Leave you far behind

[Lin]

There was a brief flickering moment when the light of the Eudaemonian Empire shined on the town of Ildereth. While most Gamma Spacers were mustering arms to fight an invasion, the Ilderans welcomed a new hope into their lives and indulged themselves in a world of fantasy come to life. Where once there were tiny flickering lamp posts snuffed out in the rainy costal weather, the eternal blue glow of phase technology banished the dark night to a mere memory. Where once there were haggard masses withering from hunger, all the necessities of life flowed out in endless supply. They gave Eudaemonians not only the loyalty they demanded, but a faith and devotion they never expected.

And then one day they were gone…

It wasn’t the day Architelos fell from the sky. It took more than one catastrophe to drive away the Eudaemonians. After all, they were born from tragedy. They were the survivors of a ruined world, the remnants of a now shattered order, and still they had their dignity. They still called themselves an Empire, and most importantly to Ildereth, they still cared for their provinces. The energy kept flowing, the lights kept glowing, and everything was alright.

Until it all fell apart…

The abandonment didn’t come suddenly. It was the sort of slow process that no one noticed until it was already too late. And by then no one would admit it. To this day the city is called Ildereth Provincial Seat of the First Province of the Grand Eudaemonian Empire. Those words remain etched in a sign that leans against the building it once adorned. The building itself is fashioned of the finest metallic alloys, immune to corrosion. But the structure has fallen all the same. Its surface no longer shines, covered in dirt. Electrical panels lie uncovered, spitting sparks day and night as the street lights crackle, fading in and out.

Ildereth is a dead town, an eerie mechanical corpse…

And yet people still live there. People still work, children are still born, tales are still told. Lin grew up hearing the same tales every child did, about the miserable past and the glorious coming of Eudaemonia. She grew up believing them, even as she heard them against a backdrop that seemed more like the beginning of the stories than the end. Everyone was supposed to live happily ever after, and so they did.

They did the best they could…

What was left of the machines still functioned. There was still food, if you could call it that. All that came from the wondrous devices that had once provided a cornucopia of delights was a thin gruel. All that illuminated the night sky were a few still functioning light posts. All that kept them warm were fires lit from the sparks of broken relics of a lost age.

This was the world Lin was born in to…

And it was the world she was left in. Three weeks after her nineteenth birthday, her mother died. That was no explanation offered, and none was expected. People died all the time in Ildereth and those who remained preferred not to ask why. Families and friends stood silent as the ones they knew were fed into the gaping maw of the one device that still functioned just as it always had, the generator that ran everything. The bodies of the dead were placed next to piles of garbage and all was consumed to sustain the husk of a life for those left behind.

But Lin didn’t stay silent…

She cried. She cried and wondered how people kept living. Living in the shadow of death was something she couldn’t do. When her father left, she had never questioned it. He would come back one day, she thought. But before long she regretted watching him go with calm silence. She regretted not chasing after him. Now there was nothing to keep her in Ildereth.

And so she left to find the world from her childhood stories, the dream world made manifest…

Eudaemonia.

[Lin]

Lin awoke on the day of her departure with her body propped against a cold metal wall in the now empty house she had shared with her mother. It was not her custom to sleep on the dusty floor. She had a rather comfortable bed that sat at the other end of the room, its sheets immaculate, but she hadn’t quite made it there the night before. After pacing for hours in thought, she eventually collapsed under the weight of her own mind and slid down the wall into sleep.

The light that streamed in through the dirty bedroom window was a pale ocher. It strained the eyes and turned the stomach, or it would if Lin weren’t so used to it. By now it was as common to her as broken circuitry and grime-covered metal.

Blinking a little, she rose to her feet and walked to the closet. As her fingers tapped the small blue panel on the wall, the door groaned and opened revealing a disorganized mass of miscellaneous belongings. Lin took little time perusing them, selecting a few items quickly from the pile. They were bare necessities for travel that even a town so blessed as Ildereth admitted to needing. Throwing them all into a cloth satchel and hefting it over her shoulder she walked solemnly out of her house for the last time.

“Lin!”

A voice called to her from a block down the city’s main causeway. She looked down with dismay. She didn’t dislike Arin. There was nothing wrong with him, but, by the same token, there was nothing right either. More than anything, though, she simply wished to leave unnoticed, and it had only just occurred to her that daybreak was a less than optimal departure time. In response, she merely kept walking until she felt a feeble hand on her shoulder.

“Lin, wait. Where are you going?” the young man said with genuine concern. His brow was furrowed and he looked strangely more distressed than Lin herself.

“I can’t say,” she replied flatly.

“Why not? You can tell me,” he pleaded. “I won’t tell anyone, if you don’t wish it.”

“I can’t say because I don’t know,” she sighed, finally shrugging off his hand and continuing to walk.

“How can you travel without a destination? Why leave Ildereth?”

“There’s nothing for me here, why shouldn’t I leave?”

