― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
-William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
The Shalostiir, a few months prior.
Malseth Malthero, Premier of the Republic of Greater Mackonia, Commander of her Armies, Defender of her Peoples, was not a Mack built for meetings. The long, white walled, red flagged, large windowed, fluorescence bathed conference room housing a long thin table around which were crowded a succession of Generals, Politicians, Intelligence Chiefs and Diplomats was overflowing with heat. Monsoon Season was on the verge of breaking and the steaming orange skies above Sterkvelso enviously withheld their watery talents as Mackonia baked in the hottest part of a hot year.
The Premier lent back and clasped a half-empty bottle of Draelezii Wine, swigging it straight from the bottle, he felt its sedative, strong summerblooded flavour ease his parched mouth and gladden his angry heart with a fiery benevolence. He belched with satisfaction, the convocation turned towards him and for a moment, the speaker...a grey cat with a limitless talent for tedium caesed to speak.
Malthero had come to hate them, come to hate the gang of perfumed elitists and uniformed homosexuals who stalked the corridors of this palace, Malthero was a stranger in Sterkvelso, a Mack of the provinces who had slain his first prey with his own claws at the age of two moons and while they were all being happily brainwashed in some ideological academy he had been hunting cerksthi with nothing but a blow-pipe in the jungles of West Tyreii. They had served as officers; himself as a private, many of them had PhDs;he had taught himself how to read at 21. Malthero was the voice of the common man, the archetypal Mackonian on the streets, but here he was a complete outsider and felt it. It seemed to Malthero that he could scarcely put on a dressing gown without being mocked as "the dumb fascist peasant", even the word 'fascist' was an insult, I am but an ordinary Mack who wants to serve his country, I am slave to no one's books or diktats thought he.
"Could we please proceed to the next issue of importance, gentlemen?...And please not the one about the spiritual advisor and the tourism disaster." He glowered belligerently as guffaws and grumbles spread around the table, cigars re-lit, glasses re-filled.
Marshall Xelvagus Sukkoth took a sip of distilled rainwater and began to speak in sonorous, faintly patronising tones.
"I am delighted to bring you onto our next topic of conversation Mr Premier, we have received a request from the Greater Island Kingdom of New Hayesalia to open a military base on our territory...The New Hayesalian Military are renowned for their combat prowess and without in any way meaning disrespect to our esteemed troops, could prove to be a valuable friend to our Republic in these turbulent times. I am sure you can see the wisdom in his Mr Premier and your approval, as Commander in Chief, is required."
It had been a very long meeting, six boiling-hot hours of long litanies about New Models of City Planning, The Practical Applications of Sikasithian Socialist Cooperativism, Regeneration of the Eastern Marshes canal system and the maddening intricacies of the turbulent world of currency markets and interest rates. This was the last straw. That he had not been told. That he was only being told now...
"Everyone but the following leave this room, Sukkoth, Straysin, Vakhotar and Njzador."
Lo the masses duly obeyed the heavenly commands of the most pussiant Lord of Mackoniae.
Malthero exploded. "HAVE YOU COMPLETELY ABANDONED YOUR SENSES COMRADE-MARSHALL! HAVE YOU PREHAPS FORGOTTEN YOU ARE SPEAKING TO A NATIONALIST! WHO DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?!...DREMATAVA FUCKING ALVEXION!-THE MILITARY HAVE BEEN LYING TO ME!"
Outside, a large crowd had gathered in the marbled hall beside the concrete walled conference chamber.
"-Everyone here has been lying to me! Even the Sskisto-streth!... ".
In a single fluid motion Malthero casted down the now empty wine bottle to the well-polished marble floor, it promptly shattered, sending faint pigments of red and glass across the floor. This did not deter the fury of Malthero.
"THE GENERAL STAFF ARE THE SCUM OF THE MACKONIAN PEOPLE!-TRAITORS AND COLLABORATORS! NOT A SHRED OF HONOUR!"
"EVER SINCE THE BEGINNING OF MY POLITICAL CAREER THE MILITARY HAVE SOUGHT TO PLACE EVERY OBSTACLE IN MY WAY! A bunch of contemptible, assimilated traitors who could not even repel a band of fucking, hatlacking PONIES!-I'll tell you what I should have done, I SHOULD HAVE HAD THE ENTIRE OFFICER CORP LIQUIDATED LAST MONTH...LIKE SIKASITH!"
Malthero fell back onto his leather chair and gently swiveled around in a full circle before staring, furiously at his silent Generals.
