text: [Themes: Fiction]
  
  > Go downwards
  She clambered down the broken steps.
  
  The inside was caked with dust and given a yellowing pallor by the sharp light of the sun outside, which flattened the whole room in white. But it seemed mercifully undisturbed. The stairway leading up looked bent, but serviceable. Both the passages to south and northeast remained, though the way to other rooms in the dwelling had crumbled away.
  
  > Go south
  She stepped outside.
  
  The tenement, to the north, cast a long shadow over this patio. She could not tell it had been a patio; dirt and dust had overtaken the floor. Rubble and debris surrounded her, though she thought she saw a entrance to the temple of Kózh to the east. Another break in the debris allowed movement back west.
  
  > Go east
  She slipped into the dark temple through a crumbling archway.
  
  Temple of Kózh
  Kózh, god of slaves, father of chains. The slaves of the Tin Quarter, as well as those destitute enough that they were soon to be slaves, would come to this simple temple to be preached at by the fettered brothers. Officially, the fettered brothers preached obedience, love of one's master, meekness. But there were always whispers – would the slaves really come to this place to hear that? The secret died with the fettered brothers. No light entered the temple from the outside. No pews – slaves were expected to stand. The only exit was west.
  
  An altar to the slave-god remained.
  
  The walls were covered by a mosaic of rough tiles.
  
  > look at the mosaic
  It depicted a long line of slaves chained together by their feet, or upon closer inspection a single slave's progression through life. He (She? The figure is stylised, faceless, identityless) waits on their master hand and foot, suffers terrible abuse, and then dies – perhaps of some ailment relating to the removal of their ears, nose, and lips. But then they are reborn in the Basalt Galleries, Kózh's version of the afterlife, where they become slaves of Kózh himself for all eternity. An image of the god dominates that end of the mosaic.
  
  > examine God
  (the depiction of Kózh)
  Kózh: Always shown as a gaunt man, his head shorn, his eyes downcast, his body wrapped in chains from which hang the bodies of slaves, tiny and doll-like relative to his godly frame. His mouth was a vacant hole through which shines a permanent grin; Pésazh had taken his lips as punishment for a forgotten crime.
  
  > examine the altar
  A squat stone block, carved with the same omnipresent chain motif. Deep dark stains covered it.
  
  > examine the stains
  Blood, of course.
  
  > examine the motif
  Kózh was not known for subtlety.
  
  > Go west
  She walked out into the sunlight.
  
  The tenement, to the north, cast a long shadow over this patio. She could not tell it had been a patio; dirt and dust had overtaken the floor. Rubble and debris surrounded her, though she thought she saw a entrance to the temple of Kózh to the east. Another break in the debris allowed movement back west.
  
  > go to the northwest
  Chanting Row was one of the city's main throughfares. It was wide as four oxcarts abreast, leading from the opulence of the palace quarter all the way to the Eastern Sea Gate. This stretch used to run west to east, straight and true, so much so one could see the sea from this end; but then it had become twisted and broken, surrounded by rubble. The square was to the west. The debris formed a slope that one might climb, to the southeast.
  
  > Go west
  Besides the creeping dirt seemingly emerging from between the broken tiles, signs of ruin were around her. The land's breaking has reduced the gilded façades of the shops that surrounded the square to rubble and ashes. Breaks in the surrounding ring of debris were open to the northwest and east.
  
  A tide of rising water had blocked access to the northwest.
  
  She could also see her makeshift raft here.
  
  > look at the raft
  Made of reclaimed wood. Buoyant cheap timber used for doors in the poor quarter. The mast was hardwood she recovered from the dining table of some Dúc, whose wife unwittingly gave up her silk sheets for her sails.
  
  > examine the entrance
  On closer inspection, the carved columns showed the unmistakable motif of Kózh, god of slaves. Made of orichalcum (distinctive among the granite that formed most of the rubble in this district), they were carved to look wrapped in chains. Together, they formed an archway, though the arch had crumbled; the interior of the temple itself was dark.
  
  > Examine box
  Oval and made of black bronze. It belonged to a lady, who had it stolen from her by a servant in the panic, after social graces had fallen away but before despair had quite set in. The lid was coral, and featured a cameo carving.
  
  > look at Celephais
  She was emaciated and hateful, or frail and wronged. She was a victim, or a perpetrator. There were crimes. She was impure. Precious little more was known to Atlantis' people: her worship was a crime. Her followers were cast into the sea, exiled to the deep. The ladies who had her effigy on their dressers were at times traitors, at times dilettantes. The box had been a symbol of hushed rebellion, youthful defiance, affluent irony. And then it was used by a survivor to store the last of his food, for three days, until he threw himself to the sea.
  
  > enter the raft
  [You have seen all 12 stories of Atlantis.]
  
  This will end the story. Are you sure?
  
  > Y.
  She had found as much as she could of the world she was leaving behind. She carried a small history with her away from that place, but could not tell if that history deserved to survive; if it should be told. Still, she climbed onto her raft, with the trinkets and memories she could take, and waited for the water to rise and take her away, a small reminder of a dead world floating in an Atlantic current.
  
