The golden sun had just dyed the sky a bleeding red, as it dipped toward the peaks of the Mountains of the Gods' Hands. With its departure came the first creeping fingers of the highland cold, a chill that even the height of summer could not fully suppress.
He sat atop a weathered stone, the shadow of a stately oak offering a silent, cool homage to his presence. He found it queer that such a fragment of nature could remain so utterly unburdened by the hand of man, even as the earth surrounding it was littered with the broken husks of his fellows.
The low, rhythmic whimpering of the dying rose into the stagnant air.
For his own sake Tiberius tried to ignore it. It was much about the deaths as much about how vain all that was.
