Morning all and Happy Friday. I hope you are doing well. I managed to find the mousy entry point yesterday and now have a very clean sunroom. Except for the bird windows. They were not clean to save little bird lives. Does that drive me just a little bit mental, yes, but I don’t want the birds breaking their necks so I’ll get over it. For now, let’s jump into the last prompt of the week. Timers at the ready and off we go.
Oh I like the set up. A one man rescue off into the wilds . So many things can happen. Yeah I’ll be playing with this over lunch.
Friday, July 25th: It was a sheer drop off.
It was a sheer drop off. Kelan looked down. It was a long way down. The rock face went straight down. Thee were no protrusions, no bumps or ridges. It was as though some vengeful god sliced downward with a giant knife like cutting a slice of cake.
“Betting it wouldn’t even be chocolate,” he groused. Kelan stepped back from the edge and looked across. The other side was far enough away that it was slightly blurry. He could see mist rolling in on the other side, edging towards their face and trying to decide if it wanted to bother flowing into the gap.
“So clearly the slice was taken.” As he took out his gear, he realized he was thinking of the world as a giant cosmic cake. He wondered what Gerna would say about that.
“Coping mechanism,” he decided as he took out his climbing gear to ready himself for the descent. He was certain that Gerna would have a lot more to say. She was a therapist to some of the most powerful people in the Empire. They expected big words with their diagnosis and he knew that while she could simplify things, if called upon she could spew words in long streams as though she had digested a dictionary.
“Several dictionaries,” he amended as he started to buckle his harness into place. “She can use several languages to do it.”
He was okay with his coping mechanism of the world cake. It was better than thinking of the truth. He was about to clime down the divide, cross the wide expanse where the section was removed and enter into the other side. It was a bad idea. Everyone knew it was a bad idea.
Several hundred years ago something happened to split the world in two. People lived on this side of the divide and no one lived on the other side. Everyone who did was killed when the world split. What exactly split the world was a matter of debate.
Even if it had been nearly impossible to traverse, thee were always laws and strict punishments preventing it. “Along with basic common sense,” he thought.
However a team of scientists was curious about what was on the other side of the divide. They didn’t think anyone survived but want to see if life had returned in places. If the plants and possibly animals adapted. And somehow they managed to get a permit to go and see.
“Well not some how,” Kelan corrected as he tied off his first lead line. One of the scientist was the Emperor’s brother in law. That was how they got the permit. “Also why I’m being sent.”
The team had not returned. There was no communication from them and the Emperor wanted to know what happened. Kelan wasn’t certain how he drew the short straw, but now he was going in to find the lost team. He was going in alone because everyone, from the Emperor down, wanted the situation kept quiet. There were those who believed that a great evil was done and the divide was God’s punishment. There were some who believed that something bad happened and to save the rest of the planet, that section of the world had to be isolated.
Neither knew the truth and both factions would be upset if someone went mucking about with the other side of the divide. So the first expedition was kept quiet and Kelan was now a one man retrieval team.
Ten til Midnight 