I gulped and stepped into the illuminated horror of my visions. The chair was simple, light, wooden, and creaked slightly under my weight. I was not a heavy man, but the cheapness of the material showed after such heavy men as before had used it. Between us was no table, no physical wall nor distance to hide familiarity. There was no secrets or lies or hidden thing here. The sun's eye was on us two, and us alone. Stepping into the light, all the world disappeared behind a veil and I was left alone with him. Despite all my struggle, I had gained no ally or power against him.  In a sense it felt poetic. This was the man I had warned my father of, and, inevitably as the new day, he had come.

Adam crossed his legs and rested his hands together on his knee, and he smiled slightly as he looked at me. The smile reminded me of the chaotically humored nature of the man I had met, yet the gold gauntlet coiled itself around his arm as a snake from his wrist to his shoulder and ending at his hand in a skeletonized wrapping along his fingers proved to me that the man I met was not whoever this is sitting before me.

"Sisyphus." The Aeterna said. "Are you familiar with him?"

"Sisyphus was a man who had defied death twice, so the ancestors gave him an impossible task of pushing a boulder up a mountain. With each attempt he fails as it rolled down the side to the start. It is a child's teaching story."

He looked at me slightly confused for a moment, "Child's teaching story? Okay, what lesson would it teach?"

"Man's stubborn nature is absurd. Accept failure for what it is."

"You don't think its possible for him to win the contest?"

"No. The odds are stacked against him. Mountains are tall, increasingly so, the peak is small, and the weight is beyond anything a man can sustain up such a journey. He was punished for his defiance, that is his sin, and it was exploited against him to give him his punishment."

"Yet would not victory prove him correct?"

"It would, but again, it was designed to be an impossible task."

"Not so." The Aeterna refutes me. "He has a clear goal. He need only achieve it. If it was truly meant to be impossible, there would be no goal to begin with."

"The goal was made to mock him."

"Then he would be the mocker upon his victory."

"You make it sound as if victory is the way of proving yourself right."

"It is, is it not? Justice is decided by the winner, no matter the contest, including war. It is by my decisive victory that I can be here making judgement of the loser."

What is that supposed to mean? Sure, its an easy enough concept to say the conqueror is supreme over the conquered, but what relevance does it have with the story?

The Aeterna continues, "Does the story require he push it up the mountain all at once?"

"No."

"Does it require he not use any other tool at his disposal?"

"No."

"Does it mean he can't take paths up the mountain or place the boulder in the crevice of holds or held by tree roots while he rests?"

"No."

"Is the boulder enchanted somehow to stay the same size for all time as the rain beats on it and would otherwise wear it down to a smaller size?"

"Not that I know of."

"I agree that stubborn nature is absurd, but only when it refuses to adapt or when it accepts failure as failure, as you say. Failure, when learned from, is not failure. It is merely a journey to success. The legend, I believe, is about stupidity and the inability to plan. It is about adapting, not giving in to disappointment."

I nod, now understanding a bit of what he is trying to say. It is true, that if the goal is not so restrictive as to allow strategies, then even something so impossible as carrying a boulder up a mountain would be feasible in the story. "In theory, perhaps, but this is the real world."

"Let me tell you of two men who's life resembles it. For the first man he lived in a poor village where the water well was on the other side of a mountain. Taking the normal winding path around the ridge took the women four hours every day, one way for a total of eight hours in a full journey. A poor village struggling to obtain the single most necessary thing in life, being clean water, it had bleak hope and people were often sick. This man had, as his only tool, merely a bucket, but he had a plan. He scooped up dirt and used its sharp edges on tougher soil, walked the bucket of dirt back to the start, and dumped it, and returned again to do it again. So he carved a new straight path through the mountain with his bucket. It took him twenty years, but he succeeded, allowing his village to only spend a single hour drawing water."

"I imagine his village was happy and, in your story, thrived."

"Indeed, but don't think of it as some mere story. It was called 'Ref'."

His words stunned me. This sick village would become the basis of that great empire? Surely it was just a legend started by the empire to claim humble beginnings and to appeal to common people. But yet he spoke as if he had personally seen it.

He was surprised to hear Abhdan was old, as if he viewed time differently.

His namesake 'Adam' appeared after the fall of Ref in starting a powerful guild.

Power like his appeared the last time in Ref's destruction.

Aeterna, in another language, means 'Eternal'.

I thought it to be a title passed down, but could it be this all is the same man?

How old is he?

Returning my mind to the present, even as the weight of my thoughts and conclusions threatened to bring me to the ground, I asked, "A-and the second man?"

