The man takes a step outside, his feet sinking slightly into a path of familler red sand ladened with the heavy footprint of his boots. No animal or plant greets him, no hill, valley, landmark, or item sits anywhere in the distance. Only a flat field of pitch black and sharp gravelly ground surrounds the trail on both sides, each stone as thin as a needle and as sharp as a dagger, some of which trickle along the path and are crushed like glass by the iron soles of the man's boots. A grim stillness fills the land, only a weak breeze to move it. A ghastly silence’s grip is broken only by muffled steps and the occasional cracking of stone under his heel. If only to fill the dead air around him, the man begins to hum a tune to himself, a marching tune.
More than ten minutes pass, and suddenly the breeze becomes stronger, picking up some of the sand from the path and scattering it into the field of black gravel, where they coat their blades in red and disappear in between their edges. He doesn't pay the ominous visual much mind as something more important lay in front of him. Rising from a small pile of red sand brought by the wind, is a massive wall of a deep and dark purple, that casts no shadow on him but yet blankets him in darkness. There, a lone rope rises along its smooth surface, held down by pitons that are drilled deep into the wall, and kept taut by an anchor buried in sand. To the rope the man attaches the latches from his belt, and he begins to climb the wall.
With a heavy *clack* The elevator comes to a rest at the top of the tower, only to be surrounded by partial darkness. For some reason the leather here is thicker, leaving only distant slits of light that slip through thin gaps where the walls separate. Even with the strands of day peering through it is still very difficult to see anything, and so Elio grabs a pin, (the jar with an eye in them), that was sitting on the elevator and shakes it violently, causing the eye within to glow a faint green, just barely enough light to see whats infront of him.
With the pin as his guide he navigates over multiple tripping hazards and along a faint line of chalk to make his way to a large pillar of wood, reinforced many times over with metal rings. To the piller, dozens of manual winches are bolted on, with a mix of chains and ropes running up into the ceiling of the tower, or down into the floor. Either way it is very difficult to try and trace ropes to their purpose when you can't see them, and so Elio doesn't bother. Instead, with the pin in one hand, he tests the winches by spinning their hand cranks just barely, and listening to the response.
Testing one low to the ground, Elio can hear the sound of metal on metal under him, testing another, the sound of metal on wood near him, another the sound of a chain becoming taut above him. Each test of a hand crank causes the sound of a different mechanism to reveal where they generally are, and yet, not a single one proves to be what Elio is looking for. Until finally he finds the right one, on the very last winch he didnt test.
Spinning the hand crank slightly causes rays of light to burst forth from under four walls before plunging him back into darkness. Rather annoyed, Elio drops the pin and spins the crank as fast as possible. Once again rays of light come bursting through from under all four of the walls and it slowly grows until the room is basked in light and the walls, like curtains, sit folded at the top. Elio looks out to the world now open to him, a slow breeze and, even though the shadows cast by the sun tell of noon, the color of the sky is of a blood red dawn.
Now with the curtains gone the inside of the tower can more easily be seen. As inferred from before, the top of the tower is a fairly large roofed square, in the middle of which lies a railway turntable (a circular platform with a rail track that can turn), that connects two of the four tracks that each run off in a cardinal direction. On the southern track, is where the elevator sits, ending up off center at the top of the tower, and implying the structure to be leaning. Finally, the pillar where Elio turned the hand crank to raise the curtains also acts as one of the four pillars holding up the roof, as well as the point where most of the hidden elements of the tower meet. The other three only holding one-to-two winches each.
Elio runs to the sleigh and pulls it to the middle of the turntable, where he then pulls a lever off to the side of the elevator. After a seconds pause, the turntable spins slowly, filling the tower with the low rumble of gears. As it spins Elio hops onto it and runs along the circumference, not to anywhere, but just to enjoy moving with and against the turntables turning, and pass the time as it does so. Eventually the turntable automatically comes to a rest after turning a full one hundred and eighty degrees, and Elio pushes the now spun sleigh all the way to the end of the track, where standing just before the edge and looking over the great expanse is a complexe ballista, ordained by elegant engravings.
