Look upon that which defies the death cloud, built as if the Masters knew the Vermin and their miasma would come and that we would need a sign to rise above them. The champion dogs of yore did dwell in these skyboxes with the most revered Masters.
You have stepped off ruined earth and onto the cracked yet unbroken fields of flat stone, knowing this to be the construction of the Masters. You have seen the fields that turn up to the sky, as rocks yet made of road stuff. In these places we know the Masters lived also, and we with them. Yet you have never entered a skybox, a road that turns ever up and is made of nothing-stuff.
Blessed were the dogs who lived in that sky! They trod on four paws yet were allowed to taste and smell as the Masters did. No soil to let scent linger or carry, no jealous wind to steal the inscrutable oils the Masters applied to consecrate their realm. Their hind legs lifted Their bodies into the air and so in the air They dwelt. Imagine being brought with Them to paradise, not to suffer a lack of scent but to never even know you missed it. This was the gift of the skybox - to look down on the world as a Master on two legs, to sense nothing and so have no distraction but Their glory in to take in raw contemplation, ever spiraling inward. It is said such dogs were so raptured that they could not even speak to those who dwelt on the ground.
And it is said that in one of the hundred hundreds of Skyboxes They created, it is through one that they achieved Their goal - to merge the sky with the nothing-stuff they built the boxes with, so that they could separate Themselves from soil in totality. In this way, some packs believe the Masters are still here yet have risen even off Their hind legs and so are beyond our sight. One day we will take back the skyboxes from the Vermin and achieve Leglessness.
But for now, if ye ever lose faith in this blasted aftermath, in the dreams that come unbidden, only look up to the horizon towards where lies the Masters' Tomb, and know their promise will bite through the cloud of death and be fulfilled again.
