“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Mireille woke and stretched. No headache, check; No painful wounds, check.
It promised to be a good day. Alyssa was, interestingly enough, still sleeping. Perhaps the day she had slept away in the carriage had carried over and led to this miraculous happenstance.
Beside her friend, she spied the dark hair of Alea who was curled up protectively beneath the blankets like a small feline. She gave Alyssa a kiss on the fluffy head, her white hair always looked like spun sugar, and then got up.
Opening the window, she saw houses and streets laid out in an orderly fashion, not at all like Saintscrossing and its haphazardly winding roads. Smoke rose from chimneys and the rising sun drew long shadows across the road. A young boy of perhaps ten years of age proclaimed to have important news, only one copper! He was holding aloft a bundle of crudely stitched papers. 'Mh, interesting.' she had heard from a traveling merchant that they had some newfangled thing called new paper or some such. But if that was what it was, why did it look so old and dirty?
She washed and put on her clothes, then left the room- She did not want to wake her friends. They had both seemed in need of more rest.
Grabbing some bread and cheese from a friendly barmaid, she went outside and, still chewing, looked for the boy with the new paper. He stood on an old crate beside a general store and waved the yellowed, cheap-looking scraps, held together with string stitched through one edge. The scrawny, blonde boy did not have all his teeth and was clothed in an old shirt and pants, much too big for his small frame, the sleeves and legs rolled up, rags bound around his feet.
“Hey! Is that the new paper? Why does it look so old?”
The boy laughed and nearly fell from his rickety post. “You want new paper, you go to the mill. If you want News!” He emphasized the last word comically, “Then I can help you. Its newspaper because it's paper with the most important, fresh and interesting…” he drew a big breath, “news!” His voice became more matter-of-fact “Only one copper piece and that's a bargain!”
“Have two, one for the paper and one for your performance!” She threw two glinting coins, which the boy deftly grabbed out of the air.
An old woman standing to the side laughed and waited as Mireille received her bundle of cheaply inked paper, then bought one of her own.
The streets were bustling in the early morning- hooves pattering, wheels clattering big wagons drove down the road while people did their best to avoid them. Here a man cursed and swung a fist, over on the other side a woman scolded her child, two men embraced and slapped each other on the back, a woman shook out a blanket from the windows on the second floor of a large apartment building. Doves took flight, their wings beating the smoke-laden air.
‘What city was it?’ Mireille was a bit embarrassed as she read in the newspaper ‘Dornenfurt Herald’ and guessed the city's name might be Dornenfurt.
‘Mayor Tormas makes speech, Dornenfurt to be the site of the new crystal dust manufactorum. Prosperous times ahead!’
‘Draft animals should not be allowed in the inner city limits, pollution, and accidents on the rise. Councilmember Theorek for a cleaner city.’
‘War to the west heating up, cold north not so cold anymore?’
‘Slavery is for the betterment of all. An essay by Ambassador Xiu Kar of Sur-Kesh. Testimonial of Slaves included.’
‘New academy founded near Tiefenforst in Nordmark. Competition breeds excellence, new academy head Irene Wellinghorst says.’
Mireille folded the paper. It seemed to mostly be interesting headlines with few actual nuggets of information. But it had been cheap, even if the paper was not…she grinned.
Entering the Three Frogs again, she spied Adam and Luke beside the more rested-looking Maximilian, the left arm still in a sling. The three brothers sat at a table nearby and were eating bread and soup.
“Good morning!”
“Morning, lass.” Adam eyed the paper in her hands.”Finished with that?”
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“Ah, not completely, but you can have it while I eat.”
“A fine morning to you too.” Maximilian greeted in a friendly tone.
Luke nodded and, with a slight stutter, greeted her, too.
Alyssa and Alea came down shortly after she had finished with breakfast, and all of them soon set out again.
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The three armed guards rode two in front and one in the back.
Boarding the coach, Alyssa eyed Mireille. The girl had been uncommonly enthusiastic for an early morning. Alea smoothed her skirt, brought out a thin green book, and gave her a brief smile before she immersed herself in reading.
Mireille looked outside and commented on the clothes and variety of the passersby.
“You don’t seem sleepy?”
“I am the personification of energy. Nirileth be my witness.”
“Normally, you would be sleeping by now.”
"Yesterday, I slept a lot. I have a weekly contingent to fulfill, and my part is done. I won't sleep for the rest of the week!” Mireille declared. “Sadly the innkeeper did not want to part with a board game, that would have been a fun way to pass the time.”
