I don't write things like this much, but I sort of like this one.
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The lava froths, sending a fresh billow of steam to the surface. For a moment, the white-robed figure is hidden behind the cloud, but soon it reappers. The steam boils forth from one of the many craters that pitt the charred, barren, landscape, rending it almost uncrossable, even by the tough adveturers who bost their exploits in nearly every bar.
The people never know that the desarted place is the sole barrier protecting them from a place they only saw in their blackest dreams. The ruler who presids over that place is old, old as the very mountains that dot the ashen ground.
None that live there know his name, nor his race. They don't even know if he exists at all, or is just a lie from the mouths of the black-hided beasts who carry out the 'king's' orders. But ruled they are, the people.
The sun is unknown to them, as its bright, lifegiving, rays are unable to penetrate the wall of smoke hanging over the grim city. Children are born there, pale, wriathlike things, never to see sky nor grass. They will grow there, and they will die there, every one of them. Each will mine a little more rock, each will carry a little more stone, each will make the kingdom a little bit richer, a little bit more powerful.
For this is Hell.
Not the Hell from myth, not the place where those who performed evil deeds were tormented.
The is Hell for the people, the rulers as greedy as the Devil, as snake-tounged as the king of evil Himself. This is Hell on earth, for what else could it be, really? Joy is known there not, the luckless souls whose home that is are laborers.
Death visits there often, taking the old, the injured, the weak. The lucky ones. For life is a place of blood and sweat, tears and horror and suffering.
21-Jan-2007 14:08:53
