What he gets instead is sweat and blood and agony. What he gets instead is Death’s cold hand against
his scalp. The wind whispers you could’ve been so much bigger, and that’s—hilarious, really, because he was a
Chinese man and in the days of the First Emperor what could a Chinese man do but suffer?
But die?
In the time-hallowed caves of the Underworld, Sisyphus bends and breaks himself under the cover of
darkness as he toils against his rock. No purpose achieved except, perhaps, to exist. He moves to the bidding of
a power greater than himself. He moves as we do, with mundane finality: it is only a matter of time. The final
truth of humanity: we toil to leave our marks on this earth, we fear oblivion, we grasp blindly at anything that
may help us leave our scars on the ground we tread so briefly.
The nature of Sisyphus is more human than any myth should be.
But in that moment of consciousness when he watches the rock roll down to him and his muscles tense
reflexively in reaction, in that moment when he chooses to push it up back slope for ever and eternity and does
not let it crush himself and does not give up—
He chooses the tomorrow that claims him, he does not bend to the tomorrow chosen for him by the
gods.
In that moment he is superior to the fate that holds him.
He is stronger than his rock.
A slow sun rises and the thundering of hoof-beats grows closer each tremor matching the pulse of his
rapidly beating heart.
Muoling stays pressed to him, their love bursting unwarranted in memory. He kisses her cheek, each
kiss an apology.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
Thank you; I’m sorry.
His hand inches towards the dagger, cold metal light years away.
In the fourth to last moment of his life, he watches her smile at him, and his own cracked lips smile
back. This death is better than anything the law can push onto them—dying still free within themselves.
In the third to last moment of his life, he shapes his palm around the hilt of his father’s dagger and
quietly slits his lover’s throat.
In the second to last moment of her life, he falls onto his own blade. The floor rushing up to meet him,
and Darkness eats away at his vision. Unwilling and unbidden, the Emperor forces his presence into his mind’s
eye, as the pictures portray him, what can the Chinese do but suffer, but die. You betray your country, he says to
him. I am doing my duty, he replies.
Yes, he is doing his duty. Not by burning books or building walls or farming the land for the rich and
their stomachs, but dying and spilling his life blood because he is a traitor and a scholar and he defied the wishes
of the emperor, and this is a fate that would earn the First Emperor’s smile of approval, high up on his throne.