The night had long fallen and Gale was yet still awake, he lay flat as a board, his mind wandering in the world between this one and his city. He danced in the twilight world behind his eyelids. He called out to the city with his thoughts. He desperately forced the image of the city in his mind. He'd try to open his eyes and see it...

The image of another. The image of hope.

He sat up for maybe the hundredth time that night, each time it got harder and harder. His vision was shaky, his movements jerky. His brain felt like it was in a storm, either that or a food blender. His hand slammed into the bedside table. He looked at it long and hard, slowly sliding it towards the full glass of whiskey.

"Gently now Gale." he said. He wobbled slightly and his hand swept across the tabletop. He watched the glass of whiskey fly across the room in slow motion, despair in his eyes.

"Shit." he muttered, flopping back onto his bed and reaching towards the floor, he felt the cold glass of a reaching back towards him. He could hear bells jubilantly ringing. All rollers said jackpot. His fist clenched around the bottle's neck.

He let out a long groan.

Half empty… But it'd do.

By the time he'd finished drinking his mind was on the City again. He was getting closer…

Behind his eyelids he kept seeing the shadow of a person flying away into the mist. He swore he'd find them.

He desperately tried to focus on the images of glorious rising towers, of crystal causeways, he wished that image would come true again.

Try as he might he could only ever see the whip of shadow. The trickery of some unseen force in the mists of his mind. The City for the first time was hazy, unfocused. His mind boiled over that one fact, that maybe, man would come back to it.

Some part of him kept saying though that it was just his hope reflecting back from the City. The cynic in him said that it was trying to keep him going, driving him on with the belief of a new dawn: A new age of creation and imagination that would grant him the chance to reach his older years in peace.

That cynic said what everyone else wanted him to think. He said that there was no chance. He said that it's time had come. But he said that every night...

So he listened to what she would've wanted...

He heard a whisper. He kept his eyes closed, so he could only hear it, and not be stuck in the withering reality. He cleared his mind like he had been taught long ago. He focused on the nothing, the void. He let it fill him…

And in that void he could hear The City's faint and distant call reached out for him. He loved that sound, and even years later it never changed... The wind echoing through the spires of dreams, those crafted and gilded by humanity throughout its ages. The gentle howls turned to notes, and each note formed together, they interwoven into song.

He could feel the warmth of the dawn sun glowing across his skin, it made him calm. Its reflections in the tower would refract again and again, shattering down into rays which bounced and weaved like they were alive. They shone through the ruins, they shone with vibrance long missed. It made all of him fall in love once more. Peace and serenity, he felt it all…

And when he listened even harder, and he could hear it:

The sounds of life returning to the City, his one final hope.

With a gentle breeze it found him, and without hesitation it drew him in. He hoped it needed him as much as he needed it. The silence of his room fell away once more, another moment in his whole lifetime. He felt solid ground beneath his feet once again, and he knew what he had to do. He had to find them.

But first he had to know how long he had left...

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Before he had even opened his eyes he'd jumped, spinning in the air as the FlightSuit launched him into the sky. His eyes opened as a spire rushed towards him, only gaining a cocky smirk.

He kicked his legs out, his feet colliding hard against the crystal wall, cracking it outwards from the impact moments before it restored itself. He braced himself like an athlete before bounding up the mile high tower. The soles of his boots glowed with the same light when he was in flight, his every step restored the spire's cracked walls. The glowing armour let out small sparks of blue, like fireflies fading to nothing behind him. A massive crevice was carved into the spire ahead, yet it didn't slow him.

As he reached its edge the aura began to rebuild the former wall. Its sundered parts came to be from trails of whipping dust. It was like a causeway for a magnificent king rushing across a deep ravine. Weaves of gold and rich red channeled across its surface. Like a fragment of an artifact of antiquity it gave a clue as to the tower's former glory.

