Eliska pushed herself off the ground and blinked the stars out of her eyes. She frowned while she tried to remember where she was and why.

She remembered the snow Island….and the conversation about the White Spire….and Marine adding those sticks to Eliska’s drawing….

And the fire. Eliska definitely remembered the fire that wiped out the snow Island.

There was no fire here. She woke up in a different Layer. It couldn’t be an Island because the landscape kept morphing and changing.

She woke up on a rock ledge in the middle of a sea of some glassy silver liquid. It blooped and shimmered all around this ledge.

The ledge didn’t float in the middle of the liquid nor was it attached to anything.

Marine sat at the other end of the ledge. She bent over the side, dipped her finger into whatever this substance was, and it clung to her skin when she pulled her hand back.

“Um….Marine?” Eliska ventured.

Marine looked up at her, and right then, the liquid sea erupted out of whatever bed it might be floating in.

It crested in waves that grew into mountains. The mountains turned into monsters and then caved in on themselves. They shattered into rock that turned into birds that flew away past Eliska’s head.

She grabbed her staff and scrambled to her feet. The furs she’d been wearing in the snow Island just slowed her down now.

She yanked off the cloak and discarded it on the ledge at her feet—but it wasn’t a ledge anymore.

The ledge grew outward into a river of ever-changing shapes. The surrounding landscape that had once been mountains changed to a solid carpet of gears, wires, machinery, and cogs all grinding against each other in constant motion.

The machinery chewed away at the rock ledge until it crumbled under her feet. She couldn’t stay here.

She flexed her legs to spring off. She spotted a large piece of machinery fifteen feet away. Its metal housing looked big enough for her to balance on….and then she saw Marine.

Marine balanced on a different slab of metal bobbing and tilting in the confusion. The slab wobbled and Marine almost fell off into the grinding cogs.

“Hold on, Marine!” Eliska yelled. “I’m coming for you!”

Eliska reacted without thinking, leapt off what was left of the ledge, and threw herself into the mayhem.

She started to descend between her starting point and Marine’s slab, planted her staff into the boiling, devouring mass of parts underneath her, and propelled herself the rest of the way to Marine’s slab.

Eliska landed on its edge. Her weight made it tip even more dangerously, but she didn’t plan to stay here.

She grabbed Marine around the waist and launched away carrying Marine with her.

Eliska pole-vaulted on her staff one more time and landed on the large machine she noticed earlier. She held onto Marine to stop the other girl from falling off.

The minute they landed, the landscape changed again. All the machinery locked together in a deafening sequence of clicks, snaps, and bangs.

The pieces formed modular components rising into some monstrous machine city. They carried the two girls high off the ground—if this Layer even had any ground.

Without warning, burning fireballs pelted out of the sky and smashed into all the machinery. The components caught fire and one of the fireballs bounced off Marine’s head.

She screamed and threw up her arms to protect herself. Eliska couldn’t wait any longer.

She scooped her arm around Marine’s waist to make sure the girl didn’t get lost, stabbed her staff down hard into the machine at her feet, and discharged a deep thump of magic through the mass of parts underneath her.

The Layer collapsed. Eliska held onto Marine at all costs and they dropped into a Layer full of gnashing mouths not attached to any kind of bodies.

All those mouths rushed the two girls. Eliska fought them off with her staff clutched in one hand. She didn’t dare to let go of Marine with her other hand.

They plummeted through the headless mouths, fell through a solid sheet of fire, and came out in the clouds.

Gravity caught them both and yanked them toward the ground falling faster and faster and faster.

The clouds parted and Eliska’s heart stopped when she saw a huge Island landscape spread out below her.

Towns and even cities rose out of a massive plane as wide as Eliska could see. The earth rushed her way too fast. Nothing would break the girls’ fall.

Eliska twisted around the other way, pointed her staff downward, and fired a jet of magic. It formed a bowl-shaped container that broke the wind. Both girls slowed until they floated toward the ground at a safe, gentle speed.

Eliska couldn’t stop staring at everything in amazed shock. This Island resembled nothing she’d ever seen in the Coil before.

Towering buildings of glass and steel raised their spires to the sky. Flying vehicles soared around the buildings and buzzed over streets teeming with different kinds of vehicles running along the ground.

Blazing lighted signs covered the walls of buildings, flashed different images and written messages, and then changed to completely different pictures of people, objects, and landscapes.

