Dammed Kingdom

Two sleeps later, the funeral procession arrived at the edge of the high country. Some had taken to walking and hopping along, eager to keep their bodies active. Wretch and Burden had sat on Grief’s antlers to keep watch. Sol was at the front, scanning the pitch black descent before them.

The path was overgrown, and his massive strides and steps had pushed the decaying high grass far enough aside for the others to move with ease. When they reached and shelf of darkened basalt, he beheld a massive tear in the world, as though a blade larger than a mountain peak had cleaved through the entirety of the ground. Soil gapped by several acres, revealing the inner workings of the land beneath, and leaving room for a turbulent, abgry sounding river to flow along its jagged edges.

They’d heard it before the could see it. Chaotic, bombastic threshes told the story of stone being eroded away. The river was the color of iron, save for the white tips that crested along its heaving, bitter waves as they slammed into walls without mercy or purpose. The dark waters moved with such might and power, Sol feared not even he could swim across. Much less while holding all of the little ones. Then he saw something else and his brow lowered, pulling the shards across the contours of his sockets and revealing a new stream of glowing lifeforce.

When the others reached Sol’s side, they saw what had truly caught his attention and what waited for them down the bend.

Their only chance to cross the murderous water was a great dark bridge. Across the whole chasm, a wall of cut, mortarless stone stood in defiance. Its enormous barrier was interrupted in the center, with a rounded, grated hole larger than most villages. Bars of metal lined the center point, and at the crown of the dark wall was a city.

It rose in tiers, with buttresses angling against smoothed triangulated castles. They stepped upwards in the dark like wide feet from some ancient leviathan, hinting at a kingdom once filled with tens of thousands of souls. Just beyond its funneled control, the world vanished off a cliff, with a waterfall fermented along the edge of the shelf.

“What is that?” Burden asked from Grief's antlered pinnacle.

“A kingdom of man. Humes,” Grief replied.

Humes had been late arriving creatures, forming from the ether long after the first souls had arrived. They had walked upright, furless and scaleless, keeping to themselves in their grand walled kingdoms. They are all manner of other creature and were known as curses to many.

Somewhere a bell was chiming lightly in the calm breeze. Below them, the river carried on, waiting to drown whatever it was offered.

Sol sighed.

“It seems like out only path,” he said.

An elder nodded.

“I once read about this kingdom of man. Their passage was the only way to trade across the great chasm. It made them quite rich and quite hated.”

“Is that a waterfall just beyond?” Sol asked.

The elder squinted.

“Seems that way.”

Sol met Grief’s gaze with a pause of concern, but they knew they had no choice.

“Keep your ears up. If we are lucky they are all long gone,” Sol said as he began to descend once again.

It grew more imposing with every stride. Wretch watched it grow to meet them, rising upwards in towering layers while the sound of the river only got louder. Cloistered arcades and carved facades told stories of creativity and grandeur she couldn’t fathom. But all that splendor now spoke to and for no one.

Silence greeted them at a bent gate, offering passage. Labyrinthine corridors immediately appeared within the dammed wall. Every speck of light was cut away within the windowless lowered deck of the fortress, bringing even more focus on Sol’s radiance. Grief walked behind him, visible only by the pale white from the lighter of her two discolored irises.

Sol inhaled, then stopped.

“Wretch. You have ropes, correct?” he asked.

“Yes,” Wretch replied.

Wretch understood and instantly retrieved several lines of light grey rope from her pouch and a few others. Knots were tied around waists and the ends were handed to Sol, who tied them to his wrist.

“If you fall, I will keep you safe,” he said.

Once they were all secured, they continued their exploration. No one spoke. Few dared to breathe beyond the slightest inhales through partially creased nostrils. Bells chimed again.

Halls of commerce storage stood empty. Workshops and machinery sat forgotten. Bodies began to appear.

Burden flinched and looked away.

Sol stopped to make sure they were completely dead.

There was an efficiency to them. Dozens upon dozens of humes, four times the height of the cabbits, hung from the rafters above. Emaciated, mutated faces were locked in perpetual grins. Eyes bulged dirty grey and vacant as the heads hung to the sides of the ropes. Many wear dressed in clothes Sol recognized to be important.

“Punishments?” Wretch asked.

“No. Suicides,” Grief replied.

Painted runes glowed on the chests of the Humes and Sol wondered if those were markers. Every hallway revealed more hung corpses, but never showed signs of turmoil. It seemed as though this was all intentional.

“I guess they thought like me?” Wretch wondered with a dark voice.

“They just accepted death would be better.”

Sol frowned but agreed.

“So they hung themselves safely apart so they couldn’t hurt anyone after they turned?” he asked, still somewhat unsure about the wanderers.

“Correct. Metus’s magic can sense if a death was accidental or natural, or if it was intentional. Killing yourself is no different than feeling joy or being turned by a wanderer. It leads to the most complete form of corruption and soul erasure. The crystallized ones.”

Sol studied some of the bodies above them.

“But these aren’t crystallized. They’re the normal wanderers.”

Grief followed the cabling from the fraters to the walls and saw several massive pulley systems. She pointed to the cranks.

“They used their trade machines. Maybe they had others hang them. Maybe Metus’s magic can’t decipher to that level. So because they were technically killed by another, they were only partially corrupted.”

Sol was almost impressed by the inventive skirting of magical law.

“Humes and their creative ideas. They always did find workarounds to-“

Before he could finish speaking, the floor caved beneath his feet.

They’d been so distracted by the death chandeliers, they hadn’t felt the stone giving way. They’d been so concerned about cruel men harming them they hadn’t considered structural decline. By the time Sol realized what was happening, he and Grief were falling through the flooring, into the scaffolding below.

They landed on the metal bracing with a thud as stone and wooden beams rained down. Creaking strains groaned all around them and Grief’s eyes widened. The cabbit give tried to get up but were too winded from the high drop. Cracks snapped beside them and Sol felt another stab of dread.

He yanked Grief and the little ones to him just as the entire structural supports collapsed beneath them.

“Hang onto me!” Sol shouted as they screamed and fell towards the dark water below.