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In, prompt me!
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Jan 12, 2022 13:53
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 06:45 |
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The Dead City Marches On 1098 words Nimothy backed up over the edge of the wooden platform, falling backwards. He felt the wind rush through his long hair. The wire connected to his harness unspooled itself with a soft whish; another wire was already dangling parallel to it. He pushed off against the wooden wall, going further down. Nimothy looked below, all the way down a massive leg, covered in tough, dead flesh. Some of it was missing, exposing a piece from a humongous femur - he could see someone else already there near the top of the bone. Despite the state of it, the leg moved and took one titanic step forward. He was an apprentice maintainer, one of many, and it was their job to care for the metropolich, the great undead beast that carried their city on its back. Nimothy finally reached the upper edge of the exposed bone. The flesh there was crawling with arcane maggots, fat little things the size of a fist. They glowed a sick shade of green, caused by their feeding off of the necrotic energies that brought the metropolich to life. The other maintainer was hanging there, smoking a cigarette. He nodded at Nimothy. This was another apprentice Nimothy didn’t know. He nodded back, and turned to the maggots. He grabbed a rod from his toolbelt and extended it, the point of it ending in two sharp prongs. He touched the rod to the maggots, and pure white lightning shot out and fried a large group of them. They fell off the flesh, smoking. The rod had a weak holy lightning enchantment, it made for a jolt that could kill lots of maggots quickly, but wasn’t strong enough to harm the metropolich. Most of his days were spent this way, shocking piles of maggots, or cleaning up ichor slicks, or trying to keep the swarms of skeleton flies at bay. He’d been an apprentice for what seemed like ages, working long, exhausting hours to provide for his sick brother. He wouldn’t have minded if it at least paid well - his boss kept telling him he was essential, but refused to give him a raise. He’d been “promised” a promotion to the fleshmancer squad for a year now - they actually got to regenerate the missing flesh of the metropolich where it was most needed and never had to deal with the anguished ghosts of a thousand crows flying out from a surprise gash behind the pack of maggots you just zapped, but, more importantly, they were paid three times what he earned now. He and the other apprentice (they spoke so little Nimothy didn’t think of asking for his name) spent a couple of hours cleaning up the maggots from around the femur. Once the job was done, they reeled themselves back up to the maintenance platform. It jutted out from the side of a palisade, in which a small door led back into one of the many maintainers’ workshops that lined the entire circumference of the city. They stepped inside. While unstrapping his harness in the staging room, Nimothy could see his boss, Joeliver, talking to a strange cloaked figure in the office next door. Six-legged pill-shaped creatures the size of a cat scurried about them, some crawling effortlessly up the walls. The cloaked figure picked one up and Nimothy saw that it had a mouth on the bottom. The stranger showed it to his boss, and said something while pointing at the mouth - Joeliver listened to them and nodded along, seemingly satisfied with what he was hearing. Joeliver called Nimothy and the other apprentice over (Nimothy learned his name was Wesmond). “Check it out,” said Joeliver, “ our Necrokings resurr-” “Death Eternal!” replied Nimothy and Wesmond in unison. “Death Eternal. Okay, so, they recently resurrected Ananastasia here, who is a uh…” “Murderwitch,” Ananastasia said, their face hidden in the shadows of the hood. “Right. A murderwitch, and they’ve created these things here,” Joeliver continued, waving at the scurrying creatures, “they apparently eat maggots and poop out flesh, is that right?” Ananastasia sniffed from beneath their hood, “That is a crude but accurate description of them, yes.” Joeliver avoided Nimothy’s gaze and said “The other workships are already using them all over the eastern legs.” Nimothy’s stomach dropped, immediately understanding the implication of such a creature. “I’m really sorry, we’ll let you work the rest of the week while we get these things set up, but after that, we won’t need you boys anymore.” *** It had been a few weeks since he lost his job. Nimothy hadn’t been able to find employment elsewhere; with so many other maintainers suddenly out of work, it was a tough market out there. His meager savings had kept him and his brother afloat so far, but they would soon run out, and he didn’t have a plan for when they would. He sat at the table in the one room they shared, his brother laid in the bed in the corner, rocked to sleep by the constant motion of the metropolich’s travels across the deathlands. On the table in front of Nimothy was a pillock, as the six-legged creatures came to be called. A few more were around the room. Despite them being responsible for their current situation, Nimothy couldn’t bring himself to hate them and now cared for these. He found raising them quite easy, and they made gentle pets. There was a knock at the door. It was Joeliver. “I heard you had a bunch of pillocks,” he said, glancing at them scurrying about. “I’m here to reclaim them since you probably stole them from the workshop.” Nimothy frowned, “Excuse me, I raised these myself and you can’t have them. Why are you suddenly in need of pillocks anyway? “Some dumb paladin exorcized the murderwitch and now no one knows how to make more of these.” Nimothy realised that perhaps his skill at raising pillocks was unique and decided right there that it would not come cheap. “You do? Please, please please please you gotta tell me, our Necrokings- “Death Eternal!” “Death Eternal. -are on my back every day because of the state of the legs, and no one wants to work for what I’m paying! You have to help me out!” Nimothy grinned and told Joeliver his consultation fee. Joeliver’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, they widened so quickly at the exorbitant number he was quoted. He stayed silent for several seconds, glaring at Nimothy. “Fine,” Joeliever knew he had no choice but to accept. Nimothy winked at him, which just made him real mad.
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Jan 17, 2022 08:23
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