"You." The Aeterna continues, "If I didn't know better, your name could very well have been Sisyphus.  You defied death twice, and you placed on yourself an impossible burden with an uphill struggle. Only where the first man succeeded because he made a plan and worked at it, you have failed."

"You call me a failure for losing to you? You can smite castles and armies with a gesture!"

"No." Adam puts up a finger. "You have failed for another cause. Tell me, what is your goal?"

"To stop you!" I say firmly.

"And you lost sight of that goal immediately! You lacked the will to kill your brother, too weak kill your chancellor, and set up a military under your unrivaled rule that could rival me. You did not wait and attempt to assassinate me, nor even learn any information of me, while you were in Ire. Then when I give you here, today, the chance to go and join your men to the north, to claim that necessary will, you refuse and instead have chosen to sit here as the measure of a man by which I must judge your blood. For someone who's goal is to defy a conqueror who chooses to enforce his will upon all the world, you are sorely lacking in will yourself. You are not ruthless enough for that. Your every choice and action is in contradiction to your established purpose. So I ask you, again, what is your goal? Not the one you tell yourself, but the one you actively work towards?"

My mind blanks at his words. Ever since I first saw him I was afraid. I was shaken out of my reverie by a terrible vision. Everything I have done has been because of that vision, that fear, but for him to lay it out so simply in its contradiction. I cannot refute it.

There are things beyond his perception. He, hopefully, does not know of the messages I sent across Ire. Izthark saw me write them; but the letters never left my sight, so I know with certainty he doesn't know the contents. He knows my friend and ministers are in the north with as many rallied as they could bring, but it is a large and hidden place beyond the wall so knowing something is there will do him little good if they intend to stay hidden.

But these things, these seeds, were because I had given up. Is it that I am too weak to achieve my goal? Or do I not really know what my goal is?

"And this is why you lost, my young Sisyphus." The Aeterna said, after allowing me a moment to wallow in my struggle. "You take on burdens too great for yourself. You lack will. You are too merciful. Like a child given its sudden awakening to adulthood you would rather be comfortable in your proud virtues than to adapt and do what must be done."

I had spoken to my friend, the Duke, of his weakness and lack of will, but I was no better.

Hypocrite.

I sat before him with my head bowed, unable to look anyone in the eye. The illumination crushed me under its weight. What words could I say to refute him? Nothing came to mind, not anything that was useful.

"This pride is a sickness of your blood. For a people with rich soil, strong metals, clean water, self-proclaimed 'virtue', able to stand in the fullness of the sun, and a weak neighbor desperately in need because they lack of everything here, your hearts are puffed up."

The Aeterna rose from his chair and walked past me towards the edge of the cliff. With him, the sun's eye moved. My heart clenched and my breath stopped.

What is he going to do?

"And pride, will be humbled." He said.

The Aeterna looked out over the plains and the sun's eye followed to show everything. In the long talk much of the Kes army had fled far in every direction. The Night-Blood had appeared in small groups, but quickly dissipated beneath the light. Rather, it was the capital city on which his gaze fell. No king, no army, and with the full attention of the sun on it, it was practically naked to me.

The Aeterna raised his hand.

No! Think! What can stop him? What weakness is there? What purpose?

He hasn't cared about resistance, but of the reason behind it. His judgement has been based on our ability to adapt, to understand, to do well, to reason. He has sat with us to talk and reason it out. He has praised queries that bring into question his own reason.

I jumped from the chair and tripped behind him, but still was close enough to be clearly heard. "REASON!" I barked.

The Aeterna paused his action, startled, and turned to look at me, his hand still raised. "Pardon?"

"The riddle you gave the priest." I explained. My breath came out in gasps and whimpers, every intake was a struggle. My eyes was on both him and the city. I couldn't take my eyes off. "The riddle you gave the priest, the answer is 'reason'!"

I held my breath as surprised recognition dawned over his face.

Then he clenched his fist, brought it down, and the sun came down with it. Though the light burned my eyes, what burned into my eyes more was the exact thing I have seen everytime I have closed them. My eyes burned and water, yet I could not close them from the sight. He brought the sun's hand down on the capital.

Then just as quickly, the sun lifted its hand alongside the Aeterna.

I let out a panicked breath. He had struck the city, but only the center of it. He had brought down the palace, but nothing more. Some would have died, namely servants and guards and ministers in the palace at the time, but nothing beyond the inner walls around the former palace so much as smoked or touched.

"Interesting. So you have listened." The Aeterna stepped up to me, and I realized I was already bowing from when I tripped and begged to appeal to him. "Rise, Valspear'Ronlin'Kes the Sisyphus, I could use a king."