Rebirth
The first moon was setting slowly, almost reluctantly in the east. Spreading a smooth 
silver glare across the ancient city so far below, spreading in all directions towards a 
hazy horizon. The pale white light did much to hide the vistas of abandoned buildings and 
deserted courtyards, where trees and grass grew on white marble boulevards and vines poured 
through pane less windows, that stared down empty streets with black sulking eyes, like 
thick green waterfalls. And on the few streets where people still walked during daytime and 
evenings the marble glowed white and mysterious. The second moon TyíLya was slowly rising, 
accepting the watch over the city from its elder brother for the remainder of the night. 
The rays filtered quietly into the ancient gorge, the very heart of the great city that 
held such a strange and alien beauty bathing in the starlight, and whisked across her 
raised face, in the depths of her crimsom robe, with a silken touch. The narrow ravine in 
which she treaded was as old as the planet itself, a heavy, sulphur tinted mist lay like 
white sheets across the ground making every step perilious, or dangerous had one strayed 
from the lighted path. Around her hot water bubbled and boiled in the hot springs and the 
lake, the cause of the mist and sulphuric fumes. The figures in front and behind seemed to 
flow forward, like ghosts on the edge of vision, fleeting like hot puffs of strangely 
coloured air, they also covered in the heavy crimsom robes. The intense smell made her head 
feel light and the scenes drawn up around her seemed strangely unreal and dreamlike in 
their mist shrouded beauty. 

And suddenly she was not walking in the quiet procession in the magic ravine, instead it 
seemed as if she was looking down on a great city, not the dying and slowly decaying hulk 
which she knew all too well but a city where happiness still dwelt, where the sun shone, 
free of dark shadows, where childrenís laughs tinkeled in lush parks and people where 
strolling on the broad avenues where vegetation and foilage now had set up an inpenetrable 
fortress. She saw marble arches beset with bass reliefs carved out of the sheer stone in 
exquisite detail, picturing great steps in the old civilization, the construction of the 
City of Ancient, the creation of the council, the unification of the people and the era of 
peace and prosperity that had followed. Buildings stood firm and tall , sparkling in the 
light of the sun, seeming more modelled than built, filled with a beauty and a grace 
unmatched on the entire planet, demonstrating more than anything the truth of the saying 
that the souls of the arcitects had gone into their construction. 

In the flick of an instant the memory had dissolved and dissipated and once again she 
walked trudgingly and slowly in the long procession. She knew the air in this place brought 
visions to those succeptible to such, that was why this crevasse was still here, untouched 
by human hands, its misty and mysterious bottom preserved from the days when the planet and 
the race was still young. And this place was also where the cries were at their loudest, 
the silent sobs and loud shrieks of uncontrolled pain seemed to emit from everywhere around 
them as they walked. The cries of a dying planet. Time was short now, the soul could not 
take the assail much longer now, all around the signs shew grim and foreboding, 
prophecising of the fall of night upon the doomed planet. The decaying, ruined city above, 
a city once dedicated to peace. Rumors had begun circulating that the people of the plains 
where silently gearing for war. Tales had been told of ancient engines of war and 
destruction being constructed from dusty, old blueprints high in the western mountains. All 
contact had been lost with the kingdoms of Cyísi and Maíla, the few unconfirmed reports 
emerging from there telling stories of civil war tearing the land apart from within. 
Harvests had gone bad in the south leaving thousands of people in the claws of starvation, 
and a mysterious plague had left the coastal ports silent, filled with rotting corpses, 
food for the ever hungry gulls and ravens. The civilization stood at the twilight of its 
history, soon to take itís final step into the oblivious night. 

A multicoloured bird swooped past bringing her out of her trance-like contemplations, they 
were soon at the temple, she could almost hint itís strange, tall, steeples through the 
thick foilage ahead. The cries had almost subsided now and suddenly she felt very cold, a 
chill spreading from within freezing her limbs in unison. She saw fire. Fire licking the 
white spires of the city, ravaging through streets littered with dead, strange machines 
marching down white boulevards. Fire swept through groves overgrown with rose bushes, the 
flowers crumbling like paper under the intense heat. This was what laid before them all, 
she knew it, deep within. 
The temple spread itís wings around her protectively, the walls seemed warm and welcoming, 
driving for a moment the fear and loathing from her heart. She could see tiny flickerings 
from the eon old computers sitting silent in the fore chambers of the temple. Dust lay like 
a thick cover of snow across keyboards not touched since the beginning of the era of peace, 
this had once been a defense outpost, its computers connected to a vaulted chamber outside 
the city, there, hidden in old missile silos, lurked terrible powers. It was said that it 
was the most terrible weapon the race had been able to devise, sealed away for what was 
said to be forever. Now, doubts of the truth in that speech broke their way into her being. 
Around the planet hung ancient defense systems, weapon platforms suspended in free-fall, 
dark and brooding, relics from the times when the race had walked among the stars, 
colonizing and settling on new planets. Those colonies were since long gone now, this was 
what remained.

They gathered around the metal altar and the two bearers strode forward, each carrying a 
bundle, something wrapped in crimson red silk linens. A strange incantation, a complicated 
hand gesture and the symbols engraved on the altar began glowing with a strange bluish 
light, illuminating the entire room with a chilly ice-blue fire, making their faces stand 
out like death masks, deepening every wrinkle. The bundles were placed on the circular 
altar and the linens removed. The two children stirred slightly, they too could feel the 
tension electrifying the air in the chamber, following each strange aeon old gesture with 
undivided attention, staring with wide eyes, one blue pair and one brown, at the man before 
them. The air above the altar started shimmering slightly and she could hear whirrs and 
clicks as coordinates were entered into the computers, locking into matrixes once devised 
for entitely different purposes. As she and the others picked up on the ancient chant the 
room seemed filled with strange lights and smells, the children, Aídam and Eíve as they 
were named started shimmering with the same strange blue light as could be seen 
illuminating the hieroglyphs on the altar, and then they were gone. 
She sank to her knees, there went their last hope, their last desperate try to salvage the 
race, their hope for rebirth. Perhaps they would be the first of a new civilization of man 
on the distant blue world of Earth. And with a terrible shudder the planet died.

Per Sikora 2000