The canter clap of the horses’ hooves and the thunder of the wheels grinding against the cobbles drowned out the deathly melancholy of the marketplace. Except in Elisa’s ears, the market’s disquieting murmurs were more deafening than the chariot and the horses combined. The chauffeur screamed and cracked his crop, clearing a path before the carriage. This was not how marketplaces should be: muffled, strangled. It felt sterile, like a physiker’s ward. No, more like a funeral. The colors carried that motif like death’s pendant. A musty, sad scent wafted through the districts outside the wall, accentuating the stygian overture.
Here, in the sanct’s marketplace, only one in twenty even wore any semblance of color. Those that did scurried quickly about their business, eager for escape out of this bleak place.
It always aggrieved her eyes, like watching her city slowly bleeding to death. It was an uncanny sense of despair. Yet, contrary to the funereal aspect, the citizens living here did not trudge as though time were a paste. As the chariot bolted down the center of the street, without concern for those hapless citizens too slow to escape its path, the black-robed and cowled Sancts danced out of its path with predacious grace.
This is vaguely cheating. I'm considering writing this story for nanowrimo this year. The other option is part two of Crestalcoatl, which I also want to write at some point. It would be fun having a series of sequential nanowrimo novels. I'm not sure whether I'll name the story Sanctified or something else, but I suppose I have a month.
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