Jake
Kanarrgo treks through rib-cages made out of stone, trying his best to ignore the grim structures. He’s been walking through the Rock Deadlands for the past three weeks, ever since he walked over that hill in the desert and into a new desert -- this time a rocky one. He hasn’t eaten in two weeks. It has been even longer since his last sip of water. It’s just him, his sword, and his cape, which he alternates between using as a head-wrap and a blanket, as needed.
Two stone ribs jut out on each side of him, massive in height. It will take another few minutes before he is past them, eventually approaching the next set of pillars. He walks with his eyes closed, face covered by his cape to protect him from the merciless sun. As it should be.
He doesn’t fault the sun. Doesn’t fault the environment for its lack of vegetation and water, its lack of life. Pretty hard to point fingers when you are the one that destroyed everything.
There are no traces of bones, or any other remains. The bones have long since crumbled to dust, furs and claws broken up into the ground, dens all crumbled up. With nothing around them to sustain themselves on, the roots have also died out. The water is gone, and the wind died out eons ago, too. The sun was the only thing he hadn’t yet gotten to, but its time would come shortly.
As for actual living things… he had been very thorough. He was the only creature in a ten, hundred, thousand mile radius. Kanarrgo walked alone, as he always had.
At the start of everything, it had been by choice. Now, it was because there was no one else to walk with him. For company he had his serpentine cape, coiled around his shoulders once more because he didn’t deserve to hide from the sun, and his wolfish sword, strapped to his back, weighing him down. They made for poor company, but he told himself that it was enough. It was.
It wasn’t.
- - - - - - -
Timeless.
Kanarrgo walks through the hallway. Canyons stretch out on either side of him, forming the walls of the long and narrow hallway.
The walls are unadorned, unaltered save for when they fused slowly with the floor. He remembers stories of how the canyon walls burnt like lava as they flowed down from the sky, the sizzling and heat as they eventually solidified all jagged-like against the floor. He tries to imagine what that must have looked like, but he can’t. He’d only ever seen them as they were now: smoothed into a slight curve where they meet the ground. The walls stretch upwards, as if reaching for something. At the very top, higher than a mortal eye can see, the walls are made out of the deepest black.
They have been here for centuries, and will continue to be. The sole guardians of the palace.
Eternal.
As deep underground as Kanarrgo is, however, the walls are merely grey, with metallic silverish streaks spider-webbing across the walls. It reminds him of bones sticking out amidst an ash pile.
The floor is made of aqua glass, serving as a cover for the ocean below. As with the walls, the floor, too, is streaked with colours. Blue, green, white, they stand in for the ocean’s waves. Tame representations of fierce, feral movements that had been broken generations ago.
Enchanting.
His footsteps echo loudly in the still air. Kanarrgo remembers countless hours, years, trying to be taught how to prowl soundlessly, walking as befits a predator, a hunter. He remembers being called a foolish quarry whenever he failed. He’d always spoken back at that, but perhaps he is a fool. Only time will tell. Time- the very thing he’s running away from.
He prowls now, but still his footsteps echo, spelling out his approach for all to hear. The sword on his hip shifts, its unscarrabed tip scratching at the glass. It draws out a grisly skrrreeek, but he doesn’t bother to straighten it, or move it to his back. There is no point to it. There is no one around to hear him now, let alone chide him.
The streaks on the ground and the walls surge in short, agitated movements, showing their displeasure at his flippant conduct. He ignores them, keeping his eyes pointedly in front of him.
Forsaken.
- - - - - - -
He walks through the trenches of what once used to be an abundant labyrinth of streams. Memories rise up, not unlike bodies floating to the surface of water, way back when there were still such things as lakes and oceans, before he’d drained them all.
There used to be a village here, he remembers, as he starts scaling up a stony pillar, to better see his surroundings. Faces he doesn’t remember killing flash in his mind, snapshots of quaint village life. He had stalked them, watched them for days, keeping them in sight while staying out of view himself. In the end, he had turned away when the pressure in his chest increased and made him feel like his heart was going to burst. It was similar to a feeling he’d had, early in his childhood -- a feeling that he thought he’d banished. The wicked craving for friendship.
