City of Iron
It was called Fenris, and it stank.
It stank of blood, and sulphur, and, of course, the iron, the ever-present iron, forged and hammered to stand strong and stark. It jutted, tall and defiant, a cold, sprawling, metallic blotch on one edge of the grand Lake Bifrost.
Once, the iron had simply been the cheapest building material around, brought forth from the sprawling mines under the city, spreading for vast acres, invisible from above ground. But now, it was simply what the city was. The people did not dream of building in anything other than iron, any more than they dreamt of hurting a loved one, or of stealing from a child.
Walking the city of Fenris, one might be forgiven for wondering how it functioned. Those unfamiliar with the city's ways might wonder at the parents who let their children play amongst the city's sharp iron, or at the lack of a city council, or at the slowly clunking statues of intertwined gears at every intersection, connected in an endless network, that every citizen stopped to read and adjust, every day.
But, of course, there were none such to wonder. The city's heart beat, and its people flowed through its veins, and none needed to wonder. If you were a citizen of Fenris, you knew.
Occasionally, during the deep, decades-long winters, immigrants would arrive, trekking over the endless sheet of ice that Lake Bifrost became. Fenris treated this process as a slow invasion, and simply locked up any would-be intruders until they were willing to join the citizenry.
Somehow, this never seemed to take too long.
Fenris remembers.
Fenris remembers, that a long time ago, there had been another city it had known of, on the other side of the Lake. "Selunis", it had been called, perhaps. Fenris remembers, distantly, a different time, when every winter had seen thousands of people streaming in both directions over the Lake, when it hadn't imprisoned immigrants on sight, when there had been a conversation between the two cities, of knowledge and culture and art and everything else besides.
Fenris remembers a time when it had been different, too. When it had responded with merely mild concern on hearing that there were no iron mines on the other side of the Lake. When it had only been disappointed to hear that many of Selunis' children were not taking up their parents' iron rings, the tradition of studying and building.
Fenris finds it very easy to forget.
Plans are drawn up, to ensure nothing like this can happen again. To protect itself. To ensure that as the city's clockwork ticks, as it always has, so it always will. They are ambitious, and detailed, and will require decades of even research before the materials engineering necessary is possible. It will be expensive. It will require dedicated, long-term focus, by the entire city.
It is important enough. Fenris must completely know itself. Fenris must have the space in which it has absolute dominion.
And so, years later, construction begins. The most prominent feature is a colossal, metal dome, reaching out of the swampland around the city, to enclose it completely, when it is finished. It will not let in the sun or the stars, for they cannot be managed or controlled by the gears.
To replace them, Fenris builds city blocks of glowing, combustion engines. They burn continuously, through day and night, heat and light being piped out via a network of dull iron. Fenris finds the dark, red heat comforting, a constant reminder that it has mastered even the task of the sun.
It ends, as it always does, with war.
It is the tail end of a long, long winter, long enough that Fenris has almost forgotten other seasons exist. The metal dome is about half constructed, and Lake Bifrost is about to start melting, once again. The city is looking forward to being able to take down its watchtowers and most of its defenses, as soon as the lake becomes impassable again.
And on almost the last possible day, it spies people, marching, on the Lake, at the horizon.
Fenris, of course, prepares for siege. It stocks up food and water, drafts its populace, and curls up, breathing smoke, ready and waiting. Its great fires burn hot and angry, churning out weaponry and armour.
But as the marchers get closer, filling the horizon, it becomes clear that they are not the ten-thousand-strong army they appeared to be. They are more - a hundred thousand, perhaps even a million - and they are refugees. Their clothes are battered and torn, and cannot be keeping the chill out. There are elderly being carried by the young.
And they have come to seek asylum.
Fenris shuts its doors and debates.
The problem is, of course, that Fenris itself is barely two million people. And these people are new, and different, and would not know how to adjust the great gears of the city anyway. They are not part of the world Fenris has constructed, and introducing them would destroy the life of the city as it exists.
The counterargument is simple. Look at them. Look at them, sitting outside the city, hoping they will find a better response here than they did back home. Look at them, those who would be citizens, with all that entails.
A thousand refugees die, of hunger, of disease, of hope, while the debate rages, inside.
