City of the Sun

City of the Sun

Kaelen had fallen into step beside Alster and lowered his voice so the others would not hear.

He knew that admitting uncertainty might diminish his standing as their leader, but he needed to think aloud. Alster was close enough to his age to understand the weight of it and sufficiently uninterested in politics that Kaelen trusted him not to carry his doubts to the others.

“I am not sure what we are chasing here.”

“Do you mean after the map room, or in general?” Alster asked. He was already proving to be a good listening ear.

“In general, I suppose. We keep moving from one discovery to another with little planning and almost no understanding of what we encounter or its repercussions. Should we stop for a while? Consolidate? Perhaps divide the company and send some of us to the Library of the Crysalise, or request special permission to enter the Library of the Astryx Arcanum? Research.. Try to understand....It's not that much further north.”

“That would be impressive, and I would volunteer immediately, but I think we are stronger together for now.”

“We arrive at every new piece of the puzzle unprepared. I feel such pressure from the High Council to report something tangible and justify our expenditure.”

“Kaelen, you cannot prepare for the unknown and I am certain the High Council would never have selected you if they didn’t have confidence in your abilities.”

Kaelen felt suddenly justified in confiding in his younger friend. Alster seemed awfully wise at that moment.

“I do think we should request permission to enter the Library of the Astryx Arcanum,” Alster added. “Can you imagine how awesome that would be and what we could learn?”

Kaelen laughed and put an arm around his friend as they walked.

Tajan had overheard the last part of their conversation. “Did you say the Library of the Astryx Arcanum? Have I ever told you that I have been there?”

“You were twelve,” Kaelen and Alster said in unison.

Their laughter eased, for a moment, the ache of thousands of steps.

“Well,” Alster said, “at least we get to see the Helios Spire.” “The nearest of Deppyoa’s stars,” Tajan replied. Anderix adjusted the mechanism over his eye. “Assuming the lights represented destinations and not points of interest for visitors from other continents.” “Thank you, Anderix,” Kaelen said. “That is precisely the cheerful thought we needed for the road.” Ahead of them, Drue and Dasher rose above the trees. Somewhere beyond the northern Solaryn mountains lay Helion and, Kaelen hoped, an answer that he could send to Kefar that would demonstrate his progress. Drue took the lead from above. He had never visited the Solaryn capital and seemed delighted to have an official reason to go, particularly after hearing Tajan speak of it with such pride. Dasher wheeled over the road, sometimes disappearing behind the trees before sweeping back into view.

Tajan was as eager as anyone to discover whether the Helios Spire was suffering the same imbalance as the towers. She was also returning to the city where she had first trained as a fire mage. Helion was where she had studied and lived before her abilities were noticed and she was encouraged to continue her training in Kefar.

After several days, the road emerged from the wooded foothills and reached the edge of a steep descent. Beyond it, the immense valley of the Losden opened beneath them.

The river wound through the plains like a ribbon of molten gold. A multitude of farms and small villages lined its banks, fed by innumerable narrow channels that carried water into fields of green and amber. Farther west, Helion rose along both sides of the river, its towers glowing beneath the afternoon sun.

Kaelen’s company stopped without being told.

“Helion,” Tajan proclaimed, spreading her arms towards the valley. “City of the Sun.”

Dasher answered with a piercing cry. She banked over the drop and landed beside them in a rush of dust and feathers. Drue dismounted and came to Tajan’s side in one smooth motion.

Everyone appeared impressed but Blena was determined to appear least impressed of all.

His grin remained fixed as he looked back across the valley. “You grew up here?” he asked Tajan.

“Not in Helion. I lived here while I trained.” She pointed to a cluster of slender golden towers near the river. “Those are the oldest academies. The newer ones spread east from there after the city outgrew its first walls.”

Drue followed the line of her hand by reaching out next to hers. One eye closed and mimicked her action. His hand grazed hers gently as it searched for the distant target. “The view reminds me of why we are doing this.”Tajan said to all of them but particularly to Drue who now stood almost touching shoulders with her. “How so?” He asked on behalf of all of them. If power to the institutions were to fail and crystals here lose their ability to send their energy this city would fall into utter collapse.” "It's a great view." Blena admitted.”But I think you are right, if crystals are really in danger, many great cities will fall.

Anderix adjusted his eyepiece. Its lenses clicked as he studied the mirrored panels covering the highest buildings.

