man we know and love? The folly of it all... My heart remains with the cause of Caesar, his first and second. I speak again, once again, not for ideology, but of what I know. Not to campaign, for this is unpolitical honesty. Oh, the gods we prayed to! How his reforms have been forced to halt one religion after another. Yet, they all remain clear. Caesar is an honorable man."

With this, he gained the attention of the mob. The hope and oratory was the counterbalance of the natural terror of the Fell, and so the demonic strength had been paused. The actions that ensued caused the retreat of Coriolus Gnaeus. Yet this failed to defeat him completely, for there, Gnaeus, his look turned stern at the face of authoritative collapse. How strange Quintus was, himself shown to be even more tyrannical than Caesar, yet be at least equal to his oral capability! But it did not matter now, for he was dragged, and impaled with sharp knives by the mob he had commanded, and so he retreated.

At this time, Kaylashee and their demonic host remained. Yet still, Quintus was mistaken, and perhaps he even knew so, for the senators could not have arrested Nepos without either their death or their loss of title, and either possibility resulted in Nepos remaining with impunity. And unlike Quintus or Caesar, Lucius truly recognized what the remaining believed to be the mistake of the European Union, that Caesar would abdicate after his founding, and true democracy, free from imperial selection, would be restored.

Yet these consisted of only half the mob, and each individual believed that their kind was few. And so silent retreat remained.

And those who looked back saw the remainder of the battle, as Kaylashee themself came in front of Quintus, the legendary commander himself. It was a personal battle, one against one, one formed not of tactical ability but of frustration Some could consider it a blunder, yet the overpowering attribute of one ceased any tactical assessment.

At one opposed to one there was an elderly man, yet hardened by the continual battles fought, military or political. As opposed to the many of his age, the wrinkles of skin were not signs of weakness, but ethereal vigilance, his brow a gaze that would never fall. The other, a ten foot tall being of ungendered grace and muscularity, of dark angelic wings that blossomed death, with a sword of emotion, virtue, shame, fear, and all other changeable identities, descended upon him.

As was described in a later poem:

Art thou the clear blade of Kaylashee, swifter and cutting the air,
Rained down four strokes, slew the wounds of Quintus,
He who defended Rome, in Caesar's place, his emissary and apostle,
The Great Builder, the First Emperor, he who was wronged by Marcus,
Here he was slain, the body fell,
At the Palace of Palatine, symbol of Law,
That system once threatened, shook from Lucius
The serious brow that faded, toga-less cloak moved slop-side
There fell the architect of Rome, the regent under Caesar,
Quintus the mysterious whose true name was never known,
And his angel of death which thrust the blade that slew him
Disintegrated, for they were bound,
As freedom and tyranny, light and darkness,
And so the universe remains

'The universe remains' line is included, as this is a poem of a Stoic philosophy school of Neapolis, teaching the eternal balance of the universe, and how, if this balance is ever upsetted, two things may occur: that either the usurper is removed, or the definition of balance is warped and changed, where technological advancement grows the line of poverty, or debt causes the rich to lose the luxurious trophies they loved, and makes what was once poor called rich again.

What occurred, after the death of Quintus, was the fading of Kaylashee and the demon host commanded. An obscure philosopher assumed that this was because Kaylashee too had carved from the souls of a man, one that must have been an ultimate nihilist or an incredible supporter of democracy, such as Pompey the Great or Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Roman Republic and overthrower of the monarchy. Yet this theory has yet to become mainstream, but would be allowed to be logical if one assumed a further step, that the chosen soul was bound to its purpose, as all demons were, and once this purpose was satisfied, faded and ceased to exist completely. Yet, as to many in the Second Roman eye, it was not a Fellic victory, this theory was shunned as it associated itself with Fellic cults, who believed in this action as divine, and that Tharizdun had foreseen every step towards his great plan.

And as the battle ceased, the sun shone. It was a rising sun, worshiped by many more than the setting sun, for the setting sun marked the end and was unfavorable, but the rising sun marked a new beginning, marked the rebirth, the slate-cleaning, the coming of a new era. And what would this era be? One of continued autocracy, with restriction in thought and will, or one of unleashed pure democracy, where infighting and aroused, crusading ignorance were absolute? One could argue for a medium oligarchy, yet it was the goal of no individual, and so the compromise would always be uneven, as it would be desired by none, but desirable compared to the goal of the other party.

