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Rain. It’s always raining here. Cold, fat droplets continuously spatter upon the worn metal structures. I don’t know how old the city is, maybe nobody knows anymore. It’s a dying city now, tall metal spires slowly rusting into orange-red oblivion. Rusty slime is another part of our lives, omnipresent like the rain. Sometimes it is the rain. It gets on our shoes, our coats. It gets all over those who live Below. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live down there. Below is what we call the labyrinthine tunnels that wind under the city streets. Long ago, they say, great clockwork machines churned endlessly to fuel the wonders our city allegedly possessed. They’ve stopped, now, probably due to the rain. Whatever magic the machines had, it wasn’t enough to keep away the inevitability of rust. At least here, in the city above, we can have clean rain. Those who live Below, the forgotten and cast-off, the exiles and the people unlucky enough to just fall through the cracks in society, have the tainted rain, orange and unclean from the rusty streets. I hear they drink it anyway. I hear they have strange beliefs about the good rusty water does for them. I’m glad I never have to go Below.

Though it doesn’t have a name, or an age, or a future, our city does have a past. At least, my mother told me about our past. Surely it was much longer ago than even she could remember. I wonder, some nights, as I gaze across the slowly melting cityscape, how long ago it was since a living person saw our city in this supposed glory. But, as mother always said, if we don’t have a past then we don’t have an identity. The city used to be wondrous, they say. Though nobody knows who built it, we were all taught the story of those builders.

First among them was the Wingless. The Wingless came, walking through the sky like men walk on land. The Wingless arrived first, though soon came the Timeless. The two travelled together, always, though the Wingless always got there first. The Timeless was simply unconcerned with such things, and thus arrived when it willed to. Upon arriving at this spot, the Wingless and the Timeless spoke to each other regarding it.

“I like it,” the Wingless said. “It has a lovely sky.”

“It is a desert,” the Timeless said. “We must think of the future. How will our people live in such a place?”

“As always,” the Wingless said, “the sky provides. I will bring this place clouds, and rain, and through the rain life will flourish.”

The Timeless looked doubtfully at the Wingless. Sometimes the Wingless just didn’t see. “Even you cannot make rain out of nothing. There are rules, bounds we must follow. Though this is a perfect sky, it is an empty one.”

“I will need help,” the Wingless said. “I must call on the Heartless.”

The Heartless was not a man, like the Wingless and the Timeless, even though none of them are men like you and I. Long before they came here, the Heartless had an accident. The Heartless would have died, were it not for his mechanical genius. He forged himself a new heart, out of gears and steel, to reside within his breast. If anybody could tame this place, it would be him.

When the Heartless came, he spent much time gazing around the region. “We can make city here,” he said, “though it will take much work. There will be nothing natural about this city – we are working around the rules by making it here.”

“That is acceptable,” the Wingless said. “This is a perfect place for a city. I need rain.”

“You need much more than rain,” the Timeless said. “But you must start with rain. It is the proper beginning.”

The Heartless knows only steel. He works only in metal and gears and machines. Thus it is that our city is only metal and gears and machines, and now it is only metal. Eventually it won’t even be that. When he first made our city, he followed the aesthetic designs of the Wingless and the practical concerns of the Timeless. Their advice, coupled with his mechanical mind, created a perfect city. It was not long before they brought people – men like you and I – to live in this city of splendour. Where these people came from, if even they knew, is now long forgotten.

That’s where we come from. A short tale, to be sure, but to the point. Strangely, there aren’t any stories about life in the city during its prime. Maybe nobody bothered to remember mundane, day-to-day affairs, and now they are lost forever. My favourite story, however, has been that of the city’s ruin – that, to me, is the real tale of how we came to be. After all, we don’t live in the harmonious machine-powered city. We live in this slowly-disintegrating metal scar upon the landscape.

“You saw this, didn’t you?” the Wingless asked.

The Timeless nodded. “It seems appropriate, given the origin.”

“He’s never led us astray before, though.” The Wingless paced, restlessly bound to the floor, captive within a room while speaking to the Timeless. Raindrops beat against the window, angry wind seeking to drive them inside.

“He is called the Heartless. No good has ever come from his work.”

“What can we do?” the Wingless asked.

“We can do nothing,” the Timeless replied. “The city dies tonight.”

Now, if you don’t mind my interjection, the city obviously didn’t die that night. While it doesn’t live like it used to, our decline into twilight has been a slow one.

The Wingless and the Timeless found that the Heartless had already left. Had he remained, perhaps, he could have done something. Salvaged the machines somehow. He did not remain. He did not salvage the machines. The Timeless chose to remain a day longer, chose to tell the people of their fate. The Wingless knew the Timeless would do better at this, and left after they made their decisions.

They rarely appeared to people, though everybody knew their visages. Thus, when the Timeless appeared before the populace, attention was given immediately.

“Citizens, it pains me to inform you that I am the only remaining creator,” the Timeless said. “The Wingless and the Heartless have left the city. You can tell that their influence is no longer with you – most of the machines no longer work, and the sky remains cloudy. It is with a troubled mind that I tell you that the rains will only get worse. By myself, I have not the power to stop them. Our pride, the pride of not just us three creators but of all of you, has led to our downfall. As you know from our teachings, the land beneath this great city was once vast desert. I can only guess at what happened here to destroy the land, but we sought to fix it. With my wisdom and the machines built by the Heartless, we made a habitable place. We made a place where people like you could live and prosper. Ultimately, though, we failed. I do not know if he intentionally betrayed us or if his designs were simply too efficient, but the rain-making machines are out of our control. The rain now is both a blessing and a curse. It will always provide you with life, but, like the clouds of Nidhogg, it will slowly destroy this place. The rain is my weeping, that I brought you all here only to slowly fade away. The tears of the dragon, slowly healing the damage done by our own chewing of the world tree.” And then the Timeless left, too.

I don’t really know what the Timeless was talking about, there, at the end of the speech, but I’m sure it must have been important. The Timeless is said to be the wisest of our three creators. I don’t think he gave us enough credit, though. I’m sure we’ve held out much longer than he expected. His time-worn tears, beating down relentlessly on our city, cannot wipe us away. We survive because we have the will to do so. I wonder where they went, though. Why, if they brought us here, they didn’t take us away. Maybe things have just always been this way.