The bowl she used to slow her fall passed some of these buildings so she could see through the windows.

People in fancy clothes sat inside talking to each other, working on more screens, and talking into them to converse with people at a distance.

Others stood in front of larger screens and pointed at diagrams, scenery, and pictures on them while they lectured others about what they were seeing.

Wild whoops of crazy laughter startled Eliska back to her senses. She went through another torrent of confusion when she realized the laughter came from Marine.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

She shot to her feet, teetered on the edge of Eliska’s magical bowl, and yelled out in crazy glee. “Whoo! Come on, Eliska!”

Before Eliska could move or fully comprehend what was happening, Marine grabbed her hand and yanked her out of the bowl.

Both girls sailed through the air and started to fall again. Eliska was too stunned and horrified to do anything, but Marine must have known exactly what she was doing.

She landed on top of one of the flying vehicles and crouched there to keep her balance as the vehicle shot away across the landscape.

Now Eliska was the one who wobbled and almost fell off to her death in the streets below. Marine caught her.

Eliska gaped in slack-jawed disbelief at the mischievous grin spreading across Marine’s smudged face.

“Oops!” Marine giggled. “Be careful there!”

She held onto Eliska’s hand and then pulled her lower onto the vehicle’s roof. It zoomed between buildings, skirted signs, and fired out of the city heading for the distant countryside.

“This is where we get off!” Marine yelled over the wind, and without giving Eliska any further warning, Marine launched herself over the side.

Eliska screamed in terror, fired her staff again, and created another bowl to slow them down.

This time, they drifted the rest of the way to the ground. They landed on a grassy knoll next to a glistening stream.

Eliska collapsed back on the ground fighting to breathe, but she couldn’t stop staring at the city just a few miles away. Its buildings touched the sky. The sun reflected off all those windows.

The tide of engine noise and thousands of voices, laughter, music, banging sounds, and crashes floated on the breeze.

Marine brought Eliska back to reality real quick. Marine laughed again. “Come on! Don’t act so surprised! You must have seen cities like this in the Coil before.”

Eliska turned around extra slowly. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to see this, but she had to.

She faced Marine and discovered Marine grinning back at her. Marine’s deep, dark eyes glowed with fun and mischief.

Her cheeks glowed with pleasure at her trick—or they would have glowed if so much dirt and muck didn’t obscure her features.

“Um…..Marine?” Eliska stammered. “Um….what the hell is wrong with you?”

Marine burst out laughing again. She had a full, musical, uninhibited laugh like she really enjoyed laughter and joking around.

“I’m not what you expected, am I?” She smirked outright and passed her hand across her face to push her hair out of her eyes.

Touching it drew her attention to it. She looked down at the stringy, matted, greasy locks hanging on each side of her face.

She wrinkled her nose at her hair. “Ugh! That’s disgusting! We can’t have that, can we?”

She passed her hand down her hair a second time from her forehead all the way to the tips. A wave of magical sparks erupted from her palm, flowed down her hair with the motion of her hand, and left her hair clean and shiny in a waterfall of glistening darkness.

She stroked her hair all over until it shone in the sun. Then she rubbed her hands over her face.

All the grime came off in more sparks. They left her face as fresh, clean, and glowing as any princess.

“How’s that?” she asked and grinned again.

Eliska gaped at her in stupid disbelief. This was definitely not the same person Eliska had been used to. This was no wild, crazy girl sitting in the snow and snarling at unseen Darklings.

Marine laughed at Eliska’s reaction. “Oh, come on! You didn’t think I was like that all the time, did you?”

“What did you…I mean…what are you….who the….?” Eliska stammered and faltered to a stop.

Marine squinted at the city in the distance and raised her arm to shield her eyes from the sun. “We should go inside and see what they can tell us about the Voyant.”

“The Voyant?!” Eliska blurted out. “What about him?”

“About why he’s hunting the Black Watch, of course.” Marine turned around to study her. “Isn’t that what you’re all trying to find out—why the Voyant is hunting the Watch? You want to find out what he wants from them, don’t you? Isn’t that your whole quest or whatever you call it?”

Eliska’s jaw dropped again. “You know all that?”

Marine made a face. “Come on. What do you take me for? I saw it all in the Dark river—and even if I didn’t, it isn’t like I didn’t hear you all talking about it. What did you think—that I was so out of my mind that I didn’t understand what you were talking about?”

