The farmer climbed a hill on the border of his property, then stopped in front of the wall of boulders placed near the summit. It was eerily silent, but he appreciated the silence… It was better than when the phantoms grew restless.
He turned left and followed the wall before stopping in front of a collection of old metal signs.
The first and largest of these signs was basic, and was still in fairly good condition.
WARNING!
THE LANDS BEYOND ARE DEAD. DO NOT VENTURE BEYOND THE STONE BOULDERS. THERE IS NO TREASURE OR HONOR TO BE HAD; ONLY DEATH AND UNDEATH. THESE LANDS WILL NEVER AGAIN BE SAFE.
The illiterate farmer couldn’t read these words, of course, but the ancient statement had been passed down to him from his father, who had learned it from his father, and so on and so forth for innumerable generations.
The farmer also knew the stone border was not to be crossed, and that it protected a section of land over fifty miles in diameter. One time, when he was much younger, his father had allowed him to approach the stone wall and peer between two of the boulders at the forbidden land. Peeking through, he saw a landscape that was dead and gray.
No grass.
No movement.
The soil had gone fallow as the microbes within it had died.
Even the mosses and lichen clinging to the boulders refused to grow on the inside of the ring.
No life.
Just death.
Impossibly-tall buildings still remained within the dead-lands, and on exceptionally clear days, those brave enough to wander up to the border could sit and study the massive structures from a distance. Each held the promise of unparalleled riches from the past, but none who wandered within the border ever returned, and many even died within eyesight of anxious onlookers. Some of these bodies had been recovered thanks to groups of brave men sporting ropes and hooks, but a few remained where they’d fallen; too far to be snared and pulled back to the living world. These bodies looked sullen and sunken, but were otherwise untouched by rot, and even the hungriest vulture had learned to ignore this otherwise pristine carrion.
The farmer was thankful these bodies were mostly along other sections of wall… Stories claimed that those who died in the cursed land were damned to scream warnings to the living for all eternity, and he hated hearing their horrible, otherworldly voices.
The curious might wonder what had happened, and should you speak one of twelve common languages that existed at the time of the dead-land’s creation, you could read one of the dozen signs situated below the warning for a more in-depth explanation. These were not as well-kept as the warning itself, with rust and sun damage mottling some beyond readability. Nevertheless, some remained stalwart.
The farmer’s father had told him what these had said as well.
In 2089 scientists at a nearby facility discovered that life, like other forces, has an all-pervasive universal field associated with it. In an attempt to forward the sum total of human knowledge, these researchers isolated the field and inhibited it. In doing so, they created an area of land where nothing can survive.
It’s uncertain when the area beyond will be fit to harbor life, if indeed it ever shall again. Occasionally apparitions have been seen in this forbidden land, and it’s suspected these are merely temporary eddies in the otherwise inert field. Do not take them as a sign that life has returned, and instead wait for plants to regrow in the afflicted area.
Until that day, let this land and the lives taken by the experiment represent the payment for man’s hubris.
Some of these words no longer made sense; their meanings lost to time. Scientists? Facility? Universal? Even those who had learned the art of literacy couldn’t decipher them.
It didn’t matter.
The signs were just stories, and many of the tribes had their own ideas about what had happened. Most agreed that at his peak, mankind had appointed himself God, and in doing so, had earned the real God’s holy wrath.
The farmer studied the collection of signs he’d brought up the hill with him. He couldn’t read, but he was capable of matching symbols, and was able to identify the three signs that needed replacing. He withdrew a hammer and dislodged the nails holding the three old signs to the wooden post, then carefully attached the new signs in their place.
He stepped back and examined his work. They appeared decent enough. He couldn’t read them, of course, but they supposedly warned the literate from entering the dead land. To the farmer, the wall was enough of a deterrent, as were the vast fields of death and the screaming phantoms within.
Regardless, he’d completed his required task. He’d tell the local chieftain, who would send him three new signs to hold in storage and pay him nine pennies for his work. He turned and headed back home with the old signs in tow.
The stories shared among the villagers often concluded with promises of an end to the dead-land’s blight. Some believed this remedy would come from a journey deep into the heart of the forbidden land, where the cure to the curse may be found. Others believed that, in time, God would reward mankind with technology to rival that of the ancients, and with these gifts, the mistakes of the old world could be rectified.
But that was for a future generation. The farmer’s son was approaching the age where he’d be allowed to learn of the dead-land. The changing of the signs would soon be his cross to bear, and perhaps someday, before the language of the ancients was completely forgotten, there’d be a way to destroy the curse.