The Jewel of Dynastrom

Jewel, a shining city made up of the bodies of past citizens, and inhabited by their current descendants, the proud race known throughout all of Wayland as the Gem. It was the capital of the country, Dynastrom, and the stronghold for the empire that had spawned out of it, the Gem Dynasty. It had stood for thousands of years as a source of great envy for the neighbouring lands, for it was said by those looking in from the outside that those who lived in the metropolis of precious stone would surely never want for wine.

Jewel was the perfect place to live in theory, Adamas knew, but the reality of the megalopolitan was far from the perfect utopia outlanders preached about. For those made of gemstone prized the substance little, and thus it had no worth in the region of red skies and rocky plains. Walking along the shard streets with his grandfather, Scutula, the young diamond Gem eyed the sand stained hovels and beggars with a new found distress. No, it was not perfect at all, and he doubted it had ever been. Beside him, his gruff relation addressed him in a more demanding tone.

'Adamas, are you listening to me at all?'

'Not in the slightest, grandfather.' he replied casually, the cheek earning him a slap across the head.

'Well mind you do in future, unless you want a full course to go with that starter. I was making a very wise point on the hypocrisy of the Siredom. Those sourcemen call us barbaric for taking a few half breeds out of the savage jungles of Animalia to live more comfortably in our fair land, when they themselves more or less brainwash fresh Pales just coming out of the Sea of Souls to join their armies. I mean really, the nerve of these humans.'

The young man looked to the shard shack in near ruins beside them, and then up to the glistening crystal acropolis in the centre of the city, its walls adorned with every treasure Dynastrom had to offer.

'How can trivial foreign news hold your attention so when the citadel immediately around us is in tatters? Do the actions of the other races, thousands of miles away, enrage you so much that you cannot see the decay and squalor our fellow Gem have to live in? Or is it that the Dynasty has blinded you to the inequality of this place with its constant barrage of xenophobic drivel?'

Scutula grimaced. 'You would do well to watch what you say about the Dynasty, little man. They have ears everywhere, and you have a spiteful mouth on you.'

'So you admit that the injustice is present?'

The elder sighed. 'It's always been this way, Adamas. The rare stay rich and the common stay poor, and there's not a damn thing you or I can do about it. So keep quiet on the matter, I've already lost a son to the state's crusades, I'll not lose a grandson to the state's justice.'

Adamas hushed up upon mention of his father, who had died while in service to the Dynasty in the Wasteland Crusade twelve years prior. Just another soldier fighting in a frost bitten land he knew nothing about, for a Dynas who cared nothing about him. Though he stayed silent as Scutula talked of different things, Adamas's thoughts remained on the matter of unbalance, and how those at the bottom were always the ones who suffered for the vices of those at the top.

He and his grandfather were diamonds, the lowest caste of Gem, with clear skin that reflected everything they came across. After diamonds in the social ranking came rubies, then ambers, then sapphires, then emeralds, then jets, then pearls, and then the amethysts: who ruled the land as royals. There were cross breeds of course, as well as a thousand more exotic variations of Gem he couldn't bring to mind, but the fact remained that the social hierarchy that encompassed all of them worked on mainly racial boundaries. Being the lowest on the food chain, and smarter than most rarer Gem he knew, that system did not sit well with him. It might have made sense if those above him had been superior, but as it was, their rank was purely based on biological luck. But as Sculta had said, what could he, one young diamond, do to change that? He saw no easy answer, and so trotted along with more gloom than before.

On the way back from the market he and his elder had been heading for, Adamas spotted one of the beggars they had passed. After pausing for thought for a moment, he went to her and gave her a loaf of rock from out of his sack, which she gleefully wolfed down right in front of him before thanking the young diamond with a toothless grin.

'I hope you know that's coming out of your portion of dinner.' the grandfather notified his odd grandson, who merely shrugged as he came to his side.

'If I can't be critical then I might as well be helpful.'

'Wont make a lick of difference in the long run, you know. You've only staved off her hunger for a day.'

Adamas turned to the older man. 'Then I'll give her a loaf of rock every day.' With that, he strode off away from his surprised relation. For though his action may not have brought down the Dynasty or changed the social norms of Dynastrom for good, it had been something worth doing, helping a fellow diamond, and he was determined to continue doing it until he could aid the downtrodden in a bigger way. He felt his father would have been proud of his small ambition, and in his mind, that was a good start.