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Cozmic

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End of Days Story Contest

Post 1: Information
Post 2-4: Aeraie's piece
Post 5-9: Delnaz's piece

29-Jan-2012 07:10:07 - Last edited on 05-Jun-2012 04:31:45 by Cozmic

Cozmic

Forum Moderator Posts: 16,435 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

.Snow Globe

We were dead before we were ever alive.

For so long, my people have built our city. We have built it out of the ash, generation after generation adding new elements each time. We have built it to be the most beautiful thing in the entire Globe, we have built it to be the only thing in the Globe, from the smooth surface of the glass walls all the way around. We’ve been so proud, you see, to be able to create such a place with our disability.

We were born without eyes. All of us. We have been forever cursed to live as blind artists, unable to see our work stretched out before us. We have been cursed to never be able to see our own faces, we have been cursed to never see the faces of our loved ones, and we have been cursed to be unable to cry. We only know of sight because it is something our ancestors had, an **** story that has been passed down through the years. I myself doubt the existence of such a thing as sight; there is no plausible explanation of how we could have once seen but have now been blinded.

All that we know is encased in a glass dome, measured out in our largest unit of inches. Usually there is snow beneath our feet, but occasionally the snow whips out from underneath and rains down upon our heads. Occasionally, when the snow falls, we as people are whipped around in a phenomenon we call an earthquake. Our buildings never move, but we do and the snow does. We always recover, though, and we go back to building our cities in the snow.

All that we know is being destroyed. It started off like one of the usual earthquakes, yet it was different. Only some of the snow flurried around our heads, not all of it, and something seemed wrong, as if the ground was shifting sideways. That’s when we heard the bang, the shattering of the glass dome that surrounded us for so long. We held on to the edges of our buildings as we found ourselves in a suddenly vexatious position, tilted on our side.

29-Jan-2012 07:10:07 - Last edited on 01-Apr-2012 06:46:42 by Cozmic

Cozmic

Forum Moderator Posts: 16,435 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Our air was suddenly replaced with a lighter, more poisonous substance. We found that our clothes, our hair, and our bodies were the only things that had retained our air, and that everything else was replaced by the poisonous gas. I took the front part of my shirt and fumbled with one hand as I slipped it over my nose, eager to breathe in the last bits of air that remained around me. With the other hand, I held on to our tallest spire, the one we named Hephaestus. My head began to pound with an intense ringing. Everything I was feeling right then at that moment, from distress to hunger, was magnified. The pit of my stomach became all expansive and I started to perspire profusely. My breath folded in and out of my chest like tiny paper cranes. I was losing conscientiousness, losing my grip on my cracked perspective of the world.

Whether it was the sweat on my hands, the lack of air, my head, or my tiny heart that did me in, I began to slip. I tried to hold on for as long as I could, but my will was all too soon not enough.

I let go.

----

29-Jan-2012 07:11:21 - Last edited on 01-Apr-2012 06:47:20 by Cozmic

Cozmic

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I began to fall.

It was that moment that I realized something strange was happening to me, to my body. I put my hands up to my eye sockets and discovered that they were no longer sockets, but rather filled with something. Eyes. I separated the skin over them with my fingers; I opened my nascent eyes.

The first thing I saw was my own body. I was floating out of it, separating from it. I had short, dark brown hair and a sturdy build; my skin was of a pale, lifeless color. I did*’t think I was beautiful, but rather it was beautiful to see me.

As my body fell, I remained suspended in space. I turned my head and looked up, up to the city I had spent the entire span of my life building. The first thing I saw was Hephaestus. It towered above the other buildings with a skinny frame that bulged a bit in the middle. After the bulge, a thin, silver point rose from the top. The building had a bluish tint in the lighting, and it was green at the bulge. There was a thick, black band that encompassed the surface area just before the bulge. There was a single, shining red light just underneath the black bulge; the only light that came from the city. The rest of the light poured in from the area outside the globe, the area we never knew to exist. In that moment, I knew that building was the most pulchritudinous sight I would ever see.

I guess it was then that I realized I only had seconds to live. It seems greedy, but I wanted to remain in that all seeing state forever. I did not want to die, I did not want to lose it all when I had just begun to see what I had been missing all these years. My mind could not decide if it was depressed or amazed. I did I sort of flip in the air, looking downward this time instead of upward.

29-Jan-2012 07:11:21 - Last edited on 01-Apr-2012 06:47:35 by Cozmic

Cozmic

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My wife was ten feet below where I was. For the first time in our twenty years of marriage, I saw the woman I loved. She had this deep red hair, pale skin just like me, and she was quite thin, just as I had remembered her. When she saw me, she smiled. She smiled with those deep red lips, little dimples catching on the sides of each cheek, white teeth shining in between. And that smile – that smile made me feel complete. It made me whole. For the first time, I felt satisfied, and for the first time, a tear dribbled down my cheek. Her seeing spirit faded away; I knew inside that her body had hit the ground, and I also knew that I had less than a second before I joined her in that other place. The corners of my mouth danced upwards into a smile as a last thought ran through my head: We were alive before we were forever dead.

29-Jan-2012 07:12:07 - Last edited on 18-Apr-2012 19:01:31 by Cozmic

Cozmic

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--------------------- Delnaz ----------------------
1st Place (tied), The King is Dead Story Contest

A throng of people crowded about the scene, their figures clad with black apparel. Dark headdresses fell down upon the soft faces of women while cowls and hoods were pulled over the irregular faces of men. Each member of the aggregation held petite candles in their left hands, lighting the dire evening aglow.

