The hills shone white, a channel of choppy water and the grandest harbor in the world, a thousand ships, a thousand ships more than a thousand. The whole world, expressed in ships and the power, sails and cannons and high walls, bastions for the strength of existence.

The power of the world's grandest city, Abōeo itself. White buildings, the power of that which was. Sails… Siqxhe stood on the dock as the Abōean ferry slowly slid up beside it. A constant flow of people, pressing in around them, pushing and pulling together.

Oceans of humanity as they came to confluence. They very works of men-

Lifeblood. It was the lifeblood of humanity. Abōeo, lord of cities. Siqxhe and Iri crowded onto the boat, falling together. Children of the earth, together as they came and together… the city of the world. Sixhe felt the wind on his face, the oceans.

All the power of the oceans as they approached Abōeo. Spires speared the sky, white towers, black stone walls, earthen ramparts built to keep up with the times. This was an old city, so old that everything seemed normal here. Nobody on the ferry even glanced more than once at Iri's shrouded form.

The city of Abōeo, and the awe… the very beauty of the world, the very making of so many things. He watched the light shine off of a city as they approached and it was so much more massive than it'd been before.

"It reminds me of Crown." Iri's voice was soft, sad as it was so often. They'd made their way across the breadth of Nolabo as the winds drove them, little more than a week by water and another two days overland, and now they were here.

The city of Abōeo… a crown, he supposed, the center of the world. He did wonder though, so faintly at the back of his mind as the ferry approached its docks and the ferrymen threw out ropes, what a city of sibilant would look like. If the Eternity Falling… he remembered the eternity, immense black walls half-torn down bringing back memories of a shadow. As they slid into shadow, he remembered orange-

Eyes. So many eyes, little white things sunken into human skulls, furtively glancing around but seeing nothing, because this was the great city of the world and if you stopped and started then you'd never get where you're going. He knew- the years he'd lived amongst the city's spires and the black stone buildings had made that message clear. "We need to find a place to sleep, and then we can search Abeōo. If it's truly in Nolabo and anyone knows about it, then that information would be here."

Iri turned her head, covered face looking directly at him- through that cloth, though he could see the blaze of her eyes. "This is an incredible place… it's incredible. A beautiful place." The sky was mostly clear, but even so a faint miasma hung over the city, a scent of smoke. "This is a place of humanity. It must seem…" She shook her head, and was silent.

"It's a place with a long history." Siqxhe dredged his mind as they walked toward gates of black stone, immense things that probably hadn't been closed in his lifetime. "Once it was just a small fortress established near the same time as the Nolabo Empire. It was that way until the Great War, and the arrival of the Eternity Falling… as far as I know, this is one of the places they come more often."

Iri nodded solemnly. “Here was where the Eternity Falling stood before it followed me.” Someone glanced at them, then away as quickly, but she lowered her voice nonetheless. “They like this place. I don’t know-” A sound, sudden- a snap, an explosion like the roar of a cannon but more. Two, three, five in quick succession, a snapping of the air followed by a tearing, the sound of things falling apart. The crowd seethed suddenly, pushing toward the safety of the walls or the freedom of the ferry or something-

Iri grabbed ahold of him before he could be swept away, powering through the crowds with her strength. Black walls rushed near, the power of the world together coming, once- another two sounds, a deadly dance then quiet. Two black specks whistled off into the distance, white motes of fire. Siqxhe gasped in a breath, glad to be free of the crowd at last. “What- what was that?”

When Iri spoke it was grim. “A confrontation. Things are escalating… and they know we’re near. Maybe not in the city, but near. Whatever we have to do, we need to do it soon.” They strode into the city proper, the center of the world, the lord of Nolabo and made into the depths of shadow.

………

The city of Abōeo was a busy place, being the largest trading port in the world and all. So many people called it home, its towering buildings wrought of wood and stone, pulled from the bones of the earth and made into home- he remembered this. Everywhere else had been foreign… Xhyolok with its strange, underground settlements, Iliaial and its grandeur, Paqaboōf and its unique cities and villages and struggles. Galland and its small-island nature.