Kanarrgo spends the entire day climbing the pillar, and as he does, he remembers clearly. A little girl, running by the sides of the rivers, fearless as he hopped from stone to stone. An elderly man, heaving his boat out in the water, morning after morning after morning, too old to be working, yet too young to sit still. A scene of laughter, sounds of saccharine and savoury flavours intermingling.
Where did they go, how did they die?
He does not remember.
Kanarrgo takes a break, once at the top of the pillar. The cloudless sky burns him. He turns his head to survey the ground below him, gripping the edge of the pillar so he isn’t blown off in the windless atmosphere. Force of habit.
There! A shadow, far away on the ground. Moving? He leans out farther, narrows his eyes. Could it be?... The thought that it could be someone that had gotten away, escaped, hits him. Do they not know that they aren’t safe, not around him, not anywhere? No matter.
The sword on his back becomes heavier, the cape around his shoulder constricting, as if coiled with anticipation. He stands up, swings himself over the pillar’s lip, and starts climbing down. His heart and mind are racing, but his movements are slow, sluggish almost.
He suddenly remembers, as he hangs in the air on one hand, a sudden, violent realisation. Their deaths. Starvation. Cries of hunger. No fish to be found, whatever small crops they farmed crumpled and dried beyond recognition, beyond repair.
Kanarrgo loses his hold. He tumbles down, falling through the abyss. Hours pass like minutes, minutes pass like seconds. Eventually he slams into the ground, body sore and broken, mind astray. Piece by piece, he picks himself back up.
There is nothing here. Must have been a trick of the light, his memories clawing their way to the surface.
- - - - - - -
Too soon -- too late -- Kanarrgo arrives at the end of the hallway. He stops before a mighty set of doors, feeling… something new. His heart is pounding, his skin clammy. A curious feeling, this fear. He’d been the cause of fear in other people, had seen its effects firsthand, but never felt it himself. Steeling himself, he draws his sword and stands tall. The doors open. Before them, he is but an ant.
Insignificant.
As Kanarrgo steps over the threshold, the floor transitions into the deepest of black. He doesn’t prowl now, reduced to a stiff walk -- an effect of the fear -- but his footsteps don’t echo like they did in the hallway. The void-like room stifles all. For a moment, he forgets where he is, who he is. Is this death? He can’t figure it out. Ironic, since he’d walked hand in hand with it for as long as he can remember.
He stops and closes his eyes, waiting for his sight to adjust to the darkness. An eternity passes before he opens them again. It’s still dark, but he can see better, even as the darkness is just as oppressive as when he first walked through the room. The sun, supposed to be in the middle of the room, flanked by blazing stars -- where is the light, the life? Nothing is like it’s supposed to be. Everything has changed.
The passing of time.
Moribund constellations mark the edge of his sight now, little dying pinpricks. They are poor shadows of the stars’ prime, but they are his only source of light.
The chamber should be bursting with life, alight with colour and sound, but there is nothing there. Time has left no skeletons behind. Only an empty void, filled with ghosts.
He wishes the stars were also gone. He would rather be fully shrouded in darkness, than have the constellations guide his sight to the middle of the room. Kanarrgo spends another eternity frozen in his shock, before collapsing to his knees. The sound is muffled in the empty room.
Desolation. Agony.
He was supposed to save them, prevent the cruel tick of time from stilling their hearts. His family -- his world -- gone. And with them, the sun. Kanarrgo doesn’t need to go back outside and stand below the sky to know that the sun is gone. The dark, cold room is proof enough.
He was supposed to prevent this. Was supposed to put a stop to the mining and burning, the endless construction.
Protector.
Everything he’d done, he’d done to protect. Instead, he had sealed their fates, stealing life with cold steel in an attempt to stave off the destruction. Had put one above all -- and now, even the one was gone.
Ragnarok.
Menace of life.
Ender of worlds.
Destroyer.