Starting on the oval base, four deep curved cuts move with the ballista, before turning to all convene where the body meets the base. From there a masterful web of crossing lines snare the attention as they run along the length of the rectangular body and all the way to the bow. Where the lines end as soft and curving grooves that mirror the beautiful arch of the bow, and the two pairs of tension hands that sit atop and below it. The ballista is also filled with complexe machinery, all of which connect to multiple hand cranks and levers only an arms reach away from the chair. With all the elements in mind, the ballista looks out of place from everything around it, being of better craftsmanship and polished to a knife's edge, and such contrasting heavily with the rest of the house, tower included.
Elio pushes the sleigh into the back of the ballista where it slots in perfectly and the hand rail presses on the back of the seat, the arm that holds the quiver full of ballista bolts becoming parallel with the body of the ballista. He climbs onto the chair with the help of some thick leather back books and stays standing to be level with all the levers and handcranks around him, and after making himself comfortable, begins to load up a shot. He spins a hand crank to the right of the ballistas body, where a thin chain runs back and forth along multiple wheels, each one lowering the strength needed to pull back the string of the bow from monumental, to so low that even Elio can tension it. The chain pulls a metal slate where all the ropes attach too, though the tension hands above and below remain slack. The ballista signifies it is fully loaded by the audible *clink* of the metal slate locking in place, afterwhich Elio pulls a lever to his left, to cause the hand that holds the quiver to move above the ballista, and a hooked gear to rise out and grab one of the bolts forward, after which, Elio pulls the lever again, returning the hand and gear as they were and allowing the bolt to slide along the flight groove and into the embrace of the metal slate.
With the ballista now loaded, Elio has to find a target, he looks through a telescope attached to a mechanical arm and scans the sky for any movement, and it doesn't take him long to find one. A monster flys alone with hunger in its eyes, its skin is a dull and sickly gray with no feathers to hide it except for a tuft on its head that has long since lost its luster. Its bat-like wings are damaged and paperthin, and its maw is filled with black rotting teeth that overlap, making it unable to close its maw fully. Lastly, eyes of different sizes and pupils are scattered unequally along its head and body, some of which are empty sockets, others damaged.
At the site of such a monstrous creature Elio is illated. He flips a reticle onto the telescope and then aims it up with a notch on the end of the ballista. With a different set of hand cranks he aims the ballista carefully, and then waits. He becomes focused, his red eyes training in on the target, he spins a hand crank ever so slightly to move the ballista higher and then checks again, estimating the distance of the creature via notches in the reticle, all for the perfect shot.
Eventually, Elio pulls the firing lever, and the metal slate is released, sending the bolt flying as a thin layer of dust is kicked up by the force. The bolt zips through the air with little deviation, as such even with its many eyes it notices the small black dot fastly approaching to be a bolt far too late, and in its attempt to change its direction it is thoroughly skewered, through the rib cage and stopping two inches out the back. The sheer force of the bolt hitting it causes it to stop dead in its tracks and with the pressure the bolt is putting on the spine it can't control its descent and flails desperately as it falls. It crashes into the gravel with as much grace as a bag of bricks into molasses, its hollow bones shattering under the concussive force, its flesh ripped and rendered by the gravel's hundred blades. Somehow, the beast survives the crash, but as it rolls over to try and get up, its body is pierced even more, and soon all its blood drains into the ground, leaving the corpse to rest on a bed of nails.
Elio sees this horror up close through a telescope, and then celebrates when it hits the ground, quickly reaching for the topmost book that is sitting next to him and flipping close to the end, were half of the lined page are filled with the big, bold, and messy tallys, describing the creature and the shots it took to kill it. He takes a thin piece of chalk and writes on a new line, ‘normal, 1-1’ and quickly puts the book back with new dots closing in on the horizon, all to meet a gravelly end.