“Those towers are redirecting sunlight,” he said. “The panels are angled towards crystals.... I suspect there are conduits below them. The city is distributing solar energy?” He questioned openly, to the whole company.

Tajan turned to him, pleased. “Precisely. The energy powers myriad instruments in the academies, workshops and observatories. Some of the older channels run beneath the streets.”

“How efficiently?”

“Efficiently enough that Mechanum engineers have been trying to copy them for more than a century.”

Anderix smiled. “That sounds unlikely. Besides, there is nothing more efficient than our static lightning fields for capturing energy. ”

“It sounds painful,” Blena interrupted. “Watching the three of you admire a collection of shiny pipes may be the thing that finally kills me.”

She pointed to the great golden spire rising beyond Helion’s eastern gates. Vast mirrored rings encircled its upper chambers, and crystal lenses glittered within them.

“Is that the one we have crossed half the realm to see?”

“The Helios Spire,” Tajan said. “Generations of Solaryn scholars built it to study the Day Star. Its rings track the sun, gather its light and focus that energy through the tower.”

Drue shaded his eyes. “It looks as though someone built a lighthouse for the sky.”

Tajan considered this. “That is not entirely wrong.”

They began descending the winding road into the valley. With every turn, another part of Helion appeared. Golden buildings climbed the riverbanks in ordered terraces. Bridges crossed the Losden between academies, markets and gardens. Reflective towers caught the sun and sent brief flashes travelling across the city.

Before the civil war, Helion had been the intellectual centre of the shared eastern continent. Scholars from the Astryx Arcanum had studied beside Solaryn mages, while mathematicians and engineers came from every corner of the east. The old cooperation had not survived, but its glory remained in the broad streets and magnificent institutions they had built together.

Tajan pointed them out as the company descended, telling numerous stories about instructors, dormitories and competitions between academies. Drue listened with the complete attention of someone who had forgotten there were five other people on the road.

Anderix asked increasingly specific questions about the crystal conduits. Some were questions Tajan could answer. Others sounded suspiciously like questions to which he already knew the answer.

Blena marched between them and announced, “It is not Karvok, but it is a respectable city.”

Tajan laughed. “That may be the kindest thing you have ever said about anywhere outside the Ironroot Bastion.”

They stopped again where the descending road curved around a rocky ledge. From there, the wide and flat Losden filled the valley floor and Helion shone beyond it.

Dasher gave a long, painful screech.

Her wings spread as though she were about to launch. Drue closed one eye and bowed his head in discomfort.

Invisible magnetic waves swept through the valley circling out like an earthquake from its epicenter.

“Did you feel that?” he asked.

“Yes,” Alster said. “It was like a wave of low sound but I heard nothing... but I definitely felt it.”

“I felt nothing,” Anderix said.

“No surprise there,” Blena replied. “You’re half machine.”

“I have only exterior augmentations that I attach to my body. Nothing is internal. That is not possible in the Ascendancy.”

“Relax, Anderix. I was joking. You know, what do you call a Mech with no arms or legs in the water?”

He stared at her.

“Bob.”

Anderix looked genuinely troubled by this.

Drue lifted one hand. “Wait. What is that sound?”

They heard it then, a faint scream carried from somewhere below.

“Where is it coming from?” Kaelen asked.

Anderix pressed a control beside his eyepiece. Its lenses rotated as he scanned the villages and roads leading towards the city. Drue was already running back to Dasher when Anderix pointed.

“There. Near the stream flowing down from the hill.”

“What do you see?” Tajan demanded.

A succession of screams echoed across the valley.

“That is enough for me,” Blena said.

She sprinted after Drue, caught his forearm and used his momentum to swing herself onto Dasher’s back. The griffon launched before Blena had fully settled behind him.

“Meet us in the village!” she called.

With two powerful strokes of Dasher’s wings, they were already high above the road.

Kaelen looked at the others. “Let us go!”

“Over there,” Blena shouted, pointing towards a small town on the outskirts of the city. “There is some kind of commotion beside the river.”

She continued pointing as though Dasher could be steered by hand.

“I see it,” Drue said. “Hold on.”

Dasher folded her wings and plunged into a steep dive.

Tajan and the rest of the company ran towards the town. Below them, scores of people fled through the streets and ducked into doorways. Their screams grew louder as the company descended.

Anderix’s eyepiece clicked again.

“They are being chased by a pack of scaleback runners.”

