In the Ruins of Sébiye

There was nothing quite like the smell of charred flesh and bone. It was eerily familiar. It smelt like the tanners on Apakwai, or the butchers by the West Gate. It smelt like a pig, roasting over a fire. It smelt like the fishmongers and cargo chips of the great port.

There were other smells, too. Burnt wood. Burnt cloth. Burnt grass.

As Jelanea stepped through the streets, he couldn’t help but feel ashamed.

Is this the empire I fight for? The one that promised peace, and unity, and dignity for all? The one that supposedly followed the tenets of the Church of Dusk, those tenets which guided one to seek compassion and wisdom in all places?

What did Abidemi mean? In that last moment, when she clung to life despite the wound through her chest, when she promised me that everything would make sense soon, was she lying?

Jelanea stepped over the broken wheel of a cart.

What was Inaya thinking? The airships were never meant to be used on the front. The whole point of working with Kofao was to have both plausible deniability, and a way to end the conflict as fast as possible with minimal casualties. The Empress will be furious, I’m sure. If her reputation is to be believed.

And what about those mercenaries? Clearly they were trying to protect the city, but using something like… that–

He looked at the colossal construct, casting a terrible shadow over the city. The strange threads of metal, now bent in horrible proportions, formed a terrible approximation of flesh. Streaks of glowing red, the same hue as fresh blood but shining far brighter, flowed across its otherwise lifeless body. Its eyes, empty, black, shells, absent of light, gazed towards the east.

Jelanea shuddered.

All these questions. So few answers.

The sound of a man, choking a short distance from him, rung out through the smoke. Jelanea searched for the sound, edging deeper into the rubble and ash as he did. He spotted a glimmer of movement, caught under a collapsed house.

“Anyone! Help!” Jelanea called out, searching for help to lift the man out of the rubble.

“HELP!” He yelled, louder this time.

The man, held beneath layers of debris, was gasping at air. He didn’t have long.

Jelanea looked down. He had to try. Piece by piece, he hauled chunks of stone and brick and carpentry off of the mountain.

He kept yelling; “HELP! PLEASE! HELP!”

His arms started aching. His shoulders starting giving out. The pile of rubble above the man seemed barely any smaller than it was a moment ago.

“SOMEONE, HELP!”

He kept working. It became a strange, terrible loop. One moment he was screaming for help, the next he was tearing every muscle in his body to try and excavate the man. The ash and smog clung to his face, beads of sweat and tears cascading down his furrowed brow. The man’s breath’s grew thinner, his voice more pinched. The mountain of debris became a hill, a mound.

Jelanea called out to the man, his voice torn, “HOLD ON”

Eventually all that was left above the man was a few scraps of wood, and just as Jelanea felt his back give way, the last one was torn off. He stared down.

The man’s lifeless eyes stared back at him.