The Black City
Let's just dust this off and... oh, it's a blog! Fancy that.
I've finished a... story, kind of. Honestly it's more of a writing exercise and less of an actual story, a kind of explorer's log of a fantasy city. It was supposed to be something light and easy to get me writing again. I started it ten months ago, and just finished it. (Not that it took more than like 3-5 sessions. I'm just that bad about writing.)
But, I'm posting it here for all to see! it's got all sorts of issues with architectural terminology that I want to figure out/fix some day. And the ending could have gone a few different ways. But I'll see what you (both of you who may ever read this) have to say first!
The Black City
On the third day since I had left the caravan and set off on my own, they having already taken me as far as and farther than my gold could persuade them, I came finally to the plateau's end. From above the plain, I could see cliffs in the distance to the north, and beyond that, the sea. I was close. Closer than I thought, for not two hours after I came down that plateau and turned east, I saw the ruined print of a small stone hut. In the distance, another, and from there, across a basin, another on a ridge. I followed them for the rest of that day and the next, coming across nothing larger than the last few stones of what appeared to have been a small town long before. From that town the remnants of huts, humble homes of farmers forgotten, grew more numerous. I continued east across flat land until finally, in the distance, I saw the walls, appearing low from so far away, though I knew otherwise.
Or so I thought. As I approached I realized that the distance was playing no trick on me - the walls were quite low indeed. And beyond them, I worried more and more to see, little rose above them from the city beyond. The old book had told of a great city, with grand citadels and towers rising to the sky, on a cliff overlooking the sea. Perhaps the walls were built farther out. But the bluffs to the north began to curve downwards. I was coming to the end of the land.
I quickened my pace, though what had waited for a thousand years or more would wait still. But I could not. My horror grew as I became ever more aware that there was little to see beyond the wall, and that it was already quite close to the coast. I reached it in late afternoon, still with nothing to reassure me but a few guard towers peeking above its battlements. The towers were set directly against the wall, I realized, which means I had seen nothing beyond them. I walked the curve of the wall until I found a gate, but it was of the same heavy black stone as the wall, and would not move. Undeterred, I hooked my rope to the leg of a tower above, tied my pack to the other end, and climbed. As the sun began to set behind me I stood atop the wall and looked out at my long-sought city. My first glance was the most worrisome yet.
Beyond the towers, whose skeletons I could now see to be as decorative as functional, there was the usual assortment of guard houses and battlements, but not many. This wall had not been considered in danger. And some ways beyond that was the first curiosity I encountered that day. There was a wide plaza of stone slabs arcing away from me on either end. Fountains - some yet standing - and statues - few so lucky as the fountains - dotted the plaza, with stone boxes where moss and weeds had replaced flowers and shrubbery. But most curious was that at the opposite end of the plaza was… nothing. The plaza formed a crescent and at the inner edge of the crescent, beyond a line of tall, proud statues facing outwards, the ground simply disappeared, dropped away. Beyond it was sea, black in the cliff's shadow stretching out before it. I was taken in a moment of panic before I thought to actually approach the inner rim, and there I saw my folly.
I came to the edge of the plaza and suddenly, there before and below me, was the black city. Instead of the void I had foolishly thought to hang below the cliff, there were terraces cut into the side of the land itself. The dark sea I had seen was the foot of the city itself, as it descended to meet the ocean directly. Sweeping away along the cliff far to the north and south were the arms of the crescent, reaching inwards and narrowing to the finest of points before disappearing, encircling a wide-mouthed bay. For nearly the entire length of the crescent, even beyond that point where the land itself seemed too narrow to support such edifice, the terraces descended unbroken from the plaza at the top of the cliff to the sea below. By a trick of the evening light, everything in the city appeared to be cut from stone of the deepest black, making it hard to see any details. There were maybe fifteen levels at the most stepped parts of the city, but it looked as though they were not regular across the city's entire arc, jogging up and down around buildings, twisting around the stumps of fallen monuments, cutting narrowly through districts of small tightly-clumped blocks and gaps where their neighbors’ roofs had once been - homes? - or simply ending abruptly and beginning again some ways away. Two great, wide highways divided the city’s descent into thirds, and these alone did run unmolested along the sweep of the city, from one end to the other.
Far to my left, nestled in the north crook of the earth’s seaward reach was a great shadow. In the diminishing dusk I first took it for a massive hole in the cliffside, so dark did it lay. But after a moment of scrutiny it began to take shape: a hall of some sort, perhaps a palace or cathedral. Its feet extending to the very edge of the bay, its front face rose up sheer from the beach; its hindquarters lay sprawled up and across several strata of the city, while its spire - spires? Towers? Or was it simply that tall a structure? - towered over buildings on yet higher levels than it lay. The lower highway ran and disappeared directly into its flank, and the upper highway melted into its shadow.
Indeed, as I squinted harder and harder I realized that most of the city had disappeared into darkness - not only had the city hidden prematurely from the sun’s last rays beneath its cliff, but the dark stone held miserly to what little light yet came its way, leaving large swatches of featureless black below me. I would see nothing else of the city that night, and navigating so dark a maze would not reveal much more, not to mention the darkness compounding the peril already present in such as ruins. I found my way into a guard house at the base of the wall around the plaza. Luckily, not everything had been cut of this dark stone and not everything lasted so long; the rotten wood had given way long ago, leaving only rusted hinges that would not have held anyway. With no small effort, I laid myself down and eventually fell asleep, eager to see what the morning light would bring.
At first light I retook my perch atop the city’s crescent, looking glass in hand. With the morning light pouring directly on it from across the sea before it, the black stone glittered, though still it obscured many details from this distant vantage. The hall on my left was now visible, although tucked away into the elbow of the cliff’s curve as it was, it escaped much of the direct sunlight. It was indeed a great citadel, although what I had mistaken for spires were pillars from a higher level of the city, disconnected yet appearing contiguous in the shadow. The front sweep of the citadel jutted like the squared prow of a ship from the mountain, rising directly from the bay to a plaza that extended out from the cliffside several strata higher. A great wide stair with a smooth lane through its center ascended the cliff at the base of the sheer wall - the lateral highway did not run to the wall but to this stair, and ended in the widest of many landings along the ascent. The stairs stopped as their highest landing joined the plaza itself, which appeared to run flatly from the mountainside to the perilous lip with only some low, dark gardens in a four-squared pattern to interrupt. At the cliff’s side of the plaza was a large door set into a very small building. The door must have stood nearly ten meters high, but the house into which it was set could not have been more than five deep. Of course, this grand gate must have opened into some grander chamber within the mountain, but the gatehouse was cut to resemble a standalone structure, giving it a bizarre incongruous look. Though the greater part lay inside the mountain, that did not explain what lay hidden within that great wedge extending out over sea and sky.
