To Civilization, You Are Disposable | Conan

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:01]The screaming had stopped 3 hours ago and that was when Conan knew the fortress had fallen from within.

[00:00:08]He stood at the base of the scarlet citadel, a monolith of red stone that rose from the Himelian peaks like a blade thrust into the mountain's heart.

[00:00:17]Snow fell in thick curtains muffling sound turning the world into a tomb of white and crimson.

[00:00:23]The fortress gates stood open. No guards manned the walls. No smoke rose from the cooking fires.

[00:00:30]Silence pressed down with the weight of accumulated centuries and the Cimmerian's instincts screamed warnings his conscious mind was still processing.

[00:00:39]He had been hired by the citadel's lord, a Turanian noble named Jehungir who controlled the mountain passes and extracted tribute from caravans desperate enough to risk the heights.

[00:00:50]Good gold for 3 months service, enough to winter in comfort rather than freeze in some border hovel.

[00:00:56]Conan had arrived 2 days late, delayed by a snowstorm that had nearly buried him in a pass 20 miles south.

[00:01:03]2 days late and whatever had happened here had happened in his absence.

[00:01:07]The Cimmerian drew his sword and advanced through the open gates, his boots crunching on fresh snow that had already begun filling the courtyard. No bodies, no blood, no signs of battle beyond a scattered weapon here, an overturned brazier there.

[00:01:23]The garrison had numbered 200 soldiers plus servants and slaves and the noble's retinue. All vanished as if the mountain had simply swallowed them. Conan moved through the fortress with predator's caution, his eyes scanning for threats while his other senses painted pictures from sound and smell >> [music] >> and the subtle wrongness that permeated the air.

[00:01:44]The great hall was empty, its fires cold, its table still set with food that had begun to spoil.

[00:01:51]Half-eaten meals suggested the disappearance had been sudden, that whatever had claimed the fortress had struck while men were dining.

[00:01:59]But there was no panic in the arrangement, no overturned chairs or scattered [music] dishes.

[00:02:04]The diners had simply stopped eating and walked away, leaving everything exactly as it was.

[00:02:09]>> [music] >> Conan's jaw tightened.

[00:02:12]He had seen men flee in terror, had witnessed the chaos that panic created.

[00:02:17]This was something else, something that spoke of will stolen rather than broken.

[00:02:22]A sound reached him from deeper in the fortress, rhythmic and hollow, like distant drumming or footsteps descending stairs that went down rather than up.

[00:02:31]The Cimmerian followed, his barbarian instincts warring with the survival sense >> [music] >> that urged him to leave this cursed place.

[00:02:39]But curiosity was stronger than caution, and Conan had always been willing to walk into darkness if it meant understanding what lurked there.

[00:02:47]The stairs spiraled down into the mountain's roots, carved from the same red stone as the fortress above.

[00:02:53]Their walls covered in script that predated any language the Cimmerian recognized.

[00:02:58]Torches still burned in their sconces as if someone had recently refreshed them.

[00:03:03]Their light throwing dancing shadows that moved with purpose independent of the flames.

[00:03:08]The drumming grew louder as Conan descended, [music] its rhythm matching a heartbeat slowed to funeral pace.

[00:03:16]The air grew warmer, which was wrong, which spoke of heat sources that had no business existing in mountain depths.

[00:03:22]The stairs ended in a chamber vast enough to swallow cathedrals, its ceiling lost in darkness above, its floor covered in concentric circles drawn in substances that might have been paint or might have been something far [music] worse.

[00:03:36]The garrison stood in those circles, arranged in perfect ranks.

[00:03:40]200 soldiers facing inward toward the chamber's center, where a figure [music] in crimson robes conducted some ritual that pulled at the edges of Conan's vision.

[00:03:49]The soldiers' eyes were open but empty, Their faces slack.

[00:03:53]Their bodies swaying in time with the drumming that seemed to emanate from the stone itself.

[00:03:58]The robed figure turned as Conan entered and the Cimmerian saw Jehungir's face beneath the hood, transformed by something that wore his features like an ill-fitting mask.

[00:04:08]The noble's mouth [music] moved, speaking words in a language that made Conan's ears ache, that seemed to bypass hearing and carve themselves directly into thought. The barbarian did not wait for whatever the ritual intended.

[00:04:22]His sword was already moving, his body crossing the distance between door and circle in strides that ate space.

[00:04:28]But the moment his blade touched the outermost ring, force threw him backward with strength that lifted him from his feet and slammed him into the chamber wall hard enough to crack stone.

[00:04:38]Pain exploded through his ribs, his shoulder, the back of his skull.

[00:04:42]Conan shook his head to clear vision that wanted to gray at the edges, forced himself upright despite muscles that screamed protest.

[00:04:51]The robed figure had not moved, had not even acknowledged the attack beyond the defensive magic that had repelled it.

[00:04:57]The ritual continued, the drumming reaching a crescendo that Conan felt in his bones, in his teeth, in the very foundations of the world.

[00:05:06]The soldiers began to change, their flesh taking on translucence that revealed [music] organs pulsing beneath skin gone thin as parchment.

[00:05:14]They were being consumed, the Cimmerian realized, their life force drained to fuel whatever working Civilization had brought these men to this chamber, had trained them to follow orders, to trust in authority, to believe that their service would be rewarded with security and advancement.