“Something is wrong with that,” Kaelen said between breaths. “Scalebacks are usually nocturnal. They keep to themselves unless disturbed.”

They raced down the grassy moonstalker tracks beside the river.

By the time Drue and Blena landed, the extent of the attack had become clear. Scaleback runners swarmed through the streets, overturning carts and smashing shutters with their heavy tails. The creatures were normally reclusive and rarely dangerous unless provoked, but these moved with wild, directionless aggression. Villagers caught outside fled with slashes across their backs and open wounds on their arms from razor sharp teeth and hooked claws .

Drue struck Dasher’s hindquarters and sent her back into the air for safety.

Blena saw a child lying near the side of a house.

“That girl!”

Drue turned, but three scalebacks had already reached her. One knocked the child sideways with a swing of its head. She struck the wall and collapsed. A second locked onto her leg.

Blena did not remember reaching for a power crystal, but one was already clenched in her left hand. With her right, she drew her dagger.

Energy pulsed through her arms and legs. It tingled from the crystal to the blade, raising the hair on her skin. Blena threw the dagger with all her strength.

The blade spun through the chaos and struck the scaleback behind its head. The creature squealed, released the child and stumbled before falling still.

Blena ran to the girl.

When Alster, Tajan, Kaelen and Anderix entered the town, shattered windows, overturned carts and abandoned belongings littered the streets. Cries for help came from every direction.

“We need to split up,” Kaelen said. “There are countless people to help and too much happening at once.”

“I will triage here,” Alster replied, already unpacking bandages and herbs. “Send the injured to me.”

Kaelen pointed towards the market square. People had overturned carts to form a barricade. Parents lifted children onto wagons, stalls and anything else that raised them above the street.

“Anderix, bring the injured back to Alster. Tajan, come with me. There will be no shortage of wounded if we cannot stop the runners before they reach that square.”

He looked towards Tajan. “These are your people. Tell them in Solaryn to get off the ground and climb onto anything they can.”

“What are you thinking?”

Kaelen held up a green crystal.

“Fire.”

Tajan understood. She shouted in Solaryn, warning the villagers to climb.

Kaelen gripped his crystal and uttered a phrase in Thalorian. His teeth clenched. The ground trembled, and the street ahead of him began to buckle like a serpent moving beneath it. Cobblestones popped from the road and rolled aside. Scalebacks racing towards the market stumbled into one another, snapping as though each believed the others responsible. Earth and stones all rolled before the scalebacks forming a wall curved back towards the scalebacks like a wave formed of earth.

“Now!” Kaelen shouted.

Tajan raised a powerful red crystal.

“Firestorm!”

The air crackled. Within .01 time, flames whirled around and past the scalebacks. Fire rolled like liquid against the broken ridge of earth and stone, then crashed down before the advancing reptiles. The creatures singed and squealed. They turned towards a flameless alley and cascaded over one another in their haste to escape the heat.

Across the square, Anderix lowered an injured man beside Alster.

“What do you need?” he asked. “Tell me what to do.”

“Elevate his leg and press firmly against the wound.”

Anderix obeyed, but blood made his hand slip.

“I cannot maintain pressure.”

“Use this.”

Alster tossed him a thick pad and a roll of bandage before turning back to a woman whose face was covered with blood and tangled hair. He wiped it carefully away, trying to find the source of her pain.

“Chew this,” he instructed her in Common Tongue.

When the woman did not respond, he placed a small bundle of analgesic leaves between her teeth and gently lifted her jaw to help her bite down.

“We can begin treating more of them,” Alster told Anderix, “but someone must stop the scalebacks before I have umpteen more patients.”

Blena and Drue had separated to cover more of the town. Dozens of scalebacks still ran through the streets in a crazed swarm of skin, scale and claw.

Blena followed a clamour of voices towards the river. She climbed over fallen debris, dodged a host of frightened domestic animals and emerged beside a crowd of villagers attempting to hold back two large male scalebacks.

They had armed themselves with whatever they could find. Some pushed broken chairs towards the snapping creatures. Others swung poles, baskets and heavy cloth bags. Fear showed in every swing, but they stood back to back and refused to abandon one another.

Blena joined their line. Impressed with their protective instincts and guardianesque movements to offer resistance.

Drue arrived from the opposite street. He ran behind one of the scalebacks and slashed at its tail with his blade, hoping the pain and his deep, bellicose shouts would drive it away. Instead, the scrape of steel through scale and into the creature’s bony tail made it turn on him.

