Consciousness came to her first as a velvet touch then sit struck like a hammer.

One moment she was twitching in the grip of a nightmare. The next she was in a prison of soft sheets and unfamiliarity.

Two scrambled like a fly caught in a spider’s web and met comparable success. One wrong turn threw her from the bet and introduced her face to the floor. It pain put an end to her struggles.

Two blinked the fuzz from her eyes and navigated free of her sinfully soft bindings. She used her time getting up to look around.

It didn’t help her confusion.

Her fall had been blunted by a carpet softer than most of the beds she’d known. The rest of the room was polished stone polished stone. That itself was not a surprise. Time had done the same to many of the slum’s monuments. Millennia of wind and rain had sheared all imperfections from their exterior and generations of steps had worn subtle paths into stone. That was not the case here.

The stone was white, an oddity in a city of painted grey brick and cobble. The brickwork oozed expense. Like every stone had been polished. Then shined then oiled and polished and then shined once again. Then the space between the bricks had been carved for perfectly straight lines and further filled with gold and silver. And then that hole mass had been polished and oiled and shined.

The stone looked more like gems cut and bound in golf. Someone had poured the wealth of a household into every brick. Such effort had been placed into the construction that she tasted it. A heady madness made bearable only because the years had worn it to a faint perfume.

All that for bricks. All that to cover some in a gaudy blue carpet.

The bed, the sheets and assorted items in the room were little better. Two suddenly very, very sick. So sick she might vomit if she wasn’t certain her life couldn’t pay the cleaning fee.

Minutes later when she stopped staring at the bejewelled wood dresser and failing to estimate its cost she noted her clothes had been changed. She was so relieved to find herself in a simple cotton dress that It took minutes more for her to wonder how she got in it.

Head swimming and brimming with shock and confusion she stumbled to the curtain and eased them open. She wasn’t yet ready to look through the door.

She cast the heavy curtains open and saw blue and white. It took her a while to realize what she was seeing.

Spes nova had been carved into or rather from a mountain. It was the reason most everything was made of stone. It was the reason the rains were merely horrendous rather than seasonal apologies, as they were in lower-lying regions beyond the city. It was a fact so ubiquitous it was taken for granted. Perhaps it was the reason a blanket of clouds drifted by below her.

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Those considerations and more trickled out of her head, but nothing rose to replace them. Silence and wonder filled the room. For past the city and its colourful urban sprawl, over the great walls that seemed so small from her new vantage.

Past all that she’d ever known, there was an embrace of green and a horizon that went on forever. Untouched and unbound by any mortal restraint. The winding roads leading from the city melted into nothing. As green met blue a forever away.

Once upon a time, Two had been a girl of many dreams. A girl whose head never left the clouds. She remembered a dream, one she butchered and buried when she thought all fancies were lies. She couldn’t even remember what it had been but she could feel the old corpse shift rumble and shift. She couldn’t bring herself to beat it back down.

That view, of blue and green was worth more important. More important than all the gold and silver. Puffy clouds eclipsed the white pressed into the walls of what she now knew to be the governor’s towering Mansion. Where else in Spes Nova could one find such a heaven-defying tower?

Or such a perfect view.

All too soon she was pulled from the sky. An old woman garbbed in clothes finner than any Two had worn informed her she was to meet the governor in her study. It was strange to think they were just a servant. It was stranger when they gave a set of similar garb and told her to be ready in five minutes. She stepped into the manor’s halls draped in a cloak of pale blue and gold. Though palace seemed a more appropriate word to her.

The servant a short woman with bobbing mouse ears of faded brown, marched a quick pace. Her suit was of richer shades than two’s. She wanted to ask if that meant something, she wanted to ask why she was here and what to expect. But the sickly smell of distrust held her tongue.

Her taint did as it always did and spoiled any impression Two could try to make. The servant wasn’t a cultivator nor were they bound to tolerate Two by the threat of Daisy’s violence. They were just an old lady that grew more wary with every step.

At least now she knew she’d not died and gone to gaudy heaven. Still, it was hard to shove the glee away. Harder to wipe the smile that sat on her face.

She lived! Her body was free of pain, she did not know what magic had banished her wounds but was glad for it. The view would not leave her. It loomed no matter how much she tried to fill her mind with plans and worries.

She had not succeded in restraining her smile by the time they reached the governor. So as a door, twice as tall as it needed to be was opened for her. She was uncertain. nonetheless, she entered ready to make do.

“Good evening Two.” The governor said with a curious quirk of her brow. “You seem surprisingly well.”

Lancetsat sat behind a small mountain of paper under which a desk survived. Her office was as spacious and filled with excess as she’d expected. The only surprise was that the books lining the left wall were not studded with jewels.

It took a beat for Two to respond. She was busy trying not to stare at the floor to ceiling window behind the noble. “I was appreciating the view.”

“Oh?” the governor hummed. With the same bored tone and fake smile that she’d worm for most of the brief time Two had known her. Behind that mask Two scented a hint of interest.

Two was too buzzed to plot. Too buzzed to bother consider what all the details could mean. She decided to simply answer. She opened her mouth but she didn’t have the words. Without the press of death or the pull of something to gain intent Two didn’t know what to say. What to express without spilling herself into a flood of words.

“I, it was very beautiful. I’ve never seen the horizon before.“

The woman thrummed an amused waft pulsed through the room. Then she broke into a genuine smile and the smell of amusement settled to a lingering flavour. “So dozens of death has less impact than one clear look at the horizon.”

The words were a kick. A blow that let two shake loose the wonder’s hold. Yet it didn’t sing as much as it should. Should there be guilt, remorse of some kind? A feeling was there a faint stirring in her stomach, a slight chill in her chest, but, that was all. The smile fell from her face and truth and fiction blended into her sigh. “I was trying not to think of that.”

“Oh.” the governor put down their pen to rest their head on their interlaced fingers. Their gaze grew ever more intense. “Does that mean you regret the choices that led to them?”

Two didn’t what the governor knew. She didn’t what a cultivator of her power could do. Nor could she imagine the resources of the city’s governor. There was little chance she could slip a lie by her, and there was little point when she didn’t know what purpose the question served. “No, I loathe the ignorance that led me to that position. I wish that I could have better choices. But I’m alive and unless you have an ill fate in store for me. Then there is little for me to regret.” Still, it never hurt to massage the truth.

The noble chuckled and the force of her amusement struck. Sending her ears ringing, though not to the extent of another rupture.

“I suppose it is the blessing of youth to be without regret. I wonder if you will feel the same as the years pass.” Lancet plucked a bell from behind a particularly large paper hill and rung it. It was as light and jolly as their smile.

Soon the door opened and Terry. pale and terrified walked in. It was then Two noticed the teeth in their smile.