Eliska opened her mouth to answer, but she stopped herself. She really did think Marine was so out of her mind that she didn’t understand what the Watch had been talking about.

Eliska started to say, “Um…..” again, but just then, Marine noticed her dress.

“Ooo! Look at this!” she squealed. “Have I really been walking around like this?”

She passed her hands down the length of her dress from her neck to her ankles. She used her magic to change her torn, muddy rags into a completely different dress.

This one glistened with silver thread and tiny gemstones embedded in the fabric. The skirts puffed out in a cone from her tiny, corseted waist to her ankles.

She somehow made white stockings appear on her legs and tiny white leather slippers on her feet where she’d been barefoot until just a second ago.

Eliska gawked at her with her jaw on the ground. Marine really did look like a princess.

The self-satisfied grin of pure wicked mischief sealed the deal. No way could this be the same girl.

“Come on! Stop staring!” Marine grabbed Eliska’s hand and towed her forward. They started walking down the riverbank heading for the city.

“Do you know what city this is?” Marine asked over her shoulder. “You know so much more about the Coil than I do.”

“Um…..are you sure about that?” Eliska didn’t ask what other secrets Marine might be hiding behind a mask of insanity.

“Of course I’m sure about that!” Marine fired back. “I’ve only been in the Coil a year or so. You’ve been in it your whole life.” She cocked her head to study Eliska more closely. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen this city before!”

“I haven’t. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Marine stopped dead in her tracks. Now she was the one whose jaw hit the ground. “You haven’t?! Are you serious?”

Eliska shook her head. “I didn’t think places like this existed in the Coil.”

“Aha!” Marine practically yelled and pointed into Eliska’s face. “So you have seen it before! I knew it!”

“I’ve seen it before, but not in real life. I only saw it in the Layers.”

Marine punched her fist into her palm. “I knew it! What did you see? Tell me everything.”

“I just told you. I saw visions of it in the Layers. I didn’t think it was real. I’ve definitely never been here before. I thought it was some construct or an illusion created by the instability.”

“Well, we’re here now. These people must know something about the Voyant.”

“What makes you say that?” Eliska asked. “They look like normal people to me even though they have all these amazing machines.”

Marine spun around and gasped. “Are you telling me you don’t know?!”

“Know what?”

Marine gaped at her. Then Marine shut her mouth and turned away shaking her head. “I don’t believe it! All this time! I would have told you a long time ago if I thought you didn’t know.”

“What are you talking about?” Eliska asked. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“The Voyant lives in a city like this. He lives in a city full of machines and flying vehicles and computers and….”

“Whats?” Eliska interrupted.

“Computers. They’re the machines you saw people using in their offices. They process information and allow everyone to communicate as fast as thought.”

“Wow!” Eliska breathed. “That sounds amazing.”

Marine waved at the city in front of them. “He lives in a city exactly like this. The White Spire is in a city like this.”

“Really?” Eliska gasped. “How do you know all this?”

Marine smirked and turned away. “We have our little ways.”

“So…..you think these people have been keeping track of the Voyant on their….”

“Computers,” Marine finished. “I didn’t say that. I think the Voyant keeps his activities a secret from everyone, including whoever lives in the same city with him.”

“So….the city he lives in….it isn’t this one?”

“You don’t see the White Spire here, do you?” Marine laughed again. She laughed a lot. “No, it isn’t the same city, but it’s similar. All the cities with this level of technology communicate with each other. Whoever these people are, they’ll be in constant communication with the people in the Voyant’s city…..”

“Do you know what city he lives in?” Eliska asked. “Wesh didn’t know where the White Spire was.”

Marine rolled her eyes again. “I don’t think Wesh’s branch of the Guardian Templars has been keeping up with their studies. They’re seriously behind on current events. He isn’t even certain the Voyant is real or that he holds the power to control the Coil.”

Eliska stopped dead in her tracks. “Are you saying the Voyant is real—and that he really does have the power to control the Coil?”

Marine nodded. “He’s the one causing all this instability. If we can stop him, we can bring peace to the Coil. Then the whole Coil will become as stable as the Islands and people can start to build new civilizations. Wouldn’t that be worth it?”

“Yes,” Eliska breathed. “Of course.”

End of Chapter 48.

“So we have to find him, figure out what he wants from the Black Watch, and stop him somehow.”