[X] My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings
And on the pedestal, these words appear
History doesn't repeat itself - but it often rhymes.
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.
Man is lowly. Man defies his fate. Man rises. Man becomes great. Man becomes proud. Man becomes foolish. Man falls.
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
This is the cycle. Humans rise, humans fall. Often, the one is the cause of the other.
Even now, the legacy of these cycles can be found, scattered across the world. The tomb-city of Xanadu, a mausoleum to the grandeur that humanity never held, lay for millenia untold beneath silent waves, before one very foolish (or very ambitious) Magus raised it from the deeps, and with it raised the Demiurge which had razed it in the first place. Naturally, it, as such things do, proceeded to do its very best to sink China until it was stopped, by luck and by pluck. But while it was stopped before it could do enough damage and wreak enough havoc to call its overlord into the world, it was not stopped before it was noticed.
In Japan, there is a region known as the Dragon's Triangle. Once, this region was infamous for its tendency to cause ships to disappear. It was known as the Bermuda Triangle of the Pacific. And then, abruptly, it stopped. Where once no ship would have dared tread, now even tiny fishing boats go without fear. They go there because they think the Dragon's Triangle has been deactivated, that it is now safe to travel. If they knew the truth, they would revise their opinions quite quickly.
In truth, the entity beneath the Dragon's Triangle is not deactivated. Deactivating it is rather beyond the capacity of any mortal man. Nor is it asleep. It slumbered once, but the raising of Xanadu and its sister-cities, and the awakening of the god-weapons within them awakened it in turn. Indeed, how could it not awake, when it felt upon the world the return of the foes it had longed for. Instead, it waits, and it remembers.
It knew the purpose it was made for. The kingdom of its masters had been at risk. The evil empire which had attacked them, sought not only to conquer their cities and dominate their nation, but to expunge their culture, their creed, their very way of life. Their people were taken and turned against them. Their lands were burned and salted, or used to the benefit of the invaders. Their heroes died, and turned against them. And worst of all, they were winning.
So the king did what was necessary. He called his alchemists and his sorcerers, his wizards and his runecarvers, his oracles and his priests, and he commanded them build a weapon of supreme potency, capable of exterminating the evil empire's entire army in but the blink of an eye (because of course, moderation has never been in the vocabulary of kings).
So the alchemists used their secret arts, and forged mystical metals of immense power, each ore a legend capable of changing the fates of smaller nations. The sorcerers called upon powers beyond all comprehension, and infused the metal of the weapon with life and with breath. The wizards showed their mastery of the secret of life, and gave the creation a semblance of true life, true power, and something very much like a soul. The runecarvers reclaimed the lost heights of their arts for one last artifice, and wrote the myth of the weapon into the very fabric of the world itself. The oracles throughout saw the shape of the thing to come, and made the weapon in its own image, for no other form would accept it so well. And when all had ended, the priests came together in a great ritual, and sacrificed ten tenfold of the king's enemies, and as many of his friends, as many heroes, and as many villeins, as many elders and as many youths, as many men and as many women, as many Sinners, and as many Innocents. And the weapon was, and smiled to be, and its creators turned away in horror and regret, for they had wrought something beautiful, but terrible as well.
The weapon was, of course, in the shape of a man, a man who bore a strange and inexplicable resemblance to the king. It had his eyes, his hair, his voice, and his manner, and wielded his vast armory with the same ease he did, but it was not quite the king. There was something missing. Perhaps, if they had cared to complete it, things might have been different. But they did not, and so things were not, and the wheel of fate turned as it always had and always would.
The weapon succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the king. It slew armies in a single motion, crushed heroes with but a thought, unleashed such weapons of such potency as to erase the very thought of defiance, and showed the people the virtue of obedience to their proper ruler by its very existence. It was proof, to the king, that his reign was meant to be, that he truly was the rightful king of the earth and all upon it, and he sent the weapon out to demonstrate to his neighbors the self-evident nature of his proof.
But while it was teaching his neighbors, the weapon learned from him. And it learned of the First Rule of the Hierarchy. And the First Rule was thus: "The Strong shall rule over the Weak, and the Weak shall obey, for they are not Strong." And as it served the king, the weapon, the greatest wielder of weapons, pondered. And the weapon learned. And the weapon had an epiphany. It was Strong. The king, who relied on it completely and utterly, was Weak. The kingdom, which relied on it completely and utterly, was weak. And the rest of the world? Was weaker still.
Armed with these three new truths, the weapon returned to the king, though he had given no order for its return. It cast him from his throne of gold, and shattered his crown of silver and rubies upon the marble floor of the palace. It took from him the keys to his vaults and equipped itself with his many treasures. It spoke of the truths it had learned to the king. And when the king could offer no reply, it moved the corners of its lips upwards and showed its teeth, and with a grace and majesty he had never possessed, took his place upon the throne.
The weapon turned the country into a testament to its might. It ruled with precision and efficiency. Every day, another legion marched forth from its vaults, to conquer in its name and to spread its glory. Every day, another nation fell to its unsurpassed Strength. The weapon rested in its palace, secure in its strength and in its supremacy, for it knew that it was the most powerful, and the greatest, and had proved it to be so.
But one doubt gnawed at its heart. It kept the king in a gilded cage at the heart of the palace, as one might keep a favored pet. Every day, it spoke to the king. Every day, the king did not reply, but only laughed. Every day, the weapon asked the king why he laughed. Every day, the king did not answer.
And then one day, the king answered.
"I laugh, Golden Man, because I have a daughter."
That was the day the weapon died. But death does not hold beings of its ilk as well as it ought, and it returned in time. It knew that as it had returned, so too had its enemies and so too had its masters. Or perhaps would return. So it sought them out, across time and space, and when it found them, its revenge would be great and terrible. And then something killed its enemies before it could reach them, so it sank beneath the waves, and a strange liquid fell from its optical arrays.
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Its kingdom had been taken from it. Its armies crushed. Its legacy had been forgotten. It had nothing left but revenge, and nothing to revenge itself on.
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
And then its masters returned. And the corners of its mouth were pulled upwards, and its lips parted to reveal its teeth, and a foolish man might be forgiven for thinking that it smiled.
The lone and level sands stretch far away.