Desolation, my employer. That's what this place says to me. Desolation. It is so dark in this lonely corner of the realm that I have vowed to study that even though it has been only hours, it makes me long to once again see the blue skies of the land of my origin, for green grass and shafts of sunlight upon reflective ponds.
There is so much blackness. I walk across blackness. Sometimes I imagine that I am in the depths of a blank void perhaps under a polar sea or in the swirling tides of intergalactic space, and only the surety of my footsteps lends me the impression of solidarity. I have to remind myself that the blackness is merely that of the obsidian glass that makes up this blackened desert. The clouds above are heavy and black, promising no sun, yet also no rain, the air is shrouded by a low dark mist that trails about my feet. The mist has a curious odor - redolent of burnt almonds. It would be almost pleasant to me, if I hadn't recalled that some poisons also have the smell of almonds.
The wasteland though which I travel is not completely without feature. Occasionally I will find a single, defiant column, its pale surface winking to me in the half-light. Perhaps once long ago, there was a thriving city that might have rivaled the glories of the Capital; a place of shining marble brick and glorious colonnades extending for miles. High aqueducts could have carried water to the parched throats of the citizenry. Every square and street crossing would have had its fountain, or its monument or statue. It would have housed verdant gardens, still pools, and ingeniously constructed halls of learning, culture, and industry. All gone now, as if it never had existed at all.
In the distance I can just barely perceive the tapering spikes of the mountains; hideous and brooding like a columns of squatting giants. There among their feet I was told that I would find the Panopticon.
Everything is broken glass, and mist, and sky with not the slightest bit of loom to give the land a potential for life. I know how obsidian is formed, and this causes me to wonder: where did the heat to make it come from? What tremendous inferno was capable of causing all this? A desert of black glass large enough to swallow cities? Was it the result of some sort of unimaginable destructive weapon wielded by the ancestors of the Orianians? On occasion I will pass what appear to be impact craters, and my imagination will turn to fanciful places. What fell here? Was there a war in the heavens? Did strange deities fall in disgrace like blazing comets, impacting the ground and turning paradise to black glass and ash? Perhaps the craters are a natural phenomenon? The result of trapped gases escaping as the sand fused? I cannot say, my employer, for I am still a newcomer, with little knowledge of the field of geology, and there is much that I must learn before I can even hazard a guess.
Despite the austerity of my new surroundings, I can be assured of one thing. My secrecy has been maintained. The noise of my arrival has gone unnoticed both by local authorities and the more abstract powers. And yet I am still not beyond all danger. Before leaving, some of my associates advised that I equip myself with a weapon, but at the time I declined, insisting that such devices would lead only to trouble and aggression. Now I am second-guessing that decision in regards to not carrying a side-arm. It is too late now, I remind myself. In the absence of force, I shall have to rely upon cunning and my own unique talents. In my heart I believe that this is the best way. If the knowledge I gain was earned through risk, does that not make it all the more valued?
I must cease my writing for now, employer. Beyond the foothills of those distant spiky mountains, I can just make out my intended destination.
Tens of thousands of obsidian bricks comprised the eight-towered fortress prison, an imposing structure surrounded by a broad moat filled with dark, stagnant and polluted liquid. It stood built upon eight foothills, and spread in an octagonal formation. Even when placed next to the mountains, it seemed to dominate. It resembled nothing so much as a hellish crown, with towering walls of dusty black glass contoured with strange and meaningless projections in its mainly sheer planes.
In the perpetual twilight of the kingdom's borderlands, a lone figure walked across the moated bridge with unhurried steps. Two guards stood ramrod-straight to either side of the prison's sole entrance with their ceremonial pikes held in steady hands. In stark contrast to their surroundings, the guards were wearing tunics of a bright blue, crushed velvet, emblazoned with the six yellow stripes of the Palace Guard. They wore the jester-like skullcaps of the ceremonial army, and their expressions were determined, disciplined. Their gazes were fixed at the horizon, unwavering.
As the figure approached them, the two men found themselves possessed of a sudden headache, a blurring of the senses, and a wave of dizziness. One of the men feel to his knees, with symptoms common to the suffering epileptic.
