303,681 days since the command
The great city of Othpehsi was burning, just as the praetor ordered.
It had been Legate Aquila’s greatest work this siege. Diverting the river had taken a while but left the city to slowly die as it was left completely without water. Then it was a simple matter of building an enclosing wall around the doomed city and preparing the siege towers. That had been a lot harder given the lack of wood but demolishing some nearby houses and villages for materials had solved that problem.
Two months later and now he was watching the great rewards of his handiwork. It’d almost certainly be worth a triumph in his honour! Oh, how he could already see himself there, breathing in the burning offerings, watching the cheering crowd as he rode past…
Ah, but it was still just a little bit away. The slaughter would have to reach its zenith before that, the rat pharaoh came out of his hiding hole, and the flag of The Imperium was planted at the highest part of the city. Well, the highest part that survived the fire.
He tried to loosen the armour around his body to give himself a little relief from the heat that lashed his body from the fires around. Riding into the city like this, now that he thought about it, might have been a bad idea. He’d have to clean his brilliant white hair of the horrid soot for one but alas, such was the struggles and conditions of being on campaign.
All around him were the bodies of dead militia members and the pharaoh's guards. They carpeted the streets like a blanket, with many of them having fallen face-first into the ground, probably running in fear from his legionaries and their cavalry as they charged through.
Cowards, all of them, nothing like our noble men.
It was probably good for them then that the jewel of their decrepit kingdom was being reduced to ashes, it might be a good motivator for them to finally gain some manly backbone and resolve as a people…
I mean, who creates a 150-foot-tall statue of one of their leaders overlooking their capital!? It was vain, it was stupid, and it was the epitome of hubris!
Maybe he’d just leave it, the one thing left of their measly capital and as a little thank you to the excellent watchtower it had been for his troops. One little mercy and memory from their great conquerors.
Yes, he thought he would do that…
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359,427 days since the command
The cold, skeletal ruins towered over Eshe as she made her way deeper into its corpse—her only light in the task were the stars, the moon, and a burning torch that crackled in her hands.
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She’d heard long ago this place had been a great city, a place like nowhere else, a beacon for her people. Then the Imperium had burned everything they could find, taken the water away, and killed its people.
But the desert had the last laugh. Now that empire too was crumbling, and Kush had been left in turmoil.
That was why she was out here, to find safety.
Time, however, had not been kind to the city. Sand had blown in and the desert had reclaimed the land, turning the streets into dusty dunes. Shifting through it was hard at night, but certainly not impossible, especially with her newfound experience after the weeks of hard travel to get here.
And in the distance before her, was the crumbling wreak she’d heard about as a child. The Great Gardens of Othpehsi. Its glory days had long since passed, parts of its terraces had fallen down onto its lower floors, smashing yet more parts off the glorious pyramid. All the gold had been scraped off by scavengers, its paint had faded, and all its verdant gardens had dried up and died.
Yet, despite its dilapidation, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of majesty when she looked upon it.
She walked closer, pushing through the abandoned streets and debris-laden thoroughfares to the base of the place, before climbing up its surprisingly intact stairs.
At the top, she found out why the stairs were in such good shape.
On the ground floor, under one of the few intact sections, was a campfire that illuminated an old figure and their camel.
She stopped, freezing in place, her hand reaching to her belt—
But the man raised a hand, beckoning her over.
She let the tension ebb a little from her arm as she slowly walked forward, still wary of the strange man in the otherwise dead grave of her civilisation.
“Good day to you, lady of Kush!” He called.
Her eyebrows raised however as she tried to process the accent. It was a little strange, like nothing else she had heard before with a distinct rumble.
“What are you doing here!?” She asked.
The man laughed, “Taking a break for my old bones, that’s all. Your people don’t usually venture into the desert, especially to places like this.”
“I’m curious,” She responded curtly, “And what do you mean by ‘your people’?”
“The people of Kush! You may not know about my people, but we were enemies once, a long, long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Hundreds of years ago. Come, sit with me.”
She let her curiosity get the better of her as she walked to him and sat down beside him. He was certainly old alright, with dirty grey hair and wrinkles that coated every part of his long face.
He took out a small ceramic cup and poured a sweet-smelling hot liquid into it. “Flower tea,” he said, looking at her frowning face, “Have some.”
She took a look between him and the cup before accepting. Sure enough, it had a beautiful floral taste and went down smoothly as she drank it.
“So,” He said, continuing, “Do you know what pharaoh constructed this place?”
She shook her head.
“I thought so, it has been a story that has long since been lost as all the pharaohs after him tried to forget his name. He was the one that broke our people, the ones you’d simply know as the desert nomads, to feed his hunger for glory and slaves, scattering us all to the four winds. Filled with that megalomania he made this, the most beautiful oasis in the desert that one could find in its day. But that was not enough for him.”
He pointed west, towards the great dunes and to a shadowy obelisk that towered above everything.
“That is a statue, long since decayed, of him. He believed that it could solve all its woes but when he went out to gaze upon it, after the deaths of so many of his people to make it, he fell. Down and down to a pit of hippos that devoured him on the day of his greatest triumph.”
“And now you use the ruins of the place where he died as shelter?”
“Exactly young one. But I’m afraid I’m growing rather old now and there’s only so many times I can tell this tale. But I won’t miss the day when it finally passes into the mists, people like him don’t deserve to get what they want and I’m just continuing the cycle…”
She took another sip of her tea, looking at the shadowy statue in silence.