The Children of the Walls
In a time before children governed the crimson wastes of hell itself, a great war was brewing in the cauldrons of a Tarturaus forgotten.
The greed of their forefathers and the obssesive ambitions unto a great power brought about evils that were better left alone.
Promises of power and wealth unimaginable swayed the hands of now long dead Kings. Leading crusades into the dark night, only to return with fire and brimstone, bringing about the fall of their world.
Upon harrowing horizons sunk the damaged walls of a dead Kingdom.
A forgotten fortress of dystopian despair and a monument unto the suffering that is its peoples memory.
Waves linger and lust over those within the walls, harbouring the untold horrors of the deep.
Knocking upon the gates of fallen utopia, echoing symphonies of an unquenchable thirst.
Nautical nebulosity’s hide beneath shapeless curtains of crimson.
Bodies litter the waves as waters flow through the limbs of the dead and living alike.
Foreword: The children of the Walls
This was a city unlike any other, it was a half sunk memory that continued to sink, slowly.
The world had drowned in blood, a war which sunk a once lively land in uncanny crimson. A war which left only children to govern. The lost souls of youth traveled the nightmaish terrain for their familys, not knowing the brothers and sisters at their side were all they had left.
The ruined towers of sunken cities reach out from the ocean depths like crooked fingers, scaling the dark horizons for the long dead Kings whom had once ruled over them. Now the clouds cry blood ruby tears, and wail over a land out of reach.
The cursed waters brought forth its worst in the broken silhoettes of those who lived long enough to grow tall. Who's bones were collected like sea shells and used as currency among the remainder living. Elongated corpse spines and arms which reached nearly two meters long. Were these children descendants of giants? They did not know. They had all forgotten the times before, or rather, not born to witness any of Gods gifts before they were stolen away.
None but a few remember tales of the sun, for what was left only gave way for imagination and myth. A ball of life which once existed for the sole purpose of lighting their day, when all they knew was the perpetual pitch of black under a stormy sky. Hence why concepts of day and night would be wasted on them, as the idea of something existing for their betterment was a stranger fact.
The inhabitants of this ethereal plain had little to live for. They were scared, confused and many, many rather angry. They were alone and seemingly left to die by their uncaring parents. But they were still their parents. And so the remains of their supposed parents would be worshiped however, mighty tall skeleton sculptures crudely made by the myriad many tiny hands of children. Worshiped, as though, by a choir of churebs who lost their wings, anchored to the hell their God had left for them.
Drowned horrors resurface to reclaim the putrid airs above their watery tombs, searching for places which might remind them of what they are and why they were gifted a second chance at damnation. Horrors who hunt the children of giants.
The hammock swayed gently in the wind, cradled by wires that bled from beyond.
Silent snoring symphonies echo from peripheral, accompanied by the accasional thwack of a pickaxe, twanging across the wall, like an archaic clock.
A head rose from the hammock, curly hair flowing like seaweed. Wondering almond eyes eclipsed by shimmering glasses shining with what little light they were granted. The hammock stacked with mindmaps and sketches written in words only their author could decipher. The head falls nearly as fast as it rose, its hair flowing like sunken seaweed.
Lightning crackles, licking thunder in an intoxicating embrace
The oceans are smeared with brief luminosity
The waves come alive in raptured ecstasy
All drowning in the inevitable dark subsequent to the light.
A derelict plateau complete with denizens of the wall,
A constellation of bodies, strung aside themselves in a spiders web
Swathes of egg-like cacoons litter as far as the eye can see, hammocks at closer inspection.
A distant horn sounds, a tempest shriek chronicled from within the walls
Heads rise, possessed by the nightmare wail from beyond.
Cacoons begin to hatch, corpses half alive with some fully dead.
The seaweed head was slowest to rise, groaning like a newborn in the rebirth of another terrible day, though not as he would know, for darkness was one of the many constants in his daily suffering.
