After
Blogland
Chapter
One: Fell Land Cemetery
Fell Land Cemetery was empty. It was sometimes called
Fiction Cemetery, or Story Graves and many other nicknames had surrounded this
place. But it was still empty. As was the rest of this town. Blogland was
empty.
He breathed deep. He rolled over onto his
back and stared at the ceiling for a while. Outside of his bed was a cold room.
And outside of the cold room was a cold house, with long corridors and hollow
rooms. It was like the House was sleeping. After another deep breath, the man sat
up in bed and allow his feet to escape the cocoon he had made and touch the
carpeted floor.
The name Fell Land Cemetery was an official name, an
unassuming name, so any local mortals didn’t think twice about the area. They
already knew this place was strange, they didn’t need anything to draw their
suspicions further. The reality of Blogland was different, it was at a
different angle than the world around it, it didn’t fit right. So supernatural
beings, strays, the undead and any sort of mage would happily settle down here.
Easy to not be as noticed. Easy to hide in a place designed by nature to hide
in. Back before Blogland was even Blogland and established as a place for the
strange people, the land here had been used by the locals to get rid of all the
things they didn’t like…especially magic.
The door creaked as it opened slowly,
careful not to wake the unliving house. The man walked down the corridor
slowly, the patting of his feet on the wooden floor soft and barely a whisper.
This house was too big he had thought many a time. Especially not to be filled
with people. Rhydian Blake passed the room for the only other resident in the
house and did his best not to wake him. Today was the one day of the week where
Rhydian didn’t have to worry about him. The one day where he took a break from being
trapped in his own house. Cemetery Day.
Before sorcerers and monsters took up residence in the
place now known as Blogland, it’s where mortals put the dead things which
wouldn’t stay dead. It’s where they put anything they didn’t understand or
anybody they didn’t like. That’s when the grounds for the cemetery were first
used. But back in the days before any settlers, after reading old archives from
the library, it had been found that mortals used this place for all sorts. The mortals
began to get ritualistic in how they used this place; they would bury their
nightmares. Curses would be strung and abandoned in the trees, then it moved
into burying murder victims and anybody that they deemed an outlaw. Reality
here was warped and they didn’t understand that, the lines between fiction and
reality were blurred here. So, then they had to burn their books and put the
ashes in the ground.
After showering away the fog in his mind
and the aches in his body, Rhydian dried himself and got dressed. He couldn’t
let himself be overwhelmed. Today was his one day he could leave the House
without any worries. Rhydian was wearing an oversized dark red jumper, his
black jeans and decided to wear his boots. Whilst finishing his morning cup of
tea, he was putting supplies for his visit into a bag. He would spend a few
hours out by the Story Graves, cleaning a few of the headstones, making sure
the plant life flourished and he could also pay his respects. Sometimes you
just need to be alone with your thoughts.
Once the Bloglandians had moved into this town, it
wasn’t just trees and fields and a a massive patch of earth full of dead things
anymore. They knew how to reclaim this empty land with their magic and began to
build here, using the altered reality to their advantage. So, as the town grew and the people began to
populate, it became apparent that something had to be done about the patch of
land which had been used to let the strange things rot. So, it was rebuilt as
Fell Land Cemetery.
This place had always fascinated Rhydian.
When he first came to this town when he wasn’t much older than a child, Story
Graves scared him. He refused to go there for how strange it was and for the
fear of the unknown. Now it was somewhere he could go to get away. It was quiet.
It was nice. It held a lot of memories over the years…That’s what happens when
you live a wild life. It’s unpredictable and sometimes you or people you love
end up in the cemetery. Rhydian had spent the last half an hour walking through
Blogland, and he had finally met the gates to Story Graves.
Rhydian sat on the bench by the Soldiers
Memorial. This area of the Cemetery was dedicated to fallen warriors and
soldiers in the numerous battles throughout the years. The numbers spiked during
the war between the Sanctuaries. That seemed to be the nudge to a spiral downwards
in terms of long-term peace…
Deaths tended to recur in this place; Rhydian knew
he had a couple of graves here already. The graveyard was split up into
different areas. The Soldiers Memorial was to the westside of the cemetery,
along with family and friends of any Bloglandian. Then right in the corner were
Mirror Graves, or doppelganger headstones, where the graves were complete
replicas to places outside of the town borders. The entire south had been
dedicated to the local mortals – whether they had a family member who wanted to
be here specifically, or they were somehow supernaturally infected, and the
family needed to know their bodies would be safe. It was to protect the local community.
Rhydian stood up and decided to head to
the east side of the cemetery, the area where if any Bloglandian had passed,
they would be laid to rest here. Regardless of which incarnation it was of
themselves. This was originally where mortals had buried the wrong things and
whatever they didn’t like.
But the man who operated in this place,
The Clock Man, had reclaimed this land, moved whatever toxic magic was in the
soil and refashioned it for new supernatural, fictional and magical beings. The
Clock Man just slept in the Crematorium. He had stopped working now. He no
longer ticked. No one really knew who he was, but he looked after the dead and
ran this place like clockwork – It was his duty he said.
The Clock Man. He also went by many aliases, but Clock
Man was his official name. A living machine who had turned up out of the blue
one day, just like the rest of the population of Blogland, and he had stayed. Made
a home here. He wished to maintain the hallowed grounds of the dead and he was
left undisturbed. The Clock Man may have raised suspicion…but he was kind. He
was always kind.
Rhydian kneeled beside his past grave. It
was specifically his mortal grave.
“Hey there. It’s been a while”
