Exploring The City 2

“This place is supposed to be called Central Station Sanctuary. It doesn’t look like much of a sanctuary. These people look like they’ve seen better days.” I speak quietly to my girlfriends. Ivy has her hand covering her mouth, her eyes wide. “What kind of living conditions are these? Why do they all look so unhappy?” She asks, the devastation in her voice apparent.

Skylar nods grimly. “This is what it’s like for most people here. I don’t know if you’ve seen this before Mia, but Gemma and Ivy? You two have been real privileged in the abyss. You’ve never had to deal with these conditions. You’ve both only been abyssals for a few weeks, and up till now, you haven’t seen what it’s like. Why we really need change things around here.”

“I knew it was bad. I didn’t know it was this bad.” Mia admits, the tone in her voice usually so full of cheer and giddy positivity, reduced to a solemn and serious state. “We need to talk to somebody. Find out why they live like this.” I state, starting towards two of the people staring at us. My guild follows close behind me.

As we near the two of them, a man and a woman, they recoil fearfully, cowering slightly. I put on what I hope is a reassuring smile and speak gently to them both. “We’re not here to hurt you. I’m sorry to interrupt your conversation, but can you please point us to whoever your leader is?” I ask. The man points his finger at a lone figure, a hunched over man sitting on a bench looking at the ground. “Thank you.” I tell him, and we walk to the figure to talk to him.

As we approach, he speaks, without looking up from the ground. “If you’ve come to take from us, I’ll tell you the same thing as the last hundred of you: we don’t have much.” His voice is tired, defeated, sounding as if he’s had this conversation many times before. From his words, he very much has. “We’re sorry to disturb you. We’re not here to steal anything. We just want to talk.”

A short, humourless laugh escapes the man, and he looks up at us. His face is weathered and scarred, and any semblance of happiness or optimism seems to be sapped away completely. His eyes are those of a jaded and cynical man, who has seen much more than his fair share of cruelty in his lifetime.

“That’s a first. Youngsters dressed like you are, with magic as strong as yours? Normally you’d be tearing apart our homes by now.” He remarks. “We’d do nothing of the sort, that’s horrible! We just want to ask some questions.” Ivy blurts out, unable to contain her emotion. He grunts in response. “Fine.” He produces a cane from somewhere and uses it to help him stand up. His posture is still hunched, and he’s a little shorter than Skylar. “Ask your questions.”

I start with the first question that comes to mind. “What…happened here?” He lets out another humourless laugh in response. “HAH! That’s a good one. I suppose you four haven’t seen much of the world aye? Pretty regular time around here to be honest. Us trying to live our lives in peace, lawless thievin’ gangs takin’ everything of value and destroying our home in the process. The usual.”

My heart sinks with pity for the man, and for the entire sanctuary. “Why would they do that?” I ask, the confusion bursting from me. “Beats me. They do what they want. The powerful and the privileged rarely consider the little guys, the ones who can’t fight back. Why would they, when they can throw us through a wall like we might a bug?”

Still processing the horrific nature and implications of what the man is saying, I take a few moments to form my next question. “Can you tell us about the history of this place? The story of the sanctuary?” He heaves a sigh at the question. “It’s a long story m’lady, and I’ll have to sit down for that.” “Please, we need to know. Sit down, take all the time you need.” I tell him.

He returns to his seat, groaning as he sits down. “I founded this sanctuary some sixty odd years ago. The gangs back then were just as bad as they are today. I grew up in the abyss, and I was relatively privileged, but not very powerful. It’s been like this for as long as I can remember. I wanted this to be a haven for the weak, the disenfranchised. People who had nowhere else to go.”

“My parents spoke of a time before I was born, a peaceful time, where there were no gangs, no thugs out for themselves, out to hurt everybody else. Or at least, when they arose, they were taken care of quickly. I wanted this place to be peaceful like that. I even dared to dream that one day, if we got enough people, we may be able to stand up to those who would threaten us.” He shakes his head. “I was a naive boy.”

“I took in people and we expanded. I formed a guild and contracted a Fateweaver to help make our barrier a permanent home. We gathered resources and provided for those who could not provide for themselves. We began to thrive as a community. We cared for each other, and we built ourselves a home.” He smiles as he tells us this, remembering the good times. His smile fades a moment later, replaced with a haunted look of grief.

“When the gangs found out where we were, they came in droves. They raided us, took what we had. When we tried to resist, they slaughtered whoever stood in their path. They destroyed our homes that we had worked so hard in building. They stole our food, our comforts, our money. They stole our dignity and our way of life. Our home. We were devastated. We’d taken a few of the thugs out, but in return, they had murdered half of our people. Our friends, our family. We didn’t know what to do.”

A tear rolls down the man’s cheeks, and he makes no move to clean it up. “We mourned our dead. We tried to rebuild. Make things better than they had been, or at least better than they were after those awful criminals massacred us and stole our livelihood. It was tough, but we managed the best we could. We still had hope back then.”

“They came back and destroyed everything we had again. Killed more of us, took the small amount of money, food and resources that we had amassed. We didn’t know what to do. We figured that if we stopped fighting back, they wouldn’t kill us. We might not be able to have much in the way of basic necessities, but they’d let us keep our lives if we just let them have what they wanted.”

“Eventually, we stopped trying to rebuild. What’s the point in building something up when you know that somebody much more powerful than you is going to smash it down again, just because they can? We tired of seeing our hard work put to ruin and our people slaughtered. We stopped resisting, stopped rebuilding, and just let them do what they wanted. They stole our hope.”

“And things haven’t changed much. Our first two years were full of the struggle that they created for us. Over the next sixty, we got used to it. We know now not to fight back. We’ve managed to get a lot more members this way, and keep them alive.” He takes a deep breath and sighs again.

“This ain’t a pretty life, but we do still have our existence. Not that many of us are very happy with it. Taking matters into our own hands is a pretty common thing. We try to take care of each other, help and support each other the best we can. But there’s only so much you can do when you’re constantly kept in poverty by greedy people who can push you around just because they were born with more powerful magic.”

I can sense the tears streaming down Ivy’s face as the old man wraps up his tale. “I am so sorry. That’s absolutely dreadful!” She says, her anguish at the treatment of these people evident. ‘I know it’s horrible love. Please don’t promise him anything though. We don’t know what we’re going to be able to do for this place.’ I send her mentally.

‘I want to make things better for them!’ She protests. ‘I know honey, and we’ll do our best. We don’t want to give him false hope in case we can’t make things better though. He’s had enough false hope in his lifetime.’ I tell her gently. A feeling of mental acknowledgement comes my way, along with a tidal wave of second hand grief.

“That’s life. Things are the way they are, and there’s no changing them.” The old man shrugs. I nod solemnly. “We can give you a bit of money if you need it? Wouldn’t be much, but it would be something.” I offer. The man lets out a short bark of laughter. “Look around, of course we need it. Wouldn’t make a difference though. They’d take the money, or whatever we bought with it. Thanks for the offer, but we’ll manage on our own. We always have.”

“Thank you for your time then sir, and thank you for telling us your story. Good luck.” I tell him. He nods once at us, before falling silent. Having nothing else to say to him or ask of him, we turn and walk away. I find us a quiet spot to sit and process everything that he told us. Mia puts her arm around Ivy and I follow suit, as she sobs softly.