OverconfidentMagi
Laugh Like You've Won Always
THE DARK CITY
A desolate wasteland, burnt charred ground and fiery toxic sky stretching as far as the eye can see. And towering above it all is a massive black tree, its bark as withered and cracked as the ground it has pushed aside to make room for its expansive roots. A figure stands just on the edge of this ancient tree's cast shadow, so that none of the sun's blood-tinted lights touches him. He is tall and covered from head to toe by a long black cloak that drags across the earth, but two long narrow horns can be seen rising up from within his deep hood. He leans down closer to the ground. Somehow, impossibly, there is growing a tiny blue flower out from the red infertile dirt. He surrounds it with his hands, thin and sharp and bony things, and the little impossible flower withers and dies. The figure stays crouched over the desiccated flower's remains for a few more moments before he stands again and walks away in the shadow of that massive black tree.
She's falling. It's a girl this time. Down, down, down. As usual the fall takes longer than he expects it should. She begins to slow down near the end, the final touching down onto the white stone platform everyone first starts on is always surprisingly gentle. Perhaps the entire journey is less of a free fall than everyone assumes, and the entire way down is actually a very precise and measured lowering. Quite likely, given everything else. His mind had begun to wander, but he pulls himself back as the girl on the dais begins to look around. Her pale pink eyes shine beneath the column of white light falling upon the arrival platform. She might have what he's looking for. Like everyone else she's got a white robe around her, and she's looking uncomprehendingly at the stone dagger that she just noticed sitting with her. He clears is throat to catch the girl's attention, hopefully without startling her too bad. "Don't worry, everyone starts out a little confused. Welcome to the Dark City. I do hope you learn to like it here."
Chapter 1
THE DARK CITY
While the Red King laughs with his family, and the Gold King barks orders to his, and the Green King lies alone staring up into the void, and the Blue King listens to forgotten music, the Black King waits. The city is always hungry, overflowing with violence and slaughter, but at the very top, for a long, long time, the kings have maintained their balance of power. Forces in the city have begun their work to topple that delicate balance. If the kings are dragged into the game of survival that fills the city, will there be any survivors this time?
The horned figure releases his grasp on the boy's shoulder, and watches silently as he falls. By the time the boy's body reaches its destination, he will have forgotten everything. He will sit up, look around confused, and after some time step off the dais and make his way out into the city proper. The horned figure watches silently as he falls.
A girl with light green eyes watched for the city's newest arrival intently through the second-floor window of a nearby building. There aren't too many two-floor buildings with a good view of the dais, so it's always a risk to come here, but having the first eyes on a fresh catch was worth it so long as she was careful about ambushes. She'd nearly gotten caught a couple times getting this spot, but she was alert and quick enough to get out so far. Most of the buildings around the dais were just a single floor. Plain square buildings made of plain black stone that made up every inch of the city. Each building had an empty rectangular opening for a door, and most had at least one window, just an empty square in the wall. There were no interior walls, not in any of the buildings. The rare two-floors had a basic staircase to the next floor, but was otherwise the same. There was a handful of taller three-floors scattered throughout the city, but she'd never been in any of them. Those tended to be claimed by more dangerous families that she'd rather not be seen by. The best vantage points in the city were always being fought over. Most of them at least. The Red King supposedly crashed in a three-floor over in his district, and no one would dare mess with his house, even if he wasn't there. The city's inhabitants treated murder like sport, but even they knew to avoid something that suicidal.
Finally, she sees him fall, and she continues to wait. The fall takes a while, and sometimes they loiter on the dais after landing. When he finally steps off the dais, she slips out the window and drops silently to the ground. Her bare feet make no sound as she slips through the maze of puzzling streets following after him. She presses her black stone dagger flat against the inside of her arm, feeling its familiar warmth. She hadn't seen anyone else watching the drop point, but that just meant no one was being blatant about it. At the absolute minimum there would have been dozens of eyes on this new body coming down, and that was just the ones who might actually try something. The city's inhabitants would have caught the smell of fresh blood and begun moving to claim it for themselves. All the weak little minnows circled the center. She wasn't in much of a position to claim much better though, since she was doing the exact same thing.