Natura Humana Quest

Cyrus had been travelling for weeks in his search for nothing specific, only the vaguest of yearnings guiding him ever onwards through the open fields that had withered the blooms on his neck and scattered farms that had revived them in an obvious change of crossing boundaries.

He had set out from the safety and comfort of his garden as a particularly odd wanderlust overtook him, like a soft voice urging just at the edge of his consciousness and asking him to come and see what his biome had to offer outside of the carefully cultivated, meticulously maintained garden he had mostly kept himself to since his turning.

Cyrus wasn’t often one to leave his boundary so venturing as far as he had from it was a wonder in of itself.

The abandoned city was a sight that would have stolen the breath from his lungs if he’d still been in possession of them.

Lush, green grass gave way suddenly to concrete and asphalt, paved streets and precisely planned buildings and structures that had Cyrus’ nature feature burst back into life as he stepped onto them, but wrong.

Decaying.

Buildings were collapsing in on themselves, roofs folding in and upper floors falling into lower levels forsaken seemingly years before Cyrus’ arrival, their colours washed out and dulled by the elements that had assaulted them ceaselessly in the time since their abandonment.

Concrete streets and sideways were cracked and falling apart, the stone and asphalt breaking apart and shifting as weeds and grass fought to push through it and reach to the sky above, seeking to tear apart enough of the man-made structures and conveniences to truly reclaim the area for another biome’s keeping.

Cyrus’ flowers may have returned upon his entering the city but they were wilting, shrivelled things, decaying like the city itself as the biome edged ever closer to the inevitable end of its reign over the area.

Cyrus continued to stride forward carefully, senses perked and trained on every little piece of information he could obtain as he wandered aimlessly through the city, passing decrepit buildings and long-forgotten streets.

He happened upon a park somewhere close to the centre of the city and after a moment of waiting, of listening to the birdsong on the wind, he took a step inside of it.

He felt the shift immediately, so strong it almost caused him to stumble back to the cool concrete that hummed with the biome magic that lived and thrummed deep within him.

The park was an overgrowth mess, abundant of life and of other biome magic eating away at the Developed parts of it to reclaim the area as a wild blooming growth within the forsaken city so that the biome might decay faster and faster and the area returns to that that had been before human intervention had originally taken in, returning the land to what it had been in an era long past existing but returning with a forceful certainty that only nature could truly possess.

It was too much for Cyrus, now shaken by the reminded inevitability of his own boundaries decay sometime in the future, either far from the current point in time or just beyond what he could see.

He turned away from the park and found a different street to travel down, gazing upon the ruins that remained of this once living city and attempting to find the little pieces of it that would show him what life had been like here, what had happened to change it, and if there was a way to halt such a harrowing decay of his own beloved home.

All the while ignoring the memory of the last, desperate piece of Developed biome magic struggled to keep itself together under the onslaught of the other biomes taking it over while the flowers on his neck withered to a near death-like state.

He continued on, through twisting, winding roads until he caught sight of the unknown figure within the city with him.

It was only quick glimpses at first. The barest hint of pitch-dark fur and swaying, withering plants. Cyrus wasn’t sure what to think of the thing inhabiting the city with him, nor the sheer size of them, taller than any esk he had ever met in his time of existence, though that was largely due to his own choice of isolation and he was aware that there were others larger than the glimpsed being seemed to be.

Cyrus wasn’t sure he really wanted a meeting with the unknown being, not in this place that felt like it was barely supporting its own control over the area let alone being able to lend Cyrus the aid he would need to escape a confrontation if one did occur. The most battle-ready esk he wasn’t and if he could avoid it where he could then that was highly preferred to the Esk.

So he turned up a street the next chance he could and worked on putting more distance between himself and the strange thing in the forsaken city with him.

More collapsed buildings were the sight that greeted him, once great structures that reached proudly towards the sky now toppled and suffocated by vines and weeds that worked to rid the structure of its form and structure. Others had been corroded by rust, the red-stained metal obvious against the more natural colours of the grass and weeds that had bloomed and taken over where they could.

Eventually he came to a place where a tree must have sprouted between a crack in what may have once acted as a sidewalk but had been broken and distorted by the great towering sigil of nature that had taken root so many years before and was now the home of a number of birds and a number of other animals Cyrus could see from his position upon the ground.

Usually he enjoyed trees, they were shaded and offered not only numerous vantage points to be taken advantage of by an individual looking for a comfortable place to lounge and look over things. But this one felt like an attack, like an infection that had been left unchecked and was now little more than a cancerous growth that only cultivated further infection of the surrounding area.

Cyrus knew better than to approach this tree that felt so much like an assailant, keeping part of his attention trained upon it as he inched ever so carefully around it, as if it would reach out and assault him, pull what little was keeping his blooms in place from the surrounding area and left him bereft should he turn his attention away from even a moment.

His gaze falls upon the pitch-dark being with the next corner he turned.

He went stuff in his unknowing, staring blankly at the strange Esk as they seemed to be doing the same in return, the two of you taking in another Esk of your biome and the dread and chill this forsaken city was having upon you both.

They looked saddened, despair weighing heavily upon the set of their shoulders and underlying their words once Cyrus was close enough to be addressed.

He remained silent for most of the other Esk’s speech, allowing them a soundboard to get all of their thoughts and feeling regarding the city they’d both explored out into the air and give them a firmness in reality they may have otherwise lacked.

And he listened to them grieve for what had once been and what was decaying around them both even as they stood amidst it all.

And he knows, deep in the core of himself that simply knows things, that this Esk is the one that urged him here, ushering him from the safe sanctuary of his home to confront the reality of what might come to pass and he grieves alongside X.

Grieves for the greatness lost, for the progress made and cast aside, for the knowledge that it would only happen again and again and that at the end of it all their biome would shift and give way back to the others surrounding it soon enough.

It was only a matter of time.

And Cyrus, as much as he could understand and appreciate knowing what had come before and the past successes that had shaped the results of the world, much preferred to keep his attention focused upon the present and what he could shift and change himself to feed into his own future, whatever it may entitle.

X seems to accept the answer he gave them and went on to discuss treasures and wonders left within the decrepit city if only he took the time to seek them out before turning and starting away from him, the ears of wheat upon their body shrivelling in much the same way Cyrus’ own hyacinths fluctuated within the ruins, their final words echoing within his mind.

“But like the lives of humans, some parts of our biome are fleeting also.”

Cyrus watched X until the other Esk had long vanished from his line of sight, mind busy with the knowledge he no held within himself and the feelings welling inside of him in the wake of everything he’d already experienced within the sprawling expanses of this once great city.

He didn’t know if he would be able to withstand traversing through these ruins in the search for the treasures and secrets X had eluded to, but there was nothing for him to do but to at least try before he returned to his own boundary, shrouded in the knowledge that it too could one day be forgotten and left to be overgrowth, free to be taken over by another biome.

He would explore as much as he could bring himself to.

This place deserved that at least.