Here, though, this was home. Where he’d left before, and where he would return… hopefully. If it remained. He walked through the low market, passing people hawking their wares and an eternity of ground level shops that clogged the city and made everything just so perfect. He remembered some of these, from his first days in the cities when the university wouldn’t even let him into his gates before he had all the materials, and all the upper market merchants had already sold out.

Either way, they’d been too expensive for him. The books from here alone had almost bankrupted him… he’d made it far, though. Here he was, doctor, graduate from the university in Abōeo. His eyes drifted to Iri and he realized that there was more to that than just being doctor-

Here he was, on a hunt for the heart of the world, centerpiece in a conflict that was older than humanity. He was beyond the university… “We need to find a place to sleep during the night. The city guard won’t look kindly on us if we don’t get out of the way come nightfall.”

It was disconcerting, the way Iri’s body quivered as they hid from the sky. She wouldn’t dare show the steel of her true form, but even now… the sky bled sound, and they hid. “They wouldn’t throw us out, though? Anyways, I thought you were low on money. Shouldn’t we just camp in the countryside and then come back in the morning?”

Siqxhe only smiled. “Not at all. In Paqaboōf and even in Galland where I was paid handsomely for my work I was in essence a poor man. Here, though, the banks remember my name and my fortune, small though it is. They curved through the streets, exiting the low market and taking the long, curving road up toward the height of the place where there was no smoke, no miasma or city-scent.

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Everything was pristine, here in this place of brightness, dark stones polished to a gleam, green banners and embellishments dutifully carved into every surface. They stopped at a bank and picked up some money, then made their way toward an in- a place he remembered.

As he entered the room, its dark halls and that door, labeled with a single number, as he saw everything as he’d left it… tears came to his eyes, and for a long time he couldn’t say anything at all. The books, the desk haphazardly strewn with papers and theories which he knew were mostly wrong, the single glass window and the tastefully ornate curtains. Dark stone, even the bed, a slight bit dusty but more or less cared for… “It’s exactly as I left it… it’s been so long.” Years. It had been years.

Finally, he was home. Iri stepped up beside him, taking off her gloves and the cloth she’d wrapped around her face, closing the door so they would not be watched. “It’s beautiful, in the way that something is beneath the watching hands of a whisperer. Someone who knows. You really lived here?” She picked up a paper, brilliant eyes scanning over it so quickly before she set it down once again.

“Yes…” He looked at the mementos of his time in college- a glass blowing a friend had bought for him, his old books, an official document hanging on the wall that said he’d graduated. An entire closet of doctor’s clothes and equipment, though he usually used what the clergy provided him with. Here, in the seat of their power, there was always room for a doctor more. “We’ll stay here for the night. Probably for as long as we’re in the city.” He hated to think of the fact that they’d be leaving soon, on the search amidst the jungles once again.

Siqxhe chuckled softly. Here for basically no time at all, and trekking through the wilderness already seemed a faraway concept. Him, who’d run halfway across the world and back again, who’d traversed or swam or otherwise been in the grasp of three continents. Who’d run from the very fires of heaven… “Will he do it again? Burn the city?”

“Not so long as we suspect we might be in it. He wouldn’t risk destroying me.” She paused picking up a particular sheaf of papers that was bound together with twine, older than the others.

He remembered this- it was his crowning jewel. A work that was actually followed in the city planning, at least in name… but that didn’t matter, did it? There was only one thing that mattered, and that thing was the conflict. The very depth and breadth of it, the race for Polarity Light. “We’ll search the city in the morning…” And the city responded, as it always had from his window- careless and ceaseless, the rattling of wagons and the pulse of the lifeblood, the shifting of the people of Nolabo. Ceaseless, until the world ended.

They settled in for the night, telling stories of old places, dark places beneath the shadows and lives made and unmade, waiting for the end of time.

………

“Wake! Wake up- there’s a commotion. The people on the docks need you.” Siqxhe groaned wearily, shaking the last remnants of sleep from his eyes as he opened them to the brilliance of new dawn, an incandescence shining through his window and lighting Iri in all the shades of brightness. She still wore the clothes but she looked so much more beautiful without her face hidden.

