Absent Conscience
Glory is fickle. In a time when the streets get bloodier AFTER a war’s end, and life’s riches are secured by a vice grip around your opponent’s throat, only the most supremely gifted at survival have a chance at discovering their door to glory.
By the heartbeat of this city, merit was plied by the ability to kill, and survival to fight again is the moral credo. High society was not decided by “nobility” as such, those days are over, and have been forgotten about for at least 750 years.
The name of the game was clear: Kill or be killed. This is the story of those ferocious creatures who dared.
KAY BACKWATER PRESENTS:
ROAR! THE WAR DRUM’S END: ISOLATED INCIDENT
A submission for Iron Age Media’s Prompt: The Acropolis
The greatest fears of the citizenry were brought to pass. The war with the last haughty dominion that offered some semblance of civilization has ended, and with it the last chance of being at the mercy of order — righteous or otherwise —, has turned to dust.
“Mama, I’m scared.” lamented the shy girl, her mother nothing more than a dejected willow that ineffectually guarded her dear girl with hollow arms to match her demeanor and attitude to these developments. A similarly hollow guardian, the father, stood at the entrance to their dilapidated, steel garage they called home with a metal rod in hand, awaiting for the potential arrival of anything from wildlife, to the savages that ran the whole world now. Both were hostile, and both would easily slaughter the man and his family if they happened by. Due to technology from the same industrial age that practically granted this whole world its present shell, the cover of darkness would not be an ally in this instance. Man or beast hadn’t feared the dark as such for several thousand years, for every heartbeat were a pair of eyes that could pierce the night, even among the downtrodden such as this man and his internally vacant family.
There were millions of other families just like this one, scattered all over the ecumenopolis of Roar, with the least living in the old military quarter 500 miles from the capital. Nature had made its own strides to reclaim lost territory in the past 750 years, but the metal shell provided by great minds from centuries ago was sturdy, and would take three times longer to peel completely.
The most dangerous place to be in Roar was towards its own beauty. The more spires or richly decorated centers formerly for either administration or religion and the higher the likelihood of witnessing a steel mace plowing into a skull.
No, in this time, “safety” as ephemeral of a word as that was in this era, was paired with rotting pavilions, trash, rotting machinery, wildlife, and the subterranean.
With the war over, the strongest faction of Roar known as the Dead Air Bully Pulpit would be returning to the capital, and the de-facto protection from “foreign” influences that are now extinct were still hungry for mayhem, as was their nature, much to the chagrin of the weaker citizenry, and rival domestic factions.
First came the vanguard, the ones who couldn’t bare going without bloodshed for extended periods of time, and so they rushed back to Roar as quickly as possible, in hopes of finding hapless pedestrians on the outskirts that they could kill.
Then came the puerile core of this army, followed by the straggling flank, who were nothing more than chasers, newbies who hoped to get within the bully pulpit’s good graces, but were too weak to provide meaningful challenge on their own.
A few of the melancholic families had a secret however. They may have been weak, but some of them were crafty, hiding in abandoned substations underground that were considered lost by groups such as the Bully Pulpit, but were also separated by tunnels, whose access to each other had as of yet remained uninterrupted by either decay or warfare.
Only the boldest families ever considered reactivating these substations, at the risk of alerting their frothing harassers to their specific area. The one saving grace remained that a Planet-wide city such as Roar held many hiding spots, but like moths to a flame, this could easily become a death-sentence for the same reason ants are attracted to beads of sugar.
Only days before the Dead Air Bully Pulpit resettled in the same acropolis that ancient artists and statemen called home once upon a time, the same father that had guarded his family with a metal rod, now exchanged ideas and loose materials with a few of the other families of the military quarter, a hidden ambition sealed behind his sunken face, until now.
“What if we used the substations against them? Laid a trap?”
One week Later…
It would be the front of the vicious pack that was the most dangerous due to their insatiable bloodlust among an already bloodthirsty group with the most prominent streak of murder. Enterprising farmers and prospectors of the older districts of Roar had already met the fury of the returning marauders, resulting in hundreds killed already, punished for their cheek in living in areas furthest from capital, but not realizing when the rabid animals would twist homeward on their round-trip.
From out of the desolation of their sharpened footprint, they arrived like giant crabs emerging onto a beach from a continental shelf submerged under a bloody sea.
Of the homesick horde, two at the helm of this hierarchy stood out, both Male, cracked obsidian adornment lining their frames.
