Spoiler: 1053 words of flash fiction
Show
And now, now we shall die.
The world is crashing down around us.
It is judgement. For meddling too much. For taking what was not ours. For making ourselves proud. But was it really us?
Was it really worth it?
Even now, there are those who say it was. They say that that one glorious moment of transcending space and time and mortal realms was worth it. They never asked the others.
The others, the people, who were all going about their lives. Us. We didn't know. Or perhaps we did. But we went on with our lives. Some of us didn't care, and if the rest did, they could do nothing. We were powerless, in that we had every power, but we could not stop the madly hurtling dreams of a few. Hurtling on past the boundaries of the mind, the woven song of reality.
So we continued on. We walked, we planted, we dug, we trained, we ran, we studied, we sang, we laughed, we lived. Some of the old lore-masters say that ignorance is the best armor. Perhaps they were right.
Perhaps, but ignorance never stopped a blade. Not knowing what that feathered shaft suddenly protruding from your chest was never saved you.
We should have acted. Done something, anything. But how were we to know? If we overran ever tower inhabited by a delusional mage, every small group of wandering troublemakers, we would overrun ourselves. Not right away, but slowly, gradually, the end would come. But we did not, and the end has come regardless.
The end is coming. The end is here. And we will dissolve into flames and sparks and shatter like the long-forgotten reflections in the mirrors.
Where will we go?
Who will remember us?
Will anyone remember us? Will come after us?
Someday, will a lonely traveler, some chronicler of dusty tales, some inquisitive, some merchant hiding from the fury of the storm, will someone come across our homes? Will they climb the broken steps and pad softly across the floors carpeted in green? Will they look upon the threadbare tapestries, and read the worn tales of our lives? Will they turn the crackling pages of our histories, and find the truth?
The truth. What truth? We never had one.
Will the stars still shine upon those new peoples? The world would be a darker place if indeed they did not. Will mothers look up and spin the tales of the constellations for their children?
The Dragon. The Compass. The Fox-thief. The Raven. We look up now, as cracks creep across the sky. The stars still flare, tiny and yet unimaginable huge, beyond the black. The Warrior of the Lake. The Ship of the North. If only there was a warrior here for us, a ship for us to sail away.
But whither would we sail? The sea would not save us, for the dark ink is spreading across all the pages of the world. If only we could sail across the sky, across empty space and air and time. We could return. Or we could go forward, to the next era.
We could tell those people what had happened. Who we were. Keep our tales and songs alive, keep our heroes and kings and queens alive. Teach them about the mistakes of the past. And maybe this would not happen again.
Has this happened before? This rending of existence? We wonder as we do the only thing we can. We watch, waiting. Waiting for the end.
Some of us remember from the times of their youth old lore-masters telling of an even more ancient time, when we began. But we were not the first. Others had come before us, come, and gone. Were they taken by their own rashness, their own foolishness and greed and pride? Their own ignorance?
We did not know, and we do not know now. Their stories crumbles to ashes and scattered to the winds many long centuries ago. Only the stars remain, constant lights from the past. But they saw different pictures then, told different tales. The stars are the same, yet different.
How much longer will we last? Already the sky is gone, filled with the strange color of the void.
Somewhere nearby, one of us picks up a harp. The soft deep notes float across the awful hush, cover the stillness.
Will they have music, the people who come after us?
Will any come after us, at all? What will happen to the world?
What will happen to us?
A child raises her voice. Clear and crisp joins soft and rich, and the melody weaves a pattern in the air. The singer's voice is strong, but on certain notes it wavers. She is not afraid, though. It is sadness that wraps around her.
As one by one we join in this beautiful tapestry of sound, our fear drifts away, and it is sadness that we feel instead. We would never see another sunrise, another glorious sunset. Never walk the shores and journey the forests again. Never run with the wild free winds, raise our swords in salute, gaze in awe at the mountains. Never plow a field, or buy a pair of shoes for a beloved child, or recount tales around a blazing hearth. We would never teach the stories of the stars again. Never sing again, nor hear songs.
Or would we? We don't know. We know nothing. We never knew anything at all.
Instead we sing, and the melancholy melodies flow away in a river to the nothingness.
We sing for the people who came before us, and who faded away into time. We sing for the children who will never know the bright and deadly and beautiful world that we knew. We sing for the forests and the dragons and the seas and skies and the mighty eagles. We sing for the heroes of the past, the heroes of the present, the victorious soldier and the brave journeyer. We sing to forgive those who started this.
We sing for those who will come after us. Perhaps these melodies will somehow make their way into the world, and they will sing our songs. The same songs, yet different. Like the stars.
We sing as the world runs and swirls into a void around us.
Spoiler: 378 words of character background
Show
Name: Sibyl (it's what she says it is, at any rate)
Gender: Female
Age: Old enough.
Appearance: A seemingly youngish woman who is best described as angular and gives the appearance of being, well, vertically stretched out, she's usually dressed in a long dark coat that's definitely seen better days. Her bobbed hair, for some reason, is a startling white, and she tends to keep a hood (or hat, at least) on because of this. If you notice her at all, at least.
Background: Sybil is voiceless. Most assume she's been that way from birth, but every now and then a rumor goes the rounds that she was actually involved in some dark deal, though none cares to find out what exactly that was--or what she gained from it, if such a deal ever happened. Her muteness has not prevented her, however, from gaining a foothold in several circles. And she's far from deaf. If you've got the desire--and the money--she'll pass along some of her findings to you. Just be warned that she's quite...opportunistic. Or at least, on the surface, she appears to be...
Sybil's earliest memories are of wandering the streets with only a name and a little brother. The name didn't matter, as it doesn't matter now. The brother mattered. She was getting desperate. Then she met a ghost--or at least, it looked like one--that proposed a deal. A voice in exchange for...power of some sort. It seemed like a good deal at the time. She wasn't exactly sure what, if anything changed, but she began to realize that her near-invisible status as a street kid was cemented even more when people found out she couldn't speak. Of course, they never realized she could write.
She learned pretty quickly the value of information. Amazing what people would pay to learn some tidbit.
What she didn't count on was her brother getting killed in the gunfire of some over-zealous thugs who were chasing her after one of her exploits had gone awry. Before she had enough to move them both somewhere nicer, too. She swore--well, it didn't matter what she swore to do. Running information for parts of the underworld would have to serve for now. People thought she wasn't smart. Their mistake.
Weapons:
+2 Snazzy semi-automatic pistol of dubious origin
+1 Stiletto, also of dubious origin