The carriage traveled for another morning till midday it suddenly stopped. The driver requested that Micky and crew exit the carriage and that Prin and Kux dismount from their mounts. It was going to be interesting anyway, Cerus and Casper weren’t exactly meant for a city. Though apparently there were enough nobles with mounts that the school had a facility specifically for that. Still, it was inside the city proper, and boy what a city was it.

Micky looked out over the edge. At a certain point the road simply… stopped. There was a straight angled cliff made of some material he couldn’t identify, but it was highly magical. As a point of fact, it was both absorbing ambient magic, and conducting magic, like little ants being plucked out of the sky and then shunted around all over, including back into itself. The material itself was amazing and something he could stare at for the rest of the day.

But it wasn’t the most amazing. At the center of the cliff stood a road that simply floated there made from the same materials, a clear delineation from the stone and whatnot of the outer city. Micky could not see down into the depths under the cliff, but he could see the shining spires that pierced into the sky. And oh were they shiny, so shiny that though they covered the sun, the light still reached down upon them so that they could see these monoliths’ splendor.

They came in all shapes and sizes, though size was relative as they were all titanic in height dwarfing anything he had ever seen, any mountain, or well anything. He idly wondered if they scraped against the sun, though he was well aware at how childish the thought was. No, they were all at least ten miles high, piercing into the sky like stylistic swords. Some were in dripping gold, with crystal spires outlining them. Several clearly had deity cathedrals on top all in gold or other rare materials. Many were silvery metal that could be mythril or quicksilver or holy silver. It all seemed to be to the deity’s preference.Though there were many more that were untouched, pure of the metals. Instead they shined like he had never seen before. Their watery sheen pure.

And that was not including the twisted and sculpted shapes. Some looked like a master crafter carved them from a single piece. Others looked like some twisted mad god had taken something once pure and warped it into strange arcane shapes.

There was one thing that was present in each of these titans though. And that was that each one was unique, no matter how similar each one looked. Even those that clearly held a gods cathedral, or were made of similar but still all different material. Each one had its own style and personality.

“I kind of figured that you might want to see it, this is really the best view around, even if most of the towers are a bit raggedy and in disrepair. Mind the gap though, and don’t look down.” Said the driver. Micky and probably all of his crew couldn’t figure out which of these towers were supposed to be ragged and in disrepair. But he already acted like a noble and chose not to look like a hick as he acted like he knew what the man was talking about. Nevermind that each and everyone was doing the same.

The driver continued “Welp, this is where I leave you. You can take your mounts with you, smart to use monsters as they will have a better time of it. Don’t ride them though, just walk them or you’ll find trouble. Check them in with the school first and they will settle them. Ideally, you would simply have someone go on ahead, but it seems the counts didn’t have anyone to spare for that, I must apologize.” The man finished a little embarrassed. Micky and the man both knew that wasn’t exactly true, but he wasn’t going to call the man out on a fault that wasn’t his own.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Taking along his crew including monsters he stepped over the precipice and onto the road. Nevermind that the road was attached directly to the edge and he never actually stepped over the gap, he still felt it in his gut. Micky idly peered over the side in his curiosity, he could not see the bottom from his original vantage, how far did it really go?... He should not have, he really should not have.

Peering down, he did not see the bottom. Oh he saw things, roads, further down the titans and away from the glorious heights to their grimmy lower sections. He saw other things moving around and will get to describing them in a second. No, it was at the bottom, were the dark black grim collected into a sea of black grim. He could only see small patches at a time, the crisscrossing roads, though shrinking with distance were blocking his view. And oh was it a view.

The titans just as deep if not deeper than as they were tall, the roads quickly shrinking into tiny strings that only appear in his vision by length and not by width. Knowing that those tiny little strings are actually the roads that are plenty across that carry five carriages, and that five people of his size could fit crosswise inside a carriage meant that he could not fathom the distance.

But it the thing that made him regret, past the slowly seeping waterfalls and rivers of black grim was the few glimpses of that black sea that he saw. Down, down deep, he could see the back of a giant fish, wales he believed they were called, and oh the size of the beast. There were tentacles and claws that only begged to what the real beasts attached to them were.

The reason why Micky grew incredibly pale upon seeing them though, was truly their size. He knew the size of the roads, so far up above the beasts yet tiny little nearly invisible strings, but no, the beasts looked to be the size of his fingernail, at least from what he could see of them. And considering what he knew of the roads floating above the beasts themselves, yes massive did not cover it.

But there were other, less, or maybe more, worrisome things he saw as well. He saw spider monsters spitting webs and bouncing from tower to tower. The preferred mounts it seams though flying monsters such as dragonflies were also considerably popular on the lower levels. Still many simply used strings and spears and hooks and sticky glue to traverse the undertower. Still, he saw some gruesome sights, battles even with randomly discharged monsters were not uncommon in the undertower. He could clearly see what was a dungeon spewing monsters from a broken corner of one of the monolithic towers. Adventurers above and bellow attacking and charging, the formations for this vertical battle in itself were mindbogglingly unique. Micky couldn’t quite get his mind around the implications.

But there was also the ever present thievery. To the point he even saw several large battles with what could only be called flying ships, massive gallions that should be sailing the seas or oceans not the skies, underskies they may be. Flames spewed from some of these ships, seemingly pointed at each other and simply because the ships had caught fire at some point in their battles. Swarms of boarders launched their lines at a ship some distance underneath in a new assault as Micky watched on. The ship spat fire and several dropped from the sky but many others challenged the crew as they tried to repel their borders. Micky was transfixed at the sight.

Still, there were more magical things to look up (ha!) too. In the skies flying above his head was a metal bird with flames shooting from its ass. Other metal birds seemed to crawl through the sky by pulling themselves along with spinning metal claws. There were of course none metal birds, drakes and even some ‘small’ dragons whose shadow eclipsed the entire road. There were cloth wings and floating bloated flying things. Usually those bloated things had a ship tied to the bottom with some more of those spinning claws.

And of course, how could Micky forget all the steam. It seemed to be mostly a dwarf thing. Many dwarves were riding around on things with black wheels on them. Some of them belching steam or smoke. Others were walking on legs, sparse but ever present.

“Oh, and be careful of the dwarves and the elves, they are all basically titled nobility, though not exactly!” The driver called out as Micky and crew continued to gawk. Well that was worrying as the aforementioned groups were basically everywhere and had a small crew of armed guards following them around...