“The itch flummoxes this one Brother Blade. Pray tell, when do I crack a skull next?” said the war-starved barbarian, his teeth hungrily peeling apart the severed arm of a young farmer.
“I stand just as impatiently as you do Brother Blunt.” Said Brother Blade, who popped an eyeball into his mouth like a grape.
“Now that the religion of war has ended, we ought to do as our blood dictates and pick a more ‘secular’ pastime. Roar has plenty of flesh. Some would say…”
“Too much.” both Brothers said in unison.
A few weeks after the warband returned to their city of rust and blood, the acropolis which housed their seat of power was turned into a sprawling colosseum of non-stop action. Every so often a stranger who lived on the lower levels would be kidnapped, and by hook or crook they would end up in this open-air colosseum, as food for the whole Dead Air Bully Pulpit, who were all present from the world over to celebrate their hard-fought victory with even more gore.
“STAB HIS EYES OUT!”
“TENDERIZE HER SKULL!”
“RIP OUT HIS HEART!”
“Colosseum” was a somewhat inaccurate descriptor, for it implies an audience that participated with their cheers and jeers alone, but as far as this never-ending torrent of broken bones and gray matter was concerned, the adulation came primarily from participants who had just “won” a battle of their own. There were so many bodies that they were packed in like a can of sardines, that’s how much blood flow persisted. At all times.
Eventually the hubris of this iron-state, - if it could be called a State at all - would be met with a bitter truth: there was always a bigger fish.
Being the underclass progeny of a hyper-homicidal tribe came with its advantages. Of them all, being underestimated was perhaps the biggest of all the catbird seats this desolate remnant of what was had to offer. The child who called out to her mother out of fear now serenaded the father with anticipatory glee.
“Papa, you did it! It will work won’t it, Papa?” said the child brightly.
She was met with a simple smile from her father.
A few wires cut and then tied together later, the substation beneath the family’s garage had been activated - or rather - rigged, with blinking lights and the hum of energy baring the same fruit as either an apple tree, or a volcanic eruption, all depending on intent and force of will.
In coordination with a few of the other less fortunate by way of their substations, the ‘neighborhood’ had received enough energy to beam with vitality, with everything from broken weapons factories, to food stores being replenished by seemingly magical means as far as these downtrodden were concerned. All they knew was that a previously untapped machine created by their ancestors worked again, and it worked from very deep within the ground beneath their feet.
They knew far too well however, that these were not the fruits of an immediate harvest. Instead, this bounty would be used as a sacrifice, with one core ingredient still missing.
“It’s morning. They will be here by next twilight. We must leave.” said the father.
And so the father had led his family, along with a caravan of some other families down a passageway that had been painstakingly cleared for a single purpose: get these helpless vagrants away from the Dead Air Bully Pulpit.
As anticipated, they arrived like Knights wreathed in platinum hellfire, carrying blades no less sharper than a razor’s edge.
“It’s like I told you Brother Blunt! More lambs to the slaughter.” Brother Blade said, practically salivating at the thought of murdering more helpless drifters.
“But where are the lambs?” Brother Blunt questioned.
For them, their only answer would be tragedy.
Reactivating such ancient machinery was tantamount to bringing the deathmatch to their neck of the woods after all, but not in the way they thought.
With the decadent age that proceeded this one of strife, the knowledge of how to maintain such technology was lost. Reactivating any of the old power plants or their substations was always a risk, but one that ramps up considerably, as long as one part was stripped from the intricate emplacements of a bygone era.
The father’s hands periodically bounced the metal rod between one another, as an inflammatory tremor shook the tunnel the caravan travelled within.
“It is finished.”
Spoiled children getting their comeuppance wasn’t the least bit harsh enough to describe what had just occurred. The offending agitants were routed by way of a nuclear explosion strong enough to incinerate the entire military quarter, cause a chain reaction of nuclear explosions that lit up the acropolis like a ray of holy light, and the tunnel which led the families away from the Dead Air Bully Pulpit had been sealed shut like a firmament between worlds.
For no soul can escape Roar, once its metal jaws have tugged against your flesh, and brought you into the confines of its eternal deathmatch. The only way to win the game, was not to play at all.
Years later, all grown up, the little girl who had watched as her father gave life to a whole new generation of civilized life, looked upon the ever-burning embers of the old acropolis. She prayed to the burning skeleton, celebrating the end of the last war, her father’s boldness, and the return of conscience.
Never again would mankind be served such a ruinous card. Their glory was now eternal.