CHAPTER 9

  We'd been walking down the windy road among the farmers for twenty minutes, parting the crowd like a biblical tale. The stolen guard uniforms that Hakashi had made us wear made people avoid us like a pack of dogs. Some even bowed towards us and waited for us to pass, but none of them would ever look in our eyes, and when I looked at them as we passed, the farmers were always looking up above the horizon, towards the sky. It seemed a little odd not to look where you’re walking on such a rocky path.

  The massive, tiered city towered above us, but we were still a mile or so off from reaching the front gates. I looked off the road and into the red-tipped wheat fields, shaking my head. Hakashi had vanished into them after giving us a vague order: ‘Take these, and blend in. Get inside the gates, avoid other guards, and find a quiet place to wait.’

  "This is idiotic," Raine muttered through clenched teeth. I soon learned that Raine was more talkative the more annoyed she got, especially with anything that questioned her logic.

  "We just discovered a hidden civilization, a massive megacity, five miles up Baldred’s Pillar, and what do we do? Run back and report the greatest discovery in Cinder history? No, his bright idea is to send us in blind. Doesn’t this go against the whole ‘stay invisible, stay out of sight’ mantra he gave us mere hours ago? What’s the point of having protocols if we go against them when a Firebrand decides so?” Raine huffed and placed her hand on the curved sword attached to the guard uniform’s belt.

  Raine and Nanda didn’t have weapons of their own aside from a simple straight sword from the Cinder armory. So, Hakashi had them replaced with the curved swords the slain guards had instead to blend in more. I was not as compliant and kept the cursed sword strapped to my back, with Lightcutter hanging from my neck in its leather sheath.

  “Not up for a little spying?” I asked. Admittedly, I thought it was a dumb idea too, but as the saying goes, orders are orders.

  Raine shot me a glare. “Do you not think with foresight?”

  “I’m sure Brother Erik is just joking with you Sis— Raine,” Nanda said.

  She rolled her eyes and let out an annoyed grunt. “This won’t end well.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I was just messing with you. Look, if we stick together, we are unstoppable. The two of us have Third Forms, I’d like to see just what these guards cand do to us.” I looked over at Raine and smiled confidently.

  “Three, Brother,” Nanda said.

  I looked over at him. “Three what?”

  “Three of us have Third Forms.” Nanda bowed his head at me with a small grin.

  “Is that so?” I grinned back.

  ———

  The city walls loomed above us when we got close. Standing fifty feet tall, the weathered white stone baked in the morning sun. A small army of men and women, wearing the same brown and red tunics as the farmers, were scrubbing away black grime that was building at the bottom of the walls. Before us, guards flanked the gates in pairs, watching the farmers streaming through, and inspecting each man, woman, and child from top to bottom, flipping out pockets, checking the baskets that held the wheat, and patting down each person as they entered the city.

  Fortunately, we passed through unchallenged. Yet, the behavior and aggressiveness the guards showed the simple citizens gave me pause, and made me wonder what sort of society we were stepping into.

  Turns out, it was a smelly society. My nose was first hit with the stench of old piss, then the rot of fish, followed by something chemical that burned my nostrils. My eyes caught up to my nose and when we passed through the long gate house, I saw how void of life the first tier of this megacity really was.

  Copy. Paste. Repeat.

  That's all this tier was. Identical wood and gray stone apartments stretched on for what a few miles in perfect rows down the main road. At the far end of the road, a massive center spire climbed upwards to the above Tier, covering us like a massive umbrella. Each block stood exactly four stories tall and had ten windows per floor. Every window were covered by the same rusted bars, and every door was painted the same faded brown. The only discerning difference between homes were the small numbers that represented the address paiin the door’s corner.

  “These people are stripped of the joy of expression,” Nanda whispered. He bowed softly and muttered a prayer under his breath.

  Is he actually a monk? I wondered.

  He looks the part, Fern said.

  Nanda was right. It wasn’t just the lack of architecture or color. These people —these faces —were all devoid of emotion. Nearly everyone in a red-and-brown tunic had a simple, agreeable face, while the guards seemed to have anger painted directly on theirs. Even the children were eerily quiet, as if they hadn’t experienced laughter.

