A Prophecy of a Prophecy

There was a city of which a prophecy was told. Its age of prosperity would come to a sudden, fatal end, its walls would be destroyed in the last days and marauding hoards would come from all directions and from whom it would have no protection.

Now this city’s esteemed governors thought that this prophecy ought not to be fulfilled in their time and even though they prospered each generation exceeded the previous with more incredible inventions of self defence. First the walls were heightened so that they towered above the tallest building inside. Because a wall can be breached by an enemy close at hand, the next generation, began clearing the forests around the City that could hide an enemy, so that a perfectly flat desert stretched out a great distance from the city in all directions, known as the Great Perimeter.

Fearing that if an enemy were to gather even at the edge of the Great Perimeter they could strike the city at that distance with missiles and, even though these weapons had not been built, as a precaution, the brightest and most ingenious of them were set the task of building weapons of Great Retribution to ensure the City would have the capability of striking any enemy before an attack could be launched. So while the City’s people laboured and prospered on, fearsome and terrible weapons of defence were built in a shroud of secrecy and its citizens felt safe.

Now another generation came and doubted the efficacy of these weapons against a devious enemy. For surely if a clever enemy were to come along and see such a well defended city with sturdy walls and a great perimeter and weapons of unknown power, such an enemy would send spies instead whom might first determine another way in. So this generation created a special and secret group from its own ranks that were trained to walk amongst its people and determine who amongst them might be spies. Indeed several were found out and the success of their efforts spurred them on and the more they looked the more they found spies and those amongst their own people who could be come spies and enemies unwittingly.

Then it occurred to the good governors of the City that it would be more effective to stop these spies at the source and so their City’s secret force and armies went out into the surrounding lands and cities with the weapons of Great Retribution. They went out to stop enemies envious of the City’s great wealth even before they became enemies. All the while the City’s people laboured on and prospered, wars on their behalf were fought far from the City all to prevent the armies of their enemies long before they should reach the Great Perimeter, or the Great Wall, or turned the City’s own people against it.

Wars are expensive but the neglect of the Great Wall and the Great Perimeter were of little concern. War also brings refugees and those who might seek their fortune in what must have been the most prosperous of cities to wage such wars. They all clamoured at the edges of the Great Perimeter from all sides. In this way they waited until a great storm lashed the City for several months that because the Great Wall was so neglected it eventually collapsed in on the City. The refugees and victims of its wars breached the Great Perimeter from all sides clambered over the remains of the Great Wall to find a population weakened by prosperity, persecuted by their own people and paralysed by the fear of the Fulfilment of the Prophecy.