Roma Nova 0.1

Two centuries ago an event changed the world drastically.

This is the story of a different present time.


*


I watched the city sprawl out beneath me as I flew, imagining that I was still and the needle-ridden mass was alive and squirming under my gaze.

I looked up and saw the core of the city... where the needles clustered together so tight that you could think that they were one. But no, look even deeper to the very centre of it, the true inner Core. It towered so high that' was part of the heavens. It thrust into the heights and stabbed the God of the Old World in his chest.

I felt it like a knife in my own chest. It was my heart, and how I hated it.

One day I would end my pain, or at least perhaps my pain would end me.


I swerved past one of the needles suddenly and made for the outskirts.


*


"What was that?" said Kale.

"Yeah," said Rowan, momentarily deigning to forget that he and Kale were in the middle of a fight over the blueprints for an elevator to the moon. "That happens sometimes, doesn't it?"

Kale nodded thoughtfully. "Let's ask a grown-up."

"Okay!" cried Rowan, getting up and running off to Ronaldo's place.

Kale looked at the piece of paper in his hand for a moment and then realised that you couldn't make an elevator to the moon after all. He threw it away. "Wait for me!"

"No!"


*


Ronaldo was reading a book with half an eye and clearing up the bar a little when he looked up, and Kale and Rowan burst in wildly, red in the face and gasping for breath. They tussled a bit and then met his eyes. He grinned at them. "Had a productive working day today, lads?"

"Yeah!" said Rowan. "We designed an elevator to the moon!"

"No we didn't! That's impossible!" said Kale. "We wanted to know why the lights go out sometimes!"

"Exactly!" said Rowan.

"You mean when they just sort of go off then on again really quickly? Like the passage lights?"

"Yeah! Like happened just now! The darkness kind of moved along the main passage really quickly!"

Ronaldo looked up, wondering how to put it to simple words. "That's called a... short-out."

The children were staring up at him with shiningly attentive eyes.

"It's a... disruption...?"

If it happened that they didn't understand the word they were too proud to show it.

"Well, lads, you see, when one of the Great Angels pass overhead... their power is so strong that... it disrupts the power that's in the lights. The mana."

"Yeah!" said Kale. "Mana! Mana is like power! It makes the lights go on!"

Ronaldo watched their shining faces and couldn't help chuckling. Suddenly his own troubles were almost small. "You're amazing. You're going to be great engineers one day, I bet you. Do you want a drink, boys?"