Escaping the End of the World

Prologue

          The waterfalls of Elseron are beautiful in the late spring.  It is for now was the only time you could observe through the spray of the water hitting the rocks falling of the new water of spring brought down from the north's great melt each year, which, when accompanied by sounds of the great oaks and spruces whose leaves shook and shimmied in the warm breeze carried up from the north, there was no scene more beautiful in all of Eltharonn.   Here, in the summer months, you would find all sorts of kind folk fishing from the rushing river, or young folk playing in the falls' shallow parts.

          Yet there was one scene more beautiful still in this area. If you stood upon the ridge from which the water fell, you could see the whole of my country, Eltharonn's full beauty. You could see her beautiful towers and pastures, her people moving about the country, her vast networking of rivers from Lelthaaris to our capital of Homeronn, and her horizon on which the sun sets the most beautifully in all the realm.  

         Tourists flooded in from all over Nuveria to catch a glimpse of the legendary view, but today it was just me here. That was likely because it was the end of the world. Everyone else was probably with the ones they loved right now, but I was an orphan slave girl.  I had no family and my friends were all lost or dead.   My hand rushed to the nape of my neck instinctively beneath the tangles of my long hair where my brand sat, a bubbly scar of my past as I stood there thinking about that day in Homeronn...

            It started as a quiet day.  Business was bustling in the bazaar as usual, us slaves working away to clean the streets or sweep the shops--or what have you--until the announcement was shouted from atop the citadel of Homeronn.  I could remember it all clearly.  I was sweeping the streets when it all happened.

          The sound of the Magistrate's voice had bounced off of every tree and every building and resonated in the ears of all the people.  "People of Homeronn, children of Saeressia, citizens of Nuveria...it is with a heavy heart that I announce that our days are to come to an end."  The Magistrate's voice echoed throughout the world,  "Only three day's time it has been that our scientists discovered a rock in space almost half the size of Nuveria herself, and it is my sorry duty that I must announce that we have no measures with which to combat the rock.  When this rock impacts Nuveria, all we know will come to an end.  Go to your loved ones, cherish them, and all you hold dear in the coming year, for within twelve months this stone will hit our planet and end all life as we know it.  All citizens, I repeat, go to your loved ones and leave the slaves to run the city in your absence.  Fondest regards from your Lord Magistrate Ryael Elseryll."

            There was a moment of absolute silence before the streets broke into madness.  All of the shoppers dropped their baskets, strewing fruit and food over streets as the people ran in every which way like a few thousand of scurrying ants.  Homeronn's perfectly structured, routine world was disrupted forever and none of us knew what we would turn to.   

          "The realm is lost!"

          "The Goddess has abandoned us!"

            We could hear in the crowd as the chaos ran in the streets.

           Us slaves, those of us who were out on the streets sweeping, battled the threat of being trampled, and a few of us were.  Their screams of agony were snuffed out quickly from the pounding feet of the elven people.  Those of us that were working inside with shop-keepers were safe for the moment before the stores were raided in the coming hours.  Those of us who were still caught in the bazaar after the bulk of the crowd had disbursed were murdered out of spite or beaten brutally. 

          Me and my only friend, Kal, stuck together--as close as we could be.  He was one of the only people who had stuck by my side through everything.  Through the beatings and the whippings, and the threat of slaves being relocated if we formed a bond with each other; through all of that, he saw my health first.  He called me by nicknames; calling me Lyssa or Lys in conversation, unlike anyone had before...But when the streets ran quick with people he was in a shop, and I was in the crowd.  It was like a surging river whose current I could not combat.  "No! Kal!  Kal!"  I screamed, tears of fear rolling down my face.

          "Alyssa!"  He had shouted back, reaching for me from the doorway of the shop he was stuck in.  "Lyssa!"

          But the current of the crowd was far too powerful.  It dragged me along the city streets toward the exit, dropping me off a small distance from the gates.  I feared for my friends that I knew deep down I would never see again.  I had hidden in an empty house for a while until the streets cleared of the mass panic before I had run back up the street into the bazaar to look for Kal, to find him and flee the city with him so that we may be able to live the rest of short time together...but the streets were emptied of people, leaving it strewn with baskets and food, splattered with the blood of the unfortunate...the blood of...

           Kal was nowhere to be found and did not answer to my hushed calls.  I paced up and down the streets, contemplating the possibilities.

         And then I came back to the gates.  There they stood, looming over me.  I gazed up at the steel studded beams, embroidered with gold and other precious metals; the sigil of the Stag and Sun upon the gate.  My heart beat hard in my chest as I approached the door which was cracked open enough for my escape.

          That was when I decided I'd travel the realm, no, all of Nuveria to see all of its most beautiful sights, and escape my fate.  I slipped out of the front gates in all of the madness.  None of the guards remained at their post, probably going to see their loved ones, or combat the madness by the Magistrate's orders.  He always loved to order people around. 

           I understood then the frivolity of it all.  There was no way to reverse the hand of nature anyhow, so I might as well enjoy it for the eleven months that all things will remain in existence. 

          So here I stood now, my bare feet in the lukewarm water of the falls, the warm breeze gracing my face, throwing my long tangled blonde hair into the wind, my slave skirt dampened by the running water.  My eyes shut, I listened to the roaring of the falls and the every now and then muffled screaming of an airship from high above.  Sighing, I opened them and started up the path to the top of the falls.  The falls were everything I had heard about and more from the stories when I was a slave.  I only had some three hundred days left...I have to make them count.