I had always tried to engender kindness with my words. With each sentence I had scrawled onto the walls of the new world, I had attempted to wholly embody that motive.
Over the course of a month, I had acted under the persona of the ‘Baron of Lilacs’. Using the chalk I had picked up previously, I continued my work as a silent poet under the bright-red haze.
When I was brought to wonder why I was doing such a thing, I fell back upon a memory of a note that had appeared tucked within one of my booklets. I was a child who allowed tears to drip down my face at any inconvenience. That day had been such an occurrence. Someone had written me a note of flowered words and left it behind to weave a smile into my expression.
In the same essence, my words were love letters around the city for those who wore a frown.
Throughout my time within the bronze city, I had been able to bathe within the waters of the river that cut through the center like a divide. The water itself was always blackened, filled with ash and soot. Yet, when it touched upon my skin, it seemed to purify in an instant, which once again brought strange looks to pierce my flesh from those who passed me by ever so quickly.
I had slept wherever I grew tired. There were little alcoves scattered throughout the city — pockets within the bronze pipework of the buildings where I could nestle myself comfortably. With an ever-present sun, it became hard to tell when it was daytime. It was much simpler when I was next to the massive clock tower in the center of the city, which served as a reminder that time was ever-flowing. Life in the streets of the bronze city wasn’t unbearable however. I never had a need for blankets, for the air was a constant warmth I could rely on.
“Agreste, will you help me fix the cart again?” I heard a voice call out as I walked through the familiar stone streets of the city.
A rugged man stood at the wayside, looking lost and worried. Walking up to him, I could see clearly that he was someone I had interacted with previously.
Walking over to him, we exchanged quick pleasantries. I then got to work helping him with his problem.
The axle of his cart has broken underneath its own weight. The same problem had occurred previously, so I had made sure to be prepared in the event where I would run into him once again. In only a couple of minutes, his cart had been revived in functionality. A softened smile was left upon his rugged face.
He threw me a piece of bread wrapped in clean white cloth, and I accepted it graciously. Unwrapping it gently, I bit into its stale warmth with a genuine smile of excitement.
I lived off of what those I helped offered me. I did not usually ask for anything in return. I would have thought it disingenuous towards the ideals of the person I wanted to be. I was thankful for what everyone had given me, despite how strangely I stood out within their landscape.
In that same land, I stood then in a piazza of sprawling stone. A large fountain with ornate carved statues had been erected in the center, and two men stood beside the splashing water, seemingly arguing with each other in front of a crowd of many others.
“The ‘King’, as he would have himself called, is no more than a slave to the greed of industrial expanse!” The first man cried out.
His hair was a dark salamander-green, and piercing eyes slit like a snake. He had ochre-skin, and he work a patchwork tailcoat of the same complexion.
“He is a hero!” The second man shouted in response. “To say anything different, couldn’t that be said to be treason against the honour of your country!?
The second man’s skin was far-paler in comparison, closer to mine than those who stood around him.
“You’ve sold your soul for the sake of your words, dirty Sprig…” The first man shook his head, his judgement clear. “Your pockets are lined with gold in the same way your hands are with blood.”
“Calm down now, I think both of your points have merit.” A calm, sultry voice spoke. “Pray, would you care to tell me more…?”
The two men looked over to the emergence of the voice in parallel, and they met the gaze of a man with sepia-skin and short, curled hair of white and black tones. As he stepped forth, he had rolled up the sleeves of his button-up shirt, revealing the swirling jet-black ink that had marked his parchment skin.
“You’re a leech, December.” The first man spoke. “Why would we seek to give you a quote, when we know you would just as quickly twist our words to fit your own narrative?”
“Oh, you speak the kindest words to me, Aren.” December spoke softly, standing close to the first man who could not turn his head to meet December’s gaze. “You know how to move my heart, don’t you? That’s all you do all day regardless, isn’t it? You love to spread your seditious teachings to anyone who would stop to listen.”
“It seems its only sedition to you when it interferes with your narrative…” Aren shook his head. “You don’t know of what we had to witness. You don’t know of the pain of artillery… and you certainly don’t know the horrors of that mixture of blood and mud… yet you still seek to prop up the figure who would demand our service. How can you call yourself a truthteller?”
December seemed to laugh upon hearing his words, a raucous display of his heart which seemed lighter than air over the subject. His gaze grew tense immediately after, and he focused it upon Aren, who stood with widened-eyes in shock.
“The truth is what I make people believe, Aren.” December winked. “Never forget this.”
With a grin that seemed to throw imbalance into Aren’s expression, December turned away from him, and walked away softly into the bustling crowd which passed them by.
There were many political perspectives that moved operatives in the bronze city. The man marked by ink who had appeared before had been a news-writer, one whose works I had frequented while learning about the world I had appeared in, Crelle.
I had arrived within the land of the ‘Undine’ species, a race of Fae that had once worshipped the water surrounding their lands. They had become ones that served the mantle of power of the steam that arose from their boundless oceans, learning to harness that force to operate heavy machinery made of steel and bronze.
Their Nation was named ‘Uepris’, and I had arrived in the Capital city of Aethine.
Uepris was a nation that operated underneath a noble monarchy, not too unlike the world I had been used to. The King within Uepris was not simply a symbolic figurehead, however. He retained the whole of his power as a governmental force.
Uepris was often referred to as the Land of Steam, particularly because the oceans that the Undine had once worshipped had grown to boil endlessly. It allowed steam to permeate on its surface, filling the sky above with a deep, cloudy smog.
That steam would often be harvested by the Undine, and was used to power the various machinery that littered the city’s surface. That machinery was one wrought from materials mined from the sediment, and that sediment had quickly run dry as their society had advanced. The materials that sat easy to collect had all been reaped from the soil, and digging deeper was something they were not yet capable of.
There was another Nation not too keen to accept the technological advancements of the Undine, however. This meant that their soil had been kept vast with the resources necessary to advance Undine society.
And that in turn meant an endless war over territory.
The opposing Nation was referred to as the Land of Thorns, for in the absence of the sun’s heat, the flora and fauna had grown bountiful. It was the Nation named ‘Esprium’, with a Capital City in the center named ‘Osheae’. The Nation itself was blanketed in a sky of fog, which blocked out the blood-red sun entirely.
The Fae that lived within the Nation of Esprium were referred to as the ‘Spriggans’. Without the need to combat the constant glare of the sun, their skin was pale and gloss-less. Their hair and eye colours tended to take on darker hues, but their ears were as sharpened as the Undines.
The Spriggans had once and always worshipped shadow. The shade that sat at the edge of a rock was one they reveled in. For some reason that was etched out of the history books — rather, what had been scratched furiously from the texts, was the reason why both the water of the Undine had been scorched, and why the shade of the Spriggans had all but vanished.
Although, all that I had learned was likely a falsification, a warping of historical events to fit a molded narrative that benefited the Undine nation.
Using premeditated and falsified issues, the Undine noble houses had allied against the Spriggan Nation as a whole, likely just to invade and commandeer their resource pool.
The wars within Crelle were different from the wars on Earth, however.
The wars of Crelle were fought with massive metal automatons and intense magical contraptions, as opposed to the ones on Earth fought with simple blades and rifles. As such, they were wholly beyond my comprehension on the war front. The politics behind it were something I was more familiar with, having a background of nobility to lean on in such ways.
It was all too familiar. It was simply war.
I had begun to wonder if the Fae were alike to humans, more so than I had thought previously.
Please log in to leave a comment.