Flight From the City

Inspiration: Artist - Jóhann Jóhannsson; Album - Orphée; Track - Flight From the City

Her bare feet brushed through detritus of burned buildings and small fragments of bone, cracked and split from the heat. Her eyes wandered the city’s horizon, eventually focusing on a large tower which thrust like a smoldering spike against the central backdrop of Ruh’enal . She could barely see the distant figures flinging themselves from parapets and windows, silent in their swift descent. It was like watching the petals of a rose fall. Soundless, unnoticed.

The Tower of Least burned alongside the city but it burned unnoticed. The path of flight consumed every soul capable of fleeing. Shapes still plummeted from the tower, some flailing as if regretting their choice. As if thrashing in the air would save you. Shamar thought, squinting.

A hand killed the sun. The shadow darkened the city around Least for leagues. Reaching down from the sky, the monstrous form squeezed. Caught in its upper two-thirds, the tower disintegrated; imploding as if a child had grabbed a tower of sand.  Support beams and stone rubble trickled from the grasp like so many grains of sand. Shamar giggled. She remembered the sea and its beaches; remembered her childish divinity among the sand kingdoms of so many years ago. The sand crabs were her subjects, her forced worshippers. Now look at us. She mused.  We scuttle like the bottom feeders we are.

 

Wrenching the tower as if plucking a weed, this hand of a god pulled sharply upward nothing visible beyond the wrist. It abruptly flickered out of sight, instantly shedding light on thousands previously fleeing shadow. Shamar shielded her eyes from the sun. Whatever rubble the hand had been gripping was now falling into those unlucky enough to be within a couple leagues of Least, spraying a vertical fan of death into the city from the initial momentum. She could feel the impacts in her toes, could now hear the screams even from her position at the Gates of Transcendence which was at least five leagues away from the tower. The crowd streaming around her through the gates began convulsing in terror. It was turning ugly, an unthinking mob of panic and selfishness as effects from the devastation continued detonating throughout Ruh’enal. Least was gone, ruptured almost in half,   It’s beautiful. She thought, still shielding her eyes. But deadly. Just like a rose. The Gates darkened and she looked up. Oh Least, do you weep for your beautiful petals?…

 

Lush saw Shamar as she disappeared beneath the fingers of an angry god. She stood not fifty feet from behemoths twelve hands long as they dragged through Transcendence, raking gashes a wagon could be buried in. Hewn stone blocks and forged iron gate supports spewed from the furrows. Lush ducked behind the corner of a gate barracks out of the path of devastation and began sprinting back around toward where her friend last stood. We killed his children, wouldn’t we do the same? She thought while trying to run and cover her head with an arm. Scrabbling around the opposite corner she found what she was looking for. Where Shamar once stood was nothing but a scattering of torn meat and splintered bone mixed with other bodies and rubble. Dropping to her knees, Lush fought down the wailing gorge in her throat, leaving her breathless, sweating and shivering in the heat.

Reviews

[Shannon]

This feels like an excert from a much larger piece.
Echoes of 9/11, if you read as metaphor. If literal, beginning of a potentially epic tale.