Victors Quill

We didn't leave right away.

The dellumite sat in neat stacks by the cracked concrete steps, twenty bars gleaming faintly in the fading light. It looked out of place, like it simply shouldn't exist. I half expected it to sink into the earth or vanish when we turned our backs.

Plor stretched, fingers laced behind her head, eyes on the nearest tower. It stood taller than everything around it. Mostly intact, too. The windows were broken, and some panels had peeled away from the frame, but it still stood, proud and quiet in the orange dusk.

"We're staying." She said simply.

I blinked.

"Here?"

She nodded toward the top of the tower.

"No, up there. It looks like it'll have a good view of the city."

"We're not bringing the dellumite back?"

"We are don't worry, it's coming up with us. It'll be just as safe with me up there, then with me back at my place."

I looked up at the tower, then at the dellumite.

She's serious? We just found the rarest metal on the planet, and she wants to go sightseeing.

Plor was already touching the bars again, recharging the charges she'd layered onto them earlier. One by one, they lifted off the ground, floating with eerie stillness. Like tethered spirits.

"You coming, or you want to sit out here and admire my brilliance from below?" she asked.

I sighed, flexed my fingers, and focused.

Just the rooftop.

I blinked—

And reappeared on solid concrete, wind in my face and a hollow ache in my knees.

The rooftop was wide, exposed, and strangely intact. Shards of old solar panels glittered near the edges. Vines crawled across broken tiles. One antenna still stood, bent at a forty-five-degree angle, half-eaten by rust.

The city spread out below us in every direction.

I froze.

Plor drifted up beside me a moment later, the dellumite trailing behind her in a perfect arc, each bar held with invisible precision.

She let them settle in a corner, metal clinking softly as they touched down.

"Well?" she said, brushing dust from her coat.

"Worth the effort?"

Didn't think I was one for sightseeing, but it was definitely worth it.

The city was a graveyard. And it was beautiful.

Buildings collapsed into their neighbors like leaning corpses. Streets were torn apart by trees as thick as columns. Rusted corpses of steel dotted intersections like forgotten bones. Ponds shimmered where roads had once been. A single train car was balanced diagonally between two floors of a shattered office block. From here, it looked like a painting.

Flocks of strange birds wheeled in the distance, trailing long shadows across the ground.

It's really… strange, this place was once alive. And now it's just wreckage. Forgotten and swallowed.

"Kael."

I turned.

Plor had settled cross-legged near the dellumite, tossing her canteen from hand to hand.

"Have you ever camped on top of a hundred-story ruin before?" She asked.

I shook my head.

"Can't even say I've camped on top of a two-story ruin."

"Well."

She said, unscrewing the cap.

"Now you have, just try not to fall off the edge in your sleep. It'd ruin the view."

I sat near her but didn't speak. The wind pulled at my sleeves. I watched as she took a long drink, eyes squinting against the light.

"You brought us up here just for the view?"

"No." She wiped her mouth.

"I brought you up here so you could see it."

I frowned.

"See what?"

Plor gestured around us.

"This."

"This… wasteland?"

"No, the scale of this civilization." Her tone was quieter now.

"Everyone talks about endings like it will happen overnight. Everything gone, all at once. But look at it, Kael. Do you think this place came down all at once?"

I guess not, how could such a powerful city fall at once?

It's not just big. It's endless.

All of it, stretched across the horizon. Ruined towers, drowned roads, strange pits, overgrown rail lines, industrial districts turned into wetlands. Entire city blocks were quite literally swallowed by the earth.

"I didn't think it stretched this far." I said.

"Most don't."

She leaned back, propped herself on her elbows.

"Do you know what it means that we found dellumite buried under this place?"

"That we're rich?"

Plor gave me a look.

"Sure. But more than that, it means this place was important. Someone had all of that dellumite, and probably more. People worked here, lived here. Then something wiped them all out."

Her voice dropped a bit.

"I've spent the last few years of my life trying to figure out how to get rid of points. What if these people learnt how, and were wiped out?"

"How'd you come up with that theory?"

"Maybe it's just because it aligns with my beliefs, who's to say?"

