There were two worlds sat side by side. The high palaces where the nobles lived in opulent luxury and the slums were the rest of them lived. His home had rested in the cramped quarters of a dilapidated factory district, where smog filled the streets dyeing them orange and they felt their own lives slowly choking away from them.

Or so he'd been told for there was a wall between them. His father had told him as a child a story passed down from his great grandfather. Of a pristine city filled with wealth and food that they had been able to visit in a time before the wall had gone up. Of a time when there was still greenery and you could walk around for miles and there was always more to see.

And he told of a time when those things had been slowly taken from them. First the green spaces had been closed off, that only the richest could see them for they were precious and how would a slumdweller understand their value. They had slowly been driven out by ordinance and law one step at a time day by day.

Finally the wall had gone up, and no longer did they need to be banned in the first place. Because trapped here in this tiny place there wasn't anywhere to go. Only the work in the factories and living and dying in the name of the Imperium.

Of course, it was said to be a lie, a fanciful story made up for there was nothing other than the Imperium. That had always been the official line, that to suggest that your betters were lying was treason.

Your duty was to accept the Truth the Imperium told you.

"If that were true, we would be free to see it for ourselves." His father had stood contemplating the sky marked by trails of smog. "There would be a way to climb the wall and see the other side knowing that seeing the truth for yourself would mean believing it."

He had nodded along quietly and gone back to a makeshift task so easy a child could do it. But mandatory for everyone once they reached a certain age as it taught them the right way to live, to find their use in service to the factories they lived beside. Even as they spewed waste into the buildings around them and the workers died never able to change anything.

And then one day his father had never come back. It had taken him days to piece together why, but it seemed he'd been taken in for questioning. The accusation was that he was spreading dissent amongst the workers and questioning the Imperium.

So, he'd been executed one day and that was that.

He had been alone except for the stories, and the dream. The promise his father had left him that maybe there was more to this world than smog that burned his lungs and an accident waiting to kill you by the hour. For the first weeks nothing in his life had changed, because he still had money for food, but without his father working to provide it he soon lost even that comfort.

Scrounging for his next meal, desperate to survive from one day to the next. But he wasn't old enough to get a job in the factory and the only one who had ever looked out for him was gone. So he'd walked along the edge of the wall in despair, the buildings all slightly too far away to reach it, too short to see over it.

He scrabbled up to the best looking building anyway, close but not enough to jump. He went back down and looked around, because the streets were always filled with debris and if there was one thing they were taught it was to make do with what they had.

A series of poles tied together hastily, a ramshackle stabiliser to hold it to the roof. The guards were supposed to come through ever hour to make sure there was no attempt to scale the wall, to protect them from the horrors without. He had spent three without anyone checking though and that wasn't unusual either because who would want to see outside if they already knew that only hell awaited them?

The pole trembled as he pushed along it, his every step rocking it in place even as he built up speed until at they very end he leapt. Arms outstretched as he slammed into the wall itself, his hands just clearing the top as he grasped on for dear life.

Slipping away as the wall was as slippery as oil, his hands finding no purchase and for a moment he hung in the void, caught in the air. In the next he was dragged up as though as light as a feather as a claw pulled him onto the roof.

On the other side of the wall another city stretched out before his eyes, buildings painted in all the colours of the rainbow stood almost pristine in the morning light. Every house was a mansion that stretched on forever, dotted by still living wildlife that filled the streets in green.

But more than what was, there was also what was not. For the orange smog that dyed the slums in every aspect, churned out of their factories and clinging to the ground did not reach here.

"It is a beautiful place is it not?" The owner of the claw was hunched on the wall beside him. A twisted cross of man and bird glanced over the morning alongside him. It's gaze twitching as it looked both at the city and him watching them both. "Or is the truth a hard thing to grasp?"

He mustered up his courage and confronted it, forcing his eyes to fix on the monster in front of him. "In stories a demon would always take a price for their aid, binding you to its service."

The bird laughed, even as glistening feathers spread around it and it turned to face him fully. "The demons in your stories are truly weak to need such, for I need none. You can leave with no consequences at all little one, I will even help you down."

He gulped and stared at the creature even as its beak widened into something resembling a grin. He stared it down regardless and spoke. "Then are you just here to watch and laugh at us from this place." No the demon had chosen to appear before him, had dragged him up here to see it. "Are you resting up here and laughing at us trapped down there?"

It hummed gleefully. "But it is not my fault this city is like this no, you humans have done this to yourselves. I… I would like to see it undone, and to achieve that of course I would like your help." It preened and turned back to the palaces as it watched over the city. "There are so many things I could use the help of a mortal to accomplish, but I do not need to bind you for you have a choice. And in your choices, I would set you free."

"The first option is you go home, to your little empty shack and food stolen from garbage as all you have to satiate you. And you will know every day that you are kept this way by their machinations. That you starve at their whims, suffer because it makes them feel strong, you will know every day that you chose to live as a slave to an Imperium that will torment you forever."

"Or you can follow me for a chance to change it all. I will carve a path of power for you to give you the strength to fight, wings to soar through the sky, hope enough to light even the darkest of nights." Fire tore itself along its limbs, an otherworldly glimpse of something more. "I cannot promise you victory for the future is always uncertain and I admit our enemy is strong. But I can give you a chance and there is nothing more priceless than that."

He looked back over the two cities. One pristine and beautiful and forever out of his reach, taken before he ever had the chance to experience it. The other home decaying and broken and slipping out of his hands at every passing moment. An endless struggle merely to keep his head above water.

It wasn't a choice he bowed his head. Because they both knew there was no way he could go back. "Is it an oath I need to make? Or a mark bestowed upon me?"

The bird grinned back, beak spreading to reveal rows of teeth. "Why bind you when you are perfect as you are? You are my student and not my slave so come let us set your people free."


Remember that to hope to live above your station is to turn your back on the Imperium. Learn to be good little slaves and die in the gutter for your masters. Or don't do that because living in a company town that treats you like a possession is hell.

Unfortunately late stage capitalism continues to look more and more like company towns would absolutely sell out to chaos for the promise of better living conditions.

Well Thank you if you did read all of these, I may notice how many people did when the stats finally come back, now I should go and put work into the actual stories I spent the last few months not writing for. Oops.