As my gaze turned west, a cursory glance revealed that the shadow on the southern crook was the northern citadel’s mirror image, twin obelisks facing out into the sea. Their stone seemed darker, smoother, and altogether more imposing than that of the other buildings, giving the impression of a pair of guards standing watch over the city, protecting the heart of the crescent from what dangers lie at sea. Perhaps I thought too much of this, however, for these people were clearly not afraid of the sea that lay before them - they traveled directly out into it. From the center of the crescent extended a massive bridge. Two wide lanes, presumably for travel, stretched out across it; but on either side of and between these lanes were equally wide spaces that appeared decorated much like the plaza above the city. Statues, fountains, and green expanses that must once have been parks dotted the bridge. It stretched out across the sea before ending in a sudden, jagged slash far beyond the edge of the crescent. Further out into the sea I saw a jagged slab of rock, the same two lanes continuing across it, perched atop two great pillars. Beyond it, too small to see in any detail, a mere shadow that may have suggested another. I ached with yearning to cross that bridge, for having come beyond the scope of my civilization’s knowledge of the world or its oldest histories, and I had not a clue where it led.
My eyes followed the bridge back to the cliffside. It ran into the city at perhaps the second tier and climbed in a wide promenade until it reached and joined the great lateral highway. Above that, the angle was too steep to see past a great building that blocked much of my view, but I was sure it was a palace of some sort, so opulent did it appear from behind.
Beyond these major landmarks, the city was difficult to discern from above. Even in the direct morning light, many of the middle parts appeared to run together as little more than motley-patched, lumpy expanses of dark stone (or timber, in places). Close clusters of tall buildings, close clusters of single-storey buildings, and narrow lanes dividing them. There was little architectural variation, which was unsurprising considering the city’s uniform darkness.
As I paced along the top of the crescent for viewpoints, making my sketches, I came to that narrow part of the cliff on the northern side. Here, where the crescent narrowed so precariously, there stood at its very edge a slim tower that appeared - miraculously - mostly intact. I broke down the door and found chambers within, mostly empty but some with a few remaining scraps of furniture or cutlery. What wooden stairs remained would not have done so for much longer had I tried to climb them, and I left with my tortured curiosity unfulfilled. I suspected it to be a lighthouse, or perhaps a watchtower - or both. Across the bay, the tip of the other arm of the crescent had crumbled away; great slabs of rock and the inevitable matching tower lay in pieces across the terraces below.
Turning from the city, I looked down the north side of the narrow crescent’s arm. It too descended, but much less steeply, and without such artifice. Two terraces like those within the crescent hung below the upper plaza, but below that they gave way to an expanse of green. A few bits of dark stone road that showed yet through the grass and weeds ran between clusters of low ruins here and there. Some of the ruined villages' scant remains stood at the very seashore. Into the sweep of the hills that rolled down to the seaside were cut shallow terraces of flat green land - the remnants of farms. This must have been where the common folk lived, the peasants and farmers whose labor fed those fortunate or rich enough to live within the black city itself. The hill’s natural slope was much gentler than the city’s - those great terraces had not been built, but excavated, the whole carved out from the land. I would later confirm my suspicion that the south was much the same, but stretched away even farther.
I decided to descend into the city itself. I followed the crescent until I found a set of descending stairways which led me to the uppermost tier. There were doors set into the wall of the cliff, wide rooms several deep leading into the dark earth. Though most of these dwellings or stores were simply empty, in some I found bowls and dishes, utensils of earthenware or stone. Black, of course. Even in the late morning, when the sun still entered the windows at the front, the interiors were dark. There were sconces, picture frames, and remnants of wall hangings, but I found myself assuming that much of the city’s art was as black as itself. What weavings or paintings could bring light to so dark a place?
In a few places the terrace ended in a railing - or remnants of one - that simply looked over the terrace before. At the terrace-edges of other districts stood clumps of small, close houses, some no larger than a single room. But when I looked inside, I found that stairwells led down into more chambers. The smaller ones had only one or two small rooms below, one of which would inevitably lead out to ground level in the terrace below. Some continued down yet another level, and some led back into the cliff, hiding beneath the road of the terrace above. In a few spots, the roads had collapsed into such chambers. In one basement I explored, a wall had collapsed and opened a hole high in the wall of a room of a different house - these underground chambers were built very closely and carefully together. Some of these neighborhoods climbed several terraces in broad swathes, and some were clustered tightly into corners behind wide lanes and statues. They dotted the entire city.
I found trade districts with the remains of awnings and stands, wide open-faced rooms cut into the rockface whose rotten gates no longer protected them. This is how most of the upper city lay - narrow lanes, often two or three across a single terrace, stone buildings jammed in between them, stacked or lain tightly along the edges, or cut into the living earth itself.
These clusters were densest in the highest third of the city, but were hardly present in the lowest, replaced there by widely-spaced neighborhoods of much larger homes - some so large I was not sure they were homes at all. In fact, all of the buildings became grander as I descended lower in the following days. The upper quadrants must have been the everymen, the laborers-not necessarily the poor, who I think lived outside the city, but the poorer. The lower quadrants were reserved for merchants and the rich, entertainment and business districts. Most of the largest buildings in the upper third appeared to be industrial in nature, great dirty workshops scattered with the remnants of tools and the simplest of ancient machines.
There were some greater buildings that rose above their terraces or laid foundations across two to three terraces. Some stood straight into the air, and some leaned or stepped back to follow the terraces beneath them. Exploring within, some of these halls appeared to simply to contain series of great chambers, or very many small ones. Most extended deep into the earth - as much for structural necessity as for aesthetics, I think.
I came across one great campus of such buildings situated in the upper southwest of the city. Entering one such hall I discovered a series of amphitheaters, wide open rooms of stepped benches and daises. Following its wide stairs and sweeping passages, I eventually emerged from a similar hall a number of terraces below and no small distance to the east, separated by similar buildings, possibly all connected in one great underground network - or by several disparate ones. I believe that campus described some sort of university or form thereof, still recognizable after unknown centuries through utility or distant ancestry of design. In another such building, I wandered for several hours in increasingly dank and moist tunnels before I emerged in the main halls only a few doors away from where I had entered. I encountered ballrooms and grand foyers and dining halls in the depths of that mountain, several so large that my torches could not reach from one wall to the next, and passageways that led to balconies above them or even, once, a precarious catwalk above a certain hall - or so I think it was, because its floor was lost in shadow beneath me. Had only I a rock to have dropped, but the halls had generally failed to crumble.
Eventually the mazes and passageways and grand halls beneath the mountains began to run together, for though they were fantastically grand and once quite opulent, they were now entirely empty of all but the least interesting of detritus. The city had fallen long before our own history began, but in truth was perhaps older even than we suspect, for its corpse had likely been robbed clean within that same murky time before time.
I found myself near the palace in the center of the city. I stood near the shoreline on the great avenue. Behind me it stretched across the sea to places known less than even this one, and before me it swept towards the center of the city like a great tongue. And visible to me only now as I stood before it, the tongue rolled appropriately from a gaping maw. The road ended in a great expanse, flat but for a broken spire directly in its center, from which many smaller roads stretched to various ends of the cities. I would realize as I later crossed it that this interchange stood directly between the two citadels on either arm of the city. Continuing beyond this plaza, the more opulent main drag sloped gently up to the city’s center. On the third tier up from the shoreline, the climbing avenue finally met the cliffside at an arch, quite as large itself as some of the halls whence I had just emerged, cut directly into the rock. Above the arch rose the body of that palatial keep from which several grand spires rose further yet.