  As we walked forward, I wondered if we would ever find a place to hide and regroup. The buildings repeated endlessly, each one precisely twenty feet from the next, creating narrow alleys that ran perfectly straight until they disappeared into dead ends and the sides of other apartment buildings. Sickly yellow crystal lamps hung at exact intervals along the main road, casting a repeating weak circle of light every thirty feet.

  It's like someone built one building and just... kept building it, Fern said, his voice uneasy.

  No, someone designed this on purpose.

  On purpose? Why?

  I don’t know the city yet, obviously. But, on first glance, I can already see a power imbalance between the guards and anyone who is a worker. I think this place looks like it does because it keeps the workers locked in place. They have the same homes and the same amount of space as their neighbors. If they don’t see comparisons to strive for more, they won’t.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Workers trudged past us in identical red and brown tunics that hung on their thin bodies. Everyone except the guards all wore the same rough fabric, the same rope belts, and the same cloth shoes. They moved in brown streams toward processing stations set up and manned by more uniformed guards. There, the farmers dumped their wheat collection.

  In the distance, beyond the wheat stations, I heard the rhythmic pounding and pinging of pickaxes against stone. We turned at an intersection, looking for any place we could rest in, when I glimpsed another production line: workers chipping away at large stones brought in on carts. They were harvesting broken bits of stone to be dumped in a separate processing station. That’s all this city was, just wheat and stone. Wheat and stone, harvested by servants… or slaves.

  "Move, scum!"

  A guard ahead shoved an elderly farmer who'd stumbled on the road. The man crashed into the mud, his harvest spilling across the filthy street.

  The guard laughed and stomped his boot onto the fallen wheat. "That's a day's harvest gone. Better explain to your overseer why you're short. Maybe they'll only take one finger this time."

  The old man scampered off, apologizing and limping as he hobbled away.

  No one said anything, though. The crowd kept walking. Everyone’s eyes avoided the scene and faced the sky as if nothing happened. But when I looked closer, I saw fists clenched. I saw jaws tightened. And through the shuffling of feet and yelling of guards around us, I hear mumbling curses under the breaths of the farmers. Discontent boiled below the surface.

  "Keep moving," Raine whispered, her face carefully stoic. But I saw how her fingers twitched, like she was fighting the urge to write everything down. "We have no idea the kind of strength that could lie in the city. We need to understand this place before we act."

  “Someone powerful must be in charge here, for the people to be so hopeless, and the guards to be so ruthless,” Nanda murmured.

  We turned onto a side street, and the smell somehow got worse. Here, workers sorted through stone chunks with bare, bleeding hands. No gloves. No proper tools except worn hammers with splintered wooden handles that looked older than the buildings. A guard stood over them, occasionally kicking anyone who slowed.

  "Twelve hours," one worker whispered to another, a girl who couldn't be older than fifteen. "Twelve hours and we can rest."

  "If we meet quota," the other replied as the guard moved away from him. “Otherwise, could go as long as sixteen again."

  We passed by them as the young girl whimpered.

  I felt a sickness build up inside my stomach.

  What kind of city is this place? I thought.

  "There," Raine pointed to an alley between two identical apartment blocks. It was narrow, dark, and smelled like death. Perfect. "We wait there for Hakashi."

  “Really? It’s not even inside,” I said.

  “Do you have a better option?” Raine said, placing a hand on her hip.

  I flipped my palms up and shrugged. “I guess not.”

  As we moved toward the alley, I noticed something painted on a wall. An obscured image of a child looking up at the sky over a street of white circles. Evidence of someone’s half-ass attempt to cover up the graffiti showed, but the words remained.

  "The Soul Nexus Will Not Hold Us Forever."

  Beneath it, a smaller phrase was painted: “He watches from below. Don't look down. She feels with water. Don’t touch it. He sees from the mirrors. Hide from them.”

  “Well, if this isn’t a message, I’m not sure what is,” I said. "Don't look down, don’t touch water, hide from mirrors? What do you think?"

  “I think it’s desperate, rebellious art from these oppressed people,” Raine said quietly as she quickly sketched the graffiti in her notebook.

  “Warnings like these,” Nanda said thoughtfully. “We should take carefully.”

  “Agreed, art isn’t always JUST art. There’s meaning behind it. There’s a reason.

