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prodigalwatcher185 - It's your moment of triumph! Where are you and what are you doing?
Once upon a time (about 300 B.C., in fact), there lived a Greek king named Pyrrhus of Epirus. Pyrrhus ruled great lands: he was king of the Molossians, Epirus and Macedon. A man who would not see his nations trampled beneath the marching sandals of the Roman Empire, Pyrrhus went to war. In battles at both Heraclea and Asculum, his armies soundly defeated the Romans.
Unfortunately for Pyrrhus, though his own forces took fewer casualties than Rome's, the centurions were of almost limitless supply, their camps quickly replenished with fresh, determined fighters, while Pyrrhus' own line had no reinforcements to be had. For his triumphs, the toll on Pyrrhus' army was much greater than his opponents'. "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined," he said (according to Plutarch).
From his sad lesson we gain the term "pyrrhic victory", for a success paid with a dear price-- often too dear to accept.
Rioting. Chaos. Violence in the street. Terror in ever corner of the globe that the still-operating television cameras could find. People everywhere, despondent and crazed with grief.
The sweet smell of victory, indeed.
It is generally regarded as truth-- and I must agree-- that having a thing only to subsequently lose that thing is far worse than to have never had it at all. It holds true, of course, for love as the saying goes, but also for peace and contentment, for happiness and tranquility. It held true that night when a false god was thrown down and all the world cried out at the loss of her.
Jasmine was no god, merely an exceptionally powerful entity that had found its way into our dimension by manipulating events and lives across the span of centuries. All those I knew and loved were at the center of her plot, unknowingly laying the groundwork for her manifestation with nearly every action we took. Angel and Darla's liaison... the presence of Holtz in our time... the actions of Sahjahn and the manipulations of the prophecies... Connor's birth... Cordelia's apotheosis and return. All intricately plotted steps, culminating in the physical birth of the being we came to know as Jasmine.
The world had never seen a conqueror such as her. One whose ambitions to rule the world were written in the language of violence and hatred we could at least have understood and recognized for what it was-- we humans have had more than adequate experience in producing such megalomaniacs ourselves. But she, who came with soft words, open arms and a welcoming smile, how could we ever have known what a monster Jasmine would truly prove to be?
Her message was simple: believe in me, and all that you have ever truly wanted would be yours. The world would at last know the end of enmity and war, of starvation and cruelty. Every human would be brother or sister to their neighbor, all with heads bowed and knees bent before Jasmine. And before most of her would-be followers had a chance to question such an exchange, they were filled with a sense of rapture in the truest sense, the blessed contentment of being within the busom of one's deity, protected and loved.
We were children, safe in the arms of a mother.
And then we few, we unhappy few, learned the truth. Jasmine not only wished to have followers, she required them-- as sustenance. Her power was not to bring peace, but to force it upon our minds. We would, in her new world, be no less than slaves and perhaps no more than insects, whose sole existence was to feed our new queen.
We ran. We fought. We ran some more. And in the end, Angel returned with the one thing that would rob Jasmine of her power over the world: her true name. Spoken out loud, the magic of that word felled what she had built. In an instant, her influence over the minds and hearts of humanity was severed.
But we, in turn, who had come to depend on Jasmine as our life line, were cut adrift by her defeat, as well. No more would we be enthralled, but no more would we know the deep and abiding contentment and happiness Jasmine had instilled within us. And so, the world cried out in grief for its loss, without a thought to what it had gained.
This was our moment of triumph, hollow and dark and empty.
As Cordy would have put it, "Go team."
(756)
Once upon a time (about 300 B.C., in fact), there lived a Greek king named Pyrrhus of Epirus. Pyrrhus ruled great lands: he was king of the Molossians, Epirus and Macedon. A man who would not see his nations trampled beneath the marching sandals of the Roman Empire, Pyrrhus went to war. In battles at both Heraclea and Asculum, his armies soundly defeated the Romans.
Unfortunately for Pyrrhus, though his own forces took fewer casualties than Rome's, the centurions were of almost limitless supply, their camps quickly replenished with fresh, determined fighters, while Pyrrhus' own line had no reinforcements to be had. For his triumphs, the toll on Pyrrhus' army was much greater than his opponents'. "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined," he said (according to Plutarch).
From his sad lesson we gain the term "pyrrhic victory", for a success paid with a dear price-- often too dear to accept.
Rioting. Chaos. Violence in the street. Terror in ever corner of the globe that the still-operating television cameras could find. People everywhere, despondent and crazed with grief.
The sweet smell of victory, indeed.
It is generally regarded as truth-- and I must agree-- that having a thing only to subsequently lose that thing is far worse than to have never had it at all. It holds true, of course, for love as the saying goes, but also for peace and contentment, for happiness and tranquility. It held true that night when a false god was thrown down and all the world cried out at the loss of her.
Jasmine was no god, merely an exceptionally powerful entity that had found its way into our dimension by manipulating events and lives across the span of centuries. All those I knew and loved were at the center of her plot, unknowingly laying the groundwork for her manifestation with nearly every action we took. Angel and Darla's liaison... the presence of Holtz in our time... the actions of Sahjahn and the manipulations of the prophecies... Connor's birth... Cordelia's apotheosis and return. All intricately plotted steps, culminating in the physical birth of the being we came to know as Jasmine.
The world had never seen a conqueror such as her. One whose ambitions to rule the world were written in the language of violence and hatred we could at least have understood and recognized for what it was-- we humans have had more than adequate experience in producing such megalomaniacs ourselves. But she, who came with soft words, open arms and a welcoming smile, how could we ever have known what a monster Jasmine would truly prove to be?
Her message was simple: believe in me, and all that you have ever truly wanted would be yours. The world would at last know the end of enmity and war, of starvation and cruelty. Every human would be brother or sister to their neighbor, all with heads bowed and knees bent before Jasmine. And before most of her would-be followers had a chance to question such an exchange, they were filled with a sense of rapture in the truest sense, the blessed contentment of being within the busom of one's deity, protected and loved.
We were children, safe in the arms of a mother.
And then we few, we unhappy few, learned the truth. Jasmine not only wished to have followers, she required them-- as sustenance. Her power was not to bring peace, but to force it upon our minds. We would, in her new world, be no less than slaves and perhaps no more than insects, whose sole existence was to feed our new queen.
We ran. We fought. We ran some more. And in the end, Angel returned with the one thing that would rob Jasmine of her power over the world: her true name. Spoken out loud, the magic of that word felled what she had built. In an instant, her influence over the minds and hearts of humanity was severed.
But we, in turn, who had come to depend on Jasmine as our life line, were cut adrift by her defeat, as well. No more would we be enthralled, but no more would we know the deep and abiding contentment and happiness Jasmine had instilled within us. And so, the world cried out in grief for its loss, without a thought to what it had gained.
This was our moment of triumph, hollow and dark and empty.
As Cordy would have put it, "Go team."
(756)
