Globus(WIP)

Globus has been the pride and joy of the ancient civilization, like a rare jewel at the neck of a beautiful woman. In the beginning it served the role of a temple, this when the people of the world thought that they could reach the gods if they raised a tower higher than the sky, because at that time, the sky was considered merely a border between earth and heaven, that nothing could lie waiting behind the veil of white clouds. As the civilizations progressed and evolved it bared the role of an embassy, a pillar that the world could use to rise to the next level, without the need to shed blood, like their predecessors had done before them. 

 Though, all of this had happened in the times when Globus was an archipelago of wild, green islands, when it was buzzing full of life, separated from the filthiness of the outside world. Although the first phases of the construction of the tower of Globus had been lost to the passing time, one thing is certain, the tower has been and still is a wonder of the old architecture. It had been raised in the middle of the sea, at the middle of the distance between two islands. The way they had constructed this colossus from the seabed upwards still remains a mystery today, as nobody ever succeeded in replicating this extraordinary construct.

 Now, Globus has turned into a desert wasteland, surrounded by high mountains, which only keep the tremendous heat inside, which in turn is tirelessly fueled by the two suns of the planet. Since the old days, lots of things have changed, the tower at one point had been expanded so much that it had turned into a city of its own. But right now even these days are long gone, as Globus is nothing more than a lonely shadow or a mirage, if you might, in the endless desert. It is a prison, home to the most fearsome criminals of the world and this is where my journey will come to an end, but until then, it is just a distant reminder of the past and a painful scar of the violent days that we live in.

I am not a criminal, a murderer, a rapist, a psychopath or any such tormented soul, but I am just a traveler, looking to get to his final destination, the peak of his journey. Some might go looking for lost treasures such as sunken cities or temples from above the sky or from the deepest corners of the earth, but I am looking for a more enigmatic treasure, one that has stood proudly through the test of time, as a witness to the ever changing story of life, and which wouldn’t go, just wither from the minds of the ones which remained but never from the face of the earth, like a restless witness which has been with us from the beginning of it all and which wouldn’t go until it all would eventually die out… and maybe not even then would he give up on the hope that it would all someday grow back even better and prouder than before.

The prisoners are still free people, as free as a person would be in a city in the middle of nowhere, severed from the real world. They are dropped off at a random spot in the desert, without food, but just a flask of water, a pair of grappling hooks and two choices, to die of dehydration or use the resources that he has been given and search for the city of Globus so he might get a tiny chance at survival. Although, the heat of the two suns is not the sole danger of the desert which is full of parasitic organisms using hosts to survive and gigantic wurms, which live in enormous underground tunnels.

 My journey through Globus started from the only place that you wouldn’t need to climb the mountains to get into the desert they surrounded. The passageway was a valley that cut through the entire mountain, as if it had been made by the sword of a god of some sort.

It took me an entire day to get to the other end of the valley and by then the sky had already filled with bright stars that lighted my way.

 That is how I have always traveled, in the dark of night, through the shadows. I have been a mere shadow in the minds of men, a Watcher since the creation, recording everything without interfering, or at least not directly, but from the same place that I have been watching. We know everybody’s history, but nobody knows ours and that is the way that it must be.

 The moons were above my head, three of them this night. I looked at them as I walked a path that I had walked already thousands of times. I couldn’t feel the cold that was now settling for the night nor did I even felt the heat from during the day. You might call it a perk of being a Watcher, but you would be so wrong. I have come to envy the persons who could feel the heat and the cold of the world around them...and I do not know why it is so.

 Then, when I looked down it was too late. Oh, not for me, but for the sand worm that even dared to think to attack me.

The creature sprung from underneath the dunes, looking for some prey, but instead it found me. Clouds of sand hovered around the great beast, as it rose from the ground. I didn’t need to see it though; I had already felt it from miles away.

The worm didn’t stand a chance against the tremendous power that a Watcher posseses. If we wouldn't be so powerful, how could we have survived for so long during the years that have passed after our creation, how could we have traveled to so many worlds so far apart from each other?

     *******

In the beginning myself and my whole race have been inhabiting a world called Phraxis, in a far off part of the Universe. We were separated from the outside world by a veil that not even us in our immense power could get through. I remember even now how we had been liberated from this weird prison. I was only a child, not even half a millennia old. Once, while I was scribbling, a brilliant light came from the sky, and a hooded man descended from it. He had presented himself to our leader as Thrax, The Traveler. He then told us that our destiny was to watch over all sentient life forms, record their history, their decisions, their greatest deeds as well as their most despicable deeds. We were not to use our powers to influence history unless the life forms were worthy of salvation. And how could have we denied the wishes of our liberator.

 That is what we have been doing for such a long time, which, from the point of view of someone who is not immortal would translate in thousands of millennia.

*******

 The wurm stopped in mid-air and started expanded and started to sizzle and then it burst in a splash of all sorts of fluids and some kind of jelly that turned the sand to glass on touch.

 The threat dealt with, I continued on my path to the Tower of the Lost Souls. As I said, the tower turned town had been a diplomatic center and its original name during those time has been lost to the passing of time, but I still remember that in the last couple of millennia it has usually been called Globus, for reasons I can't remember. It was the only communication center between this world's colonies on planets and in dimensions that they had conquered.

 I have never understood and will never understand the things that make this people just take worlds and worlds for themselves, maybe it is that they just like going to war, sacrificing themselves, killing others in the process, others who just want to protect their world, just as the invaders would do if they were in their place.

 It has been long since I last visited the Tower, but I could still remember its obsidian walls and high ceilings, depicting scenes from far away colonies, hold in place by great sculpted marble pillars. I could never forget the labyrinth-like nature of the place, which I spent countless hours trying to map it.

 As I neared the Tower, the sky began to light up as the sun started to peek over the mountain top. So deepened was I in my train of thoughts that I didn’t even realize how much time had passed.