He felt it began to shake with an almost inevitability as the decay caught up to the restoration he cast upon it. Details faded from it back to dust, colour drained from it. its texture worn away until all that remained was smooth and lifeless. The last cracks sundered his path, severing it from the spire to be claimed by gravity once more.

It didn't stop him, as it decayed behind him into broken pieces and then into incomprehensible debris he still ran. The piece was nothing more than debris now, so it did naught but crumble beneath his feet, he climbed onto its barely definable top, the other side of the crevice above him, a jump from powerful legs enhanced by the City's will sent him to its edge. The force launched the piece downwards in a relentless surge, Gale stretched his arm out as he hit the pinnacle of his jump, his gloved hand gripped onto the ruined crystal, cracking it and sundering it as his fingers dug in.

It was only at times like this he wished his belief didn't heal humanity's dreams, he hung there, being pushed away from the edge as the spire repaired itself, where he once hung on the edge he now gripped into a wall. His hands embedded in what was now an archaic tapestry, looking like threads of woven onyx. Men looked down on their gods, and his hand was firmly between them.

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He could feel the spire pushing him out like a splinter from a wound. Hurriedly he dug his other hand in, fighting away the power generated from his own being to clamber up onto the wall once more.

Ahead of him was a stretch that lasted until the sundered peak of the once proud spire many dozens of meters ahead of him. With further determination he sprinted, locking out the sounds and feelings around him, even the feeling of another watching him. He bound up the wall rapidly, gaining more and more momentum as his back plates glowed even brighter. With a powerful jump he arched away from the spire, flinging himself over its broken top into the air only to be caught by his FlightSuit before he could fall to the causeways below.

He now flew over the tops of many spires, and below the midpoint of many others. The City's glorious skyline expanded around him. Towers and spires rose as one high into the sky, each one unique in form and scale. Their tips gleamed as they caught the light and their being shimmered with every colour conceivable. From this height the ruins had an air of wonder and beauty, unmatchable albeit to the city in its prime, yet like an enormous geode it still shone. Circling their bases, and occasionally higher than that, snaked the lines of causeways that expanded out from a heart far far away like a spiderweb between each spire. Viaducts and tiers sprung up here and there like an architectural fantasy. It was that heart he set himself upon.

He flew forward at a speed that would've been impossible on Earth, but in dreams it didn't matter. In the City the only thing that bothered him was the roar of the wind, and he had a solution for that.

A faceplate rose from his chest, unfurling from it like a flowering bud. It wrapped itself around his head, a large green sheet of crystal covered his face, rising out from a single point near his chin to expand into two points near his temples. It moved as he did, like it was a part of him, fluid as if it were scales on a mythical creature. As he looked down at the city up to the fog bound edges that encircled it, a dawning sun at its edge, his new helmet moved with silent mechanisms with him.

Gale increased his speed no longer feeling barred by the air whipping at his face, he made his way to the City's heart. Despite the rush of the moment, after a fair while he grew tedious of the constant flying, he aimed downwards slightly. Within moments, he began jetting between the spires, through their ruin he halted for nothing. He flew through Man's forgotten dreams. Rushing under skyways between towers and through the shattered and splintered remains of once proud spires. He weaved back and forth around them, without a care in the world, he was a man on a mission, but he could at least enjoy it first.

Over time he reached a new district, very different from the characteristic crystal spires, Dozens of large pits scattered across the floor, walled by once shining steel and black marble, now the walls were dented, the pits flooded at their depths with debris and water. Yet their contents were in perfect condition, surrounded by a shroud of fog. He soaked it in, travelling was the only monotonous thing about it.

It was like stepping into the world of the future.

He never knew exactly what they were, or what they were doing. It was as if they were images of the future world. He could remember days long ago he'd sit on their large docks imagining a world where humanity had achieved such creations.

He slowed down slightly, soaking in the various shapes below him, interlaced with one another in an almost honeycomb network scattered spires ran along the edges of the segments. But it was their contents he loved the most, each one was unique: One was shaped like a modern fighter, bristling with what looked like guns; another was huge with a long diamond shaped hull. Many more passed underneath, some were clearly born from the city itself, others from mysteries only time could tell.

