The Lost Souls of Nightingale

Miss Casey really has the prettiest eyes in all of Nightingale City. No, dare I say, the world? Shining like amber, glittering and perfect. She came by the factory the other day to drop off the weekly rations and I could not catch my breath! I am besotted, captured and helpless. The word in the quarter is that the Calcularia will find a way to reverse the Pale. Soon, we’ll be able to leave this place! When that happens I am going to invite Miss Casey to accompany me to the fields outside the city. We will have buttered scones along the banks of the Oberon, perhaps I will even see if I can buy some of that overpriced tea left in the Royal District!

Dearest Elliot, How I have missed you, my love. It is with the deepest longing that I wish we could have laid eyes on one another one final time. Would that the announcement had come sooner, perhaps we could have better prepared for what is to come. When I first heard news of the Transept in Paris, I thought it folly. The foolish propaganda of the fear mongering Druids, prattling away in their quarter once more, quibbling that the end was nigh! And yet… The city has never been so silent, my love. Much like a great beast whose breath has been stalled by the rumblings of a much larger predator. I cannot abide the wait. The Pale will reach us soon. Always yours, Catherine

How did it come to this? Where did we go wrong? Innovation and industry, progress and the promise for a better future. But we’ve destroyed tomorrow, haven’t we?

The days have begun to stretch without end since we lost contact with the other districts. It is only a matter of time before our Pylon fails too, I’m sure. Naught but routine to mark my days now. Distribute rations. Check the barricades. Clean the floors. Mop the privy. The refugees in my attic complain of the sound of those Fae artifacts, but they are staying without pay for their board. A month ago the idea would have been unfeasible. Penny pinching and stressed as I was. Now I cannot help but laugh. It is nice to be surrounded by so many people, despite the circumstances.

I should have just eaten the damn thing! Stupid. So stupid! Would the boss have even known? Doubt he would have cared! One measly piece of cheese. Is that too much to ask for? And look, what does my God fearing conscience get me? Now, here I will die, belly empty, mouth parched, with not a lick to satisfy me but the taste of days old bread and sawdust as those Bound fiends carouse below.

I cannot breathe, I cannot think. Naught but crushing stone and drowning water. Days and days without end. Hunger, so deep I would eat the skin from my own back if I could. Mother, Father, forgive me, I cannot take it any longer.

The earthquakes are getting worse. Yesterday, the ground trembled so fiercely paintings were knocked from the walls in Duncan’s office. Maybe now he will stop trying to be so high and mighty over his new management position. No doubt the results of those Hermetics and their foolish experiments. We sometimes watch them at night. Scurrying into the passageways under the cover of darkness, contraptions and who knows what else clasped in their hands. Emily even said she saw them at the Pylon’s base the night before yesterday. Duncan has ordered us to seal the vault and leave the workshop behind. On the morrow, we will vacate the district and head for the Provisioner’s Borough. He thinks the Calcularia will serve us better and in safer conditions than those left here.

I should have listened to Tim when he said the supports were creaking. I called him a coward, scoffed at his whining. Ever a belly acher that porter! At first it was the stairs, too rickety. “Don’t you hear them groaning? Like they’re haunted!” Then it was the lights, flickering in the mornings! “Definitely those damned Hermetics!” Finally it was the beams, crackling and bowing. He was so insistent. More the fool me to have ignored him it seems.

Betty and Tom, I scoffed at them the week before last. I watched them yesterday take the bridge to the Calcularia. Fools, I thought to myself. This morning though, I heard it. Explosions. My apartment rocked as if God Himself had come to shake me awake! Someone blew all the bridges during the night, there’s no way in or out of the district anymore. Why would they do that? Who would do that? Gabe says it’s to keep the rest of the city out. I mean, of course it is! It must be! We’re the best prepared, the best stocked district! We have the most food and water left, even if things have been tight recently. We’ll weather the Pale and trust the Hermetics to see us through!

The Pale is our punishment! For our hubris! Our selfishness! For our overreach into matters beyond our ken! The Calcularia and the Hermetics have failed us. Filthy heretics! Their unnatural ways have doomed them and all of humanity with them! Their vaunted science is but a stop gap for the rage of those more powerful than we could imagine!

Ms. Tatiana smiles at the customers so prettily, offering a veneer of worldliness and civility to those who still come to the teahouse. They sip their stale water and eat their tantalizing stew… But my gut heaves. I saw it. In the storeroom. Flesh of kin and monster alike. I can feel it now, slipping down my own gullet. The feeling putrid and rancid as it is filling and nourishing. We ran out of food months ago. Is this what the end of the world looks like? Even starving pets become savage beasts in the right circumstances.

My hands haven't stopped shaking since Mary gave me the rifle. I grew up in the Borough, not out in the fields or in the army! What do I know about warfare and killing? I’ve never even gutted a chicken! In the morning, we’re going to push down the bridge to the Industrial quarter. Father Almighty, protect me… protect us.