Særima

Særima. Place of beginnings and ruins. The city where I emerged like an orphan from long exile. Sitting between the vast ocean of Tam’ir and the Great Emptiness – the desert with no end; my home, my city. Caught in the nightmare grip of those who do not belong. Those who came from elsewhere; from the watery abyss, in their black ships. Took what was ours; and drove my people across this void, this silence – to this ruinous wasteland of leprous decay, this rotting jungle of filth and corruption we now call home.

Maybe we are all orphans; all exiles, in one way or another. The last remnant of a Lost Kingdom by the sea; our lives and memories lost among broken spires and fallen walls. Yes, even now, as I sit here in this iron black prison, lost among the stone tombs of Ala’mbra, I remember my ancient home: the Palace of Ta’rif; the golden spires of the Mu’da Fir; the glowing cobbles of the Forbidden Temples, where the Drakomir worshiped the Old Gods. Like a fine diamond set on the crown of the Ausländian Empire it was the refuge for all the oppressed and forgotten peoples who’d escaped the floods of the Long Sun. All gone; all in ruins… I will not forget her; my city, ever.

The debris of past worlds, conflicts and wars, the temptation to conquer and dominate… forever we fall before such ruins of mind and intellect, our desires riven of their power to sustain us give way to the lusts of fame and glory, corruption and decay. We darken the past with the stench of our broken promises, the covenants we hold against the day of judgment. Like children we break the toys of foreign climes, cities and habitations of beauty and splendor, till nothing remains but the obscurity of things. Emptied of her people and her pride, ashes and flames; bitter conquest and blacker nights she enters the tenebrous shores of oblivion. Unable to defy time, mere playthings for the gods of chaos and destruction, we seek to keep at bay those that would deign to kill us; never vanquished, yet always at war…