The Last Page

[Xarkly 17299]

 

 

The relentless torrent of noise drowned out Floris' thoughts.

 

The glassy-grey waves as they churned beneath the boardwalk and beat against the stone shore of the Cloud Temple, the chorus of cloth sails threatening to flee their halyards in the ocean wind, and the sound hundreds of voices mingling into one restless din of chatter, laughs and shouts. Despite his best effort, he could not think clearly with all the noise. Instead of he walked, alone and aimless, down the boardwalk. He could hear the sodden planks of the boardwalk creak excessively beneath his own weight, and that of the hundreds of others scrambling about the harbour, but he thought that he would not even mind if the wood gave way and deposited him into the icy waters below. He hardly felt the spring wind, which carried the bitter touch of the encroaching Thanhium chill, and he most certainly did not feel the warmthless sun, whose light fractured at intervals through the swathes of grey that hung in the sky above the Temple.

 

Exhaling a misty breath, he tried to gather his bearings. He waded through down the creaking boardwalk through crowds of men, elves, dwarves, orcs, and half a dozen other races that he did not recognize. Perhaps once the thought of seeing a species for the first time would have filled with him excitement, and perhaps even awe, but now his gaze glossed over them as if they were not even there. He paused at that, before he raised a forearm to block out some of the spring sun even though it was not particularly bright. It was at that moment that something bumped into Floris' shoulder, and sent him staggering forward a few steps with a surprised grunt. When Floris glanced around to whatever had struck him, he found a man who seemed rather young, though he could not tell for certain because of the fellow's sallet helm. The other helmeted man wore a surcoat over a suit of chainmail, and it was the chequered design of that surcoat that snared Floris' gaze.

 

"Oi, fuckin' watch y' step, old man," the man in the surcoat grunted in a jagged accent. Floris, however, did not hear him; he remained squinting at the colours of the surcoat. They seemed so familiar -- Floris was certain that he must have worn it once, that those colours were important to him. Yet however hard he stared, and however deep he thought, he could not put a name to the colours. "What y' staring at?" the helmeted man only seemed to grow irritated as Floris continued to stare at him. 

 

Floris opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. As the man narrowed his gaze at him, Floris simply turned, and joined the stream of people flooding towards the ships that awaited at the end of the boardwalk, heralded by tall masts that rose high above the crowds and scratched at the pale sky. Floris did not know if the soldier in the familiar surcoat followed him, but nor did he care. He was left confused by the design on the surcoat, but even now, as he tried to think of it, that very same design had melted away from his mind. "Sir?," came a sudden, mild voice that wrenched Floris from his confusion. He whirled around to the speaker, half-expecting to find the aggressive soldier once again, but instead he found a squat man clad in a faded brown habit, a Cannonism cross dangling from around his neck and swaying slightly in the sea breeze.

 

"I - I beg your pardon?" Floris stammered. "Did you say something?"

 

The monk, who was an aged man with lines etched into his face like chiseled stone, offered him a comforting smile. "I asked if you were lost."

 

"Lost?" Floris repeated with a frown.

 

The monk smiled once more, but this time Floris understood it was a pitiful smile. "You ... you're standing at a dead end, sir." Floris glanced around once more, and saw that the monk was right -- at some stage when he was lost in his myriad of thoughts, he had broken from the crowd and ended up at corner of the docks occupied only by empty, rotting barrels and tattered sacks besieged by flies. "Which ship are you looking for? I can point you in the right way," the monk offered in a tone laden with reassurance.

 

"Johannesburg," Floris blurted out immediately.

 

The monk's smile twitched into a confused frown. "Pardon me? What did you say?"

 

"I - Oren," Floris breathed with a clenched fist. "I - Apologies, I - I'm looking for the Oren ship."

 

The monk's frown only deepened as he raised his heavy-set eyebrows skeptically. "The, ah, Marna ship, sir? Or the Renatus one?" 

 

Floris knitted his brows. "The - the what?" His eyes shot to the tall masts that thrust into the sky in the distance. He narrowed his eyes and scanned all the colourful banners that streamed triumphantly in the wind, but he did not recognize them. After a second, they all looked to be a lifeless grey. Floris' breathing had suddenly grown exceptionally heavy.

 

"Sir?" The monk blinked at him with obvious concern. "Sir, are you --" Without answering, Floris stormed past into the monk, and back into the crowd. It was thinner this time, he noticed, and began to wonder how long he had stood in that corner before the monk had approached him. He steadied his breathing and clenched his fists even tighter, and simply focused on following the horde of people to the ships. He could see now that the titanic sails of some of the galleons were no longer flapping wildly, but had become slightly more tame. They were preparing to set sail, Floris deduced. 