General of Infantry Vakhotar was on slightly better terms with Malthero than the rest of the Generals, the Mackonian Military loathed the Black Spear as unprofessional thugs and the Black Spear saw the military as jackbooted Communists. Sukkoth gave Vakhotar a deathly stare, indicating him to console Malthero.
"Mr Premier I fully understand your objections-but let's allow our good Marshall to finish here eh?"
Malthero sighed and took another swig of wine "Conshtinue then, Marschall Shukkoth..."
"Mr Premier whether you like it or not we need allies and the New Hayesalians are among the finest armed forces in the world, on par with Ralkovia or Allanea...But eh..er there is another um...reason." Said the old Marshall, resplendent in ceremonial dark blue officer's frock and black peaked cap, stammering slightly and turning a remarkable shade of white at the last part.
"Go on..."
"The New Hayesalians have offered a substantial sum in exchange for this, so far we are only at prelimary levels...we're talking only a few thousand hecters or something...but the sum is still in the millions. And I was er..thinking that er-given the tenuous political situation in our country and the-er, strain placed upon members of our Military and Political leadership that these funds do not quite enter public hands...".
"How much would I receive." Malthero spoke at last, piercing the silence with harsh coldness.
"4 million USD." Answered the Marshall with equal bluntness.
Malthero sighed and reclined in his seat, for the first twenty years of his life he had lived in abject poverty, growing up on a collective farm he had been forced to go out and hunt every day from his family's meager shack and if he didn't bring home enough game his father would beat him so badly he would vomit. He ran away and joined a Mercenary Company where he lived on killing Macks, Men, Elves and god's knew what else for coin, he had climbed through the ranks on ruthlessness and cunning, when he entered politics in the wake of the Blacktyde he had been dazzled by the wealth of the political elite. The pitful treasures of a Khavilaar were nothing to the fortune of an Oligarch or the halls of the Shalostiir. He never considered himself corrupt, no-he just thought of it as what any perfectly normal man would do in his circumstances...make the best for themselves. Serving the People was all well and good but surely even servants get paid?
He thought back to that adrenaline fueled night, where, as the air was thick with candle-flies and the summer's wind breathed gently on his scales, how he promised to his infant sister that he would return and lift the family from poverty, to give her children the life they never had, to build a palace on the site of that rotten old collective farm. No Malthero had never truly wanted power, pah, power; what good had it done him? He just wanted to make a name for himself which folks could respect, where the name of 'Malthero' was answered with a nod of difference rather than a contemptuous laugh.- I don't have to keep it up for much longer!- thought he -Yes, yes I'll sit out the war and lead the nation to victory o'er the terrorists, we'll have a parade and all will sing 'Malseth Malthero the hero who saved Mackonia and patron saint of compromises!' I'll be known as the wise man of the people who put politics aside for the greater good of the nation, then I'll resign and bugger them all, the Party, the House, the Army fuck them all. I'll build a lovely wooden villa beside that old forrest, yes and the stream will run past it and I'll have a garden of coriander and potatoes, I could have a mansion in the City to get smashed in every now and again...Yes they'll find someone else to take over Sukkoth, even bloody Mythurin. Oh fuck it all- Thought he.
"Pass me thine pen." Said Malthero, the Marshall seemed, for the first time in his life, genuinely shocked.
In a few minutes Malthero swiftly scribbled out a letter to the New Hayesalians and signed it with a flourish, he then turned and faced the table grave-faced and serious.
"This meeting never happened. This act never took place, Camp Siegfried does not exist, I want the land mentioned cleared within a week, if anyone from the Mack Mail to some insect-herder speaks a word of this I want them chatting with the worms. Establish a no-fly, no-go area around the base, the operation must take place in absolute secrecy. Gentlemen I must warn you the Mackonian People will never stand for this, we shall all here be condemned as traitors and thieves and quite frankly I lack our good Marshall's self-reighteousness to disagree. Tis not just me, but this entire Government is on the line now...and for the sake of all to be desecrated don't breath a word of this to the bloody Sakystrumaar or bloody Mythurin. Am I understood? Then go, in the name of whatever villainy you use to excuse thyselves go."