  We walked deeper into the dark alleyway and soon realized why it was empty.

  Rotten fish. Mountains of guts and bones spilled from overflowing barrels, maggots mingled together in the clusters over the carcasses, and flys danced above them. The stench hit like a physical wall.

  “Oh blessed—“ Nanda pulled his shirt over his nose. “Why is there so much here?”

  A grinding sound answered him, and the sound of massive gears turning echoed overhead.

  "MOVE!" Raine shoved Nanda left and yanked me right.

  A waterfall of fish guts cascaded down where we'd stood, splattering us with blood and scales. I looked up to see a circular opening thousands of feet above slowly closing shut.

  "The tier above uses this as their garbage chute, I guess,” I said, wiping fish blood from my face, wincing at the smell, and trying not to throw up.

  Raine doubled over, gagging. For once, her perfect composure cracked completely.

  "Is vomiting part of protocol Sister?” Nanda asked with a grin.

  She whirled on him with murder in her eyes, then had to turn away to dry heave again. “Don’t—call me that.”

  Before I could laugh, three horn blasts echoed from the main street. The sound of panic followed, and the workers who were sifting stone behind us scrambled, pushed, and ran to the central road.

  "Something's happening," I said.

  "Erik, no, we should—" Raine gagged, cutting off her protest.

  "Just a quick look,” I said, already walking.

  We crept back to the alley mouth, and the main street had transformed. Workers and farmers were pressed against walls, heads down and eyes shut, with their arms trembling.

  "He's here again," someone whispered.

  "Already? He came by just yesterday—"

  "Quiet! You know what happens if you draw attention."

  "Dad, guards behind us," a child with a black eye patch murmured.

  The father, a man with shoulder-length thin gray hair and a messy beard, glanced back at us, saw our uniforms, and went pale. I tried to smile reassuringly, but that only made him turn away faster.

  Forgot we were still undercover? Fern asked.

  Heh, a little bit.

  Three more horn blasts. Then came the sound of hooves.

  The procession emerged from around the corner. Four guards led a gothic black carriage that belonged better in a Victorian child’s nightmare. Pulling it was a massive creature—black as midnight, with six legs. The horse stood taller than a moose and had blood-red eyes.

  Thin black spikes, which served no purpose but to look violent, covered the windowless carriage. A driver in a top hat held the reins with gloved hands.

  Every person on the street kept their heads bowed.

  "We need to leave," Raine whispered urgently. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

  "Wait—“ I said.

  POP.

  The crowd's heads snapped up.

  POP. POP.

  Three flashes of light exploded around the carriage. The six-legged horse reared.

  Then, four figures in black and red combat robes dropped from above. White facemasks, each bearing a spiral carved into the forehead, hid their faces. The guards leading the carriage drew their crescent swords, and for a second, I thought they were going to attack the four masked men. But the guards didn’t. It was all a set up. The guards turned towards each other and threw rope underneath the horse before, tangling its legs. The massive beast tried to escape, but the fake guards were too fast, and pulled the rope. The horse crashed to the ground, shaking the entire street.

  Then, the masked figures tossed identical masks to the guards, who in turn, replaced their gaurd uniform with the new masks. I watched as what looked like thin white smoke wrap around the eight masked individuals. One of them pulled out a handful of what looked like honey and slammed it against the carriage's walls, and all eight turned away.

  “Oh shit, it’s an explosive!" I blurted out, yanking Raine and Nanda back. “Down!”

  The driver stood, pulling out a long sword. “My lord! Criers! Get—”

  The carriage exploded.

  Splinters shot like arrows in every direction. Several workers on the side of the road fell over from the impact. The heat from the blast blew over me. Thankfully, I had grabbed Raine and Nanda in time.

  My ears rang.

  Erik! What was that!? Fern asked.

  Some attack, I think. They just assassinated whoever was in that carriage.

  I stood and pulled Raine and Nanda up with me. Through the smoke, I saw a tall, lanky, shadowy figure stepping from the carriage's burning wreckage. It should have been dead, or at least incapable of standing.

  But the figure stood there, in the smoke, turning towards the masked attackers.

  The figure raised an arm and flicked it towards one of the masked men. Without a sound, a thin red spike shot out like a lance and pierced the masked assailant’s forehead.

  The crowd screamed.