The caravan trundled up the rutted road, kicking up a plume of tan dust, obscuring the path ahead. Despite this, the majesty of Sela was not lost on Ril. Even from this distance, and with the dust in the air, tiny little people were visible on the thousand balconies peeking out from the side of the cliff. They moved around like ants, taking care of various tasks.
Most of the balconies were small. Cleary meant for a single family, or home. Potted plants of all forms dotted these balconies. The most common type was a sort of green vine that hung down the side of the cliff, but there were also other varieties that added tiny spots of color to the otherwise uniform greenery.
Three of the balconies were different from the rest. Each of these balconies was extremely long, easily spanning hundreds of meters across the face of the cliff. They were stacked one above the other, and seemed to act like a public thoroughfare for the residents. At least, from the distance it seemed that there was a lot of activity on each of them.
As Ril’s carriage approached the bottom of the cliff, the dead wind revitalized, blowing eagerly against the cliff face. The thousands of green vines gently swayed in response, creating a mesmerizing sight.
“You know... That’s a big cliff” Ril said, craning his neck to see the precipice.
“I heard that Sela was huge, but this is something else.” Eren replied quietly, her voice full of wonder.
“How tall is it?” Hauke asked, rubbing dust from his eyes.
After a moment of silence, it became clear that they could only guess. “Tall.” Ril said eventually.
They approached the tunnel. Now that they were closer, they could see that the lower half of the tunnel was actually plugged with cement, creating a pseudo-wall that protected the inhabitants of the city. Embedded in the center of the concrete wall was a steel reinforced gate. Above it, on top of the concrete block, a group of four guards leaned against the crenellations while they watched the long carriage train approach.
The lead carriage struck up a conversation with the gate guards, but it was too far for Ril to hear. Content to wait for the caravan head to deal with the entrance, Ril turned to his companions.
“We arrived!” Ril smiled excitedly. THen he glanced with trepidation back towards the city gate. “Now what?”
“Typical,” Eren let out an incredulous laugh. “We will need a place to live, first of all.”
“We should celebrate!” Hauke butted in. “Let’s buy a cake! With lots of frosting, and a large cherry on top.”
“House, and...cake.” Ril said, “Got it. What else?”
“We will need to find a school for Hauke.” Eren said, ticking off her fingers, to Hauke immediate disgruntlement.
“Must we?” Hauke whined. Eren snorted and ignored him.
“A job for me,” she ticked another finger down, “I will probably be able to get a decent gig at the guardhouse here. What would you like to do Ril?”
“Don’t really know. I can begin by exploring the city, maybe I can get a job too.”
“Ah yes, Ril Renar, living the quiet life. Definitely not how I imagine you living.” Eren responded with a smirk.
Ril shrugged, “Who knows? Maybe it will be fun. But I see what you mean. Maybe I can find a party and go on dungeon runs. That might be more up my alley.”
“Hell yeah!” Hauke cried. “Dungeon runs!”
“Hauke,” Eren said reproachfully. “Watch your language.”
“Heck yeah!” Hauke cried, grinning ear to ear. “I want to come with you. You can take me too right? I can totally fight. I’ve been practicing with the sword. Bet I’m better than you by now.”
“No way.” Ril retorted. “I’m definitely better than you.”
“Yes way--” Hauke said. Before getting interrupted by Eren.
“Either way, you are not going to go adventuring.” She said, and gave the young boy a stern look. “And that’s final.”
“Aww. No fair. This trip is going to be so boring.” he complained.
“You are going to be in school most of the day. You will have plenty to do.” Ril said.
“But school is boring. I want to go out and slash monsters!” Hauke said, demonstrating by getting up and swinging an invisible sword wildly.
“You could practice with your sword, so that when you do go out you will be able to slash even more monsters.” Ril replied. “And if you manage to get a powerful ability while you are training you will be able to kill even more. When you think about it, the best thing to do now is to train with that sword.” Ril indicated to Hauke’s invisible weapon.
Hauke looked thoughtfully at Ril. Then nodded emphatically. “You are right. I’m going to get so much stronger. And then I will be able to go on adventures and kill thousands of powder beasts.”
“Thousands? Lofty goals for one so young.” Ril said, the conversation at the gate had concluded, and the entire wagon train was beginning to trundle through the gate.
“Not so young. The Flicker started right about when he was my age.” Hauke replied with utter confidence.
“But the Flicker is part of the King’s personal vanguard, you have a long way to go if your goal is to compete with those battle maniacs.” Eren said
“It’s better than just sitting around a city all day, and guarding random doors. Just you wait, I’m going to train soo much and get a super powerful ability, and then I’m going to join a party, and become a super famous adventurer.” Hauke said, glaring at Eren.