It could be the best of times, or the worst of times, the days of infamy, or the glorious days, for although the mob had retreated, the seeds of recession remained, and all remained for the final battles, as Caesar had arrived, as had Lucius's great host of his coalition of provinces, against the power of Italia itself.

2295 - The Second Coming of Albon

Albon watched from the window. The demon had not killed him. It was most likely because it had made the mistake of his convincing. And he watched the events unfold.

Quintus, overwhelmed, threw a last, desperate gamble. He gave a speech to the mob, which Albon heard clearly. It was expertly, superbly pinned at the root of all the troubles, the despotism of the Second Roman Empire. Yet it was flawed in its sense, that it appealed to the tired masses whose physical condition ordered the surrender of their mentality completely, and the supporters of the speaker. In this, it was extremely effective.

Notably, as well, was that the men near Gnaeus, leader of the mob, after the speech of Quintus, grabbed Coriolus Gnaeus in what appeared to be a red rage, and attempted to grab him and impale him with a rapier, a weapon used more often by the equestrians, senators, and others of high standing. They grabbed him by the wrists and waist, attempted to knock him down, and stab him there. Gnaeus, however, only escaped. Albon could not answer for how Coriolus Gnaeus felt, for he knew not the loss of honor to that degree, and so remained.

He sat back down in his chair. He was alone.

He thought, and he realized. In the end, and therefore in the current, the legacy of the first Emperor lived on. He, Marcus, saw, with his logic and reason, the events that would occur with Caesar and Lucius. Centuries later, this would be known by the Akaddis Empire as the Second Prophecy. To many others, it was but a fit of madness. What separated the bounds of madness and vision then, save whether they dost right or wrong?

He saw a man walking. He was a rich man, and a middle-aged one. His toga was plain, and on his body there were no pre-Great War articles, no jackets, and no ties. Yet his feet were covered in sports shoes, which were grooved and made of synthetics.

This was quite unusual, as many of the Second Roman Empire remained in the clothing norms of their formal cultures, and togas were considered formal as well as ties, but were worn seldom in informal locations.

He was accompanied by a slave. Notably, the grass was greener, and the skies were clearer, and the smoke of the factories, and the factories themselves were absent. There was no pollution, and no disease, for the sanitary aspects of pre-Great War society were maintained in hand-washing. Yet the premise remained, the world had in major aspects, reset itself.

And why this? Schools had been rebuilt, and learning and education had been given higher attention, yet the barbarism of the past remained. The Colosseum remained, and gladiatorial shows were still common. These shows were almost never fought to the death; they had improved in that aspect, however nonetheless, they were fought with ferocity, sometimes with blood and injury, and their message remained the same, that the captured men were criminals, or citizens of a lower class, and through the ideals reflected upon through gladiator fights, not murder, for to die as a gladiator was seen as honorable as was the death of a soldier, but one's ascent on the stage was reminiscent of the ideals of honor, bravery, and courage, and as for the lives lost from the bleeding, the wounded, those of weak will, lives taken and thrust from poverty or labor, selected from family and community, into an arena of bloodshed and apathy, they were not commemorated, for the higher the prestige of the gladiator, his greater memory laying.

Prior advanced knowledge was not sought after. What remained remained, but no new discoveries were made toward the advanced direction, and instead, the slow process of natural invention took place. For, as technology created hoarding, all technology had to remain in its state, in stagnation and regression, as the lack of knowledge towards technology created a decline through the damaged means. Henceforth, from Caesar's unfamiliar view regarding the new wonders of the times he had not seen, the evils of the past were lesser. Humanity lost the arts and civilized aspects it had gained.

The man thrust aside his toga in the bathhouse, and sat in a bath. His slaving servants took care of his desires, whatever they may have been,

It was uncertain of how far into the future this was.