51/5/2021 S.Z
It is not the truth that matters but the fact that you spoke it and if it be spoken by others then it be the truth no longer. I am the sort of repellent creature that could back any thought no matter how petty in its wretchedness so long as I was sufficiently assured that I was the first to think it. You see, My Acquaintances, a man will cling to any 'truth' if he knows it is truly his, in our modern world identity is a thousand times more valuable than truth, virtue and knowledge. Each man and woman a microskopic sketch of filth in a vast field of filth striving to define itself as a Scholar, a Citizen, a Doctor, a Student, a 'Moral' Man, a 'Learned' Man, a 'Super' man and all the rest of the nauseating detritus of our decaying souls, if, but only if to show he is a Man and not a pile of filth contained within a membrane of proteins to be bashed against a rock for the benefit of other filth monism and pluralism are but two shadows of the same illusion differentiation forges a world of fixed identity but what these crafty frenchmen have forgotten is what was the blank slate? The Comparative Maximum?-I. I Maglos am the Truth. Twas from the bowels of the self that we do establish this myriad of fluctuating fixation. How do I know I am I? Because without Maglos there would be nothing but Maglos or nothing at all, a God unto myself or doomed to an arrogance of existence. You see, you men of the future, the only thing more nauseating than my own existence is the existence of others. It hath reached such levels now when I can scarce look my cleaner in the eye for fear of vomiting upon their work-for such is the condition of an enlightened and rational man in modernity. Intelligence is a sickness. I am sick. I am sick of the sickness of living with my inferiors for by now I look upon my shoulders with some unease for I know they hold the fate of history upon them. I would not consider Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom worth the honour of being my laundry maid. Such are the total parallels that I must put myself with the common wretchedness to even begin to find justification for mingling with them, I have now reached total assurance that I have exhausted every soul in this Republic and not found a single one with even a fraction of my unparalleled genius and wit to even consider conversation with. So I have retreated, my one excuse for commerce with them has been stolen, so I say "No More!" they will not let me die so I shall act if dead. My books are now selling like heroin and pornography (not that any one will even come close to truly reading them) and thus I have no more monetary troubles. I am free. Free to stay within the wretched confines of these walls to brood upon a lifetimes worth of indecision. Now back to my theft...or my sickness...
I do not live you see, I am filled with almost convulsive hatred for anything with fire in its blood and passion in its soul, I am of that vile species of men who call themselves 'Men of Letters' or 'Men of Ideas'. My broth and bread are ink and paper. Without my ideals I am nothing for it is my privilege in "Life" to give loftier men whom I secretly despise something vaguely resembling a "purpose" in "Life" and they will toy about with them for a few years or millennia depending on how hard I make it to understand myself before another wretched, arrogant, cowardly over-educated 'philosopher' comes along and refutes everything I ever said to fulfill his own cowardly ego. Of course I am a thousand, thousand times above any thinker who has ever respired in the universe or ever will, the names of 'Buddha', 'Socrates' and 'Moses' are reduced to pathetic little insects scurrying beneath the floorboards at a single whisper of the word "Maglos". But what am I when my ideals become dare I even attempt to stomach the stench....the NAUSEA of the word?-Popular? I tell you now My Acquaintances that I am nothing without struggle. The intellectual ambition is but a sublimated form of the bloodthirsty warlord lurking in man and I cannot bring myself to attack anything but victorious causes. When I hear a notion insulted, spat upon and derided I am instantly drawn to it. Indeed when even one soul comes with me to agreement I cannot help but to attack that soul again and again until he bows before my ego and admits it was I who found it first for, as I have already covered you feeble-brained tramp, all philosophy is a matter of egos. Now then can you even begin to feel how such a magnanimous, pure, innocent and fundamentally superior creature such as myself could feel when they-the Herd who I shall not waste paper discussing, begin to praise, agree nay even adopt my thought?! To see it become NORMAL?! MAIN-STREAM!? I am hurt My Acquaintances that my ideals have been stolen. By whom?-By Mythurin. Every notion that becomes "Popular" becomes flawed, fallacious, arrogant, depraved, degenerate, violent and warped beyond the imagination of the original thinker, I shall not live to see that happen to my ideals. A "Popular Maglosian" is an oxymoron. To see it devolve into mob rule and become but a popular dinner-party conversation topic for these "Men in their Baths?" I think not.