“Well, if sitting around all day and guarding random doors is what puts food on the table then I’m happy to do it.” Eren responded, unconcerned at Haukes impudence.
Their cart passed underneath the concrete gate. After a short passage through a tunnel the space opened up, where they stopped on an outcrop and beheld an absolutely massive cavern that dwarfed even Anduin’s inner district.
A shock passed over the group at the sudden change in environment. Their conversation halted as they took in the sight. Outside, it had been relatively quiet. The sun shone brightly, with only the sounds of nature and the occasional conversation from one of the other caravans. The clopping of the horses had provided a steady and relaxing backdrop to the natural sounds. Sometimes one of the horses would let off some gas, but overall the air had smelled pure, dry and clean. The lack of true wind had prevented them from feeling too cold in the early winter air, but had provided enough of a breeze to spread the scent of grass and leaves all around.
It was pleasant.
Inside the city it was an entirely different story. The cavern was huge, spanning what felt like at least a hundred meters into the air. No natural light permeated the cavern. Instead, nearly every visible surface was covered by slimy looking blue glowing mushrooms. The mushrooms emitted a bright light that illuminated the rocky cavern.
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The blue light from the mushrooms came from everywhere, making the entire cavern have a dull flat look. It was dim, compared to the outside, but not so dim as to inhibit sight. There were no true shadows in the cavern. In some areas, where the fungus growth was less prevalent, every object seemed to cast a thousand soft shadows. The flat light made judging distance difficult, as all the buildings in the cavern seemed to blend together.
A ring of residential buildings spanned the edges of the cavern. Each house was constructed from the very rock that the cavern itself was made out of. Probably. Most of the homes were entirely consumed by the glowing blue fungus, which rounded the edges of the buildings, effectively making it appear as if the buildings were just lumps of rock on the floor of the cavern.
In the center of the residential district was the Eskolaite Gardens. The gardens were the same as the gardens that were in Anduin and Elkshire. A large swath of land with hundreds of vertical garden beds saturated with crops. Below the vertical beds, hundreds of workers milled around, ensuring that there was enough food to support the population.
The difference arose when the scale of the gardens was considered. Unlike in Anduin, whose garden beds never rose above five meters in height, the Eskolaite Gardens of Sela instead hung from the ceiling. A pillar of greenery in the otherwise blue and grey cavern.
In the distance, workers snappling from ropes attached to the ceiling were visible as they cared for the plants. Hundreds of lifts littered the forest of garden beds, constantly in motion as materials were lifted up, and produce was lowered to the workers on the ground.
Ironically, the most densely populated part of the cavern was actually darker than the rest, because the other plants prevented the growth of the blue mushrooms.
“This is a big cavern.” Ril murmured.
“Wow.” Hauke said.
Contrary to what Ril believed when he first entered the cavern, the walls were not bare rock. For one, they provided a not insignificant amount of light to the rest of the cave, but more significantly they provided additional housing to the residents of the city. Natural rock formations along the walls were shaped and molded to form stairs that led up the side of the cavern.
Thousands of homes were visible carved into the rock face. The thoroughfares leading up were narrow flat portions of the internal cliff wall and utterly clogged with people. Endless streams of humanity tried to climb up or down to get to wherever they needed to go. As far as Ril could see, there was no railing.
He gulped, pulling his gaze away from the stomach dropping sight. They jumped off their cart, and continued into the city on foot. Almost immediately they were engulfed by the crowds. The press of people was disorienting after nearly a week of relative solitude on the road.
The noise was incredible. Voices competed for attention on the side of the road. Trying desperately to sell the crowd their wares, or simply talking to each other.
Ril, being a rather short specimen, was completely unable to see above the crowd. His eyes reached the shoulders of most people. For that matter, Hauke was in a similar situation, and after a brief moment where it seemed that the crowd would separate the group, Eren grabbed each of their hands and made a path through the dense throng.
The push against the crowd for sometime before Eren pulled them to a recessed doorway on the side of the street.
“Why is it so crowded?” Ril shouted above the noise of the crowd.
“This is where lots of people went to after the calamity. These streets were never designed to sustain such a large population.” Eren shouted back into Ril’s ear.
“Okay!” Ril screamed. He felt a tug on his shirt, and lowered his ear to Hauke.
“Cake!” Hauke shouted. “Let’s celebrate. And find a quiet place, please.” He looked more than a little stressed at the pressure of the crowd.
“Hauke wants to go get a cake and find a place away from... this.” Ril shouted to Eren, gesturing vaguely towards the crowd. Eren nodded, before grabbing each of their hands, and forced her way through, her chain armor and gilded sword clearing a path better than any amount of strength.