I ascended the avenue and passed under the arch, finding there a grand arcade with a fountain at its center. The arcade stretched back into the mountain. To the arch’s sides were the remains of great thick gates of stone broad enough to stand two men abreast; these once shut by somehow rolling in from either end to meet in the middle. What mechanism by which they could possibly have done this would remain hidden to me, apparently within the walls themselves. The stone only went one third or one half of the way up the arch; on top of the stone were the rusted remains of black iron gating that must have covered the rest. I would later find that at the end of the arcade stood the shattered remains of what I could only imagine to be a great dark sculpture shaped from some black glass. At a certain time of the morning, the sun would appear framed in the great arch and its light would pierce to the very end of that hall; even though naught remained but shards and precious few of those, they glittered brilliantly.
Along the sides of the arcade, stairs led up to a second and then a third level, tiers cut into the walls overlooking the arcade. From these tiers, chambers and passages opened into the mountain. Climbing from the third tier I passed above the arcade’s ceiling, but came upon another great hall above it, with an grand window cut facing the sea to match the grand arch below it. This hall did not extend half so far into the mountain, instead ending in a tall double door that led to another hall, with yet more stairs and doors and halls and chambers that led further up the tower and back into the mountain. This was, I could see, the seat of this great city, but whether one of the daises that I found once held a throne or a table of councilors (or yet another body of rule entirely, or all of those and more, for I found a great many) I do not know. Not even a coin remained to reveal for me some regal face or seal.
I turned at last to the citadels that stood in the arms of the city’s crescent, facing each other across that great bay. I left the palace by a wide once-gated courtyard that opened onto the lower of the two great highways, which I then took to the south. I climbed higher before I reached the citadel’s towering wall so that I could see more of the city as I traveled, and finally stepped onto the plaza near the gatehouse. I found the plaza much as I had seen it - a great dagger-shaped flat area with gardens of a dark, broad-leafed groundcover that looked oddly familiar. After surveying the city from the precipice, I turned back to the gate - only to find it closed. It was cut from stone, and it simply would not move. Cursing my luck, I turned to the north. As I climbed down the stair at the side of the citadel, I looked for doors, windows, drainage, anything. I was disappointed; the wall was sheer and impenetrable, and since little else of the building extended beyond the cliff, there was meager hope to be found there. I would have to explore the other halls set into the mountain around it for another twisting maze-like passage that led me in through the depths of the mountain.
Luckily, the north twin was somewhat kinder to me. One of the gatehouse gates had broken from its hinges and fallen inward. The gatehouse was so shallow that it left only a small opening halfway up that I could slip through, but I lodged my rope in the crevice and slipped inside.
There was nothing. Only another door, and this one would not open.
I left the gatehouse and walked to the edge of the plaza again. I surveyed the area and looked for a possible way to get into the depths of the citadel, but the tunnels had been so unpredictable in other structures that I had no guarantee I would travel in one direction and not find myself in another. I turned back to look again for some kind of window or gate cut higher into the cliff, but there was nothing. But as I walked the path between those great gardens, something from the edge of my vision tugged at my memory, begging admission. I looked down again and suddenly realized where I knew the shape of those leaves, and why I had not recognized them where they lay - on the ground. I came to the edge of the planter, fastened my rope and jumped through.
The branch I had grabbed gave way beneath my weight and I fell for nearly fifteen feet before I hit another, stronger one that I could hold on to. It bent below me, and by swinging side to side I reached a limb that would support my weight. I was in the highest boughs of a great tree, and while my sight was obscured by the branches all around me, I could make out three other massive trunks, each directly below one of the openings in the plaza that I had taken for gardens. I fastened my rope around a high branch and dropped bit by bit, leaving a rope behind me for my ascent.
I soon realized the foolish mistake I had made in my despair - I had never looked on the citadels from the far side. Had I only gone out farther onto the great bridge, I would have seen that fully half of their seaward faces opened to allow light into the courtyard to which I had descended. The four trees stood corners to a square, at the center of which was an obelisk devoid of any writing or art save a single etched symbol on each of its four sides. The ceiling above, the underside of the high plaza, appeared to be supported by the boughs of the trees. Below the opening of the garden I found twisted, rusting remains of what looked to be a great window frame, and the shattered remains of thick glass. Holding up a shard of this glass to the light I realized that it was not in fact black, but of the darkest green. This, I think, was one of the only times I encountered a color in the city besides the green of plants and moss.
Deep grooves were cut into the soaring wall opposite the windows, sweeping along and around its great face. I wedged a foot into one of the grooves and hoisted myself to another, climbing the simple relief's great face. I found several depressions where some stone or medallion may have once been set, but little else. Standing back and seeing the wall all at once revealed nothing - the lines created formless swirls and patterns, like smoke or eddies in a stream, but no forgotten face, no hero's story, no maiden's lament.
I turned to the citadel's face. Above an arched double door were many balconies stacked above each other, the lowest ones reaching quite far from the wall - several of these farther ledges had collapsed onto those below them, some of which had fallen themselves. Those remaining had ornate balusters around their edges, and many displayed statues, fonts, or other structures I could not make out. There was only one apparent opening to the citadel's interior, at the highest central balcony. From either side of this descended great sweeping staircases, and the balconies spread across the face as they fell in a great triangle. To either side of the topmost balcony, set high into the wall just below the ceiling, were great carvings or statues, of what I could not tell. I had stopped expecting any recognizable form long ago, and these did not appear to be any different from the usual chaotic whorls of smoke.
I went to the door and found it closed, and yet again unwilling to open before me. This time, however, I knew I had another option. There had been no door barring the port above the balconies. I returned to the heap of balconies' ruin, and ascending the highest mound, attached my hook to its end. I looked for a baluster that appeared solid, and within a few throws had secured my rope around it. I climbed up to the balcony, but as I swung over the balustrade a great loose chunk slid away and fell, opening a large crack in the paving stone below. I crept to the stairs along the wall, and ascended.
Many of the balustrades were dotted with wide, shallow bowls on short pillars, presumably for some sort of candle. What I had taken for fonts were great tiered bowls of similar shape, but for what I could not say. They may have held liquid, but it would have had to be carried there from without, for there were no waterworks to be seen. At each stable-looking balcony I stopped and looked out over the garden. I could see now the faint outlines of paths, perhaps once paved though no stones remained exposed, dug into the ground. These too formed a swirling pattern that reached around the trees and seemed to center on the unmarked obelisk below them. Once I had ascended high enough, the massive windows provided a wide view of the bay and the great bridge.
