City of the Gods

Our elders had foretold the Fall, reading it in the entrails of pigs and in the flight of ravens. And on the appointed eve, we watched as a thunderbolt split the dark sky, streaking across the heavens, lighting the plains and turning night to day. It was like a moon had been torn free from the firmament, and when it fell to the earth, the very stones beneath our boots did tremble.

We turned our ponies towards the Valley of the Ancients. Dust, scorched earth and ash rained down upon us, choking the air and turning the day-star the color of blood. We rode for seven days and nights, until we came to the jagged lip of the Valley’s rim. There we bore witness to the destructive might of the gods.

The forest of Al-Ahuc had been set aflame, leaving only a skeletal, charred wasteland in its place. A rift had been torn in the hard, rocky belly of the valley, and the land crackled like the embers of a fire. The sand flats had been turned to glass, broken, and cast afield with the heat of the sun’s furnace.

Looking upon that glowing, hissing ruin, we knew that nothing would ever be the same. There in the center of rift, half buried in blackened rubble and scorched earth, it rested: The City of the Gods.