Compendium:City of Doors

A fragment of the Garden of Remembering

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Arah, city of doors, of towering spires rising out of a sea of golden shadow, the light that never fades, a shard of civilisation amidst a vast expanse of nothing... it is said that the sea goes on forever, softly glowing shadows that shift and mingle beneath an unchanging sky. Those who have set out to look for more only return disappointed, if at all.

The city is called Arah. The plane is also called Arah because the only thing in it is the city.

There are two sides to each, plane and city. We call the clarity 'above' and the murk 'below', but in truth each are only above each other. There is no ground layer, only a fuzzy transition in which the vary nature of reality flips itself on end and begins to juggle cheesegraters for the greater part of a second, before dumping the interloper back on whichever side it feels like. Those who see with eyes tend to like the clarity; those with ears, the murk; those who see the world with other things may make their homes on either.

Do not drop into the shadow, the barrier. You may come out into murk (for the other side invariably appears as murk to those above), or you may hover, suspended and shifting in this place of reversal. It is like all of the bad sci-fis, the great hole with no suspended gravity at the centre, the great destruction that takes away all that one is.

"I dissolve" has real meaning here.

And what is the murk? The transition? The barrier? Is it made of the souls of the dead, a build up of the lost over time, or simply something far less sinister, simply another horizon like the one it forms with the sky as it fades into the distance? This histories do not say, as though it has always been. The gods do not say, for the very place lies at the borders of their realms. The doors who have stood sentinel throughout the ages, witnessing all as they open and close between the myriad planes, have not the voices to speak.