~1.2k words

In the blighted corner of Aerodin known as the Pitts, it was wise to move slowly in the presence of death and wiser still to avoid moving at all. So when Bal encountered death on the mouldering stretch of thatched willows that was his path, he did what he knew he must. He spread his feet wide for balance, braced himself against the lurching walkway -one among thousands in the chaotic network of vaulted platforms that surrounded him- and wrapped both hands firmly around the nearest railing. Then, he watched.

A little further along, perhaps only a hundred feet from where Bal stood, a young pittsman in an overlarge tunic scrabbled across the flexing willows. Caught like a rabbit in a trapper’s snare, the youth struggled against a braided rope that ran out from around his ankle and plunged over the edge of the raised walkway.

Jaw clenched tight, Bal looked on in muted horror.

Tucked within a natural hollow at the base of the mountain known as Nero’s Thumb, the Pitts were a haphazard patchwork of canted willow beams propped up by little more than their own constantly offset weight. Aerodin’s slum city stood atop centuries of the Empire’s waste and looked, on approach, as though the goddess Aeras had started a game of pick-a-stick, and upon discovering the game could not be won, spit on the whole mess before breathing fresh life into the rest of the world out of spite. It was difficult to believe such a place could remain upright with nothing save rotten wood and knotted hemp to turn the trick, but it managed it all the same.

And yet, if a linchpin existed that kept the Pitts from falling into the reservoir of filth below, than it did not work wholesale, and huge swathes of walkway were often lost to circumstance. The people of the Pitts assigned all manner of reasons for these extreme architectural failures. Foremost of which were the Gods; low hanging fruit for a low hanging people who had not the time to divine the ‘whys’ of their world. After all, Gods were the perfect scarecrows, open to all the blame and abuse the world could throw at them, without ever showing up to argue the matter. But divine meddling wasn’t responsible for the ever-changing face of the Pitts. It was the perpetual shade of the mountain’s ill favor that cut the legs out from beneath the willow beams. Rot was what brought the Pitts to its knees, and there was nothing quite like a violent disturbance to hasten that work.

“Rantha take all of you!” Cried the snared youth, not bothering to point his curse at anyone in particular. Then he dropped to his belly and spiked his fingers down through the thatched willows.

Bal groaned.

Once looped, a pittdwellers best chance of survival was to cut that loop with a knife. That this luckless pittsman had dropped so quickly to the floor, informed Bal better than anything could, that the unfortunate youth did not possess one. The boy would fight the rope and hope it broke. It was a dead man’s gambit. Worse, with Bal standing on the same walkway, his own odds of dying had suddenly risen as well.

An inhuman, creaking groan came from the struggling stranger as the rope around his ankle thinned, and the willows along the edge of the walkway bowed. The young pittsman worked to flex against it, but the effort was wasted. Even with his forked hold on the walkway and low center of gravity, the snared youth was ripped brutally backwards, his fingers tearing deep scores through the wood like a tiller through a turned field.

The walkway lurched.

One moment, Bal stood with his feet wide and his hands tight on the railing. In the next, the railing slammed into his belly, forcing air out of his lungs in a violent rush. Bent over a single beam of flexing willow, he looked down on the thick haze which covered the pittfloor – a muddy brown canvas masking a world of rot ruin. As he hovered over the precipice waiting to see if the willow would bear his weight, his thoughts remained practical. What will my mother think when I die and she discovers I’ve gone to the Pitts against her wishes? Would she even know that it happened? Would Ico bother sending word?

Then the railing snapped back and the platform settled, returning time to its normal rhythm. As it did, his practical -if morbid- thoughts faded. He looked down to find the railing had splintered beneath his hands. Rather than stepping away, Bal gripped even tighter, too afraid to move.

The other Pittsmen -what few were nearby anyway- hurried around the snared youth. They danced just out of his reach as they passed to their chosen side of the walkway before the structure collapsed and the option to do so was taken from them.

Paralyzed by fear and resigned to his place on the willows, Bal ventured a look beyond the unfortunate pittdwellar. There, atop a box at the far end of the precarious walkway, sat a frail, shirtless man with dusky hair. Ico.

Covered from face to waist in matted grime, the shirtless man marked Bal’s presence, hopped down to the wide platform below, and beckoned with a frenetic insistence that did not at all match the immediacy of their shared task.

Bal groaned at the insufferable Ico, a childhood rhyme bubbling up as he did. If you find yourself a-fixed, be sure to use your tricks. If you find another noosed, keep your distance, plant, and roost. Even as the walkway lurched beneath the youth’s flailing efforts to free himself, still the people of the Pitts ignored their better sense, picking past the boy with stolid indifference. Well, thought Bal. The people of the Pitts might have forgotten the rules that governed their world, but I haven’t. Only when the boy was dead and the danger gone, would Bal brave the path ahead. Assuming, that was, the path still stood.

Not that the shirtless Ico sympathized with Bal’s caution.

The weathered man paced the thatched willows beyond with less patience than a lean wolf in a long winter, his very frown so near a vocalized curse that Bal nearly hopped along the walkway to answer it. But no, it wouldn’t be long now. Better to stay put and wait it out.

Ignoring that same good sense, a bald pittsman darted along the walkway. “Kings boy,” said the pittsman to the snared youth. “Do us all a favor and fuck off before you ruin this path for the rest of us!” Then the bald man lashed out with a kick.

The young pittsman yelped in pain, then glared at the man who’d kicked him, drawing in a deep breath as though preparing a curse.

It never left his lips.

The railing snapped and the youth was jerked backwards, eyes going wide in surprise. In a final frantic effort, the pittsman lunged for the edge of the walkway, bounced off the willows without purchase, and fell promptly out of sight.

Even as the youth’s final scream pierced the air, laughter rose to mask it. A shared chuckle joined by those nearby, as though someone had told a particularly good joke and then paused to let it marinate.