I stopped at the highest balcony to try and examine the great carvings, but they were too far and too shrouded in shadow, tucked under the great ceiling as they were, nor could I reach them with my rope. I turned and looked back through the trees, with whose boughs I found myself level, and was surprised to see sunlight beyond them - an opening under the very peak of the ceiling. Looking through it, I realized that I was facing the peak of the twin citadel and a similar opening. Though the distance and size of the window made it hard to see any details, I had to assume that I was looking through an identical window to an identical opening atop that twin highest balcony.
I turned and went inside. I was surprised to find myself on another balcony, overlooking a vast hall. My torch just barely hinted at a structure off in the distance, but I could see nothing of note through the murk, nor any floor below me. I appeared to be on the rim of some great chasm. The ledge I was on ran off along the wall to either side, so I turned and followed it. When I reached a corner, the ledge turned to follow the wall. Soon I came to a grand staircase rising into the wall to my right. To the left, out over the deep hall below, extended a wide walkway. I continued my circuit of the great hall. Beyond the ascending stairs, the wall along which the ledge continued was marked with doors and passages, leading only to more doors and passages. Hallways, crawlspaces, stairs up and down, tiny attics and cells. Empty rooms that led to more empty rooms that led to tiny twisting passages that led to more empty rooms. I turned, walked the back wall, and turned again, and the passages and doors continued. Periodically I would find staircases descending from the ledge to seemingly identical ledges below, but I never saw the floor of that great hall. Eventually I came on the upper level to another set of stairs and a walkway mirroring that of the other side. Rather than complete the last quarter of my circuit, I went up.
Climbing the stairs, I found myself in another hall. As I thought, at one end I found the great door to the plaza that had blocked my way earlier, making this a grand entrance hall of sorts. Opposite the door was an identical one leading further into the mountain. This too stood closed, but began to creak open as I jostled it. I found a fallen baluster from some crumbled ledge above and used it to pry the door open just wide enough to slip inside. There I found a great hallway, stretching away into the darkness. I returned to the great hallway and walked its considerable length.
At the end, I found yet another great door like the others, but this one stood open. However, there was nothing beyond it. Looking down from the ledge, I saw that the "wall" began to curve inwards far below. I hooked my rope to the door and lowered myself down gradually. Surely enough, the wall curved in and soon I was sliding down a steep incline, and then walking along the bottom of the great bowl or, I suspected, spherical chamber. I came to the center and there I found a pedestal circled by a low stone bench or thick-walled basin. Suddenly and momentarily exhausted, I sat.
As a rule I do not spend much time divulging the thoughts or emotions I feel on my journeys, as they are of little import to scholarship historical or otherwise. But allow me for a moment to indulge myself of the small but peculiar experience I had at the bottom of that great bowl. I, an explorer of no small renown, have been to countless places long forgotten by any humanity. I have broken centuries-old spells of silence and emptiness in cities and citadels, temples and towns, caves and castles, halls and homes, and more that I need not recount for fear of seeming the braggart. The greatest share of my adult life has been spent by myself, dedicated to those places which for which our race has deemed of no further need. I have felt, rarely, the desire for some human companion on this travel or that. But as I sat at the bottom of that great bowl, with the emptiness and silence of this black city weighing on me like a shadowy void blacker still, for a brief moment my strength of spirit gave in, and I felt alone.
My reverie was brief, and I stood to continue, though the sense that there was truly nothing in this place would linger. I circled the bowl. Opposite where I had entered was another door, also open. I managed to hook a rope on the ledge and climb up, but the hallway beyond matched the one from which I'd come, until it ended abruptly in another door, closed and immobile. I returned through the bowl and the first hallway to the entrance hall. Turned to the stairs on the sides of the room, I pushed down, back into the abyss.
At the foot of the stairs I saw the low ceiling above me, the ledge along the wall to my left and right, and the walkway ahead. Around it, nothing. I stepped out onto the walkway, feeling all of a sudden like I had stepped out into the empty void. But my foot touched stone and I walked onward.
In what I assumed to be the center of the room, I came to a circular platform around a great pillar, some fifty paces around, that grew up into the ceiling from the darkness below. I could barely make out the walls of the great hall in any direction. A staircase spiraled down around the pillar from the platform. I took it down to the next landing, where two walkways like the ones above stretched across the darkness to the distant walls. I went down again, and saw two more of the catwalks, appearing ever more precipitous as I descended, even for their generous width and heavy balustrade.
On the eighth level down, near my guess for the exterior garden's ground level, there were four catwalks, two crossing the original two to reach each wall. Below them - none. Or anything else at all, except the pillar, diving ever deeper into the abyss. The pillar, and me.
Round and round, down and down. I pictured the city from without, estimating when I would reach sea level, but before long I knew I must have exceeded it and gone deeper yet without so much as a scratch in the stone to signify. Once I had left the citadel there had been no sign at all of walls in the distance; and yet I felt, or at least suspected, that they were getting farther and farther away. I soon realized that the pillar, too, had been very gradually getting wider around. The air grew colder, damper, heavier, quieter. My footfalls were muffled. There was no echo, no sound. I called out, but the void took my voice and returned nothing. A pillar, stairs, and the endless black. Nothing. An hour. Another. Lost track. Down and down. Round and round.
A statuette. A small figure, no larger than a child's hand. Tumbled into the crotch of wall and stair; I nearly walked right past it. Black stone, of course. The shape of a person. More likely woman than man, but unclear. Features surprisingly well preserved, though few to begin with. The simplest of faces, purely representational. Two narrow divots for eyes, and a mouth. Smiling. Arms and legs close to its body, hands clasped across its chest. A small hole drilled in the base. A charm or idol of some sort, perhaps.
An artifact. A sign of humanity.
I continued down the stairs. Not a quarter turn around the pillar, the light of my candle glinted off something else. A shard of metal, tarnished badly. I rubbed at it. A mirror of dark bronze, simple and poor, broken. An everyday item. Perhaps an heirloom or sorts. I turned and looked up to where I'd found the statuette, not a dozen steps away. Someone had dropped these things, down the stairs; had fallen, perhaps. Had failed to find them, pick them up. Had left without them. Had been here. Here, where there is nothing.
With my two items of new resolve tucked carefully into my pack, I went down further. And further. And further. Nothing. Even my thoughts had fled me, disappearing into the abyss. I ate. I slept briefly, I woke. I descended further. Nothing.
Soon, my body sat down on a stair and brought my pack out. In a moment, my mind returned to me. I stretched and rubbed my abused legs. I measured out the food I had brought with me from my larger pack above. I figured at time per stair, time walking, distance. From above I felt pressing on me every last stair that I would must retake. From below... the unknown. I had come so far. How much farther could it possibly be...? And yet, I had come impossibly far. It could be impossibly farther yet. No cavern is bottomless, I said to myself in the darkness without end.
I brought out the statuette and the mirror, hefted them. I chose the statue. I examined it thoroughly, made sketches of it from every angle, felt it, smelled it, committed it to memory. Then I placed it on the stair next to me, standing where it could be seen, someday soon, when I would need to see it again.
