The King
I sat on my throne at the top of Spire gazing out the massive windows that allowed me to overlook the kingdom I had toiled for centuries to create. I spent a great deal of time staring out those windows, heart swelling with pride as I contemplated the happiness of my people.
Today, however, the emotions were different. I looked out over the city of Rathsbore and felt so empty. It was a feeling that had been building in me for some time now, and today it had finally gotten the better of me, overwhelming the pride that usually countered it.
My Regents surrounded me, three dozen of them bickering about some policy or another, complaining about how it must effect their people differently than everyone else.
Gazing into their faces one at a time increased the dissonance I was feeling. I knew their names, and I knew the provinces they represented. I had a rough guess of how they each would vote on certain issues, but that was it, and that was how it had been for their predecessors and the ones before them too.
I sat on a throne surrounded by people, united by a common goal, and I hadn’t had a close friendship among them for over a century. My gaze drifted from the council to the city beyond. I kept looking up, my gaze locking on to the mountains in the distance.
It was time for something to change.
I stood abruptly, not yet quite certain what I was doing, so I ignored the confused looks and polite questions of the Regents around me and started walking. I was quite a bit faster than normal people, so I was surprised when a hand fell on my shoulder.
I looked back and met the eyes of Hylion, the head Regent. I knew her no better than the rest of the people in the room, but the concern and confusion in her eyes held me, freezing my desire to leave in the cocoon of guilt I had been suppressing.
“Is something wrong?” She asked, her hand still gently on my shoulder.
“Yes.” I said, my voice cracking under the stress of the loneliness I had felt for so long. “It is time for me to leave.”
Hylion’s brow furrowed in deep concern and tears sparked in the corners of her eyes. The other Regents were forming a crowd around the two of us, their ears perked to hear every single word. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.” It came out as a whisper, causing uncertainty in my people was hurting me, but I didn’t know what else to do anymore.
“Are you coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
I turned and left, pretending in my heart that I hadn’t caused the tears in her eyes. I hurried down the stairs, running now from the panicked outcries of the Regents behind me.
I tore through Spire, my intimate familiarity with her halls allowing me to slip out a back door unnoticed. I stripped off my mantle, leaving the elaborate blue and gold garment inside my palace Spire.
Without the cloak it was harder for people to recognize me, and I was able to sneak from the city with no further incident. I rushed to the mountains, pushing myself along the plains and up the foothills as though the distant, frosted peaks were calling my name.
The land grew steep and I switchbacked along the face of the mountain, picking my way through scrubby little trees and bushes that tried to pluck at my clothes. I didn’t slow as I worked my way around boulders and past cliffs, pushing myself to my limits as I levered myself higher and higher above the land I was leaving behind.
My legs were burning and my breath was coming raggedly as the air thinned minute by minute, but I was thrilled by finally acting, and my eagerness pushed me through hours that passed like minutes.
I left behind the problems of my extended life, forcing them out of my mind to leave room only for ascending above the world.
The sun still hadn’t set when I found myself with nowhere higher to go, the land now falling away in every direction. My thoughts came crashing back down on me as I sat down on the peak of the mountain and looked out over the now distant city with my Spire rising delicately at its center.
I had thought that by making it up so high I would be rising above my problems, like maybe I would be able to see so far that I could glimpse the distant answer to my predicament. Unfortunately my thoughts were just as clouded up here, the path that lay before my feet just as obscured.
At least I had made a choice. I had taken the first step towards making a change. True, I was worried about the state of my people, but my government had stood for a thousand years under the systems I had put into place, and it could manage for a time without me
I watched the sun set over the city I had devoted my life to. The night passed me by, still staring down at the flickering lights of the city and contemplating where to go from here.
I’m not sure how long I ended up sitting on that mountain, several days might have passed beneath my warped perception of time, but I was still undecided about what lay ahead of me.
I stood up and turned my back on Rathsbore, beginning my long trek down the other side of the mountain.
It was time for a change, and I would figure out what that meant as I went along, just as I had been doing for so many lifetimes now.
Notes About the Story:
This story is based on the idea of an immortal ruler who is actually a good guy instead of the tyrant who must be overthrown. They would still suffer the same struggles that the evil ruler would have, loneliness and the mounting fatigue of a long life, but they would have no benefit from the tyranny that they could enact because they would be prone to creating an actually functional society.
Now that I wrote this I got inspired to write the whole story of the ramifications of the immortal king of a society up and leaving one day, but I’m forcing myself to finish one of my other two projects first lest I leave those behind to never get finished, but I plan to come back to this story in the not too distant future.
