Sunrise Gate

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

We departed, Adam back to work, I further into the alley with a remastered sword across my back.  The back streets are abandoned, overcrowded, the run down houses sit empty while the sun shines; the inhabitants either in the market buying produce fresh, or the mines working off their debt. Most likely the latter. Around this part of town no one stopped, no one asked, no one looked. Here trouble brews in the shadows only to quickly be quelled by the poverty; debt is impossible to pay and so citizens work and work and work, day on day, in mines or in the fields. You just can’t escape poverty. My house may reside next to the Guardians headquarters, I think, but this is really home. No crowds, no browsing customers or “on a walk” citizens - only those with a purpose. I like that. There is honor to be found in that. This is also why the Guardians do not patrol this sector, no one wants us here. They do not want the Guardian’s protection - interference - they have debts to pay and work to do. No time for rule breaking, no time for arrests.

I walk the cobble streets. My white armor, the same metal my parents wore years ago, glimmering in the sun. Its red accents are battle wounds to the untrained eye. I wear no helmet. Lynx calls me a fool for it, the people here see it symbolic - a true warrior lets their foe see their face. I am the only Guardian without a helmet. I remind myself, The people here know me for that. They welcome me because of it. But today there are no welcomes. It’s the first of the month, most folks in this area are off to work early trying to secure the best pickaxes in the mine.

I begin heading my normal route, straight down the main alley. Bard’s Inn is a good place to stop during evening strolls after the workers return home to drown their sorrows but never in these rare morning walks; it’s vacant save a few slackers. The run down shack does not see the patrons it wants, not many come to visit Ebonhawke as in the old days - before those overgrown felines came,I grind my teeth. The damn demons. The typical drunk commotion is well underway - glass shattering, tables flipping, fists mid-flight. The gravel crunches and cracks under my boots.

All twenty-some-odd houses are not far from Bard’s, quite convenient for Bard, not so much for the dying alcoholic. The streets here are littered with bottles of booze and shattered glass, rotting food and starved dogs. No difference from a trash heap. No different from the houses, filthy; shutters hanging, shingles missing, chimneys broken, dying flower pots - a distant reminder of the inhabitants living here. Clothes of the old, the young, the hardworking are strung over head, out to dry over the road, stealing sunlight from the road for themselves. It’s surprisingly dim, for poor people they sure manage to have the closet of a noble .Then again, these clothes are generations old.The thought sparks, Somewhere here hangs the shirt of my grandfather.

The gravel fades away, sand and dirt in its place as the mountain looms close. Over the years I’ve come to see the one vulnerability Ebonhawke has: the wall. I run my hand along side it now, flawlessly smooth to the touch as if a pearl, yet it feels so powerful, so stable. It’s ever so slightly curved, as it gentle hugs the city encircling it in its’ embrace.  A thousand hammers could never scratch this wall. Hymir did good. But perhaps it was Zisa’s fault then. For as she reshaped the continents, she made a mountain near Ebonhawke, a mountain who serves as part of the ring around Ebonhawke. That mountain happens to be climbable - a path atop of it leading from the plains straight to the top of the wall. If any army were to march, it could easily walk straight into Ebonhawke. The only issue they’d face is that the path can’t be reached from the ground. They’d have to march an entire army through a window in a four story tower and down the stairs,I chuckle at the thought, If you’ve seen a Sabre, you’d realize how impossible that may be - at least with Human sized windows.

I reach the tower. There is no front door, only an archway to greet the wanderer.  I ascend the stairs, enclosed and with a few windows, long abandoned due to its distance from the square and its proximity to the mountain. The boards creek and crack, but hold my weight. Any windows that once existed have been shattered, looters breaking most to get inside. A flight up the stairs ends at a solid steel door, four inches thick, welded shut with the blessings of Hymir himself. The Guardians would be more concerned of this tower if it weren’t for this door - any curious man bangs the door once, twice, and then walks home. I turn from the door, looking at one broken window behind me. If they knew there is a ledge beneath the window, I assume, then perhaps this would be a greater concern. But even the Guardians do not know of it.

Heaving myself up, I climb out the window and onto the narrow ledge; only a heel can fit on the iron band. I look up, whispering to myself, “Three stories up. Here we go, one more time.” I twist, grabbing rusting iron and rock. The initial climb is tricky, this story is not made of wood. But it is close enough to the mountain that I can shimmy my way up. I wedge myself between the mountain and tower and begin working my way to the soft wood of the second floor. It’s tricky, exhausting, and dangerous - but that’s the fun.

The second floor isn’t hard to reach for a seasoned climber. Fortunately for my safety, that would be me. I swing my arm in a high arc, which lands on a rotting wood floor. I dig my toes into a thin crack in the shell of the building, grabbing the wall of a rotting hole. I pull myself through. Inside once more, there is nothing here. No furniture, no boxes, no trash. It is clean - cobwebbed - but clean, surprisingly, of dust. The stairs are on the immediate right, the rest of the room open ahead with nothing but a window - unbroken.

I walk up the stairs, past the door to the third floor and onto the landing of the fourth. What’s on the third floor? I wonder. Why is it sealed and the others not? What is in there that can’t be seen? A sense comes over me that I should know why, but no answer comes. Someday I’ll have to make a trip there and find a way in. But the door for the fourth floor swings open with ease, its hinges not aged a day are silent, and I walk in.

This floor is very much like the second - empty. But there is something here: a single statue. A shrine to Hymir, left to rot and collect webs. Alone, no candles to warm him, no flowers to lighten the smell. Just webs and rot. But he is closest to the sky here. Perhaps a construction worker left him here, or whatever inhabited this place before it was sealed - if it had inhabitants. I pace to the wall by Hymir, touching it, examining the raw wood, unpainted, ready to collapse as if a temporary shelter. Did anyone ever live here? From the look of the perfectly clean interiors, no. I walk to the other wall. But why was this place built then? I look to the window, shattered since the day I arrived, but inaccessible to looters. How did it break? I twist, pace back to Hymir. Why have an unguarded exit to the city, a vulnerability, sealed rather than destroyed?What was - is - this place’s purpose?  I kneel to Hyrmir, “And why are you here?” I am hush, pleading. Everyday I ask him this. Everyday I am left in silence.

I eventually rise and move to the window, the city stretches the entire view. I can see Sunrise Gate to the middle right; the square and Hyrmir striking his anvil; Lynx training the Guardians in the distant left; the mountain hugging the city to my immediate right reaching all the way to Lynx where the wall impales it. The view is mine to bask in, so high above the city and all its problems.

But I’ve seen enough. I back away from the window, only to quickly leap forward through it.

For a second, I wonder if I’ll make it.