[00:05:32]Instead, they had been led down into darkness and fed to powers that viewed them as nothing more than fuel, as disposable resources to be burned in pursuit of goals they could never comprehend.

[00:05:44]Conan circled the chamber's perimeter, his barbarian mind working through problems that civilized thinking could not solve.

[00:05:51]The circles provided protection, their geometry creating barriers that force alone could not breach.

[00:05:58]But geometry required precision, and precision created weaknesses for those who knew to look for them.

[00:06:04]He found it where the outermost circle met the chamber wall, a gap, perhaps an inch wide, where the stone's natural irregularity had prevented perfect inscription.

[00:06:14]The Cimmerian drove his sword into that [music] gap and twisted, using the blade as lever, applying strength that made steel groan and stone crack. The circle broke. Reality screamed.

[00:06:26]The protective geometry shattered like glass, its fragments dissolving into light that burned without heat.

[00:06:33]The ritual collapsed, its carefully constructed framework imploding, and the force that had been flowing inward toward the sorcerer reversed direction with violence that defied natural law.

[00:06:44]The Hungrian's scream lasted 3 seconds before his body tore itself apart from within, his flesh erupting in a spray of blood and viscera that painted the chamber's center crimson.

[00:06:55]The soldiers collapsed as one, their strings cut, their emptied bodies falling like puppets abandoned by their master.

[00:07:02]Conan stood in the aftermath, his breathing harsh in the sudden silence, his ribs protesting every inhalation.

[00:07:09]The drumming had stopped. [music] The torches guttered and went dark, leaving only the dim glow from bioluminescent fungi [music] that grew in the chamber's crevices.

[00:07:19]He moved among the fallen soldiers, checking for survivors, finding none.

[00:07:24]They had been drained too completely, their life force consumed to feed a ritual that promised the sorcerer power beyond mortal limits.

[00:07:32]The Cimmerian climbed back toward the surface, his body aching, >> [music] >> his mind cataloging lessons learned.

[00:07:39]Civilization had created this fortress, >> [music] >> had gathered these men together, had taught them to follow orders without question.

[00:07:46]And when a predator wearing noble skin had commanded them to descend into darkness, >> [music] >> they had obeyed.

[00:07:52]Because obedience was what civilization valued, what it trained into its servants from birth.

[00:07:58]He emerged into the courtyard as dawn broke over the eastern peaks, painting the snow the color of the fortress stone, turning the world into shades of blood and bone.

[00:08:09]Conan did not look back as he walked through the gates, as he put the scarlet citadel behind him, and returned to the high passes where survival depended on strength rather than trust, where threats announced themselves honestly, rather than hiding behind authority and civilized masks.

[00:08:26]The merchant caravans would find another route through the mountains, would pay tribute to some other lord who controlled some other pass.

[00:08:34]The Turanian nobility would investigate Jehungir's disappearance, would send soldiers to secure the fortress, would eventually reoccupy it, and resume extracting their taxes from travelers who had no choice but to pay.

[00:08:47]And none of them would understand what Conan had grasped in that chamber beneath the mountain.

[00:08:52]That civilization viewed its citizens as resources to be exploited.

[00:08:56]That authority was simply predation dressed in elaborate justification. That every system built on hierarchy was fundamentally a mechanism for concentrating power in fewer hands while rendering the many disposable.

[00:09:10]The soldiers in that chamber had believed their service mattered, that their lord valued them, that their obedience would be rewarded with security and purpose.

[00:09:19]Instead, they had been led into darkness and consumed. Their lives spent like coin to purchase power they would never share.

[00:09:27]This was civilization's fundamental truth. The reality hidden beneath its laws and customs and elaborate social structures.

[00:09:35]That those at the bottom existed to serve those at the top, that the many were disposable fuel for the few's ambitions, that loyalty flowed upward while consequences flowed down.

[00:09:47]Conan had rejected such systems long ago, had chosen the hard path of self-reliance over the comfortable lie of civilized security.

[00:09:56]He needed no lord because needing a lord meant accepting that your life belonged to someone else, that your survival depended on their continued benevolence, that you were disposable the moment your usefulness ended.

[00:10:09]The mountain wind cut through his cloak, its cold honest in ways that civilized promises never were.

[00:10:16]The Cimmerian walked into that wind, into lands where predators announced themselves rather than hiding behind authority, where threats could be fought with steel rather than navigated through hierarchies designed to protect those above while sacrificing those below.

[00:10:31]Behind him the scarlet citadel stood empty against the dawn, its red stone dark with secrets, its depths holding 200 corpses that civilization would bury and forget.

[00:10:42]Disposable soldiers, disposable servants, disposable lives spent in service to a system that had never valued them beyond their utility.

[00:10:52]The snow continued falling, covering tracks, erasing evidence, transforming the world into blank canvas where nothing suggested the horrors committed in darkness.

[00:11:02]And in that erasure lived civilization's greatest strength and greatest crime, the ability to make atrocity invisible, to render the disposable forgotten, to continue the machinery of exploitation while maintaining the fiction that service was noble and authority deserved trust.

[00:11:19]Conan knew better, would always know better, and he walked on alone because being alone was preferable to being disposable.