On the wall the man is still climbing ever higher, though the surface has changed greatly since then. Circles and shapes with runic designs are drawn with chalk and connected by thick lines that navigate deep cracks in the wall that at times create indents and caved in surfaces. In Fact with the varying depths and many ledges the man has ample footing and at times enough space to walk, and he no longer has to rely on the rope to climb. At one of these ledges the man stops in front of a blank wall where a ruin once sat, and after whipping away the remnant chalk dust, checks his booklet and begins to draw a new rune.
Each line is straight and exact, every angle accurate and to the point, and every circle perfect, his hand moves with such precision that one would think it was being guided, but a simple look around shows that it is in fact skill, practiced to the point of perfection. He finishes up the rune by connecting it with the web of others around it, and after checking the booklet again he begins to climbs higher to fill out another space, but as he is climbing he hears a faint whistling behind him, just barely noticing it because of a pause in the breeze, and he turns to see the thin line of a ballista bolt hitting a flying speck, (one of the creatures) dropping it, and in the far distance the tower that it was shot from, and the house they live in, that used to live as well.
The main hall is nesselled within the unmistakable remnants of an ashen black ribcage, its incomplete arches acting as extra support to their house, with the doors leading to the rest of the rooms existing in between the ribs. Most of the rest of the skeleton is gone, the skull and lower half (pelvis and legs) are nowhere to be seen, and the right arm has been rotted away, leaving only shards. Its left arm on the other hand has impressively stayed intact, and is propped up and kept standing by a rusted metal bracelet attached to enormous chains, each link as big as a person, and anchored to the ground by nails. The hand is then covered by scaffolding and leather and used as the very tower Elio is currently on.
Similarly to the red sand path, their house is surrounded by the black gravel and nothing of note, but from his vantage point high up on the wall he can see that it does eventually come to an end. A cliff face rises sharply from the ground and surrounds the field in a perfect circle, keeping them caged within a pit, kilometers wide. On the cliff a desert of red sand melts with the red sky as it stretches into the horizon, from its dunes broken pillars of black rise in the hundreds, with their jagged ends pointing in various directions up above. But even in the rolling hills and massive pillars nothing moves except for the sand slowly trickling down the cliff into the pit, creating dust clouds that quickly settle into a barely moving pile that hugs the walls and disappear into the many spaces in between the gravel.
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The wind suddenly picks up after a prolonged lull, bringing a gust of sand with it as well, he turns to shield his eyes and in doing so sees in the far west a castle, broken, and left to rot. Its gates once ordained in glistening iron now rusted and chipped away by the wind, its walls are cracked and broken, with sand quickly filling every nook and cranny. its once mighty towers lay flat and half buried in the sand or fallen into the castle. causing deep scars, all but one, rising from the middle of the castle and shrouded in a haze, the tallest towers still standing, the flag that it used to fly, lost, the banners that stood at its side shredded by time, their symbols long gone. The man stays staring at the castle, looking for any movement, the opening of a window, the sprint from shadow to shadow, but he only sees the sand move form the wind, and nothing more.
Eventually the wind calms and the man begins his climb again, this time moving to the left, where he turns a corner to work on another rune, and the wall is revealed to be a piller, one of three that from a triangle, indecipherably tall as it is impossibly wide. It sits at the center of the pit, a massive and imposing construct that stands defiant of its own weight. It looms over the world, taller than the tower Elio is on, taller than the cliff, and even taller than the castle on said cliff, and just as wide, so that anywhere you may be for miles upon miles, it will be there as well, standing ominously in the distance. But even something as monolithic as this isn't immortal. On one side of the triangle, deep cracks reach just before its highest point, and just below the middle, causing that entire section to bend inwards into the triangle. There the man works tirelessly, drawing runes on scars of ages long past.
At the tower Elio is looking all round for another target, and as the flying creatures contrast heavily in the red sky he doesn't need a telescope to see them. Coming from the east with the ballista facing north (away form the monolithic triangle) Elio notices two dots approaching, and with no other targets in the distance, Elio quickly hops off the ballista and rushes to the side where he kicks the brakes and the ballista begins to slide along the rail track. He puts his all into pulling the ballista along, at first with difficulty, but as it gains momentum, then with ease, and soon the low hum of iron wheels on the tracks fills the halls. He accompanies the ballista to stop it in the middle of the turntable, and with the pull of a lever the tower is once again filled with the low rumble of gears, this time accompanied by a few creaks complaining about the weight of the ballista.