I turned and began to climb.
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I've finished a... story, kind of. Honestly it's more of a writing exercise and less of an actual story, a kind of explorer's log of a fantasy city. It was supposed to be something light and easy to get me writing again. I started it ten months ago, and just finished it. (Not that it took more than like 3-5 sessions. I'm just that bad about writing.)
But, I'm posting it here for all to see! it's got all sorts of issues with architectural terminology that I want to figure out/fix some day. And the ending could have gone a few different ways. But I'll see what you (both of you who may ever read this) have to say first!
The Black City
On the third day since I had left the caravan and set off on my own, they having already taken me as far as and farther than my gold could persuade them, I came finally to the plateau's end. From above the plain, I could see cliffs in the distance to the north, and beyond that, the sea. I was close. Closer than I thought, for not two hours after I came down that plateau and turned east, I saw the ruined print of a small stone hut. In the distance, another, and from there, across a basin, another on a ridge. I followed them for the rest of that day and the next, coming across nothing larger than the last few stones of what appeared to have been a small town long before. From that town the remnants of huts, humble homes of farmers forgotten, grew more numerous. I continued east across flat land until finally, in the distance, I saw the walls, appearing low from so far away, though I knew otherwise.
Or so I thought. As I approached I realized that the distance was playing no trick on me - the walls were quite low indeed. And beyond them, I worried more and more to see, little rose above them from the city beyond. The old book had told of a great city, with grand citadels and towers rising to the sky, on a cliff overlooking the sea. Perhaps the walls were built farther out. But the bluffs to the north began to curve downwards. I was coming to the end of the land.
I quickened my pace, though what had waited for a thousand years or more would wait still. But I could not. My horror grew as I became ever more aware that there was little to see beyond the wall, and that it was already quite close to the coast. I reached it in late afternoon, still with nothing to reassure me but a few guard towers peeking above its battlements. The towers were set directly against the wall, I realized, which means I had seen nothing beyond them. I walked the curve of the wall until I found a gate, but it was of the same heavy black stone as the wall, and would not move. Undeterred, I hooked my rope to the leg of a tower above, tied my pack to the other end, and climbed. As the sun began to set behind me I stood atop the wall and looked out at my long-sought city. My first glance was the most worrisome yet.
Beyond the towers, whose skeletons I could now see to be as decorative as functional, there was the usual assortment of guard houses and battlements, but not many. This wall had not been considered in danger. And some ways beyond that was the first curiosity I encountered that day. There was a wide plaza of stone slabs arcing away from me on either end. Fountains - some yet standing - and statues - few so lucky as the fountains - dotted the plaza, with stone boxes where moss and weeds had replaced flowers and shrubbery. But most curious was that at the opposite end of the plaza was… nothing. The plaza formed a crescent and at the inner edge of the crescent, beyond a line of tall, proud statues facing outwards, the ground simply disappeared, dropped away. Beyond it was sea, black in the cliff's shadow stretching out before it. I was taken in a moment of panic before I thought to actually approach the inner rim, and there I saw my folly.
I came to the edge of the plaza and suddenly, there before and below me, was the black city. Instead of the void I had foolishly thought to hang below the cliff, there were terraces cut into the side of the land itself. The dark sea I had seen was the foot of the city itself, as it descended to meet the ocean directly. Sweeping away along the cliff far to the north and south were the arms of the crescent, reaching inwards and narrowing to the finest of points before disappearing, encircling a wide-mouthed bay. For nearly the entire length of the crescent, even beyond that point where the land itself seemed too narrow to support such edifice, the terraces descended unbroken from the plaza at the top of the cliff to the sea below. By a trick of the evening light, everything in the city appeared to be cut from stone of the deepest black, making it hard to see any details. There were maybe fifteen levels at the most stepped parts of the city, but it looked as though they were not regular across the city's entire arc, jogging up and down around buildings, twisting around the stumps of fallen monuments, cutting narrowly through districts of small tightly-clumped blocks and gaps where their neighbors’ roofs had once been - homes? - or simply ending abruptly and beginning again some ways away. Two great, wide highways divided the city’s descent into thirds, and these alone did run unmolested along the sweep of the city, from one end to the other.
Far to my left, nestled in the north crook of the earth’s seaward reach was a great shadow. In the diminishing dusk I first took it for a massive hole in the cliffside, so dark did it lay. But after a moment of scrutiny it began to take shape: a hall of some sort, perhaps a palace or cathedral. Its feet extending to the very edge of the bay, its front face rose up sheer from the beach; its hindquarters lay sprawled up and across several strata of the city, while its spire - spires? Towers? Or was it simply that tall a structure? - towered over buildings on yet higher levels than it lay. The lower highway ran and disappeared directly into its flank, and the upper highway melted into its shadow.
Indeed, as I squinted harder and harder I realized that most of the city had disappeared into darkness - not only had the city hidden prematurely from the sun’s last rays beneath its cliff, but the dark stone held miserly to what little light yet came its way, leaving large swatches of featureless black below me. I would see nothing else of the city that night, and navigating so dark a maze would not reveal much more, not to mention the darkness compounding the peril already present in such as ruins. I found my way into a guard house at the base of the wall around the plaza. Luckily, not everything had been cut of this dark stone and not everything lasted so long; the rotten wood had given way long ago, leaving only rusted hinges that would not have held anyway. With no small effort, I laid myself down and eventually fell asleep, eager to see what the morning light would bring.
At first light I retook my perch atop the city’s crescent, looking glass in hand. With the morning light pouring directly on it from across the sea before it, the black stone glittered, though still it obscured many details from this distant vantage. The hall on my left was now visible, although tucked away into the elbow of the cliff’s curve as it was, it escaped much of the direct sunlight. It was indeed a great citadel, although what I had mistaken for spires were pillars from a higher level of the city, disconnected yet appearing contiguous in the shadow. The front sweep of the citadel jutted like the squared prow of a ship from the mountain, rising directly from the bay to a plaza that extended out from the cliffside several strata higher. A great wide stair with a smooth lane through its center ascended the cliff at the base of the sheer wall - the lateral highway did not run to the wall but to this stair, and ended in the widest of many landings along the ascent. The stairs stopped as their highest landing joined the plaza itself, which appeared to run flatly from the mountainside to the perilous lip with only some low, dark gardens in a four-squared pattern to interrupt. At the cliff’s side of the plaza was a large door set into a very small building. The door must have stood nearly ten meters high, but the house into which it was set could not have been more than five deep. Of course, this grand gate must have opened into some grander chamber within the mountain, but the gatehouse was cut to resemble a standalone structure, giving it a bizarre incongruous look. Though the greater part lay inside the mountain, that did not explain what lay hidden within that great wedge extending out over sea and sky.