Without fear… he’d dreamt- he’d dreamt of something. Dark places, maybe, but he was on edge. Siqxhe pulled himself slowly out of the bed but by the time he was throwing his jacket on over him he was fully awake, running-

Out the door, through the streets, down the road and through buildings and were taller than buildings had any right to be, through the very heart of the city where age laid over everything like a weighty blanket, to the docks. A crowd had gathered but he pushed through, Iri’s startling visage no doubt making the task a whole lot easier.

He caught whispers of the conversation, the pulsating fear of the people as he came upon the scene of a wreckage, a shattered dock and buildings collapsed into the harbor. Blood… he saw the blood, bodies strewn about as much as the wreckage. “What happened here?”

A guardsman strode up to him, frowned, not recognising him for who he was. Then his eyes found Iri and grew round. “More importantly, I think, who are you?”

“A doctor. I heard people were in trouble here, and I came as soon as I could.” Siqxhe pushed past the guard, kneeling down beside one of the injured. He’d been hit by a splinter of wood that had lodged itself in his leg, but as it was he’d been lucky. There hadn't been much bleeding and the guards had been thoughtful enough to staunch what they could, but he needed help more than they could give…

He set to pulling the sliver of wood out of his leg, pulling it out and cleaning out the shards before he neatly stitched the leg together. Slowly the crowds dissipated, but the guards stayed around, watching him suspiciously. “So. You’re a doctor.”

“Trained in the university here myself.” He stood, looking down with a sort of resigned distaste at clothes covered in blood once again as he moved onto the next man, who was far less injured than the first. There were some, still, beyond saving- dead. As dead as neutrality, when the sibilant fought in the skies above Abōeo…

The guard stopped, staring at him with an incredulity that said he didn’t quite believe him. “I… what? None of us here have the money to pay for your sort. Not that we don’t appreciate the help, but debtor’s prison would be a poor place for these…” He shook his head, but let his hand drift toward the pommel of his blade nonetheless-

“-no cost. Obviously. Who would I be, to see the dying and not intervene.” Even as he said it he frowned… that wasn’t how the Abōean doctors typically behaved. He still felt Abōeo- remembered the old stone halls of the university and its shadows, the way the light fell through and intersected beautifully with the darknesses. Comforting, to see the interplay amidst an ancient place… somewhere, though…

He stared at the dying man before him, and wondered what’d changed… then Iri knelt beside him, moving deftly with fingers of steel as she worked the flesh of men into wholeness once again, working so beautifully fast against the swiftness of frailty itself… when she finished, the last of them remaining would survive. Perhaps not whole, but they would survive.

She was sibilant… perhaps, if they’d been with humanity all along instead of fighting over Polarity Light, history itself would have been different. Perhaps if the Eternity Falling itself had been with them all this time-

Then he understood. He understood the conflict- it came to him in a moment, on that breezy dock, shattered… Iri fought for Polarity Light so they would remain. So power itself would stay and the world would know- safety. At last… he stood still, watching over a shattered village- “What happened here?” He suspected, though-

“Orroyelan attack. They tried to get through the fleet to shoot on the city but they barely got even closer than the far squadron.” the guard shook his head, smiling… “The Orroyelans aren’t half a match for the navy here, and the navy here’s by and far the best in the world. Nola, you know.”

He smiled, but Siqxhe didn’t. “Are the Sakaxhy here? More importantly, do you know if they’re allied with the Orroyelans or if they’re just another faction…” he let his sentence fall off into an exasperated silence as he watched the man’s blank gaze, certain that he’d get nothing out of them. With the Orroyelans on their doorstep they were also on the front of their minds, but the Sakaxy… they were up in the north sea, half a world away and where nobody cared.

Nobody cared. Nobody but Siqxhe, the seed of dying… Polarity Light. They needed to find Polarity Light, and as he thought about it he realized the best place to do so. Somewhere he hadn’t even really thought of, though it was by and far the best place in all the city to search for a lost artifact, and perhaps in the world… “Iri…” he waited for her to look at him, smiling as he was. “I have an idea, and it’s centered around a particular university in Abōeo…”