The Glitter Jungle:
Fiction:
Ir Shalem
Kronos thinks ahead.
The scent of pines drifts in the cool mountain air. He stands on top of the hill and looks down upon the armies camped in the valley below. Outnumbered, out-weaponed, but not outsmarted, not yet. In the distance to his left he sees the great wall, what is left of the temple the Romans had destroyed.
He can appreciate the empire they'd built, but he prefers everyone to know his name without having the responsibility of taxing, constructing roads, running an empire. Leave the trouble to the Romans, he thinks. I'll stick with nomad gangs spreading terror across the land.
From hiding places and cave mazes in Arabia Petraea they storm into Judaea to raid villages and small towns. The Romans never catch them, and the soldiers who tried, ended up in a bloody pile of limbs, torsos and heads at the gate to Jerusalem. The Emperor may have renamed it Aelia Capitolina, but it always was and always will be Jerusalem.
He's not found yet a strategic mind to replace that of his lost brother. He's sure that sooner or later he'll find someone else who would be that perfect, that special. A decade or two, a century or two.
He'll find another Methos.