Today's challenge - The City - gave me opportunity to dip into with a fantasy world that's been swimming around my brain for many years. Perhaps, one day, I'll get around to writing the novel that this world is a part of...
The City
It is said that, at the heart of this wasteland, there lies
a city.
At the
edge of the wastelands, where those who are unlucky enough to find themselves
here but who are lucky enough to survive gather, they pass stories around the
campfire. Sometimes they tell tales of the places they came from and drink in
the bitter sweet memories of the storyteller to add to their own. Other times,
they tell stories of how they came to be here and the things that they did to
survive on their journey, for there is a brutal honesty among all who make it
this far. And, when they want to gift each other with what passes for hope in
this desolate place, they talk of The City.
Some
tell of a city that is bedecked in whitest marble, with tall spires that reach up
into the sky and which is surrounded by luscious gardens that stem the advance
of the wasteland that surrounds it. In this version of the story, The City is
an oasis, a heart of purity in this cancerous landscape. In other versions of the story, The City is
hewn from pure diamond and rises as a single tower, up and up before it
vanishes in the blood dark clouds that fill the livid skies; not an oasis, not
a respite, this city is a means of escape from this nightmare. But, no matter which
version of the story is told and no matter which way The City is described, all
the storytellers agree that The City is the one place that offers even a
paucity of hope.
The man
who sits down beside the fire to talk tonight is known only as Jared; he is
dishevelled, as they all are, and wears a black eye patch across his left eye.
His one good eye is a brilliant blue and it sits uncomfortably within the mass
of scar tissue that covers the right hand side of his face; his hair is almost
entirely gone, save for a few clumps here and there, and so that brilliant blue
eye remains as the one thing that reminds of the man he once was. He has listened
to the stories of others, nodded in silence as they told stories of the places
they once lived and which now seem as incorporeal as dreams, but he has yet to
tell his own story in any detail. The memories are still too raw and so,
instead, he tells them what he was told about The City.
The
story he tells them he heard himself from a traveller that he met in the
wastelands and who was not fortunate enough to make it this far; the traveller,
in turn, had heard it from another and he from another who had, if the story
was to be believed, headed deeper into the madness of the wastelands in search
of The City that this version of the story promised.
The City
is not a beacon of light that exists in the heart of darkness, nor is it an
easy way out of this wasteland. Instead, he tells them, The City is a prison
cell; The City is a prison cell that stands in the very centre of these
wastelands that form the ultimate prison. It is a prison cell that was
constructed to contain a power whose scale is nearly unimaginable; a power that,
if released, could rewrite this world as easily as man draws breath. That, he believes, is why they are here; though
their manner of arrival differs in a myriad ways, he believes they are have all
been brought here merely as tools with which something may eventually fashion
an escape. And, in that, he tells them there is hope; for it means that this is
not hell, that this is not some eternal purgatory which they must suffer. They
are keys and, if they can find The City and the lock to which they are bound
then they can complete their purpose and this world will cease to be.
Most
stay silent when he has finished the telling, although some scoff and defend
the version of The City that they hold dear to, before one by one wandering
away. But one man stares thoughtfully into the fire long after all the others
save for Jared have departed to the crude shelters that they call home.
“Tell me, “ says the man, whose
name is Damien Stark, finally “Tell me everything that you know about The City.”
No comments:
Post a Comment