Third Transmission

A storyteller will tell themselves a story countless times before they consider it written, and before they will ever tell another soul.

Gravity works its endless game, pulling things together. If it were able to turn its eye on what its created, would it not do as the storyteller does? Smother the planets with its own meaning, before any new life might come and make something out of it?

They tell me that Gods must never comprehend or observe the dominion they hold. That in this way, we are all made both gods and subjects.

I wonder how many times they told themselves such a thing, before it had to fall on my ears.

-Coyote

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When we arrived at Speculation City, we quickly appreciated the visual irony presented to us. Mercenaries in my company had battle trained eyes which had given them a palette for any novelties presented to them:

There were old buildings built into the earth itself, and although they had grown past being ancient, there was a life in them that seemed to only just be waking up.

Then there were the hut stacks built atop of them. Barely erected and already they gave the impression of being exhausted. They lilted and shifted about as if being roused from restless sleep while still standing. Hunched like old men with their canes, defiance at the planet's gravity and its ceaseless pull. They had only just been built, and were not yet old enough to be called homes.

Perilous places often present ironies and incongruities in the very way they strike the senses. Danger and death have their own particular gravities, and their weight has evidence to those who deal in it. We mercenaries look past specificities and context. To have danger described is fruitless to those who taste fear. Speculation City had the stench of it. The fear was the air of a well crafted brew, guzzled then belched in our faces.

We were seasoned, violent and likely carried some visual irony ourselves. The researchers in Speculation City paid us well, for there were horrors that needed slaying. Under the splintered bark of our planet we dropped, our instruments of death prepared: for those who are curious must glance at that which lies beyond.