2. THE KING OF THE DEEP
I am a king, every inch of me is one—but I am no tyrant. Such a word, no matter the context, heats my blood, and if I allow it to truly get the best of me, my hands will close into fists. I was the ruler of my kingdom for my years—I did so sternly but justly. I know this to be the truth for no one, not even my harshest critic, and I had many in my long career, ever thought so low of me as to consider me a tyrant. I not only passively was not a tyrant, I actively pursued the destruction of tyranny wherever it reared its hideous head. I allied myself with heroes from the surface world, with whom I have waged war as well but never so heatedly as I waged it against tyranny, to see that the tyrant's days were numbered. I invaded his territory when he rose to power; and I defended the earth from the threats of those who would, if given the chance, become a ruling despot.
We accomplished great deeds, these other heroes and I, helping to usher in an age where tyranny could not take hold. Global democratization fortified countries against the cancerous spread of tyranny, until the tyrant dwindled to a breed all but extinct. With tyranny's disappearance, so too came the end of the traditional hero, the brave person performing those deeds ensuring freedom's longevity. Retirement, when before this would have been unheard of, became the reality for most. They were now at liberty to simply live, and over time, die naturally, the excitement of an earlier epoch living on only in their dreams. With peace and autonomy so widespread, no new heroes were born or trained or created to take the place of the old. Time moved on and away from the hero, now a relic.
I became equally superfluous, and by my own doing I must admit, for it was I, first seeing the spirit of the age manifesting amongst the airbreathers, who campaigned the must enthusiastically for the rise of the parliamentary counsel which would take the full responsibility of running the new autonomous country, where once there was a kingdom with a king. I, meanwhile, donned the new role of advisor, a job I held indefinitely due more to the counsel's generosity than from any need of my skill in that department.
At the time I still heard the word hero spoken, only now it was applied to a type most unlike the bold adventurer I formally was. The lawmakers were heroes now, as were the grandfatherly peacekeepers, those who crusaded, selflessly and legally, for others' rights, and the mothers and fathers who sacrificed and provided for their families.
My own boldness, my actions, and the man I retired from being was no longer in fashion. And while the urge to do more lingered in the recesses of my imagination, I was willing, for once, to belong more to the past than the present. I felt relief when my shoulders were no longer the pillars bolstering responsibility. I was proud, too, patriotically, when the protective dome, the construction of which I presided over, was dismantled amidst boisterous celebration. And I was only too content to watch this from the silent background, sleeping the heavy sleep of the accomplished.
It was such sweet sleep that was disturbed by the christian avantgarde. They did not come to us as conquerors, thus our guard remained lowered. They even stated plainly that they came in peace. But, in fact, the christian peace being a different breed altogether, they came like scheming warriors all the same, wagging a war not of might but of ideas—they came to convert us. We had grown unaccommodated to war, but still we were not sheepish people. We laughed off their theological volleys. The Atlanteans superstitions were ancient, but forgotten. To interject the gods, or as they described them, god, again into the current Atlantean thinking was absurd beyond logic and not worthy of argument. No Atlantean, not even the most naïve, would consider the christian point. And although they left unshaken, still stoically determined to win us to their cause, we felt certain our mocking assured their finally bowing out.
Then, they returned.
They returned with firepower which we, in our sophisticated peace, could not possibly return with any deftness. We had neither the technology to rival the christian guns, nor did we have the bloodthirst to overpower our attackers. To fight was alien to us; to conquer, though, and not only Atlantis but the world, was everything to them, a decree handed down from their god on high—or so they believed.
In short, we were not ready for war's return, and thus we were slaughtered. I'm sorry—I cannot say "we," for I am talking still, breathing still. Although spiritually I might have expired with my people, some part of me lives on perversely. I should have died with them, died out with them, for they are no more. The men were murdered by the christians, without hope of taking captives. The women and children, meanwhile, were spared such mercy. They were buried alive, with the bodies of the men piling up over them—buried alive and left sceraming under the ground and under watch. The christians rested on the spot, praying like demons to their devil of a god, while last gasps bloomed in that garden of death they sowed.
I was forced to hear every sound, every last one, for I escaped. I was out of practice when the christians fell upon me in the sapling stage of the scrimmage. I had allowed myself to fall into old age. I believed no longer in myself but in the world—and for this reason I lost. They beat me, cut me, shot me—yet still I was able to flee, although I did not remove myself too far from my kingdom's bounds.
I remained somewhere where I could watch and wait. I would convalesce and bide my time until the appropriate opening presented itself and I would attack, I would avenge the devastation I was unfortunate enough to survive.
Such an opportunity never came—or if it did, I let it go by without taking it, so sore of heart I was. I was reduced to a watching thing, eyes and a brain to take in what they saw, but disconnected from anything resembling a heart that I did not feel anything—even for sometime later I was numbed.
Before the christians departed, long after my people's genocide, they planted upon the spot of that holocaust a tall golden cross to sanctify the land. I watched the last of them go, probably to destroy more life, but too heartbroken still to pursue them in the hunt I would have given had I been my former self in that former time of my heyday. I was alone now, and free to walk again the land of my ancestors. But now I could not bring myself to touch it even with my feet. It was the strangest land to me, not even of the earth in my mind. The old actions of the hero I once was kindled in me a spark, not yet a raging fire. I covered the course of the destruction in who knows how many days, trending so reluctantly on that hallowed graveyard. As necessity stoked the embers of my hero's heart, my actions grew bolder. Eventually I dug, not knowing what I would find. Did I dream I would heroically pull survivors out and back into life? Could Atlantis rise again with so much effort on my part? I dug, but I did not rescue—I unearthed. I found remains, gore, bones, pieces of beings and food for worms.
I resurfaced and found the world of a nightmare. It was not that I had been away from the surfaceworld too long, and could not properly remember its details. No, the minutia of that world, which was really one with my own world, I came to understand, was recalled the moment my head rose above the waves. But something vitally important about the world was wrong. Like looking into the face of a deceased loved one, who retains the wellknown eyes while lacking the loving soul behind them, I both knew this world and did not. Birdsong, distant and nearby, floated to my hearing. When I reached the closest continent, I found there more noises, from the ground animals on and under the earth and the climbing animals of the trees. But to call this life in the fullest sense was a sin which disgusted me—for absent from these sounds was the sound of humans. We may call it precious, those coos and growls heard where man is not, but we may not call it nature, not without nature's première children. Nature had been robbed of her love and her soul.
As I traveled, I found this soullessness rife. I found more golden crosses than I did people, and wretched whenever I did, knowing what preventable sadness took place there. There was a blaze inside me when the sickness wore off—the old but not forgotten wrath which I once knew and would know again.
The gold of their crosses made me see red, and I made a vow of revenge and holy rage against all those still threatened by god, and when god is involved all are threatened!—against the combination of mindlessness and militancy called religion!—against the peace of priests, which is the peace of endless flames!—against believers, those who are the despisers of all things earthly!—and most of all against god, the king of tyrants!