“The dice would have gotten lost in here. I think we would spend more time searching than playing.”
Bickering good-naturedly and annoying the quietly reading Alea, they passed the time. Cyrus wanted to exit the carriage a few times and was held back only just.
"He now graduated from small and scrawny cat to weak and sickly puppy. Congratulations!" Mireille measured Cyrus with her hands. The wyvern bit her for her troubles. "Ouch!"
"Could you please leave the poor thing alone, whenever he screeches my teeth hurt." Alea lowered the book in her hands and complained.
"Yes, yes." Mireille sucked the small bite-mark, still smiling.
"He has grown bigger, it is not only my imagination is it?" Alyssa looked at Cyrus speculatively.
"Yes, he grew. Please be a bit quieter. It isn't as if that was something surprising after all." Alea looked a bit cross.
They crossed a river, farmland rolled on by, a forest, the wide stretches of a moor. Some small villages, people living their lives, golden wheat swayed in the wind. The weather was mostly clear but at midday, there was a short shower dampening the earth. Mireille went to sleep after eating which prompted Alyssa to make fun of her.
She then quietly addressed Asandria, “I had a question.”
‘I gathered as much. Please ask, I will hear you out.’
“I have seen the results of combat, and I have the means to alleviate some of those, but I lack methods to prevent them.”
‘You want to learn defensive magics? A good choice, even though spreading your attention might make your foundation in those skills shaky. But that is a question of effort. Very well I will teach you a spell meant to protect. Regarding your affinities, I fear that void might be the best fit for you in the short term. Do be careful when using it. The spell's name is Breaking the Second Seal. And last: Don't forget you still owe me a song.’
She began to instruct her. The spell would, at the command of the caster, align this dimension to that of the void, the congruence like a bubble pressing up against the feeble restraints of reality. It would look like a black mirror and erode anything passing through, if it were living it would drain its life force. Alyssa listened attentively.
They crested a low hill as they suddenly stopped. A few knocks sounded from the front, and the muffled voice of old Adam called, “You should take a step outside. It's worth a look.”
The three warriors also stopped their horses and rested as they watched.
They exited the coach, which had stopped at the top of the barren hill, and looked out towards the city of Kronenburg.
Houses large and small sprawled along a glistening, massive river flowing in a lazy arc, crisscrossed by several bridges, a large harbor housed dozens of great ships, masts swaying in the current. The roofs were mostly red, but there was black, and some were plated with green-tinged copper gleaming in the sun. Further inland were great villas alongside plazas ringed with trees and statues. Towards the center there was a large palace, slender towers crowned in silver, surrounded by green gardens and parkland.
Temples to many gods rose above the common buildings like whales breaching, white and golden, black and silver. The Covetous One, the One without Stain, Oathkeeper, Dreamer under the Mountain, Keeper of the past, Warder on the Threshold, Drinker of Tears. Walls circled the individual quarters, Alyssa counted three great rings.
A massive, sprawling castle sat to the east with military encampments nearby, the city covered the earth as far as she could see, smoke hung in a great pall over the low-lying poorer quarters. The land rose around the stream, and the smog accumulated in the lower regions. Great halls, probably manufactorums and warehouses bordered the river with their own small quays, large, dirty windows glinting in the sun.
Over a distant part of the city or perhaps beyond it, the sky was perfectly clear, and beneath sat white buildings arranged in near runic precision and arrangement.
Great white oval balloons hung low over the merchant's quarter, gondolas strapped beneath. Goods were carried up and down with pulleys and elevators on slender metal towers. One giant balloon made its stately way towards the east, winglike contraptions of wood and cloth beating like the wings of a gigantic bird.
It was grand. It was intimidating. Alyssa felt small and ignorant. Mireille grabbed her shoulder, “Is that the academy?” She pointed at the far-off white buildings, deceptively small looking, even though some of them must have towered several stories high.
“Yes, that is the academy. They have some mages cleansing the pollution, and it shows. The air in the lower city is barely breathable some days.” Maximilian endeavored to answer.
The wind whipped over the hill and tugged at their hair and clothing, the cold nip in the air brought tears to the eyes. Only Adam seemed unaffected, sitting hunched over on the driver's seat. He spat a bit of tobacco.
“Not all is gold that glitters. For every shiny, pretty stone, there is its underside, rife with bugs, worms, and dirt.” He grinned.
“Welcome to Kronenburg!”