01-09-2017, 01:00 AM
I've been walking down the road to Minas Tirith for ten minutes before, struck by a sudden, visual epiphany, I realize that the smallish white mountain at the base of the distant range isn't merely covered with an unusual amount of snow.
It's covered with city. A gleaming, white, mulit-tiered city, carved of stone and shining in the sun. It rises up the base of the mountain to its peak, with five distinct, concentric levels, separated by high walls. The peak itself is fused with a long, flat plateau which protrudes from the rest of the mountain, cutting through the tiers of the city rising around it like the bow of a ship (though larger by far than any I've ever sunk). The wedge of its tapered end stops shy of the outermost wall. Atop all of this, where the plateau meets the rest of the mountain, is a gleaming citadel, crowned by a single ivory spire.
This, then, must be Minas Tirith. It couldn't be anything else - the name seems to wrap around it, seeping into and through it, making it somehow more itself.
The mountain stronghold is glorious - from this admittedly great distance, the technology level appears very low, but the engineering and craftsmanship that must have been involved make it a functional work of art. Provided its still inhabited, and I think it must be because that sign I broke seemed new, it could have a population of millions.
My first response is, instinctively, to try to take to the sky, to fly to the city and cover it with golden death - but I can't, so I start to break into a run.
Then I remember what happened at the standing-stones, and I stop mid-bound. A wordless, bellowing moan escapes my throat, and I cover my face with my hands.
I can't do it. I literally can't do it! I'm just not strong enough to ruin something that grand! I'm too small, now, and too weak! It would take decades! Besides which, now that I'm reduced down to the level of the fleeing masses, now that I'm vulnerable, assaulting a city that large could very well get me killed!
I clench my fists and I scream in rage and thwarted bloodlust, howl for a deep aesthetic yearning denied!
In the end, I can't even look at the accursed place. It mocks me. Every second Minas Tirith remains standing, un-ruined, un-ravaged, un-burned, it mocks me.
If it were a matter of choice, it might be different. I might refrain from immediate attack, take advantage of this new perspective to walk the streets, learn the city and its culture, understand its unique contribution to the world and the subtleties of its character before bringing it all to a flaming, final end. The very prospect makes me shiver - but I lack that choice. I lack the ability, and that just makes me want to destroy the mountain-metropolis even more!
I do the only thing I can.
I turn away. I put the jeering horizon at my back, and I retreat along the furrowed dirt road towards the fork with the broken sign, and from there into the forest. Minas Tirith is finally obscured from view, no matter where I look.
It's covered with city. A gleaming, white, mulit-tiered city, carved of stone and shining in the sun. It rises up the base of the mountain to its peak, with five distinct, concentric levels, separated by high walls. The peak itself is fused with a long, flat plateau which protrudes from the rest of the mountain, cutting through the tiers of the city rising around it like the bow of a ship (though larger by far than any I've ever sunk). The wedge of its tapered end stops shy of the outermost wall. Atop all of this, where the plateau meets the rest of the mountain, is a gleaming citadel, crowned by a single ivory spire.
This, then, must be Minas Tirith. It couldn't be anything else - the name seems to wrap around it, seeping into and through it, making it somehow more itself.
The mountain stronghold is glorious - from this admittedly great distance, the technology level appears very low, but the engineering and craftsmanship that must have been involved make it a functional work of art. Provided its still inhabited, and I think it must be because that sign I broke seemed new, it could have a population of millions.
My first response is, instinctively, to try to take to the sky, to fly to the city and cover it with golden death - but I can't, so I start to break into a run.
Then I remember what happened at the standing-stones, and I stop mid-bound. A wordless, bellowing moan escapes my throat, and I cover my face with my hands.
I can't do it. I literally can't do it! I'm just not strong enough to ruin something that grand! I'm too small, now, and too weak! It would take decades! Besides which, now that I'm reduced down to the level of the fleeing masses, now that I'm vulnerable, assaulting a city that large could very well get me killed!
I clench my fists and I scream in rage and thwarted bloodlust, howl for a deep aesthetic yearning denied!
In the end, I can't even look at the accursed place. It mocks me. Every second Minas Tirith remains standing, un-ruined, un-ravaged, un-burned, it mocks me.
If it were a matter of choice, it might be different. I might refrain from immediate attack, take advantage of this new perspective to walk the streets, learn the city and its culture, understand its unique contribution to the world and the subtleties of its character before bringing it all to a flaming, final end. The very prospect makes me shiver - but I lack that choice. I lack the ability, and that just makes me want to destroy the mountain-metropolis even more!
I do the only thing I can.
I turn away. I put the jeering horizon at my back, and I retreat along the furrowed dirt road towards the fork with the broken sign, and from there into the forest. Minas Tirith is finally obscured from view, no matter where I look.