He waits for the rail track to spin into place, keeping tabs on the sky and the two dots slowly getting closer, when he notices one end of the track coming into view from behind him and it takes a good few seconds for his mistake to register. Realizing that he pulled the lever the wrong way and that the turntable is turning clockwise, (away form the targets), he pushes the lever straight to stop the turning and then right to turn it counter clockwise and correct his mistake, though in his panic, he was far to brash. Unlike when it is in row with the outer track it doesn't stop completely, and before its momentum can disappear the gears begin to spin in the opposite direction and slam the turntable with a thunderous sound that shakes the tower. Elio thinks that he might have broken the turntable only for it to suddenly run as smoothly as usual, and he decides to metaphorically slide his mistake ‘under the rug’.
He sheepishly pushes the ballista along where just before the edge it stops from brakes within the track, he then kicks the lock back on and loads up the ballista, his targets taking his focus away from his mistake with worrying speed. Looking through the telescope he gets a clearer picture of the two, and finds them mostly the same as the ones before, but that they are also bickering and seemingly racing forth to get to the tower first, oblivious to what awaits them. With the creatures in range Elio doesn't have to wait and fires two shots, one after the other, meanwhile the targets are still fighting to get to the tower first, one of them flies above the other to strike it with its beak, only to find it far back trying to breath with a bolt rung through its neck, and before it can process the danger another bolt rams perfectly through its skull, killing it instantly, and causing it to glide, brain dead, to the ground, where its friend soon joins him.
On the side of the triangle the man checks away at his small booklet in an extremely caved in part of the pillar, deep enough to walk into, and seemingly where all the cracks originate. A collection of many items such as a small barrel of water, rope, pitons, and other conveniences fill the cave, so that he wouldn't need to return to the house if he ran out of any of them. But he doesn't need any this time, and after checking off the last item on his booklet he instead packs up everything in the cave and begins his descent, removing the pitons and ropes that he had used to climb up the pillar along the way. It takes a while for him to get back down, and by the time he does the sun is beginning to set behind the castle's one and only tower, casting a shadow into the crater that lines up all too well with the center of the triangle. In the east, night blankets the sands in darkness slowly seeps into the crater, even while the sun still faces it, the shadows creep and crawl ever closer, eager to rule its half of the day. The length of rope and bag of pitons weigh heavy on his shoulders but doesn't seem to bother him as it should, instead it only deepens the footprints he makes as he walks, the sky above him remaining the same shade of red even as he reaches their home.
Elio fires his last shot as the sun begins to set, and he sadly has to close up the tower. He puts the sleigh back, retrieves the pin, and climbs onto the elevator where with the pull of a lever he is sent back down. While wheels creek with age and the elevator lowers, Elio looks up as he always does to see the underside of the tower, were from the back of the giants hand an untold number of gears, ropes and chains facilitate its many conveniences, and is surrounded by the several inch thick rusty wrist brace that is bolted on to the palm and forearm.
He stares at the conglomeration of gears, having memorized their placement by heart from all the times he passed it, though with never enough time to stay and figure out what they do as a wooden platform of many levels that is used to access the underside of the palm blocks the view when the elevator passes it. He decides to lie down as he descends, and he can see how the hand bends in an unnatural way, how the tips of its fingers are gone, and how the staircase spirals up to meet it. veiled by the monstruos web of scaffolding, it becomes noticeable only after he has passed it where the underside of the steps become visible.
It too is then covered as he pases through the gap in the giant's forearms and sees how the surface layer has been chipped away by nails and bolts to reveal the bone white inside. While he's resting he begins to feel drowsy from all the work and fun he had today, but is shaken out of his sleep when the elevator comes to an abrupt halt on the ground. Rising from the sudden stop he is still a bit drowsy, and considers whether to go back to sleep on the elevator, besides, the view looking up is nothing to scoff at. But when he smells the scent of food being made in the hall he becomes wide awake, for rest can wait, but food comes first. He grabs the empty quiver of the sleigh and runs into the hall where he sees the man working away at their next meal. He greets Elio without turning around.
