"Do you Remember it? There was a time we all did. Do you remember falling? So many of us still do. You jolt awake and your heart's only just started beating again. Do you remember why? Do you remember where we ended up?
"There was a time we would close our eyes and awaken in a City of dreams, a city of pure grace. Crafted fresh from the wants of those that went to it. The City rose, it grew, its towers of glass and stone etched with storys long forgotten and those yet to come. It was a world of endless colours, of endless pictures. Spires that rose for miles, and descended just as far from its crystal landscape under the perpetual dawn. Causeways of glass winding and intertwining like the fates of those that went to it. 'Inspiration' you might call it.
"And in time you forgot it, you abandoned it, and you lived with a lack of creativity in a life of monotony. You had to cast it out, you had to shut it away, you left it to ruin. All of you. You left our great city to die. Our heart, all of us. And you let it die, and I know why.
"You feared the fact that the City pushed us to work beyond the here and now. It drove you to push yourselves to your limits, to become your true selves and find your strength. It drove you to keep falling, at it's very touch you now recoil like a wounded animal, it became instinctual. It became wrong. Your. Courage was gone.
It drove you on to shape not just the day but your life at the cost of that fleeting moment and it, through its tender and caring touch to each of us, would shape our species as a whole. Like the gods many worship, the City was it. Man created it, and the City made us.
Yet you chose to live day by day. Meaningless... Pointless, with no achievement to be had by its end. You chose to live in the now, a life of monotony. A life without imagination. You gave up on your dreams. You killed the City.
"But you listen here. This is what you've done: Deep at the City's heart, where it has always stood, there's a clock counting, it's approaching midnight. Soon it will stand no more, and after that, any one of you could be the catalyst of our destruction. To save yourselves you must wake up to the world, harness the inspiration and power for greatness you all lost long ago. It's not without hope. You forgot the City. You can remember it. You must return to the City."
The man turned off his radio as he finished talking. The old device whirred one last time before fading into silence. He rested his hand on it like a parting friend. His daily plea for help fell silent. He didn't even offer a moment to listen for a reply. They weren't worth that... Not anymore.
With effort he pushed himself from the cluttered desk, and a heave he rose from the worn chair. Wavering on his feet for a brief moment, he stood hunched high above his kingdom, it equally as worn as he was. His hand swiped up a lit cigarette in a makeshift ashtray. He puffed on it carelessly as he stumbled from the room. The sounds of the world outside filled his ears like the unfettered march of an invading army upon his realm of silence.
With a shove his bedroom door caved open, knocking aside boxes and possessions with little care. He sat down, reaching for a dirtied glass of whiskey, he took several mouthfuls before laying himself down upon the creaking bed, his cigarette still in-between cracked lips the man puffed away until he felt sleep lay claim to him...
And at its whisper he willingly let it...
He waited...
He could feel the world around him changing. His eyes still sealed shut. He felt the bed move away from him. He felt the sensation of falling, falling from the waking world.
Yet he remained unshaken. He didn't jolt, he didn't shudder...
He could suddenly feel solid ground beneath him, beneath boots never worn. His body felt like new. A steady breeze blew over him, He could feel it flow over material not made by the hands of any man. The gentle whisper turned to a barely audible song, a faint note played from far away heralding his return. With slow steps every time he opened his eyes to the glorious city around him.
As he stepped away from where he'd awoken barely hours before he let it sink in for a moment, like it did every time. A tantalising peace fell over his troubled mind. Relief almost. A relief that yet still, it had survived another night. He let himself wash the torment of the waking world away in that relief. his hands rested on a waist high wall of framed, cracked, almost faceted clear mineral, inset in a warm copper frame.
Its surface was one of the most intrinsic of details. One beyond that of any man or machine, like it was made to be just so. Each cut, each inclusion lined up perfectly with the gentle facets of its surface. A texture pleasing on sight and on touch. Gold veins wound through the material, giving it the feel they floated like they were frozen in ice. A gentle blue tint gave a feel of a cool winter's morning.
Such intricacies were common in the city, from up close it was glorious...
But looking from afar it radiated.
The man's eyes drifted up from the raised causeway to the furthest reaches of the crystal canyon. Each wall was composed of many unique spires, each one rose like perfect stalagmites high into the sky. Patterns of infinite complexity covered the faces of each one. The crystal-like mineral of each seemed to glow in the light of a perpetual dawn sun. This light ran around each tower, through each causeway, streaming throughout the city. The patterns and murals on every wall painted themselves with a thousand colours, each one stretching a mile into the sky. The highest reaches of each spire were capped with crowns and points rivaling any made by mortal men for mortal men. It captured the elegance of humanity, the strength of legions, and the will of each person born who could reach it...
At Least that's how he remembered it...
If he could've willed it too, he'd have lived in that fantasy forever... Try as he might he couldn't hold onto that glorious image. He couldn't stop the inevitable creep of reality that faded the colours from his vision.
Its glory days were long gone...
He looked past his hands enshrouded in black mineral gauntlets, at the wall he rested on. The metal wrapped around it long rusted and broken, cast amongst the crystal were cracks that didn't belong, slicing through those that did.. Chunks had long broken away, sections had long vanished into the aether.
