Fath’s mind sloped into recess, imprisoned by thoughts and insights into mind and body. He had sought out the secrets of life and death and was rewarded when the Scaly Clasps retrieved a book from the tower: Victory by Doom. He committed its text to memory and gained the power to live forever along with other abilities he swore he would never use. As so often with certainty and ambition his views began to change. He lamented his desire for control of Archcrystal as the friends and family he knew passed away from old age. He saw a longer picture of time now, one that he wasn’t certain that he could shape. Fath fell into despair within his secret library at the bottom of Hell unsure of his former path to destiny. He had been certain that the fight for Archcrystal would be his primary goal forever, but as forever loomed in his conscious thoughts he began to see it as futile. So he became reclusive in his texts, waiting for inspiration as the world around him plunged onward. He stopped giving sermons and recruiting others to his cause. Given an eternity to complete anything made nothing worthwhile. So he looked inward, trying to make sense of nonsensical desires, and he refused to share this burden with anyone, hiding the book of secrets from anyone else because he judged that the reasons for immortality were crushed by infinite time. And worse, this reasoning seemed adolescent to him, persisted by the thought that anyone in his position had reasoned this as well and reached the same conclusions - what he thought was the purpose of his life became vague and superfluous.
But as with all depressions, the answer was plain to all but him, had he been able to witness himself from only a few years hence.
It was the eleven war of 477 that renewed his convictions, and even now he would say it was an odd recollection. As the battle waged he perched himself above in the glass tower watching the fight and pondering its importance. He was sure the dwarves would be victorious given the tactics and weaponry. His feelings of futility suddenly became trivial in the face of the dwarven warriors fighting for their lives - as well as the elves screaming in terror and crying for their mothers to save them as they were pressed into the dwarven wall of death.
Fath saw the gift that immortality was. He saw the commitment to a longer goal that eludes even those blessed with a long life. He saw the opportunity to plan the plan of forever which very few had the insight to consider. But most of all, he saw the work, and the chance that was afforded him to complete it that very few had. He smiled wryly as he recognized finally what Doren had been trying to teach him: to be an absolute effective ruler by design, he must be the leader who ruled forever, the immense design of things. To die meant to give control and trust. Otherwise, you are the immense design - of someone else.
With renewed purpose, Fath descended to his dwarven family with a reconditioned commitment to guiding them into forever, no matter what that forever meant. His was now a certainty that spanned uncertainty and zeal. And there was nothing more dangerous to the world than this.
Now when he started his sermons he recognized that the believers were not those to be converted forever, but to be used in the here and now, a recognition he longer regretted. To use his fellow dwarves was no longer a meager selfishness, but a realization that they served his lengthened efforts. And it was strengthened by the fact that they could not hold the immensity of design which he now held. Being above them was not a truth he would admit, and it held no attachment to his heritage or birth rite. It was simply a product of his own desires that would fail examination to anyone but him - forged by his ambition that withstood the assaults of eternity and reason. This reason would not last in the face of rational argument, but it did not matter to one who could outlast all of his opponents. It was they, not him, who would slip back into the immense design of things - along with everyone else until he was alone with perfection and, most of all, divinity.
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Topic: Archcrystal: 500 years in a fortress [SPOILERS] Finished (Read 494769 times)