“Fine, I grant you that makes sense, but don’t follow me closely. I don’t want anyone to assume you are with me,” Momoh said.

  He turned and swept away, his servants scurrying after him. Imohi gave Luke the stink eye and followed his uncle closely, along with his own retinue.

  Luke shrugged. He didn’t think his Black Mamba mech looked embarrassing. But even if he agreed that it was cringe, he would have still worn it. The first leg of their journey through the city was two miles of walking. He had brought along enough luggage that it only made sense to carry it all with his big mech. Perhaps the three of them could have split up the luggage and carried it all through the city streets, but that would have meant leaving his big mech behind at the train station.

  He didn’t want to be without his greatest weapons, even in the middle of the city. There were a few other good reasons he decided to shlep his mech all the way. With a war on the horizon, he couldn’t chance the elves breaking into the storage and copying his mech designs.

  The other reason he wanted his mech with him had to do with why the city was up on stilts. The entire city was lifted up five stories because monsters still spawned on the ground. The estate villages got around that problem by having a peace field stretch around the village walls. The capital was far too big for that to work. Instead, they lifted the city above the monsters and turned the undercity into a series of training and fighting grounds. It was the best place to train skills and level up a class. All of the aristocrats used it, but anyone could pay their way in. Luke planned on doing just that later on in the trip.

  He slung his luggage over his right shoulder and tapped his left shoulder. Jinx hopped up there and he started walking through the city streets. They were currently on the lowest level, the green level. There were large bushes on either side of the white flagstone street and trees with branches that stretched up and over to create an incomplete arch. The buildings on either side of the road were a mix of old stone buildings and newer looking wooden buildings. Without fail, they had garden beds out front, plants in the windowsill, and greenery inside. It was clearly built with the dwarven aesthetic in mind.

  Speaking of which, the street was absolutely chock full of people with pearlescent skin. The dwarves were shoulder to shoulder, shouting over each other as they went about their business. Occasionally there were orcs or elves that waded through the center of the street. In the distance there was a tall woman striding across the street confidently, the crowd parting before her. She had a prodigious mane of white hair down to her knees that flowed behind her like a cape. Her one eye made it easy to identify her as a cyclops.

  Luke decided to follow her example and started walking forward faster, expecting the crowd ahead to part for the huge machine walking down the street. To his delight, it worked perfectly. Bosa and Kruro fell into his wake and the three of them made great progress towards the Evbusogie family tower. Hopefully the apartment Momoh had promised him would be bigger than the train car they had just left. It had gotten a bit claustrophobic towards the end there.

  Walking through the city like this gave them a glimpse into the lives of a typical citizen. It was clear most of them were inured to strange sights, because almost no one gave Luke’s fifteen-feet-tall furry black mech a second look.

  The ground floor was mostly taken up by businesses. Everything from fruit shops, leatherworkers, to high end enchanters. The wooden building’s second or third stories were clearly apartments with curtains closed for privacy.

  Luke was struck by how sophisticated everything was. He had the impression that runic technology was rare in their society. But apparently that was only for the remote estate villages. In the big city, runework was everywhere. It covered doorways, windows, projected advertisements, managed foot traffic, and adorned clothing. More than half of the dwarves around him wore a sash with runes that protected them from bumping into others.

  He tightened his gauntlet. His hands were positively itching to get new runes. With their abundance here, surely they would be happy to part with a few?

  Every so often, a large flying shape would flit from one building to the next, high above their heads. Many of them were flat hexagons with a dome on top, but some were flat discs with nothing protecting the passengers from the wind. There were bird and dragon shaped ones too.

  As they continued their way through the city, Luke started to get used to the ebb and flow of things. With this many people about, things could get snarled and clogged up. But it never did. There was a logic to when and where people walked to either move forward quickly or to slip into one of the stores. They walked in waves, fast, then slow, then fast. People pulling carts around usually stuck to the middle of the street, except near intersections, where they turned left to avoid the middle. Luke mostly kept swiftly walking forward, but used the flow of the crowd to make sure he didn’t accidentally step on people.

  Since he was paying attention to the flow of traffic, it was easy to see when it was disrupted. At the next intersection, there was an unusual slowdown. People were slowing and listening to someone from the second story balcony before moving on. He was wearing a flowing yellow robe that fluttered in the wind as he gesticulated wildly.

  As they walked closer, the shouts of the older dwarf were clearer. “They act civilized, but they are bloodthirsty monsters. I’ve seen it with my own eyes! They kill their own for entertainment! They are worse than the voles in the fields. They kill with their boom wands for fun, no one is safe, even infants. The humans are a scourge! If the Triumvirate don’t climb down from their cloud tower and deal with these vermin, they will sweep through the portals and kill us all!”

  Luke frowned at the mention of humans. What a speciesist. This dwarf was an asshole, but he didn’t think every dwarf was a fear-mongering jerk. Luke recognised his cadence from hate filled podcasts, the jerk was high on emotion, low on facts. He wanted to put this guy in his place, but he knew it would be a bad idea. The political climate was clearly anti-human and he shouldn’t create a disturbance right before he was set to convince the local government to hand him riches.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  He decided to do it anyway, because to hell with that guy.

  “Oh, so you're saying everyone who has gone through a portal to Earth is a liar?” Luke shouted, just loud enough to interrupt the guy. He stepped closer to the balcony. He pointed his finger into the guy’s face as Jinx hissed at him. “Thousands of elves, orcs, and dwarves have gone through the portal and none of them say humans are baby killers. Are you saying that all of them that go through the fifty portals are liars?”