His eyes quivered upwards once again. He glared down the crystal canyon. Its floor was broken by a massive crevice, stretching across the huge gulf between the spires where a massive boulevard once lay, depths many fathoms down to the fog wall beyond. He looked across the spires at the tainted decay that stained the city of wonder, the walls split and shattered wide open, destroying the once beautiful fascure of thousands of towers. Where mighty steel frames once hung, metal now drooped splayed like rope. Debris covered every surface, twinkling each with the twilight of dying dreams in the low sun. Dust fell like ash, sparkling as if they were lights themselves from the broken pinnacles of every tower. Each one stood splintered and sundered, however stand they still did..
When one would imagine a city abandoned for decades, images of nature reclaiming it and it turning to a thing of almost ghastly beauty would spring forth. The City though didn't have that privilege, when everyone forgot about it, it just began to die. There was no beauty. There was no glorious antiquity. It was no more beautiful than staring at a fallen friend...
Even the mightiest crystal towers did not survive the decay, The pinnacles of the spires leaned far, with most being broken off completely. Some towers were just gone, taken completely to the ground. The wind blew through, scattering the crystal, like sand. The once ornate and beautiful decorations were now almost colourless, worn, and their beauty long forgotten. The world was grey and monochrome.
The world was lifeless...
It was near motionless...
For awhile.
The man listened carefully as the wind brought the sound of a colossal crash in the distance, signalling the collapse of another one of the city's mile high spires.
The man frowned as he heard it. In frustration born from endless rage he pressed his hands against the wall he leaned upon, gripping it firm. Firmer and firmer, hard enough for it to shatter.
Yet he could feel its surface change against the skin of his gauntlet. He felt it like it moved against his own. The stained and cracked mineral restored itself, becoming its former brilliance once more. Its facets were cut back into its surface, flowing like water on a gentle sea. Its veins began to shine with gold once more, the metal lost its rust, and emanating out from his hands the wall became itself once more. Like someone had taken just the tiniest glimpse of that glorious image and pasted it upon the muted ruin. Although it wasn't enough. The decay fought back, like the city now seemingly wanted to die. Everything beyond an area no more than a few feet across remained stained with desolation, the perimeter and endless battle of healing and opening wounds.
He ran his hands gently across the repaired material, like he was feeling it for the first time. He could feel its edges, he could feel its faces. Its gentle smoothness like an eroded crystal. Yet he could feel more. He felt it vibrate. The world had begun to shake faintly, almost unnoticeable. Like dominos, the collapse of the distant tower had started something more.
He stepped back, resting his hand on the chest plate bound upon his body. Just like the wall it restored itself. The plates of formerly rusted and cracked metal and mineral restored to new, with a gentle hum the edges of each one lit up a vibrant blue glow. The man knelt down slightly, before launching himself in the air as the causeway itself collapsed beneath him.
As he ascended many feet into the air he began to slow. The City's immortal laws tried to cast their will upon him, but he denied gravity that right. The plates on his shoulder blades glowed ever brighter, he didn't fly. He hovered, yet to the City below he continued to rise.
From his new vantage point he could see the causeway wasn't the only thing falling. The man kicked himself forward, flying across the skies like a superhero in between the spires as the sundering began. The cracking land boomed like an earthquake.
He glanced back, his eyes thinned as he watched a colossal hole rapidly expand, claiming the causeways, skyways and bridges, it joined with the crack below him, shortly before it started to take down the spires.
The first one began to lean, moaning like a dying animal. Its peak slammed into its opposite, snapping it in an enormous cacophony of shattering stone, cracking crystal and splintering metal, the booming clap was slowly drowned by loud rumble as the spires around it began to descend. The man looked down at the district pulling away from him. The surfaces shook and crumbled, wreckage dancing across it. The spires began to splinter, rendering themselves into debris, to become dust. Ahead he could see a rising wall, the edge of the collapse that hung like a new cliff. He took a frantic dive, accelerating faster before flipping over to enter a sliding crash back to the ground.
The man stood up, the sole witness to the fall of another realm. He watched as the spires began to accelerate as the ground they trusted as their base betrayed them and fell into the dawn, the first tips of the towers came by. With a slow salute he silently said a permanent goodbye to the last spires. The new edge of the city cast a perimeter of rubble and desolation, running around the perimeter of a huge chasm into the abyss. The aftershock of the collapse damaged the spires around it, the falling towers glimmered across the nothingness, some moving to fall after their once certain brethren.
Despite the devastation the City held strong. Moments of palpable silence went by. A short while later the City stopped shaking
The man was stunned, his shock at the scale of it shook his very core. No collapse since he entered the City had been as large as this one, and certainly not this far from the City's boundary. It filled him with fear.
It filled him with dread
He reached down slowly, plucking a piece of broken crystal from the floor, it's cracked and shattered surface became clear and cloudy. Like it had been when the City was born by humanity. The man turned his back to the gaping maw, the canyon ahead was cast with rubble, and like an aged wanderer he took his first steps.
His mind now distraught and mourning his sole inspiration dying on him, his thoughts played out a thousand versions of what was to come.
And each one made him infinitely more terrified...