Thalasar The Conqueror

I have come to ask you, Poet of Today, to fulfill a promise you never made, to men you never knew, to justify a past you could not imagine. I am just a slave, accustomed to dashed hopes, ready to bow my head to deflect the next blow... In Hades, milling with millions of eidolons, I make bold to plead with you to fulfill a promise that might ease a wound that never heals: it is vortex that drew all into its depths, then expelled them to this dark place... I was just a slave-bard, who perforce sang the praise of a beast parading as a man. He took the name THALASAR from the first man he killed. He lived THE WAY OF THE SPEAR, a descendent of an ancient lineage of mentors, who taught fighting as if it were an ART, violence as if it were a culture, killing as if it were connected to beauty. Thalasar had been their most apt pupil. He was their masterwork as killer and artist. He exulted, I, Thalasar the Conqueror, know the secret of the Highest Beauty. It is hidden beneath piles of wreckage and the dead. Fear my Wrath, people of the plateaus and lowlands! The Columns of the World collapse under my Spear! Oh, the dread SILENCE OF THE WORLD as he led his army forward, guided to his next target not by scouts or maps, but his unerring instinct to the places people thrived, pursuing profit and comfort, buying and selling with honesty because the kingdoms of the plateaus and the low lands with an over-much of prosperity. Their slave-bards sang not of war, but commerce, not of killing but money-changing and trade. Oh, and they sang the most touching love songs and marriage hymns... Thalasar smashed that world in balance with each kingdom he entered, repeatedly robbing the plenitude, then hoarding what he stole in vast desert caverns. He was the richest man anywhere, but he neither bought nor sold, made nothing, destroyed everything. The god he worshipped was an immense maw above a huge belly! But one day, like any other day, in its exchange of air and wind, rain and drought, light and dark... Thalasar forded his last river, crossed his last desert, left behind his last oasis, and entered his next conquest, but he stood amazed in his war chariot. He dropped his great spear and looked in shock at the ruins of his first conquest. He had come full circle: before him lay proof he had conquered everything in a great circle of universal destruction. His six massive horses pawed the sandy soil of the first place he had rendered lifeless. He had reached the end of his existence, but not of his life. Thalasar wept, his tears the only moisture; he cried out in agony, his complaints the only human sound. His six horses scuffed the dry ground and stirred up dust, which clogged his throat and only moans spilled out of his mouth. His charioteer, faithful no more, edged backwards and leaped into the air, and hit the hard ground, and ran, along with twenty-thousand armored men. The six noble horses, rearing and neighing, lunged in six directions... From the central mountain of the World, the gods and goddesses, who had feared Thalasar the Conqueror, saw a wide swath of destruction ringing the World. And the silence of the World ... terrified them.