What does a man of ideals depend upon when he no longer has ideals, My Acquaintances?, he turns to Music, the closest possible material to ideals-a fulfillment of his dreams and desires. In his chosen symphonies a Philosopher imprints his dogmas unto art. Oh but for me music was merely a soundtrack to greater fantasies. Oh! How I could lecture you, My Acquaintances, on these fantasies of mine. How I would rise, resplendent and vengeful, mounted on white dragons to drive out the armies of ignorance and conquer the age of darkness. I would bring them all to heel! I would fling my enemies before me, let them look into my eyes and see how little all their petty machinations had averted -raise my spear and. Then I would forgive them all and of all, and they would fall before my shoes sobbing uncontrollably at the grandeur of my visage, the purity of my soul, the strength of my will and deepness of my intellect. I would retell the inner turmoils of my soul in small volumes that would move the European public to such depths of feeling that at once all my previous misunderstandings would be absolved as I was propelled to among the highest of our national sages. I would conduct grand public readings of my poetry to tens of thousands before mounting a silver dragon to go and vanquish the Reactionaries at Stalingrad, the Queen would abdicate and leave London for Canada, mass rallies would be held in my name as the highest thinkers of the era paid due reverence to me on a frozen Thames.
Should I tell you about who I have hated most in the world? Oh so long ago in my youth at school, there was another boy who's name I forgot and good thing for that too My Acquaintances as it would send me into convulsions of rage just mentioning it. I will only recall his appearance-and only reluctantly, Blonde, Human, Glasses. Oh how I despised him, I despised his confidence, I despised his relative intelligence enough to be useful but not great enough to become a liability, I despised his willingness to conform, I despised his humour-his existence nauseated me almost as much as my own and that scared me. No but My Acquaintances do you know what I despised most about him? That in his own image I could see myself, my acquaintances! Rarely are we allowed such great mirrors as others and how we treat them, if other people are useful for but one thing it is that Maglos can see his reflection in their eyes. Oh but how I loathed him and how I cherished that loathing, how I wanted him to recognise it, to loathe me with that same passion, to seek repentance, to vow eternal enmity if but only I could claim to have forged some kind of meaningful relationship with another mind...I had friends, of course, but my company proved to great a thing for them, one sought nothing but to emulate me and claim it as himself so I disowned him and waged mortal combat against all he stood for, another proved altogether to shallow for the depths of my friendship and fled away without a parting nod.
But why do I bother you with these insane gibberings ye men of the future!? Hath you not come here for something else than to hear of the turmoils of some spiteful insect! Do you intrude here as futureborn scholars seeking enlightenment in my teachings now studied in all thy collegiums and magestyriums? I hope I would find company among your people, ye men of the future, but alas! I hath faith no longer in fickle History after seeing too much of it. In truth I have not looked upon this world with mortal gazes past, present or future born; but my instincts are predominantly alien in nature. I find myself seeing more in common between myself and those most ancient races of the cosmos than the clay-born infants who bestride our own soil...my soil.
I still work. That is perhaps the one constant that governs my life. Without something to struggle towards and distract my more stygian mental yearnings I can scarce rouse myself out of bed and find that, by the end of Civil Service holidays, I am so full of self-hatred that I fling myself into my work with such vigor people seem to mistake it for happiness. So today I was shifting through papers which I knew to be vaguely interconnected with Military Infrastructure, needed to sort out some minor land deeds that apparently ceded whatever stinking marsh someone or other in Sterkvelso wanted to a gang of inbred savages, naturally I was able to hunt down the documents, destroy every last one of them and forge a new one in my own Late Cyrmalthic that confirmed the land was infact property of one Khazhir Lyeur, who's great, great grandson ceded it too the "Armed Forces of the Realm" in 1876 S.Z. I needed to give some kind of update to the ordinance survey as to what the land was now currently being used for, the Government must at least know of its own cover ups...so I went and rung of the Lieutenant Colonel, a vile, vile man who wears his immense stupidity as a badge of honour. He tells me there is no such Military base in the area and that ordinance survey do not need to know anything...
99% of the problems in this cursed Republic of Greater Mackonia are geographical and I'll be damned if I am going to contribute to another, how dare he the disgusting little creature! He seems to forget that without me this government would collapse, I AM THE HIGHEST CLEARANCE! YOU MYOPIC BRAT! Now this has become a matter of personal vengeance! Of individual honour!
You now what my acquaintances? This is not merely personal, it is societal! Civilisational! This entire government, this wretched regime of bandits and thieves, has outlived its usefulness and its lifespan, how long will we stay searching for a Messiah? I am not he but I can at least light his path! O tempora! O mores! O the state of an intelligent man in the 21st century!
-Z.Maglos
Camp Siegfried Restricted Military Area, Republic of Greater Mackonia, Western Marshes, November 20th 2014 A.D. 19:25 P.M
Fire on the lips of the dawn, plumes of smoke dance across the brightening horizon and mingle with muffled screams. Blood and tattered clothes loiter on corpses dead or beaten, those driven not away no more in time but only in space, or only in time but never more in space. The nearby hut; an assemblage of wooden sticks tied together by reeds and uplifted from the rancid swampwater by bamboo poles, slowly burst into flames as its inhabitants were dragged out yelping by the grey-faced, blue-clad, green scaled, golden eyed black gun wielding soldiers.
