Sunset Black

In the dark of night, the world was born. The Marshalls would have you believe this, but the true morning to life came from the sun. Nearly two weeks had passed since the brisk light of day had beamed the Land to life when the wolf had prowled the Dead Plains and now they hold the highest seats in the Metro Building. Once hundreds of humanoid species had drowned the vast landscapes of Solheim, our home. Before the War humanity lived symbiotically with the Land. The common practice was to give when one had received. If one were to feed from the Land, then that person would have to give back to the Land in equal measure. Back then Solheim could speak to the people. Many people to this day believe that the Land still speaks, but humanity has long since forgotten her language. Titus was one of the few, though he wasn’t all together human, but a stout creature built like the trunk a 400-year pine. He was a gentle being; his oak knot eyes could warm the heart of any who had the nerve to gaze into them. For such a mass of stature to possess such a tender touch, he was often referred to as Titus the Coward behind is back, until one drunken day a soldier let the slur slip in his presence. Titus sadly sighed and slipped away back into the woods. The cruel learned that day they “needn’t worry of retaliation from the tree bitch” they’d say, “he won’t fight back anyway.”

Titus had been a field worker his entire life. He tended to the maple trees along the western slope, though most who knew him then would say he spent more time conversing with the tree fairies, magical beast who fluttered about collecting pine needles for the regrowth, rather than completing is obligations. But he loved the woods. He loved the Land. He loved the existence of freedom, and by all intents and purposes he was content to live amongst the trees and their fairies until Lady Death Day doth come for the return of the Pale rider, the Horseman of Death, would surely take he and his friends to the evermore with grace and love. However, as time passed Titus began to notice fewer and fewer of his befriended fairies about until he saw a day when there were none, and then he saw the end of it, the tree line… It was all fields upon fields of buildings teaming with people.

The people live under a very different code: the Pack (societal). Where once humanity lived nomadically in conjuncture with the Land, now people believe in strength in numbers. As technology gained steam and garnered a stronger grip on reality, the people learned that teamwork accomplished wonders for the collective good of society. Strengthen your neighbor and you too will gain power; and thus, a government was born with the Marshalls, a group of chosen leaders who’d endured the perceived impossible feats a person’s physical form was capable of and was reborn through the fires of intellectual endurance a woken being of both wisdom and sufferance.

As the new power of the Wolf furthered their ranks of followers, the Nomad life began to wither. Collective housing blossomed and rural existence became more and more scarce. Much of humanity that loved the land over the collective were slowly migrated out of Population. Some Nomads still remain in a dank existence throughout the vast expanse of land where the few lived has hermits do in their foxholes, canopies of tarps fastened together residual bark that once were trees long since dead, as well as vacant vehicles abandoned on the highways leading to Metro known as the Dead Plains. Humanity had strayed many Nomads had thought; one in particular: Titus.

It didn’t take long before he learned that the societal expansion had been the ruin of his beloved friends and now his livelihood. The trees were coming down in disparaging numbers. He collapsed, breathless, unable to think, and did the only thing that sprang to his mind: he sprinted deep into the woods. As the air grew thicker and thicker his lungs expanded further and further until he could catch his breath once again before he fell to the ground. Once there he noticed a batch of pine needles sturdily stuck into his hands and running from his palms were dribbles of blood. It was as if the pine needles were crying for their long-lost companions the fairies. Tears formed in Titus’ eyes and the beast wept. Three moons passed in his mourning and at high noon on the fourth he rose and made his way into the city.

As he wondered the streets of Metro, he took note what was once the peaceful sanctuary of green and blue life colors and the randomness of the tree’s bark as well as the flow of lively grass, harsh edges and sharp specific point buildings so stern they appeared to have a razor’s edge had replaced them. He approached such an edge and ran his pine scared palms against it and alas discovered nothing but the cold of concrete. He continued to the square where the six points of the city met and discovered he wasn’t the only Nomad in town. Hundreds had gathered in tighter proximity than any of their ilk had been accustomed to. The claustrophobic essence that was this town hall debate raised a rage in him. Titus stood disgusted at the sight of his people herded together begging for such birth rights as living and Land.

