31: Poems of Another World (Solar Eclipse)

A poem from another world expressing discontent against an expanding nation.

***

Touch the temples, wrought upon the many knolls

Where the Westman people built their gods in marble and in gold.

The Helios Empire; monument to glory, edifice of the pantheon faith

Unifier of the lands and the continental Marshall of all Jania 

From Casper to Inbal, and the Heartlands too 

Praise the unifier, Jaeden Titanus the Fifth, 'the Kind,' the Sun of Helios

The tyrant of Jania. 

***

What became of ancient Effinitia, where the Archons once ruled?

What become of their silver cities; now tarnished to black

Or their great philosophies, tucked away in tomes of lost lore?

What became of them when their spells transmuted into contagions?

Causing their eyes to burst, their blood to boil, their silver skin to turn black,

What then became of the empire whose hubris had overreached?

***

Aezelioth's curse took their pride, their magics, and turned it into plague

How they must've shuddered in fear to dream at night

to see their most fearsome arch-wizards be reduced to festering spores

sporting black skin and oozing grey matter from their heads

How they must've laughed at the madness of it all,

once their powers brought them awe; only to make them into lepers. 

***

Is this what shall soon become of Helios too?

And Helion, the capital; City of a Hundred Temples,

Cut from the blackest marble and gilded in the thinnest gold

And built off the bloodied backs of slaves

Who were conquered from Casper, from Inbal, and the Heartlands too

What will become of it when the reckoning calls for them?

***

What possessed the Tyrant to attack Bethel, and Dire?

Their allies in the Heartlands turned slaves to their empire

And of those not collard and chained to be put on auction and sold

'The Impaler' claimed for himself with which to play his sick games

The stories say his castle in Heathcliff is garnished with their bodies

And rumors in the royal court claim that he feasts upon their bloody souls

***

Oh, Tyrant of Helios, do you look to Arcticus now? 

Your old rival whose thwarted your invasions no less than six times

Even the famous general Leonis was defeated by Ivyn the Sly

The infamous Wolf of the North doesn't take kindly to your rampant treads

How many more will die for your wild ambitions

Oh, Tyrant of Helios, would you doom us all? 

***

It was on the day that the second prince was born

That the astrologers saw the First Star in the night sky fall

Now an omen of fifteen years past will finally lay its tendrils in your home

You will know the gods to be slain, and the kings to be punished

You will see the temple spires all come crumbling down

Helios shall suffer their fated Starfall; their sins shall not go unjudged

***

A curse will fall upon their people and home

The sun of Helios will turn black behind the moons' eclipse

There will be oceans of blood and mountains of bone

And a tainted black hand shall rip their gods from the sky

He will deliver a punishment so divine that even heaven shall quake

And the Tyrant shall die in vain upon his gilded throne

***

Arrogant Helios, who inherited Effinitia's legacy

Your star will fall too.