The doors, higher than ten men, etched into the side of the iron dome, creak open, slowly. These doors have almost rusted shut, in fact, and someone has to go run and fetch some oil.
The refugees can barely believe it. They had almost given up. They enter, tentatively, a city that is not theirs. Exploratory, but in desperate need.
And they find an empty city. No people are there to greet them; only the constant clunk-clunk-clunk of gears. Only the dark, red smell of iron. Only the metal bubble above them, the vast dome blocking out so much of the sky.
They stream in, looking for food, for medicine. The more magically sensitive of them start to cough, and feel weak; the iron serving its original function once more.
(And somewhere, deep in the bowels of the largest mines that will ever be mined, Fenris waits, and watches. It has no idea what they will do, no context for the behaviour of these people it is supposed to be related to. And even if it has forgotten about the ironward, some part of it feels reassured, that the intruders cannot do too much, that their power is curtailed here.)
The refugees find their succour. Even the buildings are strange and unfamiliar to them; Fenris' iconography uses a small, four-pointed cross for medicine, apparently. And the food is just small pills that fill your stomach, and the medicine is clanking machinery that asks you to trust yourself to it, to be healed. But it works, after a fashion.
It is also a violation, as the medical devices treat magic as an illness. When the first hundred come back, from the innards of the city, and fall to their knees, weeping, at the loss of a sense they have had since birth, the refugees panic.
(And Fenris did not know this would happen, but it is not displeased by it, either. If this is how the assimilation has to happen, then so be it.)
On the surface, the refugees frantically decide what to do. Many say that even such a half-life is better than none whatsoever. This opinion takes hold, and spreads, Selunis showing its famous harmony once more, for the last time.
Except for one.
The Archivist runs. He does his best to evade the watchful eyes, of Fenris and Selunis alike. He searches, frantically, desperately, his cough not improved by the exertion. He has to recall old, old texts, to try to trace the functioning gearwork back to its origin, to find the heart of Fenris.
And he finds it. The largest boiler room, at the very centre of the city, surrounded by conduction pipes and the smallest, most densely connected gearwork. This is the Mind, and it is what drives the entire city, clicking and whirring and even the sheer heat is enough to drive a man mad.
Or, at least, anyone not of Fenris.
He collapses, to his knees, and he vomits, dry and dusty, right there on the floor. Even so, he plucks out, from under his shirt, the most precious of cargos. A large, round pebble, the size of an orange, boiling and writhing to be set free. It glitters, somehow still managing to be a source of light next to the greatest artificial sun.
And, before he can hack up his life, he cracks the pebble open with his teeth and swallows what is inside-
explosion.
out pours a building, a building massive in its own right. a museum, a library, given potency by the weight of what has been collected. it pushes, and wedges itself into the open spaces it finds, into the gaps between gears and the holes in minds. it draws, greedily, from the heat it finds, and it entangles itself with the power and stricture.
(Fenris notices, at this point, but it is already too late.)
the museum, the library - the Memorium, as Selunis used to call it - grows, sharply, carrying what used to be the Mind with it. it shoots into the sky, into the last patch of sky that is still open, and unfolds - a flower, an atomic blast - into a metallic, crystalline tower. it brings forth its old spells, etched within the pages of what lies inside, and the spells seep into the gearwork and radiate to the entire city.
many smaller explosions happen, all over the city, from the pebbles carried by the Selunians, and other buildings rise, now...
...but it is done. the combined building rises tall and strong, towering over the metal dome that was meant to contain it. the Mind now has memory, and the Memorium now has a mind.
Before the rest of the story-
Before the shock and panic of both populations, before the citizens of what used to be Fenris remember their history, before the citizens of what used to be Selunis remember their world, before the fighting and unrest spike up and just as quickly dies back down again, before the two populations learn to live together in the chaos that follows, rebuilding the city in their combined image...
Before the rest of the story, there is a moment. There is one moment, where Fenris and Selunis are themselves, reunited at last, before the new entity that comes out of the other end is formed.
And Fenris looks at its sister, and says, oh.
And Selunis manages a scared smile, and says, hello to you too.
And they embrace, and the new world forms around them.
The incredible lrig_rorrim has written the counterpart to this story, about the City of Magic and the cultural memory of shibusa. Team gniviD hopes you enjoy ;)