High Wall

After a long journey, I had finally found myself within the towering shade of the Seraphil's rampart. There was no direct shade cast where I walked, yet somehow the land around the wall felt darker in a way. The base of the wall was now about a couple miles out, and upon staring down my targeted path, I saw piles of stones of varying heights, ash blowing through its make up. They seemed to be some sort of ruins, but I had no way of knowing until I got there. 

As my footprints buried themselves behind me, unease began to settle over me. I thought about the many things I had to go up against thus far, each one filling me with more and more fear of what is to come. Yet, I still moved my legs, trudging through hills of ash, only for answers that were not even guaranteed for me to get. I tried to reminisce about my life before I got here, but even that proved to be ineffective. I could see clearly my home, the city streets I walked to get to work, and the blazing lights of neon in my imagination, yet my purpose and reason for being there were erased from my mind somehow. Just who was I before I came here?

My mind rattled on, the gears turning to produce just a hint of what I did to get here, but to no avail. In my trance like state of walking and thinking, I found myself before the ruins at the base of the rampart. The ground here was flatter and felt much more stable, the ash beneath me being much thinner than the dunes I had traversed. It was like there was solid ground beneath me. What lied ahead was an assortment of dark stone structures, all of which have been completely destroyed. It was impossible to tell what these toppled bricks could have been a part of. The history of this place had been completely drained out, leaving only the skeletal remains of a place that told me nothing of its past.

As I walked through the ash ridden streets, still standing foundations of various heights past me by. The dark gray stones they were made from looked similar in color to the high wall directly ahead. I ran my hand over one of the cracked bricks, dust blanketing my fingertips. Its surface was a lot smoother than I initially thought, the grains being small and indistinguishable. I continued admiring the formations around me, noticing several chains that decorated parts of the walkway and stone, some having broken shackles hanging from them. I continued on the rubble covered road, weaving around each pile like a snake in the grass. As I was approaching the high wall, its grandiose height felt the most imposing than it has since I arrived to this world. The fallen stone frames thinned out, revealing an ashy road that divided the area between the ruins and the rampart. The road was wide and wrapped around the ash covered base of the rampart, its light gray contrasting against the dark stone brick.

I followed the road, glancing at every little detail in my sight. The rubble a ways to my left still barely held any form or structure to what it once was, and the high wall was just as unchanging. There was however, something new I had noticed on my search for an entrance into the wall. Within the piles of ash that have accumulated against the high wall's base, various items were scattered throughout. Some of these items were mostly buried within the gray pile, while other items stuck out like the thorns of a plant. I went up to the rampart's base to examine closer to realize that many of things in these ash piles were fragments of larger things. I saw snapped wooden handles and pieces of curved and sharp metal. I guided my gaze up toward the section of wall that was still left exposed. Along the lowest part of the wall, cracks were formed like an interconnecting system of webs, however these cracks barely scratched the surface of the stone. At the points where many of the cracks would meet, holes and dents were formed, or perhaps the cracks were formed by these holes. I gazed upon the bigger picture of it all, realizing that whoever or whatever left this damage was attempting to break through the wall.

I continued down the empty road, the cracks persisted throughout the wall, and the scattered fragments of tools still peeked out from under the ash. As my strides got shorter and shorter, I began to wonder when I would come across some sort of entrance. My doubts began to grow as I walked, the patterns of stretching thin cracks never breaking. My legs started to quiver as the distance I took without breaks began to weigh on me. I walked off the road toward a large stone brick and sat on it, my legs feeling awfully numb. I looked back up to see the road ahead, only to notice something peculiar on the upcoming path. There was a pile of something gray, only slightly darker than the ash, gathered at a concentrated point against the wall. I ignored my tired legs, my curiosity dragging me toward the mystery pile. As the details of the pile became clearer, my heart sank deeper.

First I noticed the arms, then the legs, then the dozens of heads all piled atop one another. Every body in the pile was severely decayed, skin falling off, revealing rotted bones underneath it all. As I walked along the edge of the rancid pile, something faint glistened throughout the dead bodies, like stars in a clear night sky. I leaned in, plugging my noise to avoid the odor of death, looking for the source of the strange reflections. Embedded into the skin of several corpses were sharp and rigid scales that matched the grayness of the land. Patches of skin among the pile sparkled from the teardrop shaped scales, its oddity shining through even more than it already was. I almost saw beauty in its glistening nature despite the death present behind it.

I examined everything further, noticing the part of the pile closest to the wall was several feet higher than spots further from the wall. It was like these people had been trying to get to something before they died. I knew what I had to do despite my unwillingness to do so. I stepped onto the pile, bodies shifting as I did so, making me struggle for balance. I walked toward the elevated part of the pile, my anxiety imagining a sudden hand grabbing my ankles from beneath the pile. Thankfully, nothing like that happened, and I stood steady at the center of rotten mound. I bent down and reached my hands into the spaces between each body, plucking dismembered limbs and heads, slowly making my way through. The sound of scales clacking against each other filled my ears as I pulled body parts out one by one. I nearly threw up at the sight and smell, yet somehow I was beginning to feel numb to it, like I was beginning to fit in with the horrors of this world.