Salvation in the Necropolis (revised)

No, I'm alright. I know I am old, but I am not among the elderly who believe the young to be somehow indebted to us. I'd not trouble you for food or water, or even a kind word. I only ask for your time; that you sit and talk with me. That's easy enough, isn't it? I've waded through the lonely dark of the tunnels for a very long time, and I am headed through them again, soon. Travelling alone is very, very strange, and I am so glad to hear a voice besides my own. I thank you again for sitting with me awhile. If you'd like I can tell you news from some of the other settlements I've passed?1

Perhaps you've heard some of it, but I'd be surprised. There isn't much traffic in the tunnels, these days. The Necropolis has grown sluggish and sleepy. We are too comfortable. Mayhap that's why I've taken to foot; to stir up the sediment of our kin in the wake of my passing. Even in my home of Prosius North they were lethargic and comfortable. They had, after a fashion, stopped building the city, just as they have here. They even stopped digging. The tunnels can only reach so far downward before the Fire takes them. So, one day, they started digging up.2

I'm not sure why they even wanted to reach the surface; that great, fictional Above that we'd only heard in sad whispers and the aching songs of lament handed down from our ancestors. Some say that they want to see sky, but what good, really, is a sky? We've known only the cold rock of the Necropolis ceilings our entire lives. The journey into the Surface was a bad idea; an exploit into dangerous things that we knew nothing about. It was the dead dream of our parent's parents' parents'. It just happened to be our generation that broke through.3

How many generations of our children will suffer from our mistakes, just as we suffer from the mistakes made by our people long, long ago? How many will trudge on through this mire of cursed circumstance before our brood simply caves and dies with the rest of the planet?4

I'd rather not think about it. It is my job to keep the histories, not conjure prophecy of our impending doom. Though we can learn much from the past, nobody will listen to the Stories any more. Everyone, now, aspires to forge a future, but this can only be accomplished by casting the tinder of the past.5

But you will listen? Very well. It's been long since I've told this tale, and never before has it needed so desperately to reach the pleading ears of an audience.6

We were not always goblins. Strange to think, now, that we could be anything else. There was a time when our people lived above the ground; when they would bask in the undying light of a generous central star that they called "The Sun". The planet turned, in those days. It spun around the Sun like a child racing around a tired mother. The world was beautiful and her surface was covered in life. Under the ground, there was only earth.7

All things, we are taught, come to an end. The Sun, year by year, drew closer and closer to the planet, summoning its fires to well up and bespeckle the surface. The habitations of our people were razed as the earth ceased spinning and the Fire held it still.8

That is when our wars against the Fire began; back in those days before Goblinkind truly existed. They fought it with cold, then, trying to artificially repel the flame by freezing it away. That stayed it off, for awhile, but then more of the planet began to dip into the great, bleeding orb of the red Sun and all her maddened fury. On one side of its face, the planet was burning, melting into the star that had once given it life. On the other, it froze; turned away from its source of heat long ago.9

Our people should have died. No life can survive the death of the world on which it lives, but we did. It was our earliest ancestors that constructed the Necropolis: they who were the very first goblins. They were something else above ground; a great lofty being created in the image of God and chosen as His avatar. But when we crawled into the shadow of the underground and God could no longer see us, we became goblins.10

For uncounted ages, the Necropolis grew.11

They learned of cannibalism, and the farming of the funguses, and the mineral leeching from the aquifers. They learned of the substance of shadow, and the Darksight, and of how to converse with ghosts. They learned the sciences of magic, and the magic of science, and the techniques of survival without consuming air.12

But mostly, in the Necropolis, we have learned of Death. She walks through our rooms. At the moment a life is extinguished, there is that brief flash of light above a corpse, and she is there to breath it in and take it with her. She was very busy, of course, on the day that the diggers in the Prosius North wing obtained Surface.13

What? You didn't know about that? I started this story because I assumed you did. It happened awhile ago, but the Necropolis is vast, and I can understand how one from this far corner could have missed the news. I will tell you, and you must promise to share my tale with anyone else who will hear it, but know this: We are goblins, and our home is under the earth. Here we live, and here we may live forever. The surface is folly. The only one waiting above is Lady Death on her black beast of iron.14

It was awhile ago, like I said. I was there to protest, but I knew my voice would not be heard. Despite my adverse attitude towards the project, I was just as curious as any of them to see the world above, though I wish now that I hadn't.15

There were tribe leaders of the North and a group of bards playing "Our Mother the Fire"; the lament written for the Sun in the time before she went mad. The excitement in the air was thick as a obsidian wall, and twice as hard.16

A solitary worker was chosen to finish clearing away the last of the rubble. Air filtered in through somewhere. It felt strange... The air above does not move like the air in the Necropolis; it is thin, and free, and it shrieks and roars as it pushes past an opening in the ground. There was a small tumble of debris that we onlookers avoided followed by a particularly large rockfall, but then it was visible.17

We looked up, and we saw Light.18

I can never describe it to you, though the image of it is forever locked in my mind. It is like nothing I've ever witnessed. Light was the very last thing I saw; filtering into a crack from stars overhead. It burned horribly, but so entranced was I that I could not look away, even as blackness descended on me and my sight was lost. The tribe leaders clambered up the rock fall and dashed up onto the surface, along with the workers, and the bards.19

None of them even made a noise as they died. It could have been the cold or the stars, I suppose. I heard their bodies crack as the Light him them, and I imagined them frozen and lacerated by pinpoint rays from distant Suns.20

And now I am blind; just an old goblin with nothing left but stories.21

Why have you not heard that story before, you ask?22

Because most of Prosius North is dead now. Everyone had to see the surface. You could hear their exclamations echo through the caverns as they died:23

"An endless ceiling," they'd say, or "How vast are the gathered fires!"24

Once I even heard: "Salvation, at last."25

I believe that was the old Shaman, dying in the sight of God, but I can't26

be sure. He sounded so young in his final moment....27

I'll probably travel there eventually, if ever I feel the span of my life has passed. I think I'd like to die above, as a Man instead of a goblin. Not everyone will make the same choice, however. That's why I travel on now.28

To tell my stories? No, that's not it. That's part of it, but that's not the reason in itself.29

I travel because before you know where you are going, you should know where you've been. I travel to tell our kinfolk that they have a choice.30

Now I must be on my way.31