Now, one may believe that, even in Roman times, society was civil, for society existed, and the law remained intact. What they did not consider was the personal and cruel exploitation of slavery, the constant assassinations, the bribery, the corruption, the ever-constant war, and now, due to the war against the Fell, the genocide, the cleansing, and the fall of the orc-goblins and demons, until bubbles of corruption floated and expanded, resulting in a war that would consume one of the two factions, though which one Albon could not tell.

But, farther along the timeline, past Caesar and Nepos, a new man would seize power. He would come from a northern land, and his kith enact the ultimate act of supremacy, and all other men would fall under the chains of slavery. And the human races Albon knew would be no more; there would be nothing but the new man.

For, in a dictatorship, the will of the common and the loyalists are deemed nonexistent to the threat to the dictator. It is only the court of powerful individuals that can overthrow the dictator, as those individuals may have the desire to create a differentiating state, and so believe the overthrowing is necessary. And if these individuals saw the man they feared pummeled ruthlessly, unless they could be offered something for his protection, which was the case in most autocracies, they would turn against him.

Then, the vision transformed and warped around him. He saw another image now, one burning, with a young man with a rifle walking towards an academy-fortress. Here, the common men were treated en masse, this was the system of democracy. And through this system, they selected a group of people armed with knowledge to such a degree that on an intellectual scale, the common people were nothing to them. Of course, there was a common schooling system, but due to the lack of suitable educators, these schools failed to convey the information necessary for the use of pre-Great War technology, and so were instead degraded forms of academies of ancient Rome.

And because of the unavailability, the limited, unequal supplies that were divided amongst men, equality could not withstand, and once the man himself had passed, his successors would dissolve to techno-barbarism, where the technologically advanced elite, although in the face of law equal, ruled with supremacy, for the means of the state could not provide for educated equality. And in the midst these great houses divided themselves, unyielding to a true single ruler, for the figurative throne of the Emperor existed only in paper, and as the houses differentiated themselves through different technology, of which they were unwilling to share, for at some point, a house would refuse to take its knowledge to the common domain, and would be of impunity due to the lack of assured destruction(such is the fate of all alliances, which cease to function when the majority loses power to a minority), the Elven, Drow, or another dark race of morphs, such as Praetorians, created artificially, would conquer, and establish the ultimate order. Through the anarchy of democracy rose the ultimate law.

Another man walked past the raining, dark passage, lighted by street lamps. Previously there were lightbulbs in place, but now candles were resorted to. Everywhere, there were the posters. Posters of Polonius for Senator, or Maximilian Protects Rights, in their tarnished golden font, or whatnot, of such a poor quality that one would call them works of crudeness to the beings of Wieden and Helmut Krone, but their repetitiveness was what propelled them to optimality and common use, and the long, complex, and artistic were scoffed at, for just as order was taught the juveniles was education, so was jeering, and in this case it was jeering directed to the complex. These practices were taught at a multitude of academies, all secretive against each other, and all appealing to a certain class. The blacksmiths went to the smithing school and campaigned for lower taxes in smithing, the sellswords petitioned for the decrease in tariffs upon weapons, and the laborers marched for greater insurance in blood.

Such were the great wars of population, and the ultimate flaw of democracy. And as the groups fought, fled, and argued, as the average level of education was too low to reach a successful agreement of any sort, there was only one solution to any form of victory, and that was the changing of populations. As the giving of advanced knowledge was ineffectual, there remained but distant hopes of eugenics and violence, but these were not turned to.

But did that matter to this man? Those posters were torn, wet, and remnants of a distant past. He had seen the marches, the hats thrown in the air, Rome was akin to a fantasy of old Moscow. And that has dissolved itself now.

Seeing the indecision plaguing, there was only one solution. The assemblies were recreated, and the balance of power shifted, and the Assemblies, the legal Tribes, thus the individual lesser proletariat had less power, and the power of the higher estates were strengthened considerably.

The man walked through the streets of Rome. Gaslight was seen, and chivalric graffiti was seen, depicting the great techno-houses of Rome, their solidification a product of Second Rome being a successor to the former world. The Plebeian Assembly was for the big and unruly, the popular, and they reflected that, as true populists would.

