Hollow City (Part 3)

At long last the sun rose slowly in the east, casting glowing amber light across the dense fog swirling in a thick, turbulent blanket across the surface of the deep lake at the city's eastern edge. A chill breeze stirred the wretched scent of stagnation emanating from the brackish water. Occasional sloshing broke through the silence, its dark origin hidden somewhere beneath the dense coat clinging to the water.

Beyond the lake, the eastern horizon was obscured in a dun haze. Only one discernible point marked the divide between land and sky, a black, skeletal spire shooting jaggedly from the earth to staggering heights. Only its vague silhouette was visible from the shores of the stagnant lake, so great was its distance. As the sun climbed laboriously into the sky, the ghoulish ebony finger was again lost in the brown curtain which hung lifeless and unending above the land. That same all-concealing haze had, over the course of many long years, wrapped its way around the whole of the horizon, a great python choking off the city from any world which may have remained beyond its hideous coils. The lone tower was all that remained to signal the existence of anything from that world, and only for a scant time each morning.

The dark surface of the lake emerged from the strangling mists, revealing a low series of battered limestone wharfs along its western shore. With a soft grunt, a squat, sallow figure hauled itself up onto one of the lichen-encrusted slabs and stared blinking into the daylight. A hairless head sat with no visible neck atop a bloated, unclothed torso. Long, thin arms hung from its knobby shoulders, cords of sinew standing out tightly against its skin. Strong, gnarled hands with swollen knuckles reached its knees as it stood on short, twisted legs. The figure turned and waddled into the crumbling remains of a low hut. Moments later, it emerged wearing a burlap sack with holes torn for a head and arms to stick out through. Pausing at the water's edge to retrieve a small bundle wrapped in sopping grey rags, it turned and began picking its way north along the shore.