When you have lost everything in life all that remains are memories. For Varan there was no place filled with more memories than Heaven's Bridge. Since times immemorial the members of his family had been buried in this ever growing mausoleum. Before there even was an empire the noble line of Sagras had laid their dead to rest here. At first in catacombs carved into the rock deep beneath the earth, later as the earth did not want to yield any more they started to build upwards into the ever open sky. When Varan had been child he had been filled with pride and awe seeing the Bridge extend beyond the clouds. His ancestors had built a mountain reaching higher than even the peaks of the Shakrash mountains to the south. There was nothing else like it. A symbol of the great destiny of his indomitable house. A bloodline that would not be stopped; not by man, not by nature, not even by the gods themselves.
These days when he walked through the cold stone corridors past the beautifully carved doors leading to the suites of the dead the only thing he felt was shame and the deep cold of grief.
"Hubris." he muttered to himself. "Hubris..." he said his voice dry and cracking, he had not used it in a long time. The words escaping his mind while he wasn't paying attention. It had been there all along reminding him and the world what the ultimate destination fore everyone was, regardless if they be peasants or emperors.
He had thought of Heaven's Bridge as a monument to the tenacity of his bloodline. They had survived whole eras of history rising to the greatest heights, falling to near ruin, but always, always persevering to grow again into a new resplendent form.
"Hubris." he spat. It was there in front of him, in front of the court, in front of the entire bloody world warning them that the only thing that was certain in this world was death. The one constant that was always there throughout the history of house Sagras.
He had not seen the ruin inching ever closer, he had been distracted. At least that's what he told himself when he begged sleep to take him for the night, while in the far corner of his room death was watching him with a condescending smile. The empire was in declining. The vassal states getting ideas of independence. The fools. It was unity that kept them alive, unity that upheld civilisation, unity that made them strong. Imperial unity not the fickle consensus of the masses who followed whomever's voice was the most honeyed, nor that of the council of the noble houses driven by their unquenchable envy of each others power. It was the true unity brought by house Sagras the only noble bloodline to have survived since the dawn of history. They who had left behind artefacts even before the age of the first great chroniclers. Even now archaeologists were unearthing artefacts from a time now mostly forgotten on a continent they believed newly discovered bearing the crest of the imperial house.
"Hubris." half choked by tears.
Emperor Varan Sagras LXVII last of his bloodline, bent by old age and broken by grief in a way only the strongest will could be warped and crushed to arrived in the tempest halls. Here was the entrance to great spiralling stair roads leading from its very foundations all the way into the heavens. The heat of the deep catacombs rising towards the topmost floors above created the raging storm that gave this part of the tower its name. He gripped his staff of office tightly with both hands, working his way slowly towards a carrier, pushing against the storm. It took all of what little strength was left in his desiccated body to reach the cylindrical metal carriage container. Trembling with exhaustion he barely made it to the door at the lee-ward side of the cylinder. The carriage was a splendour from the seventh dynasty, wrought from precious metal, and polished hardwood, made to work for centuries but above all else to awe those who laid their eyes on it. The metal forming the shapes of the great predators of the eastern lands, the wood engraved to mimic its overgrown plains and forests. Hands shaking he opened the door and entered. Inside after closing the door there was only perfect silence, in here the storm had no power, was denied any presence. Here he could only hear the drained beat of his heart and his fluttering breath, nothing else. At first. Then little by little the room around him started to resonate with him, coming alive with a deep lethargic hum. He sat down in the seat in the front of the carriage facing the main window. The wind could not be seen or heard from this place. He let himself fall into the control seat its cushions rushing forward to catch him as he fell, gently, almost lovingly, seating him. He closed his eyes finding for a brief moment a semblance of peace. The resonant hum around him shifting into a deep languorous drone. As he relaxed sleep finally approached him, but as always sleep brought memories, of fire, of disease and of war. Before his eyes his wife, his children, his cousins, uncles and aunts, his brothers and sisters one by one where plucked away from him. Again.
He forced eyes open, staring out of the window pushing the dream away and with it the memories.
It was time to move on. He laid his hands on the controls of the carriage activating the ancient machine. Outside it unfolded it wings of woven gold, catching the wind, absorbing its raging power, converting it into fluid motion. The craft moved right into the tempest towards the stair roads. The actual bridge to heaven connecting the depths of the earth with the sky above. The wise scholars of the empire had ascended to the Heaven's since the days the tower touched the clouds. To study the sky, the stars and the winds. Or so they said. Secretly they were all looking for the edge of the realm of the gods. A fact the gods at first found amusing until one day many centuries ago the sage Lirna of Tharas Falls noticed that it was hidden within the air right where the clouds could reach no higher. That lead to the first ever diplomatic incident between humanity and the gods leading to the Celestial Incident a few decades later. A time of great glory for the Sagrasan Empire.
"Hubris." said the Emperor as his carriage took him past the celestial ring where the first embassies to the gods were built.
