I wake. Is this the real world? Maybe I'm just having the worst hangover.
I can make out a fireplace oddly shaped, carved stone is etched into the unholy maw of some monster, Impressions of what could be coffins are stacked in slots along the walls but details are smudged like charcoal.
I push myself into a sitting position looking around with incruity, this isn't familiar at all, I remember walking the catacombs of Rome, and then darkness.
I rub the throbbing bump on the side of my head and wince at the flare of pain.
Something hits the ground with a sound like gunfire near to me and I look into the darkness eyes wide.
I sigh, just a loose stone I guess.
I get up slowly with the support of the wall and stride through a narrow passageway with a celling extending into forever; the corridor goes on for some time, the sides dotted with curious but scribbles in a language I cannot decipher. Eventually I come to a black door the width of my hand, the walls stretch into infinity, I lay my hand on the door and push with all my might.
It swings away, light as a feather; I stagger forward and frown at the door as it closes with a resounding boom.
The biggest cavern I have seen, the celling stretches into infinity, the sides disappear into the darkness, the other side of the cavern is so far away I can register the curvature of the earth. Moonlight rains from above in diamond rays filling everything with eerie luminance light like a silver candle in the vacuum of space. Shrouded stalactites the size of skyscrapers stretch out of the darkness like the maw of some gigantic beast, stretching below us a winter forest fills soil, but look a little closer and it's easy to see that no bird will chirp on its branches again, the trees are thin and spindly and once great oaks sag under their own weight, black shrivelled grass crumbles to ash underfoot. Far in the distance the view is bent by stalactites the size of mountains their tops dusted with ice and snow. The jungle encircles a golden network of lights bright enough to match the moon, a megacity bigger than London, taller than New York. It stretches out below us, its silver light screaming out of every inch and orifice. I can see palaces with their spires fashioned in the style of claws, skyscrapers corkscrew into the sky like drill picks jutting from the centre of the earth. Dotted around these are blue pyramids made of something that burns the eye, shops, warehouses, halls, walls and things that twist the brain and bewitch the eye, towers summited with beacons of frozen light, every building seems an architectural impossibility built from this bronze matter. A stone path of painted gold snakes its way around impassable stalactites tipped with silver snow and slowly makes its way across the forest on its path to the city.
I stand a figure on the edge of this, less than an ant against the background of an Olympus.
YOU ARE READING
Moon Requiem
Aventură"The jungle encircles a golden network of lights bright enough to match the moon, a megacity bigger than London, taller than New York. It stretches out below us, its silver light screaming out of every inch and orifice. I can see palaces with t...
