The Fallen City

|Chapter XVI: No Matter How Far

Where the pair had ended up on their walk through the City had a far more untouched feel to it than when they set out that night. The destruction from the collapsed spire was hidden behind the decayed and broken remains of others.

They were biding time, admittedly. The decision made not to act until they were united in the real world. Gale, as such, took longer to absorb his surroundings than he had the most recent nights. The need for action had always been there, yet tonight in the inbetween it gave him that lost opportunity.

It brought a tear to his eye this time.

When he thought the City's state was dire he'd never realised how much. Crevices smashed through the smooth stone broadwalk, its patterns and inlays once fit for nobility were now faded and smooth. Splits ran up walls, shattering the faded and eroded sculptures and once intricate mouldings. The towers and spires of a thousand colours had been greyscaled and muted.

The City now was barely of form. Its elegance and vibrance sapped away, with all that was left behind cracked and broken. He looked down a crossroads, and off in the distance could see what looked like a sloped cliff.

Only when looking up did he see that wasn't quite it. The severed districts didnt even fall anymore, they just drifted. Towers hung in the air mid fall, their debris still drifting away. It was like time had slowed, that this was the City's last breath and it was just drawing it out for as long as it could.

There was some grace to it. Even in death it tried to be beautiful. To a first time observer it was a staggering sight no doubt, yet it was merely morbid when someone knew what it once was.

"It's like you're waiting..." Gale whispered aloud. He didn't say it to anyone, but he knew it had heard him. Somehow, it was willing. He pleaded to it. "I can't go any faster, you will have to wait a little more."

He looked upon the ground. Dust and sand from the desecrated spires left a thin coat upon it, some had reformed to chips under his feet. His fading aura had sharpened. The restored land from his will had regained a colour. A shimmer almost. It would wait for him.

Gale coiled down and leapt into the sky. His flightsuit alight once again, he worked his way through the ruins scattered amongst the skyline. He tumbled and weaved amongst them, taking in each piece as he went by. So many memories, from so many...

All turning to dust and rubble.

After what felt like an age of flight, the never ending canyons of broken stone and crystal ceased being never ending. They reached a grey end, anomalous at first until the faintest trails of dusky fog crept into detail. The spires and towers became more scattered, like the waning edge of a forest. Their tips became less tall and proud and more shallow yet dignified. Each one of them was stopped with a crowning spike made of what seemed as pure white marble, their true form lost to the echoes of time as anywhere else.

The final end of the City was sudden. A mere wall of black stone, no higher than one's waist, seemed to endlessly run into the distance. It was a distinct line drawn around the City's true end. The causeway between it and the bases of those last towers was still adorned with intricate knotwork, the scale of the artistic pattern was huge for such a simplistic design. Yet the weathering and erosion that had scoured the City still left its mark, yet never taken from its form.

Gale landed next to a large obelisk, the definitive end of this broadwalk into the depths of the dream. Thousands more sat along the city's boundary, standing silent guard at the end of its broadwalks, each one still glistened faintly with the faded light.

As Gale stood up he heard the wind of an object pass him by. He thought it was, at first, the wind.

"Hi." Carola said, standing up as well. she gestured towards him. "Thought you were on your way?"