Even if they turned to look at the passing figure, they would stare straight through it as though it were not there.
The figure passed through the courtyard of hexagonal obsidian slabs, dull with the passing of generations of feet. The phantom then entered the entrance at the base of one of the obsidian towers, just left of the prison's smithy.
From there the figure turned right down a black stone corridor glistening with moisture from the land's trapped mist and lit by strange orange lanterns set high up near the ceiling that cast long, angular shadows. A single door waited at the end of the corridor, dented with flakes of rust contaminating whatever symbol it once bore. It had been added to the frame recently, as the hinges were newly forged steel.
The prison was the product of a less civilized era of Oriana's past, a relic from a time when barbaric tyrants needed prisons to keep their legions of dissidents and suspected traitors. Now the vast prison held only one prisoner. That person occupied one of the eight tower cells. It was as much protection as it was imprisonment. In that lonely fortress tower cell, the prison's sole prisoner was writing. He filled volumes worth of pages with his straight, precise lines, occasionally dipping his quill pen into the ink pot at his elbow.
The prisoner was editing his memoirs. He stopped only to eat, sleep, and to knock upon the door to request more ink for his inkwell, another quill as the one he had been using had eroded to dullness, and always he was requesting more paper.
The cell in which he spent his days was not spacious. Like the prison, the chamber was octagonal, and constructed from bricks of solid obsidian. The only furniture was the cot, a dresser, a bookshelf with a dozen volumes on it, two ancient wing-back chairs and the writing desk. The second chair was mainly there for interrogations of prisoners by a guard, but now sat unoccupied across from the desk. There was also a low table between the chairs with a clay tea kettle, some cups and saucers.
With a flourish, his quill completed the page's line. He nodded at the drying words and smiled.
"Chancellor Grumper?" a voice asked.
The man known as Grumper turned from his writing, one eyebrow raised. It appeared that he now had a guest, who was standing close to the locked door. What a truly rare occasion. At first he feared it would be an assassin or one of the less disciplined guards attempting to harass him in one of their drunken moods, but the stranger's appearance didn't lend that impression at all. He should have been questioning how the visitor had managed to enter. Had he been so engaged in writing that he hadn't heard the door open? But strangely he dismissed any notion of questioning this scene.
"That, I am no longer," he gave a slight smile. "Though I thank you for the kindness of your address. Please, just call me Grumper. It's what everyone calls me now. Not 'chancellor', not 'Your Grace", just Grumper. It's the name I was born with, and it's the one I will likely die with."
"Grumper," the figure nodded and stepped into the light.
Grumper turned his head quizzically at the visitor. How very strange, he thought. The more I look at this person, the less I see. How very odd. Yet I'm not bothered by this. I feel at ease.
Shrugging, he asked, "So what do I call you?"
"My name is not important," the stranger replied. "Only my mission, which is why I have come all this way."
"And that would be to what? To kill me? Perhaps you're going to smother me, or slip me a poison pill." Grumper smiled, and went on to say. "It would spare the Princess the burden of arranging for my trial."
"No," the stranger replied. "That's the last thing I want. And from what I know, there has been no trial scheduled, not this year, nor next year or any year after that."
"Hm, a pity," Grumper frowned. "Still the distractions of a trial would keep me from my true work."
"Your writing?" the stranger gestured at the pages in front of the middle-aged man.
"Yes," the older man replied. "My memoirs, notes, essays, a novel...all that's left of me now. Words filling pages that no one will read. I have so much time now just to think."
"Grumper," the stranger said. "There isn't much time. I too am an admirer of knowledge, and that's why I've come here. Not to kill you, but to learn the truth from you. There are others who desire this information, and that is why I was sent to you this night."
"Truth?" Grumper gave a slight chuckle. "I've served under three monarchs, and each one has said the same thing: truth is whatever you have the power to make real."
"Do you believe that?" the stranger asked.
"I go over the subject of my personal beliefs quite a bit in these essay I've written, but unfortunately I don't imagine that you have the time to read them."
"It would fill me with the greatest joy to read about your thoughts, but that is true. I have little time as it is. I've come here only to learn about one particular subject."
"And that would be?"
"Grumper," the stranger began. "What can you tell me about the Duke of Zill?"