The Everburning City

Act 1, Part 1, Chapter 1

Valen

A man stood watch at the end of the world.

Behind him green shoots sprouted in orderly columns that stretched on for miles. Forests of beige grasses swayed in the gentle breeze, washing over the miles like ripples marring a placid pond. Small trees clutched unripe fruit as the wind teased the branches into motion. Further on, beyond another wall, and others after, crops grew the bounty that now fed millions.

Beyond those fields the City itself glowed. At its heart the Spire shone like a piece of the sun had been taken in hand and stretched into a wire, rising from the ground to some impossible height beyond the sky. Surrounding it, the sprawling city of millions shone with a hundred-thousand tributary lights, and glowed like a distant, immense bonfire.

The firelight extended out from the City, following the walls and causeways in a procession of luminous lights that, with the distance, blended together into lines of orange light that snaked across the land. The light of the Spire cast long shadows on the trees in the field, and on the watchman himself as he stood upon the very edge of his world.

That edge was a stone wall a hundred feet high, and six hundred miles long. At the base of the wall a small army of small bouts of fire, drawn from the Spire, spit out into the lands beyond the Everburning City. Into the world claimed by the Gloam.

The pallid grey mists seethed and churned in the firelight, swirling about like water churning in the river. It clung to the the stone, and only begrudgingly shied away from the pilot lights that blazed at the base of the wall. There was nothing else beyond the Last Wall, no rock or tree or hill. There was nothing beyond, except the Gloam.

A man stood at the end of the world. And listened.

Far beyond his sight, a muffled crash shook the night air. The wall beneath his feet rumbled faintly the way a passing train can rattle the platform. Each distant rumble sounded like an impossibly large hammer striking the dirt, a strange, soft, low, but powerful noise.

In his ignorance, the watchman only remembered that fire, not stone, held back the Gloam. The hundred-foot stone walls were for something else.

"Valen!" a shout echoed in the still night, startling the man on watch and shaking him loose from his trepidatious thoughts. Valen turned to the nearby watchtower, rising up above the wall, in time to see the door open a sliver. "Are you on watch yet?"

"I am," Valen replied, taking a deep breath and forcing his hand off his sword. He hadn't realized he had been gripping it. He turned to the door and spoke through it. "And you're late, Specialist."

"Right, spit and ash," the woman said. She stepped through the door and shut it behind her. She then faced Valen, stood at attention, and set her right fist over her heart. "Ready for the watch, Corporal Redgrave, and apologies for my tardiness."

Valen chuckled, out of relief rather than amusement. He was almost grateful to be distracted from his thoughts. "We're about twelve miles from an officer you actually need to pay homage to, Mildred. No one salutes a lieutenant unless a captain is in view. And I'm quite a few pegs below that."

"Right," Mildred agreed. Valen suspected there was more she wanted to say, but he wasn't willing to pry. He waited silently as she sighed, rolled her shoulders, and took a deep breath to steady herself. "Sorry sir."

"Are Hendricks and Darius on their way up?" Valen asked, enquiring about the rest of the group he lead.

"Yes sir. Just putting their boots on when I left," Mildred confirmed. Valen frowned, and raised an eyebrow at her tone, suspecting something else had been left unsaid.