As my gaze turned west, a cursory glance revealed that the shadow on the southern crook was the northern citadel’s mirror image, twin obelisks facing out into the sea. Their stone seemed darker, smoother, and altogether more imposing than that of the other buildings, giving the impression of a pair of guards standing watch over the city, protecting the heart of the crescent from what dangers lie at sea. Perhaps I thought too much of this, however, for these people were clearly not afraid of the sea that lay before them - they traveled directly out into it. From the center of the crescent extended a massive bridge. Two wide lanes, presumably for travel, stretched out across it; but on either side of and between these lanes were equally wide spaces that appeared decorated much like the plaza above the city. Statues, fountains, and green expanses that must once have been parks dotted the bridge. It stretched out across the sea before ending in a sudden, jagged slash far beyond the edge of the crescent. Further out into the sea I saw a jagged slab of rock, the same two lanes continuing across it, perched atop two great pillars. Beyond it, too small to see in any detail, a mere shadow that may have suggested another. I ached with yearning to cross that bridge, for having come beyond the scope of my civilization’s knowledge of the world or its oldest histories, and I had not a clue where it led.
My eyes followed the bridge back to the cliffside. It ran into the city at perhaps the second tier and climbed in a wide promenade until it reached and joined the great lateral highway. Above that, the angle was too steep to see past a great building that blocked much of my view, but I was sure it was a palace of some sort, so opulent did it appear from behind.
Beyond these major landmarks, the city was difficult to discern from above. Even in the direct morning light, many of the middle parts appeared to run together as little more than motley-patched, lumpy expanses of dark stone (or timber, in places). Close clusters of tall buildings, close clusters of single-storey buildings, and narrow lanes dividing them. There was little architectural variation, which was unsurprising considering the city’s uniform darkness.
As I paced along the top of the crescent for viewpoints, making my sketches, I came to that narrow part of the cliff on the northern side. Here, where the crescent narrowed so precariously, there stood at its very edge a slim tower that appeared - miraculously - mostly intact. I broke down the door and found chambers within, mostly empty but some with a few remaining scraps of furniture or cutlery. What wooden stairs remained would not have done so for much longer had I tried to climb them, and I left with my tortured curiosity unfulfilled. I suspected it to be a lighthouse, or perhaps a watchtower - or both. Across the bay, the tip of the other arm of the crescent had crumbled away; great slabs of rock and the inevitable matching tower lay in pieces across the terraces below.
Turning from the city, I looked down the north side of the narrow crescent’s arm. It too descended, but much less steeply, and without such artifice. Two terraces like those within the crescent hung below the upper plaza, but below that they gave way to an expanse of green. A few bits of dark stone road that showed yet through the grass and weeds ran between clusters of low ruins here and there. Some of the ruined villages' scant remains stood at the very seashore. Into the sweep of the hills that rolled down to the seaside were cut shallow terraces of flat green land - the remnants of farms. This must have been where the common folk lived, the peasants and farmers whose labor fed those fortunate or rich enough to live within the black city itself. The hill’s natural slope was much gentler than the city’s - those great terraces had not been built, but excavated, the whole carved out from the land. I would later confirm my suspicion that the south was much the same, but stretched away even farther.
I decided to descend into the city itself. I followed the crescent until I found a set of descending stairways which led me to the uppermost tier. There were doors set into the wall of the cliff, wide rooms several deep leading into the dark earth. Though most of these dwellings or stores were simply empty, in some I found bowls and dishes, utensils of earthenware or stone. Black, of course. Even in the late morning, when the sun still entered the windows at the front, the interiors were dark. There were sconces, picture frames, and remnants of wall hangings, but I found myself assuming that much of the city’s art was as black as itself. What weavings or paintings could bring light to so dark a place?
In a few places the terrace ended in a railing - or remnants of one - that simply looked over the terrace before. At the terrace-edges of other districts stood clumps of small, close houses, some no larger than a single room. But when I looked inside, I found that stairwells led down into more chambers. The smaller ones had only one or two small rooms below, one of which would inevitably lead out to ground level in the terrace below. Some continued down yet another level, and some led back into the cliff, hiding beneath the road of the terrace above. In a few spots, the roads had collapsed into such chambers. In one basement I explored, a wall had collapsed and opened a hole high in the wall of a room of a different house - these underground chambers were built very closely and carefully together. Some of these neighborhoods climbed several terraces in broad swathes, and some were clustered tightly into corners behind wide lanes and statues. They dotted the entire city.
I found trade districts with the remains of awnings and stands, wide open-faced rooms cut into the rockface whose rotten gates no longer protected them. This is how most of the upper city lay - narrow lanes, often two or three across a single terrace, stone buildings jammed in between them, stacked or lain tightly along the edges, or cut into the living earth itself.
These clusters were densest in the highest third of the city, but were hardly present in the lowest, replaced there by widely-spaced neighborhoods of much larger homes - some so large I was not sure they were homes at all. In fact, all of the buildings became grander as I descended lower in the following days. The upper quadrants must have been the everymen, the laborers-not necessarily the poor, who I think lived outside the city, but the poorer. The lower quadrants were reserved for merchants and the rich, entertainment and business districts. Most of the largest buildings in the upper third appeared to be industrial in nature, great dirty workshops scattered with the remnants of tools and the simplest of ancient machines.
There were some greater buildings that rose above their terraces or laid foundations across two to three terraces. Some stood straight into the air, and some leaned or stepped back to follow the terraces beneath them. Exploring within, some of these halls appeared to simply to contain series of great chambers, or very many small ones. Most extended deep into the earth - as much for structural necessity as for aesthetics, I think.
I came across one great campus of such buildings situated in the upper southwest of the city. Entering one such hall I discovered a series of amphitheaters, wide open rooms of stepped benches and daises. Following its wide stairs and sweeping passages, I eventually emerged from a similar hall a number of terraces below and no small distance to the east, separated by similar buildings, possibly all connected in one great underground network - or by several disparate ones. I believe that campus described some sort of university or form thereof, still recognizable after unknown centuries through utility or distant ancestry of design. In another such building, I wandered for several hours in increasingly dank and moist tunnels before I emerged in the main halls only a few doors away from where I had entered. I encountered ballrooms and grand foyers and dining halls in the depths of that mountain, several so large that my torches could not reach from one wall to the next, and passageways that led to balconies above them or even, once, a precarious catwalk above a certain hall - or so I think it was, because its floor was lost in shadow beneath me. Had only I a rock to have dropped, but the halls had generally failed to crumble.
Eventually the mazes and passageways and grand halls beneath the mountains began to run together, for though they were fantastically grand and once quite opulent, they were now entirely empty of all but the least interesting of detritus. The city had fallen long before our own history began, but in truth was perhaps older even than we suspect, for its corpse had likely been robbed clean within that same murky time before time.
I found myself near the palace in the center of the city. I stood near the shoreline on the great avenue. Behind me it stretched across the sea to places known less than even this one, and before me it swept towards the center of the city like a great tongue. And visible to me only now as I stood before it, the tongue rolled appropriately from a gaping maw. The road ended in a great expanse, flat but for a broken spire directly in its center, from which many smaller roads stretched to various ends of the cities. I would realize as I later crossed it that this interchange stood directly between the two citadels on either arm of the city. Continuing beyond this plaza, the more opulent main drag sloped gently up to the city’s center. On the third tier up from the shoreline, the climbing avenue finally met the cliffside at an arch, quite as large itself as some of the halls whence I had just emerged, cut directly into the rock. Above the arch rose the body of that palatial keep from which several grand spires rose further yet.