“Welcome back, dinner will be ready in a moment” to which Elio drops the empty quiver into a pile of more empty quivers and snakes his way to the middle table to sit down,
“So, how was the ballista? Did the wyvern ghouls give you any trouble?” to which Elio puts one hand over the other in an X, before quickly remembering the incident with the turntable, and he ends up making a less confident X instead,
“Is that sooo?” the man says with suspicion in his voice, having somehow guessed what Elio was thinking about without looking back still, of course Elio denies it, and the man lets it go but with lasting comment,
“Well whatever you did I'll fix it tomorrow when we organize and clean the house”, and they both give a prolonged sigh after the man talks. Elio protests, but the man reluctantly reaffirms,
“I'm sorry Elio, but we've put it off for long enough! And there's literally nothing else on the list we can do”, Elio slumps in his chair while he hears this, but not for long, as the man turns around to show what he has been cooking this entire time. Baked potato, detoothed obviselly, and filled with the leftover stew. Elio slides back up in anticipation but before giving him his food the man says,
“And how are you going to eat with the jacket covering your mouth?” Elio realizes that he hadn't taken off his jacket and rushes to his room to return it as well as the gloves, in the meanwhile the man sets the food down and waits. Elio comes back out but before he can reach the tabel the man says,
“And wash your hands”, and so Elio has to run back again. By the time he comes back to sits back down at the table, the food has cooled enough to be eaten without Elio burning his tongue. of course, if the man tried telling Elio to wait it wouldn't have worked, he probably wouldn't be able to finish his sentence, and so instead he gave him stuff to do, and so Elio enjoys his warm but not burning hot dinner, none the wiser. After dinner and a long day the man finishes up cleaning the dishes only to find Elio in the process of dozing off. He walks over and says,
“You know, you can go to sleep right, you don't need to stay awake so late” but Elio resists the man's offer and tries to fight the urge to sleep, and what a fierce battle it is. Both the gardening and the ballista have drained a lot of his energy, and the surprise attack from the potato has him barely holding on. though he forgot one thing, the man, who lifts Elio up and carries him to his bed. The first thing of note as the man walks into Elios room is that all over the floor are toys that seem to be made by Elio with premade wooden pieces that have been taken apart and put back together in many different ways, some the man didn't even now could work. Directly in front of the door is a shorter sink and mirror, and to its left a small table, carved from the humerus (bicep bone) and made to look like the man's desk, with a wave of parchments with pencil drawings slapped haphazardly on the wall above it and two small boxes either side to act like the mans drawer. Also, the humerus runs along one side of the room and is covered in chalk drawings where the black outer layer hasn't chipped away. On the other side of the wall are Elios drawer of clothes, the jacket thrown atop it, and bed, on which he sets the still ‘fighting’ Elio into, whose last act is a weak flail before he is taken by the sleep forces.
The man quickly navigates out of the room before he breaks out laughing, and after he recollects himself, he is surrounded by darkness as the sun sinks past the horizon. The man doesn't fret though and he reaches for a pin whose placement he memorized to violently shake, not only causing the eye to glow, but every eye within line of sight to react and glow as well. With The pins as his guide he finds and lights a candle that produces a far brighter light and he brings it to his room and places it on his desk (probably one of the neck bones of the giant). Sitting down, he pulls from one of the drawers a leather back book that has been ravaged by time and stitched back together just as many times, infact as the man pulls it out he notices the leather beginning to fray again, but he leaves it for later as he clears the papers and places the book down.
Opening to the first page reveals it to be a record book, but with only one recorded sentence written on there, ‘all is normal’, repeated again and again, on every line, on every page, the dates that used to accompany them blanked out, and at one point they stop being written. The man keeps flipping along, the book, probably holding somewhere in the hundreds of pages, each with more the fifty lines each, all covered in the same sentence, over and over again, until, at the latter half of the book, he find a page with a line still free, and so he writes,
‘All is normal’