Everyone quickly polished off the rest of their breakfast and headed over to the front of the Potirangi. A rope ladder on the side of the command room led to the roof, which offered a better view of the surrounding area. At least the part that wasn’t obscured by Millie’s giant, multi-eyed face.

The Pillar was even closer now. The icy cylinder seemed to stretch out for miles on either side, and was approaching the sun in brightness. But still, the point where it connected with the ground wasn’t visible. It was like instead of coming closer, the Pillar just maintained its distance and grew bigger.

Salamin made sure they were on the right track before joining everyone at the top. People were looking down to try and spot anything, but the all-encompassing mist did not make the task easy. If anything, it seemed ever-so-slightly thicker in this region.

Mark started to get bored of watching nothing. “So, what are we even looking out for? What if we just flew over it or something?”

Salamin stifled a laugh. “Oh, no, no. Trust me, we’ll know when we get there. In fact, we should be startin’ to see… There.”

Through the haze, a shape appeared in the air. The shape of a house.

It looked vaguely Victorian, with long windows and several floors. Except it wasn’t made of brick, or wood, or anything recognizable. Just some gray, uniform substance, as if the house was made from some kind of molded frame. And it was just floating there, in mid-air. At the bottom, where the ground ought to have been, a cloud of rainbow light danced around like an electric nest, flickering through the entire spectrum of visible light fast enough for Mark to get a slight headache from all the alternating colors.

The house passed them by quickly, seemingly hovering motionlessly in midair. But then there was another one. It wasn’t identical, being slightly wider and squatter, but it shared the mound of dancing lights propping it up in the air. And then another. And another.

The Potirangi had to occasionally swerve to avoid hitting any of the buildings. When they were on an unavoidable collision course with one, the house simply moved to the side and let them pass. The air was becoming thick with the buildings.

Omet was in awe. “...Is this Tragnil? Some kind of floating city? Because if so… Yeah. Just, yeah.”

Salamin chuckled again. “If the city was in the sky, I would’ve told you that it’s in the sky. I think this part’s called the Wizardly Suburbs or somethin’, for all the mages who don’t want to deal with the city’s rules on magic.”

Horan looked around, trying to see something besides houses. “Then where’s the real city?”

Through the mist, some sort of ripple appeared. It seemed to form a solid wall of faint, shimmering color, stretched out in all directions. It seemed to curve forwards at a slight angle, like a section of a dome, but no other sides were visible through the fog.

Salamin grinned. “‘Bout right there.”

The Potirangi passed through the ripple, revealing it to be paper-thin. There was no mist on the other side. While it was still visible surrounding the dome shape through the one-way-view barrier, the air on the inside was clear as day. And that meant that there was nothing obscuring Tragnil.

On top of a flat field, the massive walled city buzzed with movement. Buildings seemed to shift and move down streets, clouds of scintillating color burst to life before quickly fading, colossal monsters stepped between streets. But it didn’t seem like it was in chaos. There was no fire or ruin, all the movement and liveliness seemed contained, expected. And that was to say nothing of the buildings themselves.

The whole skyline seemed to exist at a slight angle, as if one side had been pushed downward. The side of the roundish city furthest from the Pillar seemed smaller, almost flat. Buildings were too small and close together to pick out, even for a trained eye. Both ends of this segment rose up and formed seemingly normal-sized buildings, then… continued. On the opposite side of the patch of tiny cityscape, the buildings were massive. Individual houses looked like massive complexes, yet the sizes of the doors and windows, which were visible even from the Potirangi’s birds-eye view, were gargantuan even in comparison to entire buildings elsewhere in the city.

This size discrepancy was contained to the edges of the city, however. The middle was something else entirely. A sprawling, gothic castle of black stone soared above even the most ambitious rooftops, widening at the top and hanging over the nearby streets like a tree. Hallways branched and led off into unsupported wings that should have easily collapsed under their own weight and fallen onto the city below. Stretching across the ground of the cityscape were dozens, no, hundreds of glowing rainbow lines that branched away from the castle into the labyrinthine streets and alleyways like an enormous spiderweb.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Horan gaped at the view. “That’s… There’s no way. I’ve never even seen a Domain’s home come close to that big. Was this just… here? In the Down Below? This whole time!?”

Salamin laughed and slid down the roof. “Welcome to Tragnil, buddy.” She entered the command room and the Potirangi began to make its descent into the city.

