For my Creative Writing Challenge Task #8: Mix and Create submission, I thought I'd try my luck to figure out what to write about. So I rolled some dice.
PALnet on Discord has a bot, @banjo, who was kind enough to roll a 5-sided die for me to see which categories from the list here that I would write about.
The Results:
And so armed with this random list of things, I created the following story.
The White City
The vista that came into view beyond the the rocky cliff was cause enough for rest. Saphrax was a trusty riding horse, and while sure-footed, had difficulty on this quest to the ends of the earth.
Sir Martin pat Saphrax’s neck, as he quietly reigned him in and dismounted. Handing off the reigns to his squire, he stepped onto a precipice that made him feel like an eagle soaring over the vast ocean below. The deep blue of the sea was an exact replica of the cloudless blue in the sky, and the breeze was pure bliss after the heat of the relentless sun.
To the west stood the great city of Anfa, with its bright white walls and towers. At first, all seemed well and peaceful in Anfa. One could fool oneself into thinking this a good, civilized city where one might find a place to call home. Where the small folk were industrious and content with their lot, all because they lived by the sea that provided for their livelihood.
Small folk. Since when did I start calling them that? thought Sir Martin. It wasn’t too long ago I was among them.
But he sets aside that thought to ponder another day. Today he has arrived at his destination: The White City. He reaches into his breastplate and pulls out a strangely folded piece of parchment. The Baguirmi knight who has served as his guide turns his horse to look at him, and the mysterious paper that he carries so close to his heart, but Sir Martin ignores his imploring glances.
He carefully unfolds it, the creases in the paper causing the ink on the folds to fade away. But there’s no mistaking the same white walls and white towers: this is the place. He half-expected the Baguirmi heathen to take him to his camp of marauders or whatever it is they do. “Governing,” they call it. Seems little more than what the misery lords and the Holy Church in Rome do, just perhaps a bit more obvious about it.
This was the mission given to him by the Church, but the Holy Roman Emperor, in fact. Not personally, of course, but through many levels of messenger that would be suitable for an Emperor to speak to his lowly knight. Why he was given this task instead of the Crusades, he doesn’t know. Perhaps as a means of scratching a small, curious itch for the Emperor while at the same time eliminating a dissenter who wasn’t openly dissenting.
He cleared his mind of that, as well, and gazed upon the White City before him. Except that it wasn’t really white. Certainly in places, the allusion to white existed, and in fact, one could pick out the whitewashed sandstone in some spots here and there, just as the picture shows. Yet what could not be overlooked and what differed so greatly from the detailed rendering on the faded, folded parchment in his hands were the plumes of smoke and splotches of black that bespattered the once-pristine while walls of the city.
The towers, once grand and white, are mostly fumbled heaps, lying in ruin at where their proud feet once stood. The Fires, Sir Martin thinks to himself, his jaw clenching in a mixture of anguish and resolve.
He turns to Saphrax and pats the proud gelding’s nose, looking into its dark eyes, “Stay with me, friend,” he speaks quietly to him before remounting. The heathen, oddly not impatient with him, but giving him time to to prepare himself for battle, looks on with what appears to be mild interest.
"You know,” the heathen says in his mellifluous accent, somehow making his own command of The Emperor’s tongue as awkward as a babe learning to speak, “you don’t need to do this. It is obvious they have sent you on a fool’s errand. Let the city die and fade into history. Live to fight a battle worth fighting.” His small white horse shifts underneath him, sensing the fear from his rider.
"I know,” replies Sir Martin, “I could leave this place to ruin. But I made a promise.” He fingers the paper and the small red seal. Had the Baguirmi known the Holy Roman Empire, he may have seen that the sigil stamping the letter was not from the Emperor, nor from the Pope. It came from the from Emperor’s youngest sister - one to whom Sir Martin was entrusted to protect from all harm.
Sir Martin smiled as he thought of her, with her petulance and airs upon realizing that she needed a constant escort since her brother’s coronation. This was her dream, her crusade, and for that, he would die trying if he had to. Not because of orders from the Emperor, but because of her. Only for her.
He carefully folded the parchment at its usual creases, the paper willing itself to close in the same places since she folded them that way, and tucked it back beneath his breastplate. As he turned to regard the once White City, a flicker of red darted into the sky behind a remarkably still-standing tower, followed by a blood-curdling screech that resounded over the expanse of the sea. From the other side emerges a head with glowing red eyes, a neck with spines and bat-like wings over a scaled body that glistens in the afternoon sun. As it cries, a spout of flames gushes from its mouth - as a clear warning to all to See and Fear that which inhabits this place.
"So they are real,” said Sir Martin aloud, and tugged on Saphrax’s reins to calm him and let him know his own resolve. The horse complied and calmed.
"Shall we?” he said to the Baguirmi and his entourage. He looks around him and makes eye contact with each man. They will give their lives this day for a woman they’ve never met. But they trust me, he thinks, that she is worth it.
He turns his horse toward the White City and draws his sword, the hissing of metal scraping metal echoed by his men at arms, and he descends the rocky path with a fierce battle cry.
Source
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