Authors note: I have edited this chapter as I prepare to finish off the story. It was originally written a few years ago and my style of writing has changed a little since then. While the content won't have changed much the reading of it should be smoother. Enjoy! ~Ellie
Cities of Power Ch. 1
The Great War had taken its toll on the lives of the generations to come. The anarchy, madness and depravity that had ensued after the obliteration of the known world had continued for decades. Finally, on a dry and dusty continent plagued by ruination, leaders arose with the forethought for the survival for all, not just themselves, and, having encompassed the small parcels of still fertile ground, these leaders built three great city states.
Small villages of peaceful hippies and the simplistic descendants of remote Amish communities were taken into a kind of bondage to work the small plots of farm land and raise the meagre herds of livestock that could be found scattered across the wind swept landscape. With peasant labour to work the farms and a new class of slave labour to build the houses of stone and battlements upon the city walls to keep the leaders and their chosen people safe, the monumental cities grew and prospered.
It was such that the three great cities rose from the ashes of what had been the pinnacle of human achievement to start again; Each holding their own beliefs as to what would save their brave new world. As the cities evolved under their separate ethos, they came to rely on one another for trade, and citizens from the towns mingled with travelling merchants. It was not unusual for arranged marriages to occur between the elite of two cities in return for preferential trade agreements. As news of the towns spread throughout the ruined lands, more people began to arrive at the gates seeking shelter and food. The towns groaned under the weight of the refugees until, eventually, they closed their gates.
Over time, the country side surrounding the great cities became dotted with small villages of peoples who had sought out the legendary new cities and been turned away, as well as runaway slaves and peasants. Most eked out an insubstantial living amongst the sparsely wooded areas and gathered into small communities to ward off the roaming bands of thieves. With bandits and village militia, in the foothills around the towns, raiding their resources and tapping into their clean water supplies, travel between them became limited and was taken only in direst need, and then with armed escorts.
Phoenix, or Techno, as the villagers referred to it, was the city realm of Lord Zhou. His clan prized the knowledge and use of technologies above all others. They created a new fuel and invented modes of transport from the remnants of past civilisations. Robotics and computerised equipment, pieced together from bits and pieces gathered by relic hunters, made their lives easier, as well as the lives of the lower caste members that served them. The technologies, though, were pieced together without precise knowledge and understanding causing accidents to occur frequently amongst the lower castes. From time to time warriors of the city's elite would venture out into the country and capture new slaves to supplement the labour force required to keep the city running.
Skirmishes became regular occurrences between the Techno warriors and the Village militia throughout the small continent as time went on. With losses occurring on both sides in every raid, feuds between villages and city of Phoenix became part of the folklore of each group of peoples.
The other two cities did not require the replenishing of the lower castes at the same rate as the Techno city seemed to and allowed petitioners to approach their gates twice a year to apply for refuge. Most were refused and became permanent residents of the small towns and villages set in amongst the foothills and forests between the great cities. Some few of the more desperate people agreed to join the lowest castes of each city and work in slavery for the security of food and shelter.
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It was in one such village, close to the city of Gryphon, or Justice, as the villagers had named it, that Trix lived. The youngest child of the village blacksmith, she had four older brothers and lived a protected existence. She was not allowed to stray from the village in which her family lived to play in the sparse woods with the other children of the village. She had grown up watching the world rush past her as she learned to cook and sew patches on her brother's clothes. She longed for even the smallest freedoms of village life, but her oppressive father, Spar, ruled their home with an iron fist.
Spar had wanted to live in the city of Faith and Justice, Gryphon, but the gates of his chosen city had been closed to him. He had returned on petition day, and though his iron fists had proven him worthy of their survival of the fittest ethos, he had been offered work and shelter amongst the bonded peasant class only if he continued to fight within their security forces. He had turned his back on their offer of becoming a bonded man. Instead, he sought freedom in the villages of the foothills, meeting with an ageing blacksmith who had escaped the bonds that held him to the city of Gryphon. Finding the man a kindred spirit, Spar had undertaken an apprenticeship, the value of which eventually saw him earn his position as a village leader.
Trix sat daydreaming about the story of her parent's romance and wedding feast, sighing heavily. She lamented that she would never have adventures or a life beyond this small village, she had come of age last week, and no boy would even look at her for fear of her father and brothers, and she sighed heavily again. She knew she would never have a romance like that of her mother, and she despaired.
Unlike her brothers who were carbon copies of their hulking father, Trix was small and slight. Though she did her best to cut the better parts of her brothers hand me downs into usable pieces of fabric to fashion clothes for herself, she always looked like an orphan boy from one of the poorest villages. Trix smiled as she looked down at what she wore now, real girl's clothes of her own. Her brothers had been trading the jewellery and metal work they created in their fathers forge with the men from other villages who went out on raiding parties to the cities. They had traded for the clothes to give Trix at her coming of age feast. It was a gross mismatch of items, but she loved it none the less and felt like a princess for the first time in her life.
They had given her thick soled boots, with buckles all down the outside of them. Tights with only one hole in them, a pleated leather skirt and a snug top that held her nicely rounded breasts displaying how much of a woman she had become, much to her father's disgust. The best part of the outfit was a leather jacket she had been told had come from one of the Techno warriors who rode those two wheeled roaring machines. She had never worn anything so beautiful, and she stroked over the embroidered picture on the back of the jacket, closed her eyes and leant back against the tree imagining the girl who may have worn it.
She had only ever heard stories and seen drawings of the techno people riding their roaring machines, her village being too far removed from the skirmishes that occurred all too often with those people. Her village was located closer to the city of Gryphon, or Justice as they called it, and they lived in relative peace, if not prosperity.
Trix knew that to keep the beautiful picture on the jacket was dangerous, but as she sat with the small scissors in her hand, she could not bring herself to destroy it. She took up her old worn hand-me-down coat; she carefully measured and cut a piece, fitting it directly over the design of the new jacket. Then she took her small sewing box and began to stitch it into place before she was chastised again for not removing it. She worked quickly, her nimble fingers sewing a nearly invisible second seam over the top of the original to sew in the false back she had created.
