I float and twist in a stagnant breeze as it carries me above the rotting timbers and crumbling masonry of the city. A fever is beating in my head like a drum, and my thoughts are crawling through my brain like ants. Above me, the sunlight struggles its way through a wall of clouds, gasping a sickly yellow haze onto the brickwork of the world below.
This place has been dead for years; I know that in the back of my mind, but I don’t know how. I can barely think at all, and I can move even less; my body is weightless and paralyzed in this foul air. I’m a stranger in my own body.
The wind yanks me down into the street level. I try to blink at the sight of cobblestone rushing up to meet me, but my eyes ignore me, and I can’t help but watch as the fronts of abandoned houses and shops blur as I plummet down.
Barely inches above the stone, something stops my descent. I feel it slowly lift up my gaze, and I start to see that I’m in the in a circular junction. I’m in front of a long-neglected ornate fountain, dribbling fetid water into the uneven stones of the street in front of me.
My brief calm is immediately replaced by paranoia, when I realize that I’m surrounded on all sides by innumerable rows of degenerate houses.The horde is staring into me with hateful glares and silently screaming mouths, their ranks stretching into the infinite horizon of a flat Earth.