Muffled cries and wails echoed through the night as the crowd made way for the six bearers of the gilded casket. Roses, tulips, and dandelions were strapped to the surface of the coffin and even with death being so close, the fair aroma of flowers drifted through the open air.

When the carriers finally reached the oak platform that was designated in the center of the gathering, the casket was set down and all six men departed besides one. The last man cleared his throat, fiddling with his fingers as they entwined with one another. He stepped before a great podium that was embellished with gems, flora, and gold.

The man’s eyes remained closed for a long while, tears delicately streaming down his cheeks like a caterpillar crawling down a tree. His hands moved upward toward his countenance, brushing the black bangs of hair away from his face. Long eyelashes adorned his almond-shaped eyes, and when those orbs finally opened, blue irises stared outward at the crowd.

29-Jan-2012 07:12:08 - Last edited on 05-Jun-2012 04:23:32 by Cozmic

Cozmic

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“Hello to you all. Today is…” the prince paused, his hands beginning to sweat. “Today is both an honorable and loathsome day to be a citizen of this establishment. Your king, and my father, is now planted within that prison of a coffin behind me, lifeless. He did not die fighting for his acclaimed homeland amidst a war. He did not die fighting for his people, nor his children. He did not die battling a dragon until his final breath. No, he did not die of any of those legendary things… he died of an illness that struck him at his elder age,” the prince paused once again, sniffling as he brought forth a handkerchief from his pocket. “My father was a coward.”

Every peasant gasped. Whispers bounced off the vocal chords of each civilian as soldiers of the city looked on with perplexity. “None of you saw what his last days were like. He would struggle to breathe, and because of that, not once did he utter my name. Not once did he reach out for me, for he succumbed to the slumber of death, not knowing that he would never awaken again.

One time, when I found that he was not asleep, I entered his chambers and handed him a small mirror. He glanced at the reflection of himself and then looked over at me, glaring. He gritted his teeth and threw the mirror across the room.” The prince laughed, wiping the tears from his face with the handkerchief. “That told me that he was sickened by himself, sickened by what he had done with his life. He had slept with a wench to create me, and then had finished his life off with a despicable rule over an ignominious city! He was not fair to any of you, but I will be! I will be a greater king than my father ever hoped to be… and I will lead you until a blade pierces my heart, not until a disease shatters my mind.”

29-Jan-2012 07:13:04 - Last edited on 05-Jun-2012 04:24:06 by Cozmic

Cozmic

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The prince stepped away from the podium, adjusting the dark collar of his black silk tunic. He stared aimlessly at the assembly of men and women before kicking the podium off the platform and onto the ground below. People screamed. “Have a nice day,” the prince mumbled, meandering off the stage. A group of soldiers surrounded him, guiding him through the throng until they reached the castle gates.

This was his city now.

Two days passed before the poltroon of a monarch was buried. The prince stood before the burial site out in the fields on the outskirt of his city, observing as the casket was lowered into the black abyss that would forever be his father’s home in the morrow to come. He watched as the peasants lifted their spades and began to toss the gravel back into the idle chasm, the dirt engrossing the tomb in mere seconds.

A man embellished by red satin robes with gold trimming approached the prince. A solid white tunic could be seen underneath the attire, partially obscured by the royal colors of the garment the royal advisor wore. “I see you are taking your father’s death well,” the advisor said, holding a bounded papyrus scroll in his hands. The advisor’s head was perfectly bald and his sagacious features bore wisdom that most men could not define.

“Your sarcasm astounds me,” the prince scoffed, his sapphire irises staring intently at his father’s entombment. “I’m glad he’s gone. He was a disgraceful bauble to this city.”

“Why do you think so?” The advisor asked.

29-Jan-2012 07:13:24 - Last edited on 05-Jun-2012 04:24:41 by Cozmic

Cozmic

Forum Moderator Posts: 16,435 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“He was an assimilationist. The culture of man has now long been forgotten due to his worthless idiosyncrasies. He found himself to be a giant among ants, but in fact, he was an ant with the rest of them. He had dreams for this city. Dreams that could have turned this world upside-down, but he never got around to them. He was a dreamer, not a dynamo. He will not be remembered in history as the one who industrialized civilization or the one who conquered the known world. He will be known as another accessory in the pages of a text book,” the prince explained, glancing sideward at his advisor.

“You do not regret ending his life?” The advisor inquired, fiddling with the scroll in his hand.

“No,* the prince declared.

“I thought so. Guards!” The advisor called, a duo of armed officials snatching up the prince’s arms from behind.

The prince looked left and then right, his eyes enlarging until they locked on to the pupils of his advisor. He stared for a prolonged amount of time before he uttered one word: “Traitor.”

“No sir. You are an apostate to your father’s rule, and you deserve to be dealt with… violently,” the advisor said, smirking. He began to rip the binding of the scroll, casually opening its papyrus wrinkles. “This scroll reads that I am steward so long as your father dies. You have no claim to the throne, only an allegation to a swift death.”

“You can’t do this!” The prince screamed, the guards beginning to drag him away from the burial, his legs bouncing off the ground as they did so.

“Oh, but I can. Avarice is a trait so common amongst the minds of young men. Yet the youth tend to forget that power is not always the dictating force; an artifice can be just as effective as an assassination of a ruler.”

29-Jan-2012 07:13:52 - Last edited on 05-Jun-2012 04:25:11 by Cozmic

Cozmic

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.

29-Jan-2012 07:14:10

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