Ril made his clone visible. In the crowd it wouldn’t matter all that much, and the cloak that obscured the clones face would prevent any strange interactions. He sent the clone through the crowd parallel to them, Exploring the various stores, and listening in on the shopkeepers to get a feel for the city. Periodically, the clone would get too far away from the real Ril, and would dissipate, only for it to be immediately resummoned and sent to scout ahead and around the group.
The clone's small form, coupled with Ril’s experience with traversing crowds that he picked up back when he lived in Elkshire made it so that the clone actually travelled faster than the three. Especially, since the clone didn’t really have a direction and oftentimes let the crowd push it towards whatever direction seemed most interesting.
Eren dragged them towards a particularly exuberant hawker, and asked him for directions towards a cake store. A brief discussion later, they were marching towards a bakery. They rushed inside and took a deep breath when the noise of the crowd noticeably dropped once the door closed behind them.
“Hello, what can I do for you?” A young woman stood behind a glass counter. Various baked goods ranging from breads, to cakes arranged artfully behind the glass.
Eren let go of the two boys and walked up to the counter. Immediately, Hauke moved to the glass display case and started ogling the cakes.
“This one!” He cried pointing at a particularly heavily frosted cake. It was cylindrical, with strawberries arranged on its surface. Around the strawberries fluffy white frosting bloomed outwards in flower like shapes.
“Hi, we would like to buy a cake. How much would that one cost?” Eren translated to the shopkeeper.
“Sixty three dekars.” The shopkeeper smiled at Hauke.
Wow that’s expensive, Ril thought to himself as he perused the cakes on display. All were elegant, and not a single one of them below thirty dekars. I could buy food for two days with that money in Anduin.
Eren hesitated, then pointed at a smaller and significantly less lavish cake. “What about that one?”
“Thirty four dekars.” The shopkeeper replied. “If you would like I could also bake something custom for you? Maybe something with his name on it?” she nodded towards Hauke.
“Oh, you misunderstand. It’s not his birthday. We just arrived to the city and were looking to celebrate a little.” Eren said.
The shopkeeper raised her eyebrows in surprise. “New arrivals? Don’t see that everyday. So what brings you to Sela?”
“New opportunities.” Ril said idly from the side. Near the side of the display case, there was a particularly ambitious cake, it had three layers to it and was leaning dangerously over the cake that stood beside it.
Wonder if I could subtly use Telekinesis here..., Ril thought
“Opportunities?” The shopkeeper said, “You won’t find much of that here. This city has been bursting at the seams for nearly fifteen years. Prices are inflated compared to other cities, as you can see, but I promise you that if you are looking for cakes, you won’t find cheaper or better cakes anywhere else in the city.” She gestured to the cakes on display with one hand.
Somehow I doubt that, Ril thought, but it would take far too much effort for something like this.
Eren nodded, “We’ll take that one,” she pointed towards a cheaper cake on display.
The shopkeeper nodded and began the process of boxing up the cake for them.
“Why can’t we have the big cake?” Hauke asked.
“It’s too expensive, and we don’t need something so big to celebrate.” Eren replied stoically, to which Hauke pouted but didn’t say more.
They took the cake and paid for it, which the shopkeeper accepted graciously. Then they left the store and reentered the crowds. Once more they were nearly overwhelmed, but were quickly getting used to the chaos that had not been present back in Anduin. While they had been in the store, Ril had sent his clone to scout the nearby area, and directed them towards a less crowded part of the city.
They stepped off the main streets, and immediately felt the difference. While still crowded, this part of the city had a more residential feel to it, and as such the people had less of a desperate haste to their movements.
They stopped a random passerby, and asked him where they could find lodging in the city. He directed them to speak with Elro who would be able to house them. Elro lived in a tunnel on the far wall of the main cavern that led deeper into the earth. The blue mushrooms spread here as well, so the lighting was still the same flat blue as the main cavern, but the majesty of the main cavern was replaced by a narrow near-claustrophobic corridor.
They met Elro, and after a brief exchange of words, they found themselves in a small apartment deep in the earth. It had two bedrooms, a living room, and a small kitchen. The only interesting thing about the apartment was that in the kitchen there was a small patch of a different kind of shroom, which emitted a warm white-yellow light over the kitchen table. There was a warning carved right into the stone beside the white mushrooms that said not to touch them or they would have to pay for new ones.
Apparently the white mushrooms were fragile.
They sat around the kitchen table and ate the cake, sang songs and even at one point got up to dance briefly. In other words they enjoyed each other’s company before turning in for the night.
The rooms were dark, a garbage pail at the foot of each bed suggested that the blue mushrooms were pulled out and dumped whenever they began to grow in the room.
Upon common consent Ril slept with Hauke, while Eren got her own room.