The Throne
Thus is my friend returned to me.
This… this was the plan I made, and thus it is accomplished, but not in the way that I imagined, or the way any of us imagined.
Plans are the delusion of man. We make them to feel safe, and to secure the future. But the future is a shapeshifter, a fluid trickster. It is mercurial and ever-changing, and it wears many aspects. It can be whatever it decides to be, and no plan can fix it or pin it down. It mocks the plans we paint upon its walls, for those walls will not stand forever, and may not be there tomorrow. I know this. I have seen the future, and it has seen us.
Plans cannot be trusted. We place such faith in them, but they are fragile, devious things that alter the moment we look away, or break like oaths, or melt like snow. Some are simply the lies we tell ourselves, or promises we cannot keep, or dreams we hope will see us through the night. Those few that last, and come to fruition, seldom do so in the ways we expect.
Yet, still, we make them. We have always made them, and those that come after me, I’m sure, will continue to do so. They are all we have, our only armour, stronger than war plate. My friend knows this. He has known it from the very beginning. So he has made them anyway, plan after plan, down through the ages that he has ruled as king, not because he is stubborn, or a fool, but because he knows they are the best we can do. The trick, and there is always a trick, is to expect them to fail. To anticipate the way the future will squirm to escape them, to compensate, to build contingencies, to make not one plan, but many, and layer them up, thick and overlapping, so that when one fails, there is always another. Like war plate indeed. And, like war plate, a blade will always find its way through all those layers if it really wants to. The future’s blade is very sharp.
My friend made many plans, and the blade has passed through almost every single one of them.
My last plan, so hasty and impulsive, has worked. It has brought him back. But it has failed too, for it has not brought him back safe and whole. I see this the moment they escort him in. I see it from the fact that they are having to carry him in. There, Rogal and Constantin, and four fine Sentinels, bearing him upon their shoulders. They are weeping. Of course they are. A silence falls upon the throne room. Vulkan starts forward to meet them from the foot of the dais, and at his side, Uzkarel and the other Custodians leave their place to help carry their lord.
This is a time of grief, but I am glad I am here to see it. My last bequest is fulfilled, however imperfectly. I am not alive to witness it, but I am present at least. My whole self burned away hours ago, and even the sigil of me that remained is all but erased. But it has persisted this long. The material man may perish, but the informational man lasts a little longer. Some parts of me will last for years to come, I think, as ideas in the minds of my chosen few.
That’s my plan at least.
I have lasted this long because I had to. Not to see him home, but to hold the throne until he returned. As they bring him up the steps towards me, I feel their urgent expectation. The throne is his only chance. It will save him. It will restore him and sustain him. This is what they have understood from the signs and symbols that both he and I have tried to show them, for signs and symbols are the only language we have left. This will save him.
Like plans, though, symbols are imprecise. They are fluid, and they seldom mean what we presume they mean. Rogal and Constantin believe they are saving him. They think that the throne is his only chance.
In fact, the reverse is also true. He is the throne’s only chance.
I know it, and my friend knows it. This is what we were trying to tell them. Yes, the throne may stabilise him and suspend him, as it did me, but that’s beside the point. He is the only one who can stabilise it, for I can no longer perform that task. And thus it will tether him here, to this seat, to this room, to this reality, on the brink of death and the verge of life, both wounded and whole, unborn and yet reborn, ended yet unending, now and forever.
It was never his intended plan. But it was a contingency. My King-of-Ages knew it might come to this, if the permutations of the future aligned in this particular way. That’s what he told me, anyway. He had me believe he would be ready, if there was no other choice. And I see none from where I am sitting.
It will be agony. I can vouch for that. I have tasted but a brief moment of that eternity, and that is more than enough.
May your death live forever, my friend. There is nothing immortal about this.
And so they come. They ascend the steps. None of them speak, but I feel the hope in their minds. What they do now, they do only for his salvation.
I want to correct them. I want to explain their mistake. But I can’t. And even if I could, perhaps I wouldn’t. The truth is brutal. At least, this way, they have some solace. Some small consolation in the face of tragedy.
They should have that much. They need to be strong for what lies ahead. This is where it will end, here in my flames. But it is also where it will begin. After a fire, all that is left are foundations. It is a good time to rebuild.
They are our foundations now.
I wonder if they have learned enough. They are close now, Rogal and Vulkan stepping forwards while, behind them, Constantin, Coros, Uzkarel and Lamora lower the bier. Oh, Vulkan, my boy. I have been glad of your company in my last hours, and humbled by your devotion. And you, Rogal. My heart breaks to see the tears in your eyes. I never thought I’d live to see that.
I suppose I haven’t.
I hope you have seen enough, Rogal. I hope you have seen enough to learn, you, the master planner. Plans do not work or last. You have to learn to change them as you go. Change them, all the time, make new ones, make better ones, make them strong and layer them deep, but make them flexible. They never work the way you think they’re going to.
Not even this one.
Does he understand? He doesn’t hear me. He and Vulkan reach down to lift me from this seat. And–
–and I no longer sit upon the throne of Terra.
And this, at last, is my end and my death. For a moment, finally, I feel something–
–it’s time.