It is the nature of all things to change. Mountains rise and fall over aeons, rivers wend their way through the land over millennia, forests reclaim the world throughout centuries. And, as a testament to man’s ephemeral nature, a city can fall to ruin in only decades.
Icarus, named once in irony and once again in truth, lies fallen from the lofty heights it once inhabited. Nestled into the comforting embrace of a valley, its tall bronze and copper spires once arched proudly to the sky, soaring from streets paved with stone and interspersed with flowerbeds. Street vendors hawked their wares to all passers-by, and pleasant aromas filled the city streets.
People moved throughout the city in waves and trickles. This tide of potential would ebb and flow at set intervals, glorious multi-toned bells heralding a brief pause as the city held its breath. Then a new surge of gossiping and haggling would rise from below to bathe the orange-brown spires in sound. As its influence spread across the continent, delivering art and food along the silk roads, the domain of Sythics Thrice-Blessed echoed with life and hope.
No longer.
Streets, once busy and chaotic, are now pristine and orderly – scoured of filth by gangs of cleaners each morning. Street vendors are not in evidence, for the successful ones ply their trade from inside marble fronted buildings. The unsuccessful ones have joined the cleaning gangs outside.
No loud and joyous calls for trade can be heard now in Icarus, for haggling is a thing of the past. Only the rich can afford to pay, and they care not for the price in the end. Breads and fruits are negligible compared to the cost of rising in the golden spires.
Three rival gangs now exist in Icarus; the first group are the most visible – the aforementioned cleaners, who work in drudgery before the important residents even wake. Nevertheless, they can be seen trudging back across gleaming cobblestones to the outer gates of the city come the morning rush.
The second group are the most numerous – these are the unemployed, the vagrants, the refugees and the ones most spurned by the City of Spires. They inhabit the shanty town that has grown around the city’s great walls, like Verdigris creeping along a copper pipe, slowly subsuming all in its wake. They are the predators and the prey in the squalor that they are forced to live in, and just like rust on a pipe, they threaten the integrity of the city.
The third and final group are the most feared, and the only ones to truly embody their role as a gang – the guards of Icarus that have grown insular and isolated from its people.
As Sythics Thrice-Blessed passes through the haphazard lines of tents and lean-to structures surrounding the city walls of his former home and greatest pride, his thoughts turn toward the third gang he has witnessed in residence.
They once functioned as the immune system of his beloved city, protecting it from the attacks of petty parasites and violent disease. But the parasites have now taken root, and that immune system has been turned upon its host. Separated from their charges by circumstance and interest, the guard of Icarus are now its people’s bane. They still serve the interests of its citizens, but that definition has been narrowed until it is unrecognisable, and the guard now protect nothing but rot.
It is tempting to blame the parasites for the ruin of this great city, but that would be premature. After all, each host has ways of protecting itself from them, and they cannot take root until it has been sufficiently weakened by disease. Did he not train the guard himself? Did he not appoint capable people to ensure the checks and balances he wished for remained functional?
Self-recrimination does one no good when it is wielded in error, and Sythics knew he had been careful. Despite his best intentions, a disease had taken root in his beloved city, long before the parasites took up their roost in his spires.
He looks past the poor and the weary, ignoring the flea-bitten clothes and the buzzing flies cloaking the destitute and needy. He likewise turns a blind eye to the abuses and excesses of the Icarus Guard, as he slips through one of the three larger gates that holds back the human tide. He has been gone for nearly four decades, and this behaviour is deep-rooted. He will not waste time amputating a toe when he has yet to cure the affliction in whole.
Signs of decay and decadence are abundant, as he flows along bare cobblestones and up beneath delicate stone arches. The copper and bronze spires he had spent so many days admiring at dawn and dusk are now golden, stained with evidence of the disease gripping this new city.
The beautiful bells still ring, but rather than the mad rush of mingling citizenry, he sees only hurried workers, backs bent and heads lowered. Spots of stillness punctuate this flow, with eddies circling around the silent forms of watchful guards – to draw too close is to risk their ire, after all.
He lets his senses spread out, partaking in the sights and sounds, the smells and feel of this new place, for it surely bears little resemblance to his city of birth. Only its skyline is recognisable, and that has grown ugly to his eyes with the splendour heaped upon his favourite view.
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His slow march into the centre of this city suddenly speeds up as he gains purpose. His roaming senses have found what he is looking for, and his will bears him through the maze of city streets and underground passages until he stands within a bunker deep beneath the northern district.
No windows or exits of any kind line the bare room, for this has been built around the occupant for a single purpose; to permanently contain a person that cannot be killed. The person in question is a small woman, ravaged by age and neglect. She lies slumped against a padded wall, head lolling in a ritual of boredom. A repetitive motion to help the mind escape from its physical prison and wander the depths of the imagination.