I ascended the avenue and passed under the arch, finding there a grand arcade with a fountain at its center. The arcade stretched back into the mountain. To the arch’s sides were the remains of great thick gates of stone broad enough to stand two men abreast; these once shut by somehow rolling in from either end to meet in the middle. What mechanism by which they could possibly have done this would remain hidden to me, apparently within the walls themselves. The stone only went one third or one half of the way up the arch; on top of the stone were the rusted remains of black iron gating that must have covered the rest. I would later find that at the end of the arcade stood the shattered remains of what I could only imagine to be a great dark sculpture shaped from some black glass. At a certain time of the morning, the sun would appear framed in the great arch and its light would pierce to the very end of that hall; even though naught remained but shards and precious few of those, they glittered brilliantly.
Along the sides of the arcade, stairs led up to a second and then a third level, tiers cut into the walls overlooking the arcade. From these tiers, chambers and passages opened into the mountain. Climbing from the third tier I passed above the arcade’s ceiling, but came upon another great hall above it, with an grand window cut facing the sea to match the grand arch below it. This hall did not extend half so far into the mountain, instead ending in a tall double door that led to another hall, with yet more stairs and doors and halls and chambers that led further up the tower and back into the mountain. This was, I could see, the seat of this great city, but whether one of the daises that I found once held a throne or a table of councilors (or yet another body of rule entirely, or all of those and more, for I found a great many) I do not know. Not even a coin remained to reveal for me some regal face or seal.
I turned at last to the citadels that stood in the arms of the city’s crescent, facing each other across that great bay. I left the palace by a wide once-gated courtyard that opened onto the lower of the two great highways, which I then took to the south. I climbed higher before I reached the citadel’s towering wall so that I could see more of the city as I traveled, and finally stepped onto the plaza near the gatehouse. I found the plaza much as I had seen it - a great dagger-shaped flat area with gardens of a dark, broad-leafed groundcover that looked oddly familiar. After surveying the city from the precipice, I turned back to the gate - only to find it closed. It was cut from stone, and it simply would not move. Cursing my luck, I turned to the north. As I climbed down the stair at the side of the citadel, I looked for doors, windows, drainage, anything. I was disappointed; the wall was sheer and impenetrable, and since little else of the building extended beyond the cliff, there was meager hope to be found there. I would have to explore the other halls set into the mountain around it for another twisting maze-like passage that led me in through the depths of the mountain.
Luckily, the north twin was somewhat kinder to me. One of the gatehouse gates had broken from its hinges and fallen inward. The gatehouse was so shallow that it left only a small opening halfway up that I could slip through, but I lodged my rope in the crevice and slipped inside.
There was nothing. Only another door, and this one would not open.
I left the gatehouse and walked to the edge of the plaza again. I surveyed the area and looked for a possible way to get into the depths of the citadel, but the tunnels had been so unpredictable in other structures that I had no guarantee I would travel in one direction and not find myself in another. I turned back to look again for some kind of window or gate cut higher into the cliff, but there was nothing. But as I walked the path between those great gardens, something from the edge of my vision tugged at my memory, begging admission. I looked down again and suddenly realized where I knew the shape of those leaves, and why I had not recognized them where they lay - on the ground. I came to the edge of the planter, fastened my rope and jumped through.
The branch I had grabbed gave way beneath my weight and I fell for nearly fifteen feet before I hit another, stronger one that I could hold on to. It bent below me, and by swinging side to side I reached a limb that would support my weight. I was in the highest boughs of a great tree, and while my sight was obscured by the branches all around me, I could make out three other massive trunks, each directly below one of the openings in the plaza that I had taken for gardens. I fastened my rope around a high branch and dropped bit by bit, leaving a rope behind me for my ascent.
I soon realized the foolish mistake I had made in my despair - I had never looked on the citadels from the far side. Had I only gone out farther onto the great bridge, I would have seen that fully half of their seaward faces opened to allow light into the courtyard to which I had descended. The four trees stood corners to a square, at the center of which was an obelisk devoid of any writing or art save a single etched symbol on each of its four sides. The ceiling above, the underside of the high plaza, appeared to be supported by the boughs of the trees. Below the opening of the garden I found twisted, rusting remains of what looked to be a great window frame, and the shattered remains of thick glass. Holding up a shard of this glass to the light I realized that it was not in fact black, but of the darkest green. This, I think, was one of the only times I encountered a color in the city besides the green of plants and moss.
Deep grooves were cut into the soaring wall opposite the windows, sweeping along and around its great face. I wedged a foot into one of the grooves and hoisted myself to another, climbing the simple relief's great face. I found several depressions where some stone or medallion may have once been set, but little else. Standing back and seeing the wall all at once revealed nothing - the lines created formless swirls and patterns, like smoke or eddies in a stream, but no forgotten face, no hero's story, no maiden's lament.
I turned to the citadel's face. Above an arched double door were many balconies stacked above each other, the lowest ones reaching quite far from the wall - several of these farther ledges had collapsed onto those below them, some of which had fallen themselves. Those remaining had ornate balusters around their edges, and many displayed statues, fonts, or other structures I could not make out. There was only one apparent opening to the citadel's interior, at the highest central balcony. From either side of this descended great sweeping staircases, and the balconies spread across the face as they fell in a great triangle. To either side of the topmost balcony, set high into the wall just below the ceiling, were great carvings or statues, of what I could not tell. I had stopped expecting any recognizable form long ago, and these did not appear to be any different from the usual chaotic whorls of smoke.
I went to the door and found it closed, and yet again unwilling to open before me. This time, however, I knew I had another option. There had been no door barring the port above the balconies. I returned to the heap of balconies' ruin, and ascending the highest mound, attached my hook to its end. I looked for a baluster that appeared solid, and within a few throws had secured my rope around it. I climbed up to the balcony, but as I swung over the balustrade a great loose chunk slid away and fell, opening a large crack in the paving stone below. I crept to the stairs along the wall, and ascended.
Many of the balustrades were dotted with wide, shallow bowls on short pillars, presumably for some sort of candle. What I had taken for fonts were great tiered bowls of similar shape, but for what I could not say. They may have held liquid, but it would have had to be carried there from without, for there were no waterworks to be seen. At each stable-looking balcony I stopped and looked out over the garden. I could see now the faint outlines of paths, perhaps once paved though no stones remained exposed, dug into the ground. These too formed a swirling pattern that reached around the trees and seemed to center on the unmarked obelisk below them. Once I had ascended high enough, the massive windows provided a wide view of the bay and the great bridge.
