Shilfiell Nels Rada, shrine maiden turned ghost, looked out across the city of Sairaag.
Or rather the necropolis of Sairaag. Some she had heard had taken to calling it Dead Sairaag, though she could never bring herself to use that epithet herself. To her, it would always be her home Sairaag.
She supposed that was probably one reason she was still around even though she'd been one of the first to fall to the plague that later became known as White Burn.
It was little surprise that this was the only remaining bastion of civilization left. The people of Sairaag had always been survivors, having had to rebuild their city more than once. Still, this time was unlike all prior.
This time it was as though the gods themselves decided Sairaag shouldn't 'die'.
It, like all things, had started - or rather ended - with the Silence. From what she had heard from those that survived it, the Silence was as appropriate a name for whatever calamity hit. For one agonizing moment, the survivors would tell her, everything stilled. For that eternal moment, no sound could be heard or made. And then the moment passed and the world shattered.
Sometime afterward, after all life that had existed, no matter how large or small, dragon, mortal, or mazoku, had died, the sacred tree Flagoon, or rather a ghostly mirror of it, reappeared over the ruins of the city. With it came all those killed in Sairaag by either Copy Rezo or Phibrizzo - either before his 'death' or after his return.
She herself had simply woken one day to see the translucent image of Flagoon over head and her ghostly father nearby. That had been, to her best guess, just under a thousand years ago.
Rebuilding 'civilization' had been difficult, and they still had not been entirely successful. The first hundred or so years especially so, since no one within the city had a body. But, soon enough, the first of the others started to arrive. Mostly necropolitans, fleeing from other maddening undead, but some mummies, death knights, and other more exotic types had also come to the city. A few liches even moved to nearby asteroids and lent their aid to the fledgling necropolis. Slowly, it had been rebuilt. By the standards of the world before the plagues, Sairaag was now a booming metropolis.
Not everything went smoothly, of course. Many undead had hungers that simply could not be stated without the living, and had been driven quite mad because of it. Zangulus, a swordsman turned Death Knight she had met briefly when they both had been alive, had been the one who organized the town and led its defenders against the berserk undead that existed on beyond Sairaag.
And of course, not everyone in Sairaag agreed on what civilization was necessary. Despite the two or three liches who had been vital to their survival during the city's second century, the people, mostly ghost and necropolitans, had turned their backs on magic and education a few hundred years ago. Books were soon being burned in magical fires that required no air.
The liches had all left long before the first book burned - they had no need for a city that didn't need them, after all. The few dissenting voices, like herself and Eris, were ghosts now, and largely unable to look through books anyway. Zangulus had raised no hand to impede the rising anti-magic tide; he was more concerned with defending the city and leading the cult dedicated to his wife's god, the Monstrous Zoamelgustar.
"I hear Amelia is getting ready to leave."
Shilfiell nodded even as she turned to face Eris. The passing centuries has made them friends, even though they had fought in life. "Yes, she is." It was somewhat amazing to her how little a hindrance having one's planet being reduced to asteroids was for travel. At least, when one didn't need to breath. Even magic-less commoners could simply jump off one rock and 'float' to another. Of course, a good Raywing spell sped that process tremendously, and naturally ghosts and other incorporeal undead didn't even have to expend that much effort.
Eris stood next to Shilfiell and looked out over the city with her. "What do you think of it?"
"Of Amelia's portal?"
"Yes."
Shilfiell sighed. "I think she is tired of living in a truly dead city. I think she is tired of seeing ghost of the people she cared about around every corner; the kind that aren't really there. I think the possibility of leaving is the only thing that has kept her going after the Silence hit."
"We don't have to stay ourselves, you know," Eris pointed out.
Shilfiell frowned and looked at Eris for a moment, reading her ghostly posture carefully. "What's Zangulus done now?"
"Ordered everyone in town to worship Zoamelgustar."
Shilfiell's frown changed from one of dread to one of confusion, "And how is that any different from the last three times he gave that order. He does this every hundred years, and the people will pay just as much attention to him this time as they have every time before - none."
It was Eris' turn to frown. "It's only been fifty years, hasn't it?"
Shilfiell paused for a moment, looking out into the void. It was hard to tell time when nothing terrestrial really changed, but she had learned something of astrology and navigation growing up in a port town. The stars could still be used to tell time. It only took a moment to do the calculations in her head. "Nope. It's been ninety-five years since his last call to worship."
Eris relaxed. "Oh. Goody. I'm going paranoid."
Shilfiell giggled at Eris' pout. A few moments later Eris joined in.
And in Sairaag, life - or un-life - went on.
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(Posted Sat, 06 Nov 2004 15:15)
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