"Please! My kits are in there!" Cried the feline mater gazing anguished into the plumes of smoke billowing from her fallen abode, she lept towards the turned figure of the officer, clasping his black cape with pleading paws.
"GET OFF ME YOU FILTHY RIVER-WHORE!" He roared, spinning around, his eyes staring wildly, his shadow hungrily engulfing the figurine of his tragic victim as he unsheathed his whip, cruelly unadorned instrument of misery that hissed as it flew airwards towards its victim's tear-drenched cheeks.
Twice, twice and thrice again it slashed the fur run slick with blood and sorrow as the smoke turned to fire and the fire into ash and charred bones. The Commissar turned away matter-of-factly, ignoring the weeping bundle of rags that had been his emaciated victim; now lamenting the screams of her burning kittens.
He turned his gaze in circumnavigative motion around the village proper, finding it almost humorous he did not even know its name, all around him his black-uniformed troops were methodically darting between closelt packed shacks and leaping over garden fences of barbed wire to set alight the remaining buildings with flamethrowers. Swiftly dragging the occupants out and occasionally leaving them in for some entertainment, the frantic shrieks of burning specimens encaged in the cages that had held them for so long now burning bright in the night. Those who had survived a swifter death had been herded into tight columns of misery at the entrance to the wretched little hamlet. The Officer proceeded to march over to them, every stride heralding apprehension forming clouds of mist-breath amid the nightcanvass.
"Listen! All of you! Several weeks ago every household received a letter from the Commissariat of War demanding their complete vacation from this habitat and declaring all land within the parameters discussed, of which your village falls into, state property. Since then not a Single. Bloody. One of you rabbits have left from your filthy burrows and now-now I'm here to clean you out."
"BY WHAT BLEEDIN RIGHT I-" Bellowed a naked Cyrzarii announcing his challenge by thumping a rather large chitin spear on the ground.
The officer nodded and one of the soldiers surrounding the entrapped villagers raised his rifle and opened fire, a repertoire of shots flew as white thunder from the barrel of the assault rifle, each slamming into the Cyrzarii blowing off scales and sending bloody splattering to the floor showing the backs of several repulsed villagers. The Challenger fell to the floor, stone dead.
"-The rights of the victor." Said the Officer, allowing a slight malicious grin to creep across his peak-capped face before continuing. "This is now MILITARY property and you are now TRESPASSERS! Do you want to know what the penalty for trespassing on Station-3 Restricted Military Property is in Greater Mackonia? Execution! However due to the mercy of our government, who understand ignorant people such as yourselves can allow selfish desires to get in the way of the loftier good, you shall be spared execution to earn your freedom through labour in a State Correctional Facility." He enunciated every word of that final, chilling phrase with sadistic pleasure. He loathed these shadow-worshiping yokels with a passion, it was their sort who were keeping the country down with their willful ignorance and provincial obscurantism. The government had been all too easy on the provincials since Sikasith died. Thought he.
"You're sending us to a GULAG? Comrade-Officer we have done no crime! The letters only began to arrive two days ago, some of us have yet to even receieve them-" Cried an elderly Cat who was silenced with a sharp jab-in-the-ribs by one of the soldiers.
"I am not a mailmack, I am a servant of the Republic and a punisher of its enemies. Now, any more complainers shall be shot."
The crowd halted on the brink of outrage, storms of fury stopped in their medium-sized mouths of fire, the soldiers formed a circle around the remaining villagers and began to shephard them into several vans with the sedative aid of truncheons and whips.
The Officer turned back and looked upon the smoking remains of the village, the last of fifteen he had cleared over one and thrice nights past, a smoking debacle of shattered glass windows, burnt walls and ashen hedges, a nucleus of isolated quasi-tribal culture razed in an hour and half by the dread hands of State Mercenaries, emaciated beds of childhood memories and hunting for clams amid the reeds. Tattered clothe and abandoned possessions littered the hardened earth and dried grass between the burning huts. The river swept by weaving its melody into the stench of blood and synthetic fire, dragonflies hummed in the evening air and in the distance a bat glided down from a wizened pineapple tree.
His gaze wandered over a shadow splattered signpost that declared in simple inscription CAMP SIEGFRIED.
