Chapter Text
The sky refused to truly show itself to the citizens of Dema.
Smog from the compact cement city chased away the brightest of blues from the daytime sky, and hushed the twinkle of stars at night.
You won’t find any windows in the sanctity of stone cold walls, leaving the outside world an untouched mystery.
Dema was the silencer for one shotgun citizen in particular, one who had just come of age, deemed ready to be brought to the high north tower. There, in its eroding stone and shriveled vines, held the morning teachings for the devout. It was always lead by the high bishop of the nine,
Father Nicolas Bourbaki.
Clancy climbs the stairs behind the other grey and mechanical citizens, ignorant to what is about to change his ever predictable life forever.
he catches his first glimpse of the horizon.
The outside.
Barely even tall enough to see above the wall, his eyes squint through the hazy smoke that’s always spouting from lower levels of the city.
Colors unlike anything he’d ever laid eyes on greet him with a smile. Shapes that don't inhabit his world behind walls danced under an unchained sky.
Outside was foreign, nothing but a soft expanse of slopes stitched together with gentle green and warmth. Nothing like the sharp, all encompassing jaggedness of the city.
But those symmetrical and piercing shapes were the wounded home in which he belonged.
Clancy cursed at himself for even wanting to sneak a look over the city walls, at that unpolished softness threatening to tear everything he knows apart. For what does curiosity bring except for insubordination and discontent?
Dema is sanctuary, he reminded himself.
“We are to be nothing but grateful,” Father Nico began his sermon. Dark and cracked palms rested in his lap as he paced.
“For we have everything we need. You are clothed, you are fed. And that is enough until you rise into the kingdom of the gone, its arms open, and glorious.”
“Glory to the gone.” The congregation echoed, bowing their heads.
Clancy quickly followed suit just a beat behind, his mind lingering on that forbidden horizon once more. It infected every thought like vandalism, causing his time in the high tower to pass without him.
When he closed his eyes, he saw the sun. When he opened them again, he found himself missing it.
Father Nico was wrapping up his teaching, sludge coming from the Bishop’s passionate words. A dark, thick sense of dread pooled in Clancy’s stomach.
Nico spoke of the blessed privilege it is to die. To become one with the depths of earth the city sunk into, to escape your imperfect mortal body, leaving it as a shell for something else to infect.
Just a vessel under a neon headstone to rot.
Yes, Clancy would love to leave this damned form.
His feet weighing more with every step. Skinny arms always too frail, too fidgety, unable to do much good or right. Disobeying ears unable to pay attention to a sermon for more than a few minutes.
No, Clancy wasn’t holy yet.
His knees not yet bruised enough from kneeling in submission. Not enough grime under his nails to consider his servitude to his bishops, to his city, complete. To earn the crown of glorious gone, one must prove to have the unyielding loyalty of a true Vialist. Faces pressed into stone beneath the holy presence of the bishops, palms up with aching devotion for the hive.
Living solely to see the honey of your life be consumed by them.
Citizens sharpened themselves on the grindstone of unforgiving time, so that one day the shackles of labored consciousness will loosen, and peace that transcends understanding will wrap itself around your shoulders.
Clancy wakes up in ache, and lies down at night just as steeped in it.
The city reminds him, you will never be free until you fulfill the glorious purpose.
Until his life is molded into something the bishops can use. And use him until his skull fractures and his heart pulses weakly for the last time, they will.
He can’t help but notice and question however, how that hypnotizing horizon seemed to cup his chin in a kind of warmth he hadn’t ever felt before. The bishops were meant to be the only thing to make you feel any semblance of good and safe. It was blasphemous to believe that anything outside of the city could fill you with true purpose or wonder.
“Clancy, son.”
The gravel in Nico’s voice always had its way of pulling him from his head.
Clancy blinked up in attention, honing the chilling realization that the rest of the congregation had left.
“You showed up for my teaching, but you were not present.” The bishop sighed, as if knowing the deviant thoughts that had formed in the boy’s head.
“You know what happens when your mind wanders from the flock.”
Awful, awful, awful
Clancy bowed with intensity, hoping to convey his remorse and slip from the clammy grasp of punishment. “My bishop, I- I have no excuse for this.. unfocusedness. I will pay close attention next time, I.. I will have my eyes glued to you, only you, I promise, I promise..” He stuttered, bordering on pleading.
How stupid stupid stupid
“Oh, my Clancy..” He sighed, his chin downturned,
“My mirror, my little exception. You are constructed different than the others and yet destiny is higher than you yet can reach. But in time, you will become pliable enough to mold in my hands.”
Nico’s eyes remained dark in weathered disappointment, as he abruptly took Clancy by delicate deep brown hair to forcefully drag him to the west end of the city.
To the towers of silence.
Clancy writhed and kicked in an attempt to stay upright, trying to ease the pull of ink covered hand in dark hair. Even now, Clancy dared to avert his glassy, tear struck eyes to that tease of horizon one more time. The sun in its sudden, slippery descent into the darkening hills, little critters bolting into the bushes for safety through the night. Everything so wonderfully aware that the sun will come back again for them.
But not for Clancy.
The sun doesn’t bother entering the towers. It must believe in his punishment too, he thinks. Refusing to give any light to someone so sinful and disobeying.
Still, he can’t help but admire the last bit of heat his skin will have for a while. He wants to toy with it in his hands, let its yellow warmth pool into his palms until he’s dizzy.
Something loosens the smallest bit in Clancy's chest at the fleeting feeling of its radiance.
He wants to see the sun bathing that landscape again.
And just before he is thrown into the uncaring darkness, a thin smile slips onto his face as he selfishly thinks he will see it again, someday.