  > Go northwest
  Gilded Lane had been paved with gold, and when gold proved too soft, it was paved with orichalcum. But then, orichalcum proved too soft, too. She saw a mess of green-gold tiles, stopped mid-spin, where the street used to be. All around her were the husks of crumbled buildings, like the limbs of buried giants breaking through the ground. The maw of a tunnel opened up to the southwest; the square was back southeast.
  
  > Yes
  cheapglulxe quit with exit status: 0
  
  > Go southwest
  She descended into the tunnel below.
  
  The land had contorted this section of street into a spiraling vortex of cobblestones and dirt, dead grass poking incongruously from the helical ceiling. The passage ran northeast and west.
  
  > look at the ceiling
  Like a great rolling ocean wave, stopped just before the break. Cobblestones and tiles flecked with gold, dirt and grasses, dead flowers, all were caught in the movement of the dried, cracked earth; some hung overhead like curious, inverted vines.
  
  > Go west
  She emerged from the tunnel.
  
  This had been a formal garden, a gathering place for aristocrats. But she found within it only a dried fountain, and a lawn that had become overgrown with grass. The grass, in turn, was a matted patch of drying hay, caked with dust and ash, waiting to catch fire in the constant sun. A breach in the land was still open to the east; to the north, she could see a jagged passage into the remains of a palace.
  
  The fountain was long drained of water, but it still stood.
  
  > examine the grass
  Dead or dying, whitening at the edges, as though they turned to salt in the harsh air.
  
  > examine the fountain
  A simple square of grey stone. It had been cunningly designed so that the water would come at the top of the fountain in spurts, creating roiling waves on its surface. The artisan who designed it had been exiled from Atlantis, so that he could never craft a similar wonder for another noble house. Its bottom was a mosaic of Lonkê, god of the ocean.
  
  Half-hidden among the mosaic tiles was an obol.
  
  > examine the mosaic
  Lonkê was a foreign god, a deity who washed upon the shore of Atlantis for a distant land. He had the upper body of a man, the lower body of a shark, and the head of a moray eel, which in the fine mosaic would sinuously peer at the viewer through the water. Pésazh had taken his left hand as a punishment for his hubris – that effigy showed it replaced with a jagged harpoon tip.
  
  > look at the obol
  A heptagonal token made of steel, with a border in orichalcum. One side depicted an eye; the other side, a right hand. The god Pésazh collected a toll on the dead, taking from them parts of their body as repayment for their sins; these coins were struck as surrogate offerings, so that the wealthy dead could remain whole in the hereafter. Symbolically, this one was struck for a man of envy (the eye) and greed (the hand); he did not get a chance to be buried with it.
  
  > take it
  Taken.
  
  > go north
  She walked through a passage into the remains of a palace.
  
  This rich foyer had been floored with brilliant marble tiles and draped with silks. One of the grand columns along its side had toppled, preventing movement into most of the palace complex. Holes in the wall – hard to tell if they had been intentional passages – led north and south, outside. A hidden door in the west had become a jagged hole. And a collapsed staircase still allowed an unsteady climb to an upstairs room.
  
  > examine the silks
  Little remained; jagged strands flapping in the twisting wind, goldenrod speckled with dirty white.
  
  > examine the tiles
  Pristine marble from the east, each tile individually carved into the likeness of a condemned man. The villa had belonged to a magistrate, who made his guests walk on the faces of the men he had sentenced to death or exile. She found their broken visages littering the floor, crunching under her steps.
  
  > go upwards
  It was just barely perceptible that at the top of the stairs, passages would splay out in all directions, leading into various wings of the palace. Most of them were gone, as was the palace's roof, ripped away. All that remained of the upper floor of the villa was a curious island of orichalcum-flecked ceramic tiles, cracking in the sunlight. Even then, this little patch of opulence had been ransacked, more than once, by various desperate bands – and later, desperate individuals.
  
  A pile of ash, the remains of a campfire, marred the tiles on the floor.
  
  The only furniture that remained was a lectern made of gold, rendered worthless by the calamity.
  
  She could also see a tarnished lantern here.
  
  > examine the ash
  (the pile of ash)
  The grey-black ash betrayed scrolls and furniture; someone's attempt at staving off the wind and cold of the nights, the roaming feral dogs, the hunger. For four days and four nights they were tended by a desperate man, a lesser servant whose master chose to leave behind. Until he went out into the ruins to seek food, and did not return.
  
  > examine the lectern
  As it could not be eaten or burned, it was left alone as its companions were ransacked, a silent witness to the chaos. Its base is sculpted into a vaguely human shape, a stylised depiction of the slave-god, Kózh. But its surface rarely held scrolls; the master of this manor had used it more as a pillory.
  
  > examine the lantern
  A cage of silver, blackening at the edges. Inside, ensconced safely from errant fingers, is an illuminated mirthstone, a facet-cut piece of hell. The silver lantern is shaped into an angular, polyhedral form that makes it uncomfortable to hold, though the stone emits no heat. Instead, one holds it by a leaden hoop attached to the top.