Entrance

The fields of dragons only seemed to get denser with more of their petrified corpses taking up the open space. Between and on each corpse, the black growth reached high and spread wide in various twisting forms. Hills of dragon scales littered the path ahead, both intact and grounded to dust. It was a massacre of magnificent beasts.

As Fesha and I walked through a valley of dragon corpses, one dragon in particular caught my attention. Its head laid itself on the road we were taking, its mouth agape and parts of its head and neck broken through by the dark form. As we walked around it, I noticed that its eyes were missing, and thinking back on it now, I can't remember seeing a dragon with its eyes. I stared into its maw and examined the rows of teeth. I looked over at Fesha, specifically the tooth that she had been wearing around her neck. Their sizes and shape were similar and its sharpness looked the same. This comparison I made gave me a thought.

"Hey Fesha, have you been getting any memories back lately?" I asked.

"Hmm, now that thee has mentioned I have not. Why does thee askest?" She responded.

"I just find it strange. We've been surrounded by dragons with their teeth exposed for days. Why haven't we gotten more memories back?" My curiosity shown even in the tone of my voice.

Fesha stayed silent but kept a look on her face that implied she was thinking about it. In the end she shrugged, unable to answer. We continued our march going up a grand and ornate staircase, some of its steps covered in black threads and dark bubbles. As we made our way higher, I looked back to see the devastation. Without any backstory of the scene or knowledge of how this world functioned, to me there was only sadness here. Fesha may be grateful for a sight like this, but to me something felt wrong seeing hundreds to thousands of these creatures known for soaring through the sky now grounded and dead, only in reach of their home through a small pinpoint in the dark.

Once we arrived at the top of the stairs, more dragons littered the landscape ahead and around to the other side of this new layer. Something new that appeared was the sight of bits of vegetation. Patches of small red flowers poked out from the dust and between the spaces of the growth. I watched as Fesha rushed over to them, picking them out of the ground in various locations and putting them in a pouch. We walked by the crumbled edge and basked in the light above, its rays warming our cheeks. I looked up, the sky so close I felt I could touch it, its hue embracing my sight. A feeling of longing stirred in me, yet an urge to looked back followed. I stared over the edge into the antithesis of the sky. The chasm below was so far away now. I watched the air beneath us sway and glisten like ripples on water, a faint black haze slowly drifting downward.

As I brought my attention back to the path ahead, Fesha pointed out something in the distance. It was another large staircase that was visible from our distance that seemed to lead to the top. We would finally get a taste of fresh air from the open sky. We walked forward, admiring the patches of red flowers that passed us among the corpses of grounded beasts and dark corruption. As we got closer to the base of the stairs, the surrounding fauna grew denser. Large patches of bright red petals mixed in with the light green of grass, moss, and small shrubs. Finally we had made it to the base of the ornate, moss covered stairs and began to ascend.

Upon reaching the very top, Fesha and I were greeted by a sight that only seemed possible in fantasy, even for the standards of this decrepit city. Distant walls of darkness still surrounded my entire field of view and the corpses of dead dragons have not waned. The pale blue of the sky was just above us, blinding us with its beauty. Just up ahead was a field of short grass with bleach white Vinnuluses and the unnamed red flowers peeking out in large patches, their bright colors dazzling in the sky's rays. In the distance of this large open field, a figure stood still at the very center. I saw the shape of six stained white triangles, each of varying heights. There were splotches of darkness that seemed ripped throughout each triangle, perhaps holes that I was looking at the darkness on the other side through. The triangles looked to be like something folded, similar to folded cloth. These triangles were attached to something larger at their bases. It was a large, roundish figure with short spikes running across its top, some of the spikes looking like they have been cut off. Something was leaning next to the large figure. It was bronze with a shallow silver crescent above it, both glistening in the pale glow. Just beyond both figures, a tall carved out arch made way to a dark interior, the arch's perimeter framing the figures in black.

I turned back to Fesha, realizing that the crumbled edge was just behind us, and that we would be walking further from it yet again. We nodded and moved forward, the grass tickling my boots. We walked around large uneven holes that gave way to the layer below, plants draping over their edges. As we maneuvered around more holes in the grass, what we had been seeing from afar had become much clearer. The white figure was a six winged dragon and the bronze and silver glimmer was a knight and a weapon. The dragon was large, far larger than any dead dragon we had passed and ones in the surrounding area. The knight was sitting, leaning against the dragons thick neck, weapon in hand, the base of it placed on the ground and the blade pointed at the sky. We took one step and the dragon began to move, its chest expanding. As quickly as it expanded, the dragon's chest shrunk as it exhaled. From its mouth, a large cloud of nearly translucent black haze flowed outward, snaking through the field like a heavy gas. I backed up as the gas nearly grazed my feet, and continued to watch as the dark haze reached an edge of one of the holes and slowly drifted back down into the the chasm, its form shifting as it sunk.