The Brink of Creation

Chapter 8 - The Commander of the South

I once feared death. Grief is temporary and so am I. As you all are. You must understand the reason I tell you this, for death approaches even now. Daily it looms closer to steal your breath. Every person should be aware of the presence of the end. Should I be afraid to step off the Brink? Fear is not for you. What are you so afraid of? Decomposition? You will leave behind everything you have. Do you fear being alone? So does everyone who has come after you. Fear is not for you. The embrace of death is so sweet.

Let's continue.

Commander Dosima, devastated by the news of her father's passing, slumped in her seat at the head of a table built directly into the jet floor of the mighty Deltafront Fort. The edge of her feldspar-clad foot was ironed solidly into the concrete channel between two of the dull dark crystal shards which lined the entirety of the most fortified structure in the southern wilds. The bolts in the plate were neatly spaced apart – the work of a master smith who proudly lifted this armor from the forge. The commander balanced her leg upon the other – desiring to grieve alone and forced to entertain her unwelcome guests in this tainted hour, she stoically twisted her limbs this way and that to ease the writhing within her gut.

Her arms, studded with lines of razing shark-teeth plucked from the beached skeletons of the elusive Tongue Sharks, ground their marks into the etched rests of her stone seat as they folded into each other. The circular stone chair, a symbol of Deltafront's forgotten past, had been carved from a well-used ship's stone anchor and given edges depicting the fishing myths of the Crystal Sea. The art on the sides of the seat, though worn, were hopeful tales no more. They showed a man crawling from the sea dressed with a decorative coat and feathered tricorn, and he was hauling a vivid gemwhale onto the shore towards a town being built, which would be called Deltafront. The seat, groaning from years of enduring the commander's teeth-laden limbs, was reaching the end of its life. The groaning was matched by the wounded voice of its furious owner.

"Twenty-seven."

The scathing voice echoed in the Great Hall of Deltafront Fort, positioned in the center of the Fort's ground level. A gentle sea breeze, brought in by the narrow defensive slits placed high above the heads of those who were present, pushed behind woven cloth flags which fluttered behind the breeze. Each of the flags hung from the top of the wall to halfway down, and they were rectangular, drawn to a fine point at the very end. They hung five and five, both groups decorated equally, on each side of the Hall. The first flag, closest to the Commander, was the flag of the Capitol. The Judgment Seat's flag was simple – pure white, with seven lines of night painted from the bottom of the flag, the first three increasing in height until the fourth line near the top of the flag, then the final three lines descending to match the first three. This was to represent the skyline of The Judgment Seat.

The second flag was the flag of Fortitude, a general of Light. Fortitude's flag was dark green, with a single brown arrow drawn to point to the sky. The center of the arrow was interrupted by a single small circle and a dot in the center, with two lines protruding horizontally to the edges of the flag, and another two lines protruding at an angle above those, also meeting the flag's edges. The arrow pointed to a design of bricks in a wall, the symbol of Fortitude. The arrow, circle, and lines were designed to show the constructed face of Fortitude.

The third flag, placed in the center of each of the longer walls of the Hall, had no color. It was pure white – the flag of Light. The flag was creased ten times, representing rays of pure light, but the creases did not meet in the center. The center was left empty, showing that Light was unseen. Ten plain white tassels hung from the bottom of the flag.

The fourth flag was that of the Funghilians. At its top was the familiar structure of a beige whitecap mushroom, with its gills converging to the center of the flag. The center of the flag was pure white, with ten lines of gills drawn towards it. The stalk of the mushroom bent and swayed down the sides of the flag, meeting at the bottom with an intricate display of earth-covered mycelium.