. Baladeith .

As Fior and Kelsi travel south, the crowded mudholes of the Wallsides grow fewer and fewer until the coast reveals itself. The morning clouds brighten under the hidden sun, illuminating the boundless waters which meet them eye-to-eye.

Yet, they aren’t able to appreciate them.

Jutting past the land into the ocean is something even more monstrous: a great, gray expanse stretching far above where the eyes can see. A fool underestimating its magnitude might say it reaches above the overcast sky. Those who respect it know it pierces down from the heavens, driving so deep into the rock and soil that the Realm’s very bones crack. They know it to be a place insurmountable to any intruder, a fortress with no equal.

The fortress’ name? Baladeith – the divine barrier between here and yonder.

Nothing intrudes upon the wall’s splendor where Fior and Kelsi now stand. No squatters seek cover under its strength, and not one merchant bothers to flock to its cover. This rare, desolate pocket by the sea sits unperturbed by all, leaving the gray pure and untarnished.

Of course, this is no surprise to anyone. It’s common knowledge that this is where the lunatics of the city come and go – those who would risk entry, and worse, those who would dare leave.

But as Kelsi gets a better look at it past its shadow, she boggles at the thought.

There are no doors here to speak of.

In fact, there are no openings to speak of. No windows, nor even a single space between the bricks.

…For there are no bricks, either!

Rather, the whole wall is composed of ashen cubes no bigger than dice. They fit snugly against one another, drawing out a grid that goes on, and on, and on until Kelsi can’t tell them apart from any other smooth surface.

She leans in closer to them. Her eyes catch the glyphs engraved into every one, each a depiction of the same symbol: a trinity of spirals branching out like tentacles from a central point. Their arms reach out past their confinements to ensnare her, tempting her hand.

At the graze of her fingernail, a few of the squares sink past their brethren. She flinches away, and they slide back into place.

What’s with these things…?

She cautiously pokes the wall again with her empty spear shaft. The cubes shrink back, then spring forward. They don’t grind against each other at all; instead, their motion passes to their neighbors without a sound, and then to the next, and so on. Before long, a silent ripple undulates across the wall as if the blocks form an ocean of their own.

“How nice of you to knock.”

She turns to Fior, who has simply been entertaining themselves with her wonder this whole time. As usual, she wants to respond with more questions than she can count, but her professor stays them with a raised hand.

She can do nothing but wait.

…

The cubes in front of them start to stir.

First, one twitches, then another.

Five becomes ten, then twenty, then more.

They twist and turn, shifting in fluid movements to make way for an approaching source beyond their reach. Thousands upon thousands of cubes join the mechanism, pushing forth and peeling back like flowing sand.

The wall goes through all this trouble just for a few grains to part, leaving a slit for a pair of brown eyes to peer through.

“Who goes…there…?”

The young man’s sheepish voice trails off.

The sliver of an opening cuts off his view of the bodies standing before him. On his left is a sprout of copper hair – on his right, a loincloth adorning tremendous, azure hips.

Outside, Fior sighs. They plunge a hand into their cloak and reemerge with Mailo’s two notes, propping themselves all the way up on their toes so they can meet their guide’s gaze. “I’m here on behalf of the Chancellor.”

They strain their arm to slip the papers through the slot.

…

“…Oh. W-wait here.”

The gap seals itself.

Kelsi itches at the shelling on her arm. The urge to ask Fior what’s going on has grown unbearable, and every time she looks at her broken glaive, she feels it beat against the inside of her skull. Even so, she knows letting it escape now would amount to nothing.

The wall begins to tremble once more. The cubic cells shove each other aside as they dissolve into a much larger fissure, clearing the way for a gaping, rectangular doorway.

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Two armored human men stand beneath the threshold. The plating they don exudes a deep gray like the wall around it, highlighting wherever their snow-pale skin shines through.

The first figure is the brown-eyed guide from before. His stance oozes callowness – he sticks his thin legs together according to rehearsal, and his soot-colored chestplate puffs out with an exaggerated grandeur. Despite this, his sagging shoulders betray him at the sight of the vast outdoors, not to mention the immense woman towering over him.

The second, much taller man doesn’t share such ineptitudes. His wrinkled face and dark eyes demonstrate command, but only through their age. He doesn’t waste any effort fixing his withered expression into anything other than stoic disinterest. Perhaps it’s simply that he doesn’t need to, given his careful yet casual posture is more attuned to habit than his subordinate’s.

He is the first one to speak.

“You again,” he groans, scowling down at the professor. They nod in response, to which he puffs out a callous breath of air. “Alright, no time to waste. Let’s get this over with.”

He turns around, waving a curt hand for them to follow. The youthful guide stumbles with him as if being yanked along by a leash.

Kelsi looks down to Fior, but they give her no words or smiles of affirmation – they simply step forward after the men, still believing their student will be behind them.