By now the stair road was getting calmer, even the wind lost force these heights, the carriage now mostly moving through the energy it had accumulated before. Varan left behind the stone blocks that had been used to build most of the tower entering the very tip which was wrought from living crystal and transparent metals a structure that defied nature and the gods. After the wind had failed, Varan knew that it was now as silent outside as it was inside his craft. Here even the sun began losing its power. The sky outside now visible through the translucent wall shifted from dark blue to the black of the void of space, the first stars becoming visible.
Not far now. He was almost there. He had reached the part where he knew the name of everyone one who lay here, the name and the person. Not far now. His body remembered before his mind did. His tears pooling into his dry eyes, recognising the grave of his great grandmother before his mind did. Shaliliana the Elder. For others the nigh immortal matriarch to the empire, to him the warm and loving woman who would always dote on him and never return from any of her many state voyages without a little gift. Now there was no one alive who was close enough to him to know that to this day he had kept Vyl a tiny cloth bear she had given him before he could walk. Vyl still sat in his office on the highest shelf, always watching over him, even now that he was an old man. For a moment the old emperor thought if it would not have been a better idea to not hide Vyl from the eyes of the others, but keep him maybe on a tiny chair on top of his desk, reminding his subordinates, that even he, Varan Sagras LXVII was a human like them. Maybe then... His tears washed away his thoughts.
The carriage had reached its destination, it retracted its golden sails falling dormant again, while inside the emperor had to wait until the tears had washed away enough of his pain so that he could move again. When he finally stepped out his eyes where dull. For a short while he felt empty, a gift he was unable to enjoy but was deeply grateful for.
With his head down he moved forward. He knew the way. He did not dare look up and see the exquisitely decorated doors leading to the tombs of his closest family. He knew better than to look at the walls etched with scenes commemorating their greatest moments in life. It was meant as a celebration for those who had come before, yet if he lifted his eyes it would crush him. No, he had to move past, he had to reach his own room. It was waiting for him.
When he finally arrived at his final resting place he scrambled to the control panel next to the gate slamming the emergency button that would seal the room. The great doors thundered shut. Now he could dare to raise his eyes. The room of eternal rest itself was only decorated once the inhabitant had died. So he was now standing in a great hall with translucent walls the colour of white opal with a transparent celling above showing the stars in the black sky. In the centre of the hall stood his sarcophagus on raised part of the floor. Here he would lay down to rest for a final time, rejoining his family.
"Not today." he told the universe. He moved towards the open coffin faint embers smouldering back to life in his eyes, a faint echo of his once great will. After his last niece was killed by the sword of enemy soldiers, sweet little Laha, the last scion of house Sagras, Varan had almost died with her. Almost. His grief had almost consumed him, then his anger burnt him giving way to suffocating despair. He was too raw, too wounded to die then. After calming down enough to feel the loss, a final drop in an ocean filled with regret, he could start to think again. His life, his dynasty, his empire, everything was over. In the end death had won. It had always been with them, following them wherever they went. They even built death a monument, the greatest that had ever been erected. Somehow they all had failed to grasp the warning growing ever taller as countless generations passed. Now after millennia of patience death made its point clear.
"Hubris." this time his voice was calm. He just nodded to himself. He leaned his staff of office against his sarcophagus. He pulled a crystal rod from his coat. Warm to the touch, almost as long as his forearm, made from a dark blue stone. It had cost him most of the treasures left to the Sagrasan Empire and the sanity of many of the greatest sages of his time. Some of the more resilient sages despite their great wisdom did not know when it was prudent to remain silent. So with great regret Varan had to teach them virtue they lacked. He had laid them to rest inside the imperial mausoleum honouring their great work.
His fingertips caressing runes into the warm almost pliant crystal, activating it. As the artefact came to live it consumed his, withering the hand and most of the arm that had woken it. The desiccated arm fell to his side, the hand turning to ash slowly raining to the pristine floor. He gently laid the rod now strobing in a strange rhythm onto the floor, pulled out his knife held it between his teeth and cut deep into his still healthy hand. As his blood splashed onto the sarcophagus he spat out the knife. He took back his staff of office. He spoke the words, tapped the staff against his coffin opening his final resting place. The sarcophagus blossomed open its many arms expecting his body ready to wrap themselves around him to welcome him to his eternal rest. In stead of himself he gave them the blue rod, they took it and the sarcophagus collapsed into itself now pulsing with the blue energy.
Emperor Sagras' eyes where now alive again. Death had come and taken everything from him. Destroyed not only what was dear to him but what he and his ancestors had fought so long to establish, to nourish, to protect. It had come to claim the greatest civilisation that ever was. But he would not allow it. He would not be broken. Death had claimed his realm, well Varan would claim the realm of death in return. The cerulean rod was now part of Heaven's Bridge extending its tendrils of power growing from its very tip down to the deepest foundations finding the dead which had the taste of the blood it had drunk. Using the life force of everything around Heaven's Bridge as a fulcrum it grabbed hold of the dead, ready to pull.
Emperor Varan Sagras LXVII stood in front of what once had been his final resting place, now a throbbing ovoid mass of blue crystal light. He raised his staff of office high above his head ready to strike it down and return every single member of his dynasty who had been taken by death back into this world.
The staff crashed down.
"Hubris."
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