Many more groans joined his as lightning licked overhead, some of these groans in pain, others in irritation, many in fear. Another day meant more work in darkness, though, today would be different. Ever so often they would be able to enter the city for a brief period, before being thrust again into their caccoon tombs across the wall. This was a punishment,
A glorified prison without guards to protect them from the world outside, an asylym with no medication to soften the nightmares of their reality. Many of these child convicts were strung up for bad behaviour, obssesions with violence, insubordination to their chief and the worst being the failure of meeting the clans expectations. But it did not last forever, atop of venturing the city on their 'off days' they would even be let free, eventually.
A day where the cacoons would hatch to join their brothers and sisters within the walls.
Seaweeds brother was atop the walls. They didn't really get along very well, however.
A distant groan overshadowed theirs, a mechanical creaking of gears like a sickened clock, reminding them of the passage of time since last they rose. Seaweeds eyes fall, however, to the crashing of the waves which now seemed so far off, knowing full well that the watery symphonies would continue cradling him to sleep when him and his kin were lowered once more.
Lowered once again after failing to perform the miracles that were his chiefs tall orders.
Being asked the impossible time and time again.
Seaweed was the last to leave his cacoon. Crasse silhoettes of walking corpse clothe led their way in single file towards the nearest exits, sniffling and sneazing there ways into cracks in the walls and crawling to whatever safety the darkness seemed to offer.
Children draped in the filthy fabrics which held them, all with the tools they were given to 'fix' the wall. Those who sent them knew that they couldn't accomplish much, however they believed this to be a way of reminded even the youngest of their flock that they are in dire straights, and even the walls in all their obsidian magnificance will one day come crumbling down. Children who realize this are few, Seaweed being one of them. Seaweed secretely wished the walls would just fix themselves, to wake up one day to a fresh breeze and the triumphant return of his parents, from whichever war they were still fighting in.
And so he disembarked upon his new wealth of time abroad from the wall, no longer at its side, now, atop it.
Brother, how longs it been?
Seaweeds brother had been waiting for him, which he rarely did, for he saw his time through a most particular lense, one of responsibilty.
Seaweeds brother was dressed in dirtied robes strung together with the many odd things he had claimed as his own. Like a turtle he seemed to carry his bed and home around with him.
Rope-like hair carrying coins, bones and whatever peculiar thing which caught his fancy. His eyes were blue as the eclipsed azure horizons of elder sky and sea.
About five Kachunks ago, had to go and find you that one time.
Seaweeds remark is met with a grin
Atop the wall, the wind cut to the bone, it was an icy scythe which claimed many lives, though now it only worked to send the occassional shiver down Seaweeds spine.
We've finished it. A boat-
More like we found it, fished it up from some sunken harbour... But its ours now...-
The two lock eyes as Seaweeds brother finishes his sentence. Yet again asking his brother to sail a wooden coffin and fill it up with whatever him and his crew could scavenge. Seaweed wasn't always on the wall.
The world was a tomb unto itself, broken chandeliers hung above it
of dead stars hung in their black tombs like broken chandeliers,
unseen maps of a land offering no treasure beyond deaths sour embrace.
A cavern of darken cloud which sunk deep into the skies abyssal black.
Mountains like teeth, sunken eye sockets sinking deeper into the corpsed carcass skull the remainder living called home. The world had died, an etheral tomb, its inhabitants like maggots feeding upon a carcass.
Fallen stars wonder lands alone. Walking candle-men searching for those of their kind.
In the rotten resessions of a cave of ethereal dark.
Titans so large, that in their gluttony and greed, would pick the luminescent stars beside their garguatuan heads like apples from a tree. Stealing starlight and devouring the suns grace.
Dead starlight and barren rock corpses.
An egg that continued to hatch unhallowed blasphemies from the undead womb of a carcass undead world.
Maggots wonder the wastes, feeding upon their mothers flesh and the myriad forgotten siblings they devoured in their madness, gluttony and greed. Creatures who bit the hand who fed them, so they would not be trained. Monsters who murdered their creators in the tainted fantasies of unadelterated freedom. The world was free of society, it was free of rules and even logic. It was a broken realm where the fantasies and ambitions of men, destroyed the very foundations of order that worked to comprise their world.
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