Post by Elizabeth of Chelms on Dec 26, 2013 20:12:42 GMT
An eerie wind blew through lifeless streets, lined with dead trees with crystal leaves. Doors hung open and creaked on their hinges, revealing still-crackling fires and abandoned meals. Violet banners emblazoned with grey skulls flapped in the wind, covered in a dusting of spring snow.
The Collis Scelerius rose up from the center of the city, and the Imperial Palace stood atop it. The walls would seem unguarded, to a cursory glance, but if one peered closer, they could see a sort of shimmering in the shadows, the faintest outline of an invisible presence. Spectral sentinels lined every wall, looking out on the city of the dead.
In the halls of the Palace, the last living man in Campus Scelerius lay prostrate before his Emperor and Pantokrator.
Gaius Ventinus could feel his heart beating furiously in his chest. He supposed it was appropriate. Of all the voices who had cried out for Sceleria's end, his had been the loudest. He had championed this mad crusade. Perhaps that was why he was the last one left. The last man to bear witness to the Second Cataclysm.
He could almost hear whispers in the shadows of the throne room. Almost. Had he not known better, he would have put down the half-noticed noises to his imagination. But he knew full well that they were very, terribly real.
He looked up at the empty throne, and for a moment, he thought he saw his emperor.
It was the last thing he ever saw.
