Submission (500 words, exactly
)
The walls, before sheets of white marble, were scorched with soot and ash, long seeping trails of crimson running down from their crests. The streets, before smoothest brick, bright and warm, were scuffed with muddy bootprints, weighted with corpses and the oozing runoff of death. The air, before crisp and clean, ringing with song and the hawkers’ cries, was now choked with smoke and rent by a thousand thousand death rattles and the keening wails of a thousand thousand weeping widows and orphans. But there at the top, in the mountain of polished stone that was the
Supreme Oracle’s retreat, there was a sense of calm.
Standing there in the gentle breezes, above the pain and blood and shrieks of the city below, an aging man wearing a winged crown looked out over the smoldering city, the last
conquest of his long reign. His mismatched eyes, one green and one blue, raked back and forth over the ruins, taking in his
legacy. And then a single tear gathered at the corner of his green right eye.
Reaching up, he wiped the drop of moisture away, and then stretched his arm over to rest on the shoulder of the younger man standing beside him. With his other hand, he gestured toward the city, toward the fires and screams.
“I
adopted you out of this, Faris,” the man began, halting as a racking cough tore its way through his chest.
“I know, father,” Faris answered.
As the man finally regained himself, steadying his breathing, he fixed Faris with a cold look. “Yes, you know, boy. But you know I will say it anyway then, yes?”
Faris’ eyes narrowed for the merest fraction of a moment, and then he nodded.
“Good. Now, at the end, it is right to do things properly.” The man nodded to himself, as though he had convinced himself of some necessary truth. “Twenty years ago, I killed my sons and daughters. They were good children, but their ideas were
poisoned by a woman who never could bring herself to see the hard truths. Foolish wife. I killed them, and I took you from this place, took your raggedy orphan self and made you my own. Why did I do that?”
“To continue the work,” Faris answered flatly.
“Yes! To continue the work! This was the last city. And that means we have done what no king or emperor has ever done before; we have made peace. I am dying, but when I go there will be only you. No brother to tear at your empire. No remaining lineages to challenge your claim. Only you, and there will be eternal peace.”
Faris looked out on the burning city, and then on his adoptive father. The man was old, frail. Faris made a choice and three seconds later there was a wet crunch on the smooth bright bricks below.
“Long live Faris,” the emperor said under his breath, staring down on the winged crown skipping its way down the street.