Blena watched him meet its charge. He was not her type, she reminded herself but in that moment she could understand a little of what Tajan might see in him.

A second tail swept towards her head. Blena ducked, snapping back to the immediate problem of remaining alive.

“Something has made them panic,” she shouted. “We cannot end this without killing them.”

She retreated a step and reached for the strongest blue crystal at her waist.

Blena had never attempted the invocation outside her training. Even then, no Veylborn had answered. Now the scalebacks were closing in and the villagers behind her had nowhere to run.

She gripped the crystal.

“Dorlita speak calm to these beasts. Dorlita we call on your powers.”

The crystal cracked.

Blue vapour erupted between Blena’s fingers, forcing her to drop it. Before it touched the ground, the crystal dissolved into light.

A woman appeared within the vapour, formed from wisps of air and pale radiance.

Blena’s heart almost stopped.

“I cannot believe that worked.”

Dorlita spoke in a soothing language that was neither Common Tongue nor Solaryn. The crystals at Blena’s waist vibrated, making faint clinks and chirps like stone under pressure.

The Veylborn extended one luminous hand towards the scalebacks.

Villagers held their breath, aghast at the apparition but still too frightened of the creatures to flee. Some crouched behind their broken furniture. Others remained ready to run if either the scalebacks or the floating woman moved towards them.

Dorlita stroked the back of the nearest creature. Her glowing hand passed above its scales without touching them almost as if it went below the surface of their scales. Slowly, she turned her palm and held it over the scaleback’s forehead.

The creature lowered its head.

Its tail stopped lashing. The tension left its limbs.

Blena turned towards Drue and smiled.

He stared back at her in open amazement.

Dorlita’s form loosened into air and particles, flowing from her head to her feet. Gusts of pale light travelled outwards through the streets. Wherever they passed, scalebacks slowed. Their frantic movements softened into the heavy, deliberate pace natural to the reptiles.

Then Dorlita was gone.

For several breaths, no one moved.

“Stay here,” Blena told Drue. “Make sure the villagers are safe before you return to the square.”

She went to find Tajan and Kaelen.

After what felt like hours, but could only have been minutes, the creatures began retreating towards the dark foliage and riverbanks they knew. They followed paths leading out of the town, their aggression subsiding as panic became calm.

Drue looked around at the villagers. Their relief took manifold forms: lowered shoulders, trembling hands and exhausted faces.

Blena found Tajan in the town square and recounted her attempt to summon Dorlita.

“It was magnificent,” Tajan said. “It destroyed the crystal, though?”

“Completely.”

Drue returned as the rest of the company regrouped.

“We need to understand what caused this,” he said. “A great many things are happening that do not ordinarily happen.”

“And a considerable number of questions are going unanswered,” Kaelen added. He wiped sweat and someone else’s blood from his forehead. “These events must be related. When we have time, Blena, you are going to tell me everything about summoning a Veylborn. That is certainly not an academy lesson.”

Blena thought for a moment. “Scalebacks live near water or underground. I wonder whether that wave disturbed them.”

“We all felt it,” Tajan said. She glanced towards Anderix. “Well, nearly all of us.”

Anderix ignored this.

“I am sure it startled them out of their nesting grounds,” Alster said. He sounded more confident now that there was a problem he could explain.

“Agreed,” Kaelen replied.

“I lived in this region for years and never saw a scaleback runner,” Tajan said. “The energy surge is the only new condition that might account for such a change.”

Alster looked towards the distant Helios Spire. Its mirrored rings still glittered above the city as though nothing had happened.

“First we help the rest of these people. Then we investigate that wave. If Deppyoa was right about the imbalance spreading through the ancient system, this may be another effect of it.”

With renewed purpose, Kaelen, Tajan and Blena joined Alster and Anderix in tending to the townspeople. The villagers showed their gratitude by sharing food, water and what little medical supplies they had. Several offered the company places to sleep, a welcome kindness after the terror of the afternoon.

Drue returned to Dasher and flew towards Helion to request medicine and assistance from the city watch. He promised to return within the hour.

As dusk settled across the valley, the Helios Spire caught the final light of the Day Star. Its mirrors shifted together, sending a brilliant beam down through the tower.

For an instant, the entire structure blazed against the darkening city.

Then the light flickered.

Thy Quest: A Multitude of Meanings
Find at least eight words or expressions in the chapter that communicate the idea of many. Make a list of as many as you can find and show your teacher.