In a middle-sized part of the city, near a gate that led out of the dome keeping the mist out, was some kind of raised port. Though coming closer, it also looked like it included a series of helipads. Dozens of flying monsters, including a couple of Potirangis, were chained into several concrete(?) recesses, and dozens more were tethered to pentagonal platforms. All points of landing had stairs leading to the ground.

Millie flew into one of the recesses and one of the crew members pulled a folded-up plank out of the warehouse. The plank was placed between the Potirangi and the floor while the remainder of the crew threw ropes over the side next to multiple steel anchors.

Salamin was the first down the plank. Halfway to the dock itself, she was stopped by a floating purple ball. Four eyestalks protruded from the top of the hovering sphere, along with two spindly tentacles. The one on the left cradled a clipboard against the monster’s body, and the other held a pen.

The monster vibrated for a moment, which apparently produced a buzzing sort of speech. “Mmm, registrationnn?”

Salamin fumbled around in her pockets before presenting a fold-out, police-style badge. “Right here.”

The monster ticked something off on the clipboard. “Locationnn of registry?”

“An-q’Tra Guilds.” Salamin stumbled slightly over her words

A quick scribble. “Purpose of visit?”

“Commerce.”

A tick. “Durationnn of stay?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

A scribble. The monster floated off of the plank, allowing Salamin to walk to the ground. “Mmm, please deposit onnne hunndred annnd fifty slivers with the officials at the exit. You may deposit annn extra three hunndred for cargo assistance. Thannnk you for usinnng Carnnnlac Docks, annnd ennnjoy your stay.”

“Yeah, you can send the haulers over now, I’ll pay when I get there.”

The Carnlac flew off. Salamin walked onto the dock, stumbling slightly as she got used to the stable ground. She noticed her five passengers coming down behind her. “Well, y’all, this is it. Tragnil. You might’ve heard me talkin’ to that Carnlac, me and my crew’ll be here for the next day. You’d best figure out where I’m to take y’all before we go, because we won’t let the fines rack up just for y’all.”

Quet sighed. “Really? You’re just gonna leave us stranded here if we take too long?”

Waia held up a hand to silence her. “No, no, it’s cool. We’re just a bunch of hitchhikers. Not worth wasting money over.”

Salamin pointed to Waia. “Yeah, you get it. Besides, y’all get stranded here and can’t finish up your business with the Lady, whatever enigmatic purpose that might be, you can just buy a portal back home. Using, uh… Using money that you… that you don’t… Yeah, okay, there are a couple issues with this, I see that now.”

Half a dozen Carnlacs, all much bigger than the one that Salamin had spoken to, flew up from somewhere beneath the dock, near ground level, and up to the warehouse on top of Millie. One of Salamin’s crewmates leaned over the rim and called out. “Hey, Captain, if you’re done burning money with the Primoi down there, you mind helping us haul our stuff down?”

“Right, yeah.” Salamin shouldered past the group and trotted back up the plank. “Twenty-four hours!”

The group watched Salamin jog back up to the top of the Potirangi, then immediately started heading for one of the stairways to ground level. Horan decided to start the discussion. “So, should I just jinx us now and get it over with, or do we wait for things to go wrong of their own accord?”

Mark shrugged. “It’s not like it won’t get worse if we stay quiet. Let’s just properly communicate while we have the chance.”

“Eh, it’s better to take the chance of nothing happening. We get the idea anyway,” said Waia.

“I’m not a hundred percent sure what we’re talking about, but luck as a mutable agent is a hoax perpetrated by the casino industry,” Quet flatly stated. “I vote yes.”

“We can do it quick,” said Omet. “The really bad juju takes a minute to set in.”

“I don’t think that’s really true, but sure. That’s three to one for,” concluded Horan. “Democracy wins again. I’d say this seems pretty easy, at least from where I’m standing.”

The group arrived at a toll gate at the bottom of the concrete stairs marked ‘PASSENGER EXIT’. After signalling for the gate operator to let them through, Horan continued while the gate opened slowly. “If the place where we’re going is the same as the place everyone’s trying to take over, that’s probably gonna be a complication for this whole process. But we aren’t trying to take over, we’re trying to find whoever’s left in there and get the info we need. I can probably just fly in through a window if the door’s blocked. How har- No, that’s just me being greedy. I’ll leave it at ‘This should be straightforward en… ough…”

The gate fully opened and the group stepped into the streets of Tragnil.