And in Mankind's defeat, past his darkest hours, in his forced being, came another race that, with secrets that Man had only known in the past, would embrace, at the cost of the common Man. And as the man looked over the wall, he saw the screen, which watched him, and the message blared.

Albon never heard the message, for his focus had shifted. And the third vision, which felt similar to the second vision for some reason, was one of utter and complete darkness. He saw nothing. There was nothing. There was no burning ground, nor the weeping of women and children. There were not large tentacled monsters with eyes and mouths on its outsides, along with a giant hole filled with gaping teeth in the middle. There was nothing.

These three visions that manifested to him, did they make him the descendant of the Emperor of Man that the demon had described, or a schizophrenic, pragmatic madman? Did the mythos described even exist? What was he to decide what was right or wrong, what was folly or vision, for in these moments the god-king could have been the madman, and the senile hermit could be the prophet of fate. But from what he saw, he knew what he had to do.

"Pythos" He called, steeling himself, "Get me my horse."

In his room, he looked at the metal shape in the cabinet underneath his desk. It was smooth, inelegant, and very practical. He knew it well.

2295 - The Return of Caesar

At this time, Caesar returned from the east to Rome. By ship and foot, he had arrived with a single legion. He had received word somehow, by Psionics or phone service, the uprising in Rome, and, as he could only travel swiftly with a single legion, opted for that path. And with a single legion, he could not have hoped to defeat Lucius, despite his frequent battles in which he was outnumbered, for he knew Lucius had conquered the provinces, and sought to restore the former idealistic glory of Man.

His horse, accompanied by the first cohort, arrived at the gates of Rome first. The torches had spilt and fallen, and blood ran down the sour streets and sewers. The tired and worn soldiers looked at him, and moved slowly out of his way. His veteran escort followed him, and the unhaughty look of the commoners did not follow, and looked away.

Near Palatine hill, his own estate, with a trail of blood that led to his fall, was the corpse of Quintus. The corpse was still surrounded by a contubernium of men.

He walked the streets of Rome. The soil of a faraway land trekked beneath his soles, that of a peninsula of the Black Sea, one regarded not as distant a few decades ago, yet in these desolate times of regression and discovery, was as mythical as the Great Outer Sea had been to Alexander, unknown, and outside. And he walked slower now, as he approached what was his old friend, Quintus. The guard separated themselves.

He broke and solidified into a solicitous, somber acceptance, one not of the state and deeply personal. He thought, Here lies him, my regent and right-hand man. The man who I knew and knew me so well, he fought against my first heir, and I, being the pardoner of crime, forgave him and he joined me. And from studies I learned history, learned the cause of my first death and my betrayal. But unlike Octavian, I chose the hybrid way. The genocide of the orc goblins were too much for me, and although I had to censor all essence of culture and religion, I always allowed the bubbles of preservation to form. And so when Felix Lucius saw, from his conquests, from the people and states he destroyed, when he began to doubt my vision and see my role to the Union in a dubious light, I did not stop him. I merely decided to watch him closely, make preparations, most of which were carried by this man. And so Rome did not fall immediately asunder. But I know now, I should have listened to him. And though my first heir may have betrayed him, I know now, there is no mercy for the opposer.

Oh you, who have joined the dust of earth for what will now be eternity. One day, perhaps, in the far future, Man could hope to rediscover such power. But in those times, unless we hope for an eternal war, we will never be summoned again. You, the guide, my greatest legate, greater than Nepos or Octavian, yet forever will never be regarded as greatly as them, for you were the stepping-stone on their path to greatness, once you had a weakness, now it was resolved and replaced with the weakness of position. I should have listened to you, and created absolutism. Yet I held back, and so this great heresy began.

He looked at his eyes, focused, and frozen stern as they had been at the time of his death.

But it is too late now. I could purge the entire senate as my supporters would grow more flamboyant, I could increase censorship, and cause this never to happen again. But it is too late now.

He knelt down towards him.

And the final battle awaits me.

He whispered a name in the dead, unmoving ear, as if wishing for his rejuvenation.

"Marcus."

He got up, and left the scene.

The guards, and the public that saw, knew then the grief that could afflict all hearts.