  The dwarf sputtered and pulled his yellow robe closer. “I have been to Earth and seen these things with my own eyes. Who are you to doubt the word of a priest of ?ojo?”

  Luke ignored the question and casually said, “Are you even a priest? You sound like a treasonous rebel. Are you sure you want to be yelling that you hate the Triumvirate? I, for one, give them all the respect and glory they deserve. I won’t tell them what to do.”

  The dwarf’s eyes went wide. “I wasn’t saying that! I am a loyal citizen.”

  “Sure, sure. I think I’ll go find some guards, let them sort this all out,” Luke said and started walking again.

  The dwarf sputtered again and weakly replied something, but Luke had stopped listening. His work was done here, the crowd was quickly dispersing. None of them wanted to be labeled as traitors too. When he reached the other end of the intersection and glanced back, Luke was unsurprised to see that the balcony was empty.

  “Well played, master,” Bosa said and gave him a shallow bow.

  Luke grinned, but since she couldn’t see that he said, “Thanks. Although it’s not exactly good news that the priest felt comfortable spouting nonsense in the first place.”

  “I have a theory about that, but perhaps we should talk about it later,” Kruro said.

  Luke agreed and led the way through the streets again. He didn’t run into another rabblerouser, but when they were almost to the family tower, they saw something rather interesting. The building off to the north of their destination was under construction. The fifth floor was being completely demolished and rebuilt. Completely.

  The dozen story building was currently missing its fifth floor, but the sixth and above floors floated midair as if it wasn’t. Luke saw a single mage in the middle of the empty floor, doing all the work himself. He gestured and bricks appeared midair. They stayed there until he twitched his hands and they flowed over to a new spot to build an interior wall. The bricks he was creating didn’t look like they were floating, more like resting on something he couldn’t see. It was fascinating, and Luke was almost sad when they reached the Evbusogie family tower.

  It was almost identical to the other apartment towers nearby. Momoh’s family clearly wasn’t upper royalty. The ground floor was made up of enormous black pillars with creeping vines and undergrowth that loved shade. The inhabitable levels started at about the fourth story. A black and gray stone building was built atop the pillars, thick and squat. Three stories of that heavy stone made way for another three stories of curved metal and glass. The whole thing was nine stories tall, with only six of them inhabitable.

  He stood there, looking at the tower for a bit before Kruro spoke up. “There’s usually a staircase in the center of the tower, with an elevator shaft inside that.”

  Luke saw a paved path heading towards the middle and took it. He saw the staircase shortly, the building wasn’t very wide. It was about three hundred feet wide, with a fifty foot shaft running through the center. In typical Kalibutan fashion, the shaft was hexagonal. There were three elevator shafts and one was in use as they walked up.

  A young orc in tight fitting purple shorts and shirt hopped off the elevator and hurried over to them. He gave Luke a shallow bow and said, “May I presume you are Luke of Machines?” When he got a yes he continued, “Welcome to the Evbusogie family tower. You are an honored guest and have all the privileges of such. Please follow me and I will escort you to your eighth floor apartment.”

  He bowed again and led them to the elevator. The shaft was mostly open air, with patterned metal grates. A thick stone platform sat flush with the ground and glowed slightly as they stepped on it. The orc carefully stepped around Kruro’s long tail to tap a rune on the stone near the edge. The platform floated up the shaft with a low hum. It was slightly faster than the average Earth elevator.

  There weren’t any doors, so when they arrived on the eighth floor, the orc simply hopped off. There were six rooms on the eighth floor and he led them around the central foyer to the door with a number five on it. He stepped to the side and said, “This will be your suite for the entirety of your stay in our blessed city. The master of the building has invited you to dinner. It will be held on the ninth floor courtroom, eight hours from now. If you have any needs, please send your servants to room one on the fourth floor. Anyone there would be happy to assist.”

  Luke thanked him and tapped the central rune. The door slid into the wall and revealed a nice sized apartment. There were floor to ceiling windows on the far wall that gave a great view of the city. He set down their luggage just inside the doorway and shuffled to the side to climb out of his mech. Despite tall ceilings, it was far too big to walk around inside.

  Jinx hopped off his shoulder and started exploring the apartment while he climbed out of both sets of armor. There was a large central room with several doors around the walls. The room to the left of the entryway was devoid of furniture, but had a variety of runed objects on the walls, including a sophisticated version of the telegraph/flag thing.

  Before he could explore the next room, the floor rumbled. It was a soft rumble, not an earthquake, more like the entire tiled floor was set on vibrate.

  “What the hell is that?” Luke said and stopped moving.

  Bosa’s eyes were wide and she seemed just as clueless.

  Kruro chuckled softly. “That is the notice that someone is at the door requesting to be let in. Bosa, I believe that would fit in with your duties.”

  Bosa shook her head at the weird version of a doorbell and hurried to the door. She opened it with a touch and bowed. “Greetings, glorious Lord Mo-”

  She didn’t get to finish before Momoh cut her off. He shoved her to the side and stomped over to Luke. “They’re holding the dispersal hearings now. The disgrace of a Falodun widow is trying to steal the holdings for her cousins. I won’t let that slime get her way. Get dressed in your finest and meet me on the roof. No armor, just finery. Quick!”

  Momoh spun on his heel and stomped out of the room without waiting for a reply. Luke shook his head and said, “Well, let’s get to it. Chop, chop.”