Arin’s look of good natured concern vanished in a flash of dismay. His eyes turned down and his lips drew tightly together. His whole expression seemed to turn inward in shame. Lin would have noticed, but she wasn’t even looking. By the time she turned toward him to see why he had fallen silent, his composure had returned.

“I… I know you’re upset, about your mother. But… you can’t just stop living.”

“I’m not stopping living. I’m stopping living here.”

“I see,” he said with his face cringing again. This time Lin caught a brief glance of it.

“What difference does it make to you, Arin? The whole world’s going to be wonderful soon, right? The Eudaemonians are going to come back and fix everything and we’re all going to be happy? You believe that garbage, right? So what does it matter?”

Arin stopped in his tracks as they reached the edge of the city. The metal pathway gave way to an old stone and dirt road and eventually faded to nothing as the surrounding wilderness grew thicker. The forest around Idereth was so dense that daylight never fully reached beneath its canopy. As Lin disappeared beneath the shade of the boughs, the young man whispered to himself, “It matters.”

[Lin]

Lin sighed to herself as she mantled over the moss-covered trunk of a fallen oak. The rustling of underbrush beneath her feet had begun to sound like nails on a chalkboard and what little light filtered through the dense trees above was fading. Soon her sight would fail her and leave her completely alone in the darkness of the woods. She leaned back against the oak and decided to go no further before daybreak. Her pace through the forest had been fairly good for an inexperienced traveler, but without maps or guides she had no idea how much further the wood went.

As she reclined against the mossy wood it occurred to her how little she knew. She left the only home she ever had and set out toward what? All she had to go on were rumors of another city with Eudaemonian influence, one that lay through the woods to the east. Traders had mentioned it, what history remained alluded to it, but no one she really knew had ever seen it. Uiria was just as much a myth as the fabled return of the Eudaemonians to right all wrongs. But it was a myth that Lin had faith in. Surely another city could exist, one better maintained, one that could answer the questions she had.

She mulled over these thoughts as she gathered together loose brush and a scraps of wood into a pile and pulled a flint from her pack. Sad as it was for someone born in an allegedly technological city, Lin was quite familiar with starting a fire. The lights and heating systems for the hovels they called homes had become so unreliable that it was more of a surprise when they worked. Soon flame rose from the pile and cast a warm flickering light on her environs.

The place she had chosen to settle in for the night consisted of a small clearing between the otherwise dense flora. She looked around and found it mostly featureless. The large fallen trunk provided something to sit against, but other than that there was little more than a few stray stones and the omnipresent underbrush which had been cleared away from the fire site.

Time passed unrecorded as Lin stared at the fire, lost in her own thoughts. Eventually her eyelids drooped and she felt the onset of sleep’s embrace. Just as she was dozing off a sharp wind cut through the canopy with a fierce rustling of leaves and branches. Lin’s eyes shot open and her hand grabbed the tiny dagger that was her only defense. She shook her head at her own foolishness, drawing a weapon at the wind, and settled back down when it seemed to pass. Still, the unsettling feeling that was growing in her chest didn’t subside with the wind.

As a mild fear came to grip her, her ears became acutely sensitive to each and every rustle and snap in the surrounding wood. Soon one sound came to dominate them. A low sound, deep and organic, but still too quiet to recognize just what it was or where it was coming from. It was the worst sort of thing to hear when frightened. She felt as if the very forest around her was slowly creeping in. To keep her eyes from darting constantly from one dark bramble to another she stared intently at the fire.

As the sound grew she came to recognize it as a growl, a menacing growl. Of that she was entirely certain, but its source still eluded her. The fire writhed and crackled as her eyes peered deep into it. Soon, it seemed to look back at her. It was a trivial thought at first, almost comforting, until she could see two little circles of flame form within it, like eyes. The growling grew more pronounced and issued forth from the fire.

Eyes wide with terror, she backed away from the flames, pressed hard against the trunk, her legs tucked against her chest. The searing pupils grew bright with rage and a plume of fire lept at her. Lin jumped to her feet and scurried to the other end of the clearing, her vision fixed on the beast emerging from the flames.

It had a form like a wolf, a terrifying enough sight alone in the woods, but where there would be fur there were crackling flames. Its maw was black with teeth of sharp obsidian and a tongue of pure fire. Its eyes were two perfect circular braziers of flame, coursing with rage as they pointed toward the terrified girl. It growled and snapped at her, leaning back on its haunches, its black claws digging into the dirt as it prepared to strike.

Lin’s hands shook as she pointed a tiny and futile dagger toward the hell-spawned beast. Her mind raced, wishing and praying that this was merely a dream, but finding no release. She readied herself as best she could for its attack. It came with a horrible ravenous sound from the flame beast’s mouth. Its whole immolated body pounced toward her. She felt its claws pierce her leather shirt and dig into her chest as she fell to the ground. The heat from the flames was unbearable. She closed her eyes with a certainty that she would die horribly.

[Letho]

This thread has been closed due to inactivity and moved to the Archives. If you wish to reactivate this thread, please PM me or one of the administrators.