 

He found an even bigger crowd at the farthest edge of the boardwalk, where five ships were lined up. A glance out towards the open sea told him that some of the smaller brigs and frigates had already took to the water, with their sails curved and filled with wind. His attention was quickly robbed by the crowd, however -- the crowd, and their noise once more. The hundreds of simultaneous footsteps, the droning voices and a nearby chime of a bell that heralded passengers on board one of the ships. Yet in that brief moment, it was not footsteps that Floris heard, but the thundering of hooves as horses followed the ferrum-tip of their riders' lances into enemy lines. The chorus of voices became screams of rage as men killed, and screams of pain as men were killed. The bell was a horn that signalled the infantry's advance like a wave of steel, and Floris' mind was taken far from the docks of the Cloud Temple. The towers of Johannesburg glazed in ice, the fields of Elba streamed with corpses, the bloodied pines of the Rothswood. He brought a fist to his head, and tried to drown out the images. He was here now -- he had to keep going.

 

His final steps felt like he was crawling on his hands at knees. With a hand held to his face like he was impeding a blood flow, Floris fell in a line with humans, and he simply followed. He focused on his footsteps, on forcing himself to move one foot forward without slipping back into the mire of his own mind. Though it only could have been a few dozen feet away, it felt like hours had passed by the time Floris arrived at a broad gangplank that led onto the dock of one of the larger ships. He could not tell which ship it was, as the crowning banner that flew from the mast seemed like a blank grey canvas to him, but it was full of humans. 

 

"Welcome aboard, sir," chimed a broad-built, barechested sailor by the gangplank. "We be abou' to set sail, hurry on board." 

 

Floris made to move up the gangplank. His body, however, did not move. 

 

"Sir?" the sailor prompted with a hint of impatience. "We be leavin' now, in just a moment. I'm raisin' the plank after ye." 

 

He was here now, Floris told himself. He had to keep going. Didn't he? 

 

"Sir? Hello?" 

 

Floris did not hear the man. Instead, he looked up towards the men and women crowded along the gunnel of the ship, before he glanced over his shoulder. The dock behind him seemed barren all of a sudden, with the former bustling crowd of all races reduced to just a few meagre queues to board the remaining ships. Floris squinted at and scanned the faces of those humans, in search of the slightest hint of recognition, in search of Amelie, Erin, Johan, Laurens, Susanne, Leon. Much like the banners of the ships, within seconds, all the faces seemed to turn to a blank mound of grey clay, waiting to be formed. 

 

If the sailor spoke as Floris turned and marched back down along the boardwalk, he did not hear him. With each step he took away from the ships, the world seemed to grow a little more colourful, a little warmer. When he was back on the island proper, he turned back towards the ocean, and found that the colossal titans of ships that once lined the docks had been reduced to toy boats on the horizon, gliding across the glassy water, and into the grey unknown. It was a soothing sight to watch them simply fade away. Floris simply sat on a cold rocky outcrop on the island's plateau, and watched until they vanished. He remained watching the horizon long after they had vanished, too - he did not know how long. When the Thanhium came for him, as he watched the surrounding ocean turn into a blue glaze, it was not the cold that Floris felt. 

 

He felt the warm caress of a healthy fire as he settled into the armchair of his Johannesburg office. From the chair, all it took was a glance towards Floris' unblemished window to be greeted by the stone and slate labyrinth that was the city of the Johannesburg. Even from John Frederick Avenue, he could make out the colourful dome of the courthouse and the spearing spire of the palace. It was growing dark outside, and Floris watched in simple awe as the city was suddenly dappled with spots of bright torchlight as yellow as butter. It was at that moment that Floris then realised a book was laid open on his lap. He had not remembered fetching a book, but as he traced the firm leather binding, he suddenly felt very comforted by the book. It was complete, he realised with a soft smile. 

 

With that thought, he gently closed the book.

[bromadan 368]

((No I am not crying, it is just the sea water..

[Birdnerdy 1539]

The sad eyes of Prince Karl Sigmar look on from heaven.

 

((damn good post.

[SerFinnick 445]

 

 

((this is one of the best posts I’ve seen in a while. Good Job. 

[JEEGK 1367]

Moved to The Great Library. It shall be sorted into the appropriate category shortly.

 

If you feel this is a mistake, please contact myself or any FM and we'll restore it.