He saw an all too familiar vessel parked on one of the rare spires. Unlike the rest he could see it clearly. Its hull was made of solid crystal and stone, a slight blue sheen long covered in cracks and rust. It was more alive than any other. It's brethren slept, whilst this one waited. He gave it a friendly salute and a smile. It seemed to vibrate with glee at his presence.

"I'll see you soon…" He said to his beloved ShardShip. turning his salute into a farewell wave.

His head raised from the vessels of the DreamYard beneath him, gazing out to the even taller towers flanking the horizon ahead of him. Even on the horizon they were enormous. They were separated from the rest of the City by a rich blue ocean running like a massive moat around the City's heart and beyond, it's basin was made of the purest white, clear crystal facets gleaming like sheets of glass. It was kept free from the decay of its world, as if it were merely a dirt it cleaned. The only change it had seen in Gale's life was the forming of huge archipelagos entwining around the remains of many spires, their pinnacles were long sunk and wrecks in its clear pristine depths. Entire districts once wrapping around its shore having long collapsed into the depths of the ocean.

Gale dropped down so he could skim over the ocean's surface, he dropped his hand down, cutting into the water like a blade, kicking up a long trail of white spray as he went. Glancing behind him at the marked route he took, some spires of the City's shoreline still rose shining, tall and magnificent from this distance, just as with the heart, one only learned their true state when they arrived.

After a short while flying faster and faster, Gale flipped himself end for end, his boots glowing once more as he landed on the ocean's surface. He skidded across it as if it were ground, kicking up more of the glistening white spray until the moment he stopped. Rising up from his crouch he stood tall upon its surface. His helmet collapsed into his armour once more, displaying his wide smile for no one to see.

The water's still edge immediately gave way for the rising base of a long fallen spire. Its crystal depths untouched beneath the waterline, perfectly preserved from the ruin that was cast upon it. Gale's eyes ran up the spire's length, it rose from the ground like a tree-trunk cast in cracked crystal and fractured marble, smaller turrets rose from its base before it tapered to the spire's true width. Its design cast a separate beam around it, it spiralled up high to a tapered steeple spanned high into the sky, the only sign of the ever present decay was a small slice off the point high above. Its entirety was gilded with faded mosaics and interweaving threads that had been duplicated by its crafters throughout the inner city.

This spire stood as a vigilant watchtower for the heart of the city, completely independent with a moat of water encircling it. In its prime its peak would gleam like a lighthouse above the water, its rays of light scattering and refracted in every colour. Its beams of lights coming from its source across the scope of the ocean.

These towers held sturdy and resistant to the slow call of time compared to the other districts. This was the one place where no tower had fallen, where the skyways still strung themselves between the buildings, the towers still shone with a vague resemblance to their former brilliance and eldritch mechanisms still turned in their shadows. The spires gleamed white with untouched sinews of black, shining a radiance out of purest majesty, their causeways long quiet, the maze of rooms long forgotten. Although it was as abandoned as the rest of the city, yet Gale never could figure out how it remained in such a comparatively pristine condition. Its spires were cracked, yes, the colorful mosaics long faded, the decay ever present, but they had never been sundered or shattered unlike that of their brethren from across the ocean. They were held high by unseen, unknown forces. It had the feeling that even when the last man stops dreaming of it, This part of the City would stand for all time, and he felt for that reason, it had been where it had begun.

It made him smile every time he saw it, made him pause every time he looked upon the city's crown from a distance. He made way for the water's edge, taking one step forward at a time, the water gently rippling beneath his feet. His footprints on its surface held a lingering glow as one by one they vanished behind him. Even with the relative haste of his mission at hand, he knew this was a journey that would surely take him hours. However it was hours he, for now at least, was willing to spend.