She grinds her anxious fangs, but ultimately, she believes so, too.

As the four disappear into the bowels of Baladeith, the doorway behind them dissolves. The blocky rubble finds its way among its companions, healing the wall’s wound until the surface is like new, smooth to the waking residents of Altar City as if none had ever opened.

----------------------------------------

The corridor is like nothing Kelsi has ever seen.

Here, too, the same tiny cubes construct everything from the floor to the ceiling. They make way for the walking group like a liquid mass, parting a hallway in front of them while pinching off the hollow areas left behind. Yet not all are so lenient in this bubble – the ones under the group’s steps are rigidly bound together through some unknown force, not budging even against Kelsi’s heavy feet.

Despite there being no light sources, everything here is also perfectly illuminated: the dark tint of the guides’ armor, Fior’s spindly, maroon hair, and even the intricate spirals engraved on the stones. Whether or not this is a quality of the strange material, Kelsi can’t say; regardless, in proper lighting, she’s finally able to look upon her battered body after Fior’s early morning bout.

Bruises engorge patches of her skin in plateaus of deep purple, leaving only small crevices for light blue to thrive. Her bare face and belly, unprotected by her chitin shell, are especially ruined.

Her violet blush is lost amongst the blemishes.

Turning to check on his guests, the older guide notices this and raises an eyebrow at Fior. “Sheesh. Go easy on the thing. Isn’t this the ‘city’s teasure?’ The Chancellor’d throw a fit if you broke it.”

Their face hardens at the ill-humored remark. Meanwhile, Kelsi’s gait slightly crumbles as if the man had thrust a battering ram against her skull.

“You’ll make things easier for me, t-that’s for sure!” the young guide stutters, trying his hardest to follow up his elder’s confidence. Even so, his head is paralyzed in place as he looks up at the Elemental. His wide eyes carry a different sort of fear from any of the people Kelsi passed in Danu Prominence, even the children – it’s a primal terror, one that blooms purely from the heart.

As this cowardice douses the awkward boy's laugh into a nervous squeak, Kelsi tilts her head. She doesn't know how to take this kind of reaction.

The old man engulfs the top of his head with his hand, rattling it inside his helmet like a bell.

“Ugh. I hope you’ll forgive our newbie, here. He…just came of age, you know? Doesn’t know how to treat our guests…”

“…”

Sensing the growing disdain in the air, he swiftly gives up bothering Fior and Kelsi, releases his younger partner’s head, and throws an arm around his shoulder. “Get a hold of yourself, Bran! Crossings are an honor…!”

His hushed ramblings and laughter fade as he speeds up and takes them both further into the wall, stretching the corridor until distance snuffs them out.

Left with only each other, the professor and their student stroll along, the silence only broken by footsteps and Kelsi’s jangling bag.

As she fully recovers from the guide’s insult, the onslaught of questions returns to her mind like a swarm of flies. They tickle her brain with even more ferocity than before, crawling around in her curiosity only to hide away behind some fleshy crease right as she thinks about quelling the itch.

Her grip around the steel pole tightens.

What’s Professor doing? They’re acting all weird again… Can they just tell me what’s going on? Am I even allowed to speak?!

Whether or not she is, she can no longer dispel the urge.

She blurts out a single word.

“…Professor?”

Fior lets out a pent-up breath of air as if they’d shared in her inner turmoil, looking up to meet her crystalline gaze. “Gods, I was wondering when you’d say something. What is it?”

“Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Hm… I’ll give you…two.”

“What is this place?”

A playful smile cracks across their face. “Well, this is Baladeith, of course.”

“That’s not what I mean!” Kelsi squints down at her professor with feeble irritation. Releasing it in a huff, she continues. “What I’m trying to say is, what’s with this place? How could I not notice any of this until-”

“Do you want that to be your second question?” Fior intercepts. She hangs her head in defeat, and they chuckle. “Well then, who knows? We tend to care not for the finer details of things we think we know well. But as for the wall itself? It’s impressive, right? Though really, it’s not all that complicated. These pesky, little things run on the same stuff you summoned back in my room – they’re tathlums.”

“…Tathlums?”

“Two questions, Kelsi.” They snicker as she resigns herself once again. “No worries. In time, I’ll teach you all about this stuff. Was there something else you were worried about?”

She breaks eye contact with Fior and looks at the men further down the hallway. Though the pair are merely dots from this far away, she can still make out the shimmer of their armor in the mysterious light.

“Yeah. Who are those people?”

“They’re a very special sect of the Guard. Pretty old, too. Since Baladeith was built, they’ve sworn to the Morrigan protect it at all costs, at all times. And I don’t mean just as a job. This place is a home to them just as much as it is a fortress.”

“There are people that live here?”

Despite this being her third question, her professor answers her anyway.

“Yes – from birth ‘till death, I might add. We call them Fir an Bhalla.”