Main Road

The weight of my eyelids lightened up, giving me a view of the dark room I had fallen asleep in. The place that I had found while wandering the slums of Seraphil lacked a bed worth sleeping on, its mattress covered with disgusting mold. Instead I slept sitting upright on the floor, my back on the cold stone wall, and my shoulder leaning against a dusty array of cabinets. I stood from my spot, feeling warm streaks caress my face as I straightened my legs. I had cried in my sleep. Maybe it was the dream I had, some old memories starting to close in on me. Though there was not much I could make of it besides my routine commute, but there was one thing that stuck to me: the beauty of the morning sky. The one that always greeted me on that overpass. How could I have almost forgotten that? Now that I had dreamed it, I promised to never forget, so that I would remember the goal I had set for myself: to find a way back to my world.

I wiped my tears and pushed the warped door outward. The pitch black clouds with dim cracks of light were waving at me from above. "When can I finally see the real sky again?" I wondered to myself. I looked back ahead and continued on, snaking around rubble and corpse piles alike. After what felt like a couple hours, I had noticed that the sizes of things around me began to change. Buildings seemed taller and roads got wider. The architecture had also shifted from the haphazardly made structures to much more cleanly defined and ornate walls, though the level of deterioration remained the same. Large chunks had been ripped off these fancy walls, their remains now lying in piles at my feet. I walked around and over such piles, paying attention to the various things scattered across the ground. For one, there were far less corpses now, the only ones here being far apart rather than concentrated in piles. Ash covered banners laid spread on the brick road, there borders all torn up, and pieces of wood, small and large, were broken across the area.

So far, everything seemed fairly tame, at least compared to what I have seen before. It was quiet and peaceful, only the subtle ambient breeze to keep me company. I looked up toward the rampart, its crumbled gap now closer than ever. Soon I would be able to see what lied at the base of it. I let the silence embrace me for a moment, one of the few times I was able to experience serenity in this perished world. Just as that moment began to dissipate, something on the open road ahead caught my eye. Something foul to the eyes and rotten to the nose. Despite the distance between me and it, I knew exactly what the thing was. The decaying corpse of a dragon.

I approached the dead beast slowly, noticing every little detail on its back. The dark, ash green beast laid on its side, its rigid spine facing me. Thick rock-like spikes ran from its head, down its neck, along its back, and to the end of its tail. One wing was petrified straight up, its torn webbing swaying in the subtle breeze like a flag. Its other wing laid completely flat on the ground, its webbing equally as torn. I made my way around the massive body, its scales, both attached to its skin and scattered on the ground, still glistened even in the dim sky light. I walked around its large head, its sharp teeth piercing my gaze. Looking into the beasts mouth, I had noticed something peculiar: its tongue was missing. Not a hint of a tongue was left between its teeth. I made my way to its front side, revealing to me an abyss within the fleshy walls. The entire abdomen of the dragon had been split open, showing that the bones of this behemoth was the only thing keeping its skin from collapsing in on itself. Nothing else was left other than bones and a thin outer layer of a few muscles. Some of the muscle fibers dangled from the top of the open crevasse and along the leftover bones. All the organs had been stripped out, leaving an empty void within the chest cavity. The only sign that there were once organs within this beast was the large dark stain that cast a splattering shadow on the brick road just in front of the dragon's open chest. It did not take long for me to understand what had happened here. I remembered the the pale girl once again, and the disgusting way she and her parents gorged on the mountains of meat. A feast had transpired here, but where the participants of this feast are now, I could not know.

I continued down the wide road, the buildings at each of my side getting closer, their crumbling ornate pillars and balconies squeezing in on me. On the way, I past several more hollowed out dragons, all of them spread out across the stretch. As the buildings on each side began closing in, the presence of the behemoths' corpses dwindled, then vanished al together. Finally, the buildings had fully converged into a series of small alleys and I was in the midst of them. I navigated through, attempting to go in the same direction I had been. The distance of the buildings from each other blocked the landmark of the crumbled rampart from my sight, forcing me to depend only on my sense of direction. After what felt like ages being lost between the dusty brick walls, something had changed. There was noise in the distance, a lot of it. It was like a gathering was taking place. I followed the sound echoing through the crossroads, the heightening volume indicating my distance from it. Eventually, I stood just one more road away from the end of this maze. I could see a wide road at the very end and many different things moving that I could not make out.

My strides quickened as I rushed to see what it could possibly be. Then, within a second, I was suddenly pulled sideways, the open road swiping off my view. I fell to the ashy ground within a dark alleyway, the bricks of the wall and ground shaded from any light. I looked up to see a tall figure staring down at me, its features impossible to make out against the dim light of the main alley.

"Quiet down. Art thou trying to be heard?" The shadow above me spoke.