I stared at her.

You… You're the one who's meant to say…

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, watching the way the clouds caught the last threads of gold from the horizon.

"Do you remember your first kill?" I asked suddenly.

Plor didn't answer right away.

"Yeah," she said eventually. "Do you?"

I nodded.

"If I never got this power, it wouldn't have happened."

Silence again.

Maybe she's right. Maybe, just maybe, it's the points that are the problem.

"You think about it a lot?" She asked.

"Well, I try not to."

She didn't smile this time.

Instead, she leaned forward and bumped her canteen against my knee.

"Drink. Then rest. You're not gonna bring back the dead."

"Who's to say, maybe there's someone who can."

She raised an eyebrow.

"That's a dangerous way to think, Kael. I suggest you forget about it."

I took a sip.

Isn't it better to chase delusion than live in sorrow?

The sky turned violet, and the ruined world beneath us fell into shadow.

I woke cold.

The wind had picked up sometime in the early morning, and it slipped under the blanket like water.

The sky above was a pale, bruised blue, and clouds drifted low, long, stretched things with ragged edges that didn't seem in a hurry to go anywhere.

I sat up slowly, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

Plor was still asleep beside the dellumite, arm over her face, one leg half-tucked beneath her. She looked uncomfortable, like someone pretending to rest rather than actually doing it. Her hand still hovered close to her chakram.

Even here, on a rooftop above the world, she didn't fully let her guard down.

I stood and walked to the ledge.

The city was quieter now. The mist had completely dissipated, leaving a stark view of the city. The view was simply overwhelming.

It was the same as yesterday.

And yet, it felt different.

I've spent most of my life trying to not think too hard. Just survive. Just move. Just keep going.

Because if I stopped, I'd remember what I'd lost. Who I'd lost.

But now that I'd stopped, really stopped, I couldn't unsee it.

The world wasn't just broken.

It had been wrecked. Deliberately, with intention. This kind of destruction didn't come from time alone. Something had shattered this place. People had done this, or let it happen.

And someone benefited.

Behind me, Plor groaned and sat up. Her braid was loose, a mess of black threads streaked with silver, and her eyes blinked clearly against the morning light.

"You ever wake up before me?" she muttered.

"Can't say I have."

"Well, congrats. The trophies at home."

She stood and stretched, arms high above her head, bones popping. Then she wandered over to where I stood.

"Still staring?"

"Still trying to understand it."

She glanced out over the city.

"You won't," she said. 

"Not all of it. But you'll start seeing the big picture."

"I think I already do."

Plor didn't say anything.

Instead, she leaned against the ledge beside me and watched the city in silence. For a long moment, there was only wind, and the sound of something distant—maybe a loose sign tapping metal below, maybe water dripping from a broken pipe.

"Why do you keep going?" I asked finally.

Plor turned, eyebrows raised.

"You've clearly seen more than anyone I've met. Fought more, lost more. So why keep doing this? Why dedicate your life to getting rid of something everyone desires?"

She took her time answering.

"Because I remember it."

Her voice was low, steady.

"I remember what it was like when the people around me died. The world has always been harsh, as long as I can remember. But, it can still be changed."

"Is the world that bad?"

"To put it simply, yes and no. There are places where people can live, but just as many where people can only survive."

She looked at me, expression hard.

"You probably think I'm alone, but I'm not. I'm just a brick in the wall, a small part of something bigger. A group of sorts, and our goal? Take people surviving, and make them live."

The silence between us grew sharper.

I know what it's like to live, and now all I'm doing is surviving. 

Now it didn't feel like enough to just survive.

What if I can help others live?

Plor's gaze lingered on me for a second longer, like she saw the change as it settled behind my eyes.

Then she grinned. 

"There it is."

"There what is?"

"Some paint has finally spilled on your canvas." She said.

I frowned.

"That makes no sense."

"Maybe not."

She paused beside the floating bars and began recharging them again, one by one.

"We head out soon." She said. "House is two days away if we keep a good pace. No reason to stay any longer."

I didn't move. Just kept looking out over the city.

But this time, I wasn't trying to understand it.

I was trying to remember it.