Sythics speaks then, and the head stills abruptly. “What has happened here?”
The head rises slowly, and baleful eyes glare towards him. A voice that hasn’t been heard in years now speaks, anger and recrimination adding a clip to each word. “Where were you? I called to you, I begged, and I pleaded. You lied to me.”
Silence meets the pronouncement, and the head lowers again, resuming its rhythmic bobbing. A few more heartbeats pass before the Thrice-Blessed waves a hand, banishing the darkness with light. A table and two chairs appear in the small room, bowls laden with fruit and an amphora of sweet wine now sitting on the table just as suddenly.
“Come my friend, ease your burdens and we shall both enlighten the other.” His voice is soothing, understanding and compassion flowing alongside those words to the figure in the corner.
A small shudder, swiftly repressed, before the figure stands to her full height. It is not an impressive action, but Sythics is impressed all the same.
“A coup, 17 years ago. I was placed in a luxurious golden cage, placated with wealth as they stole my influence and destroyed our city. I spun my web anew, but I underestimated them. Again. 6 years ago, our rebellion failed and I was placed here.”
The woman’s rage from only a moment ago quickly gives way to a monotonous report, eyes flat and uninterested. Sythics recognises the coping mechanism for what it is; the enforced distance a way to keep his old friend from being overwhelmed by the reliving of history. He provides an ear to her, as well as a shoulder, and stays within that room for 17 bells.
The monotony soon leaves her as she continues her tale, detailing the harrowing decades she has endured, all for their shared dream. The pain, the heart break, even the moments of brief success.
He holds her as she cries and stays nearby as she sleeps – the first true sleep of recovery she has likely had since she was placed here. He tries to ignore her thrashing and whimpering in the night as she relives her worst moments in her dreams.
They discuss again after she wakes. He tells her of his travels, of all the things he has seen, all the joy and pain and wonder and terror. Everything she has sacrificed for a city that no longer knows her. He asks for her advice on his next move, although both know he is truly asking for permission.
And what was once the voice of compromise, of gradual change and bloodless incrementalism, gives that permission to him without hesitation or reservation. This admission from his old friend, antithetical to the person he had left behind decades prior, does more to firm his resolve than all he had witnessed since returning to his place of birth.
In a padded room, isolated from the city above, a dream lies in ashes, and Sythics Thrice-Blessed commits himself to action.
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He acts, feeling the aether respond to his call as he pours his intent into one of his skills. The padded room simply disintegrates, walls crumbling away into dust, while the runes embedded within slough to the floor in piles of molten gold. Another flex of his will brings him from deep beneath the city one moment, to standing on the cobbled streets far above the next.
Few notice him, and it is unlikely that the ones who do will show any outward signs of doing so. A single guard spots him soon though, standing tall and unbowed amid the throng of a cowed populace. He calls out, and begins to make his way towards Sythics, but a single glance stops him.
The Thrice-Blessed moves again and the world changes, swiftly resolving into the shape of the central spire. Guards on the door glare menacingly out at the workers scurrying back and forth, but their expressions freeze as he appears before the doors. Hands drop to hilts before they reconsider, and he ignores them as they back away.
Rain has begun to fall in his once-glorious city as he enters the building, and there is a moment of stillness, of silence, before it is shattered like glass. A body falls from the 13th floor, swiftly followed by several more. Screams echo through the city from the central spire, mixing with the gongs of a hundred bells until a symphony of violence is splattered around inside the great walls.
The Thrice-Blessed descends from the tower, walking back out through the front door to be greeted by two crowds. One lies broken and twisted on the cobblestones in front of the central spire with limbs splayed at odd angles and blood leaking across the bright stone. The other seethes and boils with potential, acting as if a single creature that can’t decide whether to run or to approach.
He gives no chance for the indecisive crowd to do either as he raises his hands to the heavens, activating another skill to propel his voice across the crowd.
“A disease has gripped this city. It will now be eradicated.”
Sythics Thrice-Blessed reaches his hands to the sky, and the glinting spires begin to melt. A trickle at first, gold flowing from the tallest buildings into the sky. Delicate filagree and extravagant plating alike are melted in the face of his will, and the trickle soon becomes a flood as a swirling ball of gold forms in the air above the city, every tower feeding its bounty towards the golden sun in the sky.
He drops his hands, and the sphere descends towards the earth, dripping and spattering onto the pile of bodies in front of him. The copper spires of his childhood are returned, and as gold rains from the sky, he speaks again.
“Let this serve as a reminder to those who rule this city: If they place gold above life, then I will honour their wish.”
The golden rain sheets down, covering the mound of corpses as the crowd stands transfixed. A shower of wealth and they are none of them touched by its cruel embrace. A few more heartbeats and the moment has ended. A single pyramid of gold now stands in front of the tallest spire in Icarus, and it reaches only a dozen meters across. A reminder to all.