Axen

I have seen an empire's birth: The empire called Axen. I have seen its civilization rise out of formlessness. I have seen culture emerge from a cold and lonely void, complex traditions and arcane ritual built in the gloom of obscurity, poetic expression and unique lexicon spring to life from soundlessness. I have seen the capacity of the human spirit to tame and conquer even the most feral biomes and give life to the most barren wastelands. I have borne witness to men far greater than I cutting steps in the path of progress with nothing but naked ambition.

But all this has come at great cost. I have seen censorship. I have seen power and control exerted to their fullest. I have seen great purges occur in less time than it takes to blink; extensive, vibrant historical records erased with callous irreverence. I have seen coups and reformations mercilessly squashed. I have seen a regime obsessed with power grow unassailable. I have seen alliances brokered between the most powerful few, uniting to crush any semblance of democracy. I have seen the most convoluted and violent Politics and War to establish control over a languishing populace. Yes, I admit: I, too, have wanted to be at the top. I have pleaded and groveled, masking my desperation from myself with pomp and irony. At the time, even the slightest promotion seemed swollen with gravitas. I, too, have been drunk on power -- but I always knew I would never be The Ones with my fingers on the strings. Have I any dignity left? If I do, it eludes me.

All this, yet the controllers never seemed to matter to the controlled. Because whatever happened at the top, no matter how sky-shattering, no matter how tumultuous, never seemed to trickle down to the people at the bottom, the ignoble, the unpromoted. The unpromoted coped with this in various ways. There was rage, there was sadness, there was apathy. None of it ever amounted to much. However dissenting the voices at the bottom would be, the ones at the top would keep on laughing.

I have seen travelers. I have seen pilgrims of all sorts take refuge at Axen. Few stay, as I have. They were the smart ones. I conversed with some, cloaked in the shadows of dank alleyways, away from prying ears. They asked me, "Has it always been this way?" and I would reply, "Yes. I've been here since the beginning," and to this, their eyes would grow wide with awe and terror, and their feet would grow swift with sudden urgency, and they would disappear from Axen within a fortnight. I do not blame them. The age of the Axen Empire stretches far back in history, and to meet someone who was present for its birth is no small thing. You could count on one hand the total number of living people who witnessed it.

But it ends there, for all I've ever truly done is borne witness. They've called me various things in the past; they've tried to pin me down as a joker, a mover and a shaker, a gruesome troll, a shameless propagandist not to be taken seriously, but what I've really been -- all I really know how to be -- is a watcher, the idle slave of my sensory inputs, beholding, never becoming; perceiving, never participating. My contributions to Axen, scant as they are, hardly deserve the air they would be spoken with. My restlessness and dissatisfaction with the status quo has never manifested into tangible reality. My voice, whenever it did speak out in dissent, has always been laced with a sniveling and flippant refusal to take things seriously, burdened under the weight of its own arrogant detachment and delusion. All this time, I've just taken it, and it has been far from fine.

And even now, I am still paralytically disposed to do nothing but bear witness in passive silence. I am seeing the end times. I am not alone in this -- the apocalypse has been coming for a long time now. We were all forewarned. We all made aware of Axen's date of death, long before it will come to pass. Discord has already come. Discord looms enormous on the horizon, blotting out the selfsame Sun who heralded it. And even while the jackals are drawing ever nearer, the ones at the top are still mired in senseless antiquity and mindless tradition, perennially drowning in the quagmire of their own torpor. They will be forever confined to stagnation, stranded in the progressless trappings of days long forgotten to modernity. I do not weep for them. I wept long ago, years ago, when I first realized their deep-rooted refusal to adapt to their own circumstances. Nowadays, any pity is gone. They will let their culture drown with this? Very well, then let it drown. But I pray -- for their sake -- they don't beg me for help when they realize it's too late to be resuscitated. For when their hand scrabbles for sanctuary as they sink into that dense swamp, I will merely be watching.