A fictional morning pages sketch, inspired by the photo below:
After it got sickened by pride and weakened by tyranny, rising empires have been crawling and gnawing on its limbs for millennia. Despite its consuming gangrene, the sickened giant outlasted many of its carrion enemies. One after the other, they fell, piling their decaying carcasses next to the moaning ruins till one day, after five thousand years of decomposition, it finally succumbed to its parasites. The fourth seat of the heavens, the prime branch of orthodoxy, the capital of the empire, Damascus, has fallen.
The Book Of Life 