Ahead of the crowd was the Grand Marshall of Metro. He was a powerful man dressed all in black with his leather-bound book and quill at the ready to fetch the bitching of the people before him. They with hands raised and voices whimpering a pathetic squeal of “please, please, sir! The Wolf hath taken all from me, please, please, some charity!”

And that, the final line “some charity,” was but the final blow that started it all, The War of Land.

Titus, sickened by the blight of humanity standing and pleading as if their lives were of such malefaction as to beg for collective synthetic scraps when the Land would have provided so long as she had been provided to in return, to stand in such a petty place of feeble flailing curs: Titus must act and with the raise of his hand one final tree sprung from ground and bolted into the sky higher than any skyscraper concocted by the people and he released his hand an explosion of breath people are still inhaling the residue of that air this very day.

The people fell back in shock. Titus moved through crowd until he was at the front of the mob and glared up at the stoic Grand Marshall…

“Only the sheep fear the Wolf,” Titus growled. And as quickly as the tree sprung from the ground, the city erupted into chaos. Legions of people flocked to the side of Titus. Nomads, Mages, Warlocks, Marsh-people, all from the various parts of the wilderness and many from the streets of Metro (though some would argue many of the city’s citizens joined merely with riotous intent) raised up against the Marshall’s society; but with great buildings comes great weaponry and the Wolf had the superior firepower.

The War lasted four days and a night. Not a long-lived conflict, but the consequences ripple into today’s society. The tree Titus had raised shortly began to decay and die, suffocating the great city of Metro forcing the citizens to abandon it and build outlying counties. Some larger cities have risen since, but none as Metro had been. In the absence of centralized leadership, the Marshall system is failing. Many have taken on other careers whilst maintaining what little control over the counties they had, and some Marshall’s have abandoned their posts entirely.

What of Titus? No one knows. Legend holds he was banished to the hellscape realm of Skurge. An arena of eternal torment burning crippling agony by a fire so fierce tears still on one’s eye blisters. They say the rock beneath the prisoner’s knees quacks and their skin boils before the victim erupts into a blue flame of misery. The Marshall’s had a saying “It is left to we, the Few, to purge the Deviant.” By that tenet the Iron Wolf was founded and thus such punishment is how they purge those to be found of deviance. They believe the most human sentence is to cleanse one of impurity thereby making one human again.

As my skin begins to boil this go around, as my mind tries to lapse, as the flame approaches and my brain melts; I will remember this day. The day I became a mark in a book written not in my hand and for the benefit of tyrants, the mutt will learn the devastation it has inflicted upon me and mine. I am not the monster but the beast within such malignant forms have transpired to curse my memory. They created a life lie. The Land is purity and promise. Your exploitation of a legend I did not create but will perpetrate as need be to purge the intolerance of the lucid fiends gorging the life of my home. I ask you, you who reads these words long after I’m gone, long after you’ve taken my place in the bowels of an eternal nightmare to the blue flame; how will you remember this day? My friend, I hope fondly for you will not be here for long. What I am and always will be is Titus of the Dark Wood, but in Skurge have I found the blue purity that will bring equilibrium to a devastated ecosystem. My dead planet will live again. I am no longer Titus the Coward, but am reborn Titus of Skurge...

As I read the dead language carved into the heat warped rock before me on the quacking ground, I think to myself “what had I done to deserve such ravings?” Was that heart-shaped locket perched on a tree near the edge of County Kah a step towards fate or a snare plummeting me to my doom? A flash of light later and now I’ve burned for ages. Perhaps that’s why they told us to veer free of the Dark Woods. Perhaps that was the day I met the true Titus of Skurge and will hold his spot in hell until Lady Death Day doth come. Perhaps I am the Pandora, and this is my purge, or perhaps these are my markings upon a molten rock, and you have been rung into my chains as the world draws to an end like Titus did to me. Perhaps this is not the end for you, but the beginning of something very new. Or perhaps it’ll all just burn.