The Old City Wall

In the days before gun powder was invented, the days where the only way to take a city was to lay siege on it with battering rams, trebuchets and giant catapults; the old city wall was built. It was in the days before limestone mortar had been invented and when various types of ceramic mud were the norm - used to built the wall with giant stones carved from quarries several weeks travel away.

This wall in the old abandoned part of the city was one of those. The city has expanded since those times, but this part of the city remains ignored, almost forgotten. Something bad happened here. Something so horrible that even the street animals avoid this area of the city and the city's underbelly only enters if they have no other choice.

The wall is thicker than three houses are long, built with so many layers of brick and different kinds of mortar that even the historians get confused as to exactly how old this wall was. It could even be the wall that was built in a time predating the founding of the city. The wall that ancient, brittle manuscripts allude to as the Flooding Wall.

The Flooding Wall is thought to have first been built to stop the two rivers surrounding the city island from flooding it during flood season. Over time, the land was built and razed and built and razed, until the ground of the island lies high above the river level even during flood season. Who knows what lays beneath the present layer of daily trodden, hard packed dirt?

The wall still bears scorch marks and melted glass from a time not recorded and nobody remembers, so far back in the city's memory that only the early bricks and stones could tell the story. Human bones protrude from some sections of the wall and all sorts of scars can be seen in the mud render that has been cracked and chipped in many places.

But it's because of the ghost stories and unexplainable things that happen in the night that makes this place relatively safe for a homeless young girl, unafraid and not at all superstitious. This part of the city whispers old secrets and stories to her and she just accepts them. The ghosts and supernatural happenings hold their breath, hiding when she passes by. They see what ordinary people cannot.

Ordinary people look and see a scarred, undersized street urchin. The ghosts see a rising warrior with growing authority. The oxymoron has the city shake its head, but the city's stones are in need of a new hero. Few are born, few answer the call and even fewer survive to achieve their potential.

Ok, I'm bored. This was a boring piece. Now I will sit back and reflect upon it and see where it went wrong. I can already see many problems with it.