I stopped at the highest balcony to try and examine the great carvings, but they were too far and too shrouded in shadow, tucked under the great ceiling as they were, nor could I reach them with my rope. I turned and looked back through the trees, with whose boughs I found myself level, and was surprised to see sunlight beyond them - an opening under the very peak of the ceiling. Looking through it, I realized that I was facing the peak of the twin citadel and a similar opening. Though the distance and size of the window made it hard to see any details, I had to assume that I was looking through an identical window to an identical opening atop that twin highest balcony.
I turned and went inside. I was surprised to find myself on another balcony, overlooking a vast hall. My torch just barely hinted at a structure off in the distance, but I could see nothing of note through the murk, nor any floor below me. I appeared to be on the rim of some great chasm. The ledge I was on ran off along the wall to either side, so I turned and followed it. When I reached a corner, the ledge turned to follow the wall. Soon I came to a grand staircase rising into the wall to my right. To the left, out over the deep hall below, extended a wide walkway. I continued my circuit of the great hall. Beyond the ascending stairs, the wall along which the ledge continued was marked with doors and passages, leading only to more doors and passages. Hallways, crawlspaces, stairs up and down, tiny attics and cells. Empty rooms that led to more empty rooms that led to tiny twisting passages that led to more empty rooms. I turned, walked the back wall, and turned again, and the passages and doors continued. Periodically I would find staircases descending from the ledge to seemingly identical ledges below, but I never saw the floor of that great hall. Eventually I came on the upper level to another set of stairs and a walkway mirroring that of the other side. Rather than complete the last quarter of my circuit, I went up.
Climbing the stairs, I found myself in another hall. As I thought, at one end I found the great door to the plaza that had blocked my way earlier, making this a grand entrance hall of sorts. Opposite the door was an identical one leading further into the mountain. This too stood closed, but began to creak open as I jostled it. I found a fallen baluster from some crumbled ledge above and used it to pry the door open just wide enough to slip inside. There I found a great hallway, stretching away into the darkness. I returned to the great hallway and walked its considerable length.
At the end, I found yet another great door like the others, but this one stood open. However, there was nothing beyond it. Looking down from the ledge, I saw that the "wall" began to curve inwards far below. I hooked my rope to the door and lowered myself down gradually. Surely enough, the wall curved in and soon I was sliding down a steep incline, and then walking along the bottom of the great bowl or, I suspected, spherical chamber. I came to the center and there I found a pedestal circled by a low stone bench or thick-walled basin. Suddenly and momentarily exhausted, I sat.
As a rule I do not spend much time divulging the thoughts or emotions I feel on my journeys, as they are of little import to scholarship historical or otherwise. But allow me for a moment to indulge myself of the small but peculiar experience I had at the bottom of that great bowl. I, an explorer of no small renown, have been to countless places long forgotten by any humanity. I have broken centuries-old spells of silence and emptiness in cities and citadels, temples and towns, caves and castles, halls and homes, and more that I need not recount for fear of seeming the braggart. The greatest share of my adult life has been spent by myself, dedicated to those places which for which our race has deemed of no further need. I have felt, rarely, the desire for some human companion on this travel or that. But as I sat at the bottom of that great bowl, with the emptiness and silence of this black city weighing on me like a shadowy void blacker still, for a brief moment my strength of spirit gave in, and I felt alone.
My reverie was brief, and I stood to continue, though the sense that there was truly nothing in this place would linger. I circled the bowl. Opposite where I had entered was another door, also open. I managed to hook a rope on the ledge and climb up, but the hallway beyond matched the one from which I'd come, until it ended abruptly in another door, closed and immobile. I returned through the bowl and the first hallway to the entrance hall. Turned to the stairs on the sides of the room, I pushed down, back into the abyss.
At the foot of the stairs I saw the low ceiling above me, the ledge along the wall to my left and right, and the walkway ahead. Around it, nothing. I stepped out onto the walkway, feeling all of a sudden like I had stepped out into the empty void. But my foot touched stone and I walked onward.
In what I assumed to be the center of the room, I came to a circular platform around a great pillar, some fifty paces around, that grew up into the ceiling from the darkness below. I could barely make out the walls of the great hall in any direction. A staircase spiraled down around the pillar from the platform. I took it down to the next landing, where two walkways like the ones above stretched across the darkness to the distant walls. I went down again, and saw two more of the catwalks, appearing ever more precipitous as I descended, even for their generous width and heavy balustrade.
On the eighth level down, near my guess for the exterior garden's ground level, there were four catwalks, two crossing the original two to reach each wall. Below them - none. Or anything else at all, except the pillar, diving ever deeper into the abyss. The pillar, and me.
Round and round, down and down. I pictured the city from without, estimating when I would reach sea level, but before long I knew I must have exceeded it and gone deeper yet without so much as a scratch in the stone to signify. Once I had left the citadel there had been no sign at all of walls in the distance; and yet I felt, or at least suspected, that they were getting farther and farther away. I soon realized that the pillar, too, had been very gradually getting wider around. The air grew colder, damper, heavier, quieter. My footfalls were muffled. There was no echo, no sound. I called out, but the void took my voice and returned nothing. A pillar, stairs, and the endless black. Nothing. An hour. Another. Lost track. Down and down. Round and round.
A statuette. A small figure, no larger than a child's hand. Tumbled into the crotch of wall and stair; I nearly walked right past it. Black stone, of course. The shape of a person. More likely woman than man, but unclear. Features surprisingly well preserved, though few to begin with. The simplest of faces, purely representational. Two narrow divots for eyes, and a mouth. Smiling. Arms and legs close to its body, hands clasped across its chest. A small hole drilled in the base. A charm or idol of some sort, perhaps.
An artifact. A sign of humanity.
I continued down the stairs. Not a quarter turn around the pillar, the light of my candle glinted off something else. A shard of metal, tarnished badly. I rubbed at it. A mirror of dark bronze, simple and poor, broken. An everyday item. Perhaps an heirloom or sorts. I turned and looked up to where I'd found the statuette, not a dozen steps away. Someone had dropped these things, down the stairs; had fallen, perhaps. Had failed to find them, pick them up. Had left without them. Had been here. Here, where there is nothing.
With my two items of new resolve tucked carefully into my pack, I went down further. And further. And further. Nothing. Even my thoughts had fled me, disappearing into the abyss. I ate. I slept briefly, I woke. I descended further. Nothing.
Soon, my body sat down on a stair and brought my pack out. In a moment, my mind returned to me. I stretched and rubbed my abused legs. I measured out the food I had brought with me from my larger pack above. I figured at time per stair, time walking, distance. From above I felt pressing on me every last stair that I would must retake. From below... the unknown. I had come so far. How much farther could it possibly be...? And yet, I had come impossibly far. It could be impossibly farther yet. No cavern is bottomless, I said to myself in the darkness without end.
I brought out the statuette and the mirror, hefted them. I chose the statue. I examined it thoroughly, made sketches of it from every angle, felt it, smelled it, committed it to memory. Then I placed it on the stair next to me, standing where it could be seen, someday soon, when I would need to see it again.
I turned and began to climb.
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