The black light was all I saw. The bright orb, like a star. The sparkling light at the top of a grand spire greeted me from afar and shown down on a glimmering city. My heart reached out to that glittering orb and I reached out for it as one did to the thoughts of a loved one and suddenly I was rising toward it.
Jessy took to flight with a greater thrill than mine and screeched with all her exhilaration as we soared up and up to the glittering orb. The sun rose high over the city I found myself flying from the edge of. With my perspective growing higher, I could see the shallow downward indentation from the cliff-like edge were Lia had brought us.
The wind rose hot from the streets paved with blackened rock sown so smooth it looked like freshly carved stone. The updraft lifted Jessy and I higher and thankfully so as a line of tall buildings rose to greet me. Impossibly tall, bigger than the mount where I’d found Jessy they rose. The sun reflected off their pristine glass surface and were Jessy’s thoughts not on other journeys I might have lingered to stare. Jessy took one quick perch on the tip of the tallest of those outer buildings before leaping off again.
We tucked and dove toward a row of tall metallic buildings boldly proclaiming in more artistic severity that they might be as grand as those glass structures that looked down upon them. Jessy flew close enough to the pointed tip of one of these that I struck it with my pike. I laughed at the clanging sound it made as Jessy screeched and dove onward.
A thick row of brick buildings, stout and low, greeted us with enormous chimneys shooting into the air like smoking fingers. “Go Jessy, go!” I cheered my crown on as she zipped and zoomed in and out and in between the maze of chimneys as she screeched with glee from the air-warping heat emanating from the smokestacks. Jessy turned sideways and we edged through two close together and flapped one strong thrust that jolted us upward and through the black mist.
The smoke burst through my face like a curtain drawn and I looked down upon colored houses made of trimmed and polished wood. Solid cut boards painted and laid in rectangular structures with the occasional clock tower or balconied roof signifying itself amongst the others. The loud rumbling of a metallic wheel made Jessy tilt and attempt a quick dive back toward the high buildings but I egged her on with thoughts of worry-free thrills.
“That’s no beast,” I said, though I had no idea what the long, thin thing was that sped along iron rails with such a clatter. I told Jessy to go down and we sailed along to come alongside the enormous caterpillar. Jessy hooked a talon on the edge of the metal boxes carrying enormous loads of a black rock at incredible speeds.
Catapulted by the speed of this vehicle, Jessy spread her wings and took to the skies as I looked down on an ever-thickening expanse of trees. Only the occasional log-constructed home marred the uninterrupted length of natural growth. Here and there high, rocky and grass-covered hills rose above the trees and we skirted these heights while diving low to the ponds and the enormous lake in the middle of the trees.
I struck the reflected image of that spire and orb glowing on the surface of the water with the end of my pike. The spray ran around us as Jessy kicked up more with her pounding wings and took us over the last line of trees to a neighborhood of stone. Stone buildings seemingly cut from bare rock and laid out in a sometimes chaotic, sometimes strictly uniform pattern till it ended quite suddenly in another long field of grass.
After the grass my eyes grew blurry with the sight. Here a tall glass building, then steel, there brick, there a microscopic forest and there more wooden structures and buildings of such enormous stone I couldn’t imagine them all sitting next to the other without one inevitably absorbing the other. Yet there they all stood, the quilt pattern of buildings and colors laid out till they all met in the center base that held that high spire.
Jessy screeched with glee after topping the last glass building and swooped low to the beginnings of this mountain of a building.
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The base of black, a deepest black like the shimmering stones found beside a suddenly cooled volcano, lay out with an enormous footprint that held up the other two levels with polished steps guiding the way. Three separate chambers made up the second section of three triangular structures starting out rigid and well-shaped before they swirled together in the center. Three colors. Three buildings. Of such material and expert cut that they appeared less buildings and more giant precious metals, jewels of unimaginable size.
The first was white, a white that conjured up images of spirits and dreams, a pure white that embodied the color as it truly was, the containment of all other colors. The second a rich gold that rang with imagined hammerings of strengthened tools while chiming to the music of glorious song. The light hit this gold in a way true gold shouldn’t have, casting a glow that heightened one’s inner will but cast no shine the eyes could physically detect. The last chamber, of red, made me strike back in fear for a moment and turned Jessy end over end as she approached the building. As the skies glow faintly before the ushering of lightning, so the building stood with the promise of soon to be fire. It pulsed in my mind with a fury and thrill that made Jessy pass over it and tumble once more as she cheered her tumbles.
I urged Jessy on and we flew toward that silver spire set in the middle of the building. The final, smallest building on top of the other two sections. That structure stood as a blend of all three colors below. As I looked down from my ascending flight round the spire I wondered how the three colors could meet so close without destroying the other. The white seemed too immaterial to blend with the unbreakable firmness of the gold and the instability of the red seemed ready to consume it and the others. All these together actually forced a physical confrontation with the others as they swirled together to form the block of solid, round stone like a diamond of many colors sitting as the capstone to the mountainous building.
This was merely the metaphysical sensations rushing through my Mother-Dweller mind of overactive empathy. Though the buildings never moved, the imagined battles going on in the stone made me smile as we rose toward the clouds.
The spire shot through the center of that last building and rose up and up. Up and up we went till Jessy grew near exhaustion and we rose to the top of the ever thinning spire. Here the orb sat, a strangely small piece that must have been a priceless gem. Perfectly spherical, the orb sat at the tip of the spire like a cap on the city-sized spike. It glowed with a fierce light I could barely look at. Colors of a shifting red, gold, and white burned within. I could almost see the rays of that light physically leave the skies and soar into space to challenge the twinkling of the stars themselves.
Tired enough to risk the severity of the multicolored light, Jessy and I set down on the orb, Jessy taking a wide stance with padded feet since her claws could not hook into the smooth gem.
“Wow,” I said as I took in the city.
Jessy let out a low purring sound.
“You said it Jessy.”
Spreading her wings high above her head but taking care to avoid catching the wind, Jessy took a stance I imagined seeing from afar and counted as enormously impressive. The thrill of that place entered my mind with such overwhelming energy that I let out a yell as loud as I could, screaming from the top of my lungs from the top of the universe as Jessy screeched with joyful fury.
I had barely exhaled from sucking in that delicious air when I heard the clanking of metal on metal beneath Jessy’s paw.
“Boy! Get. Down!” the voice said.
I looked down and saw a man with a thick beard of yellow tied together in the middle but with only the faintest hint of a mustache that didn’t connect with the rest of his facial hair. Wrinkles covered his narrowed eyes as he stared up at me. At first I thought the faint golden glow reflected in his face came from the shimmering orb. Then I noticed the steady, golden light was actually coming from the metal glove he wore about his hand. It was with this that he gripped the thin spire’s tip and supported himself like a man clinging to the edge of a cliff, though his eyes showed only mild annoyance and no trace of fear.
In my shocked state at both the incredible city and the incredible curiosity that was a man without wings joining me below my winged Jessy that all I could utter was, “What?”
“Lia said your name was Kagis. She sent me to get you down. Now get down,” he said.
“Oh, sorry.”
“You better not have scratched that thing.” With his ungloved hand, the man pointed at me. The thick finger went to a thick forearm and a tremendous shoulder.
“What?”
“The orb. Your pet better not have scratched it.”
Jessy shrieked at the man, making the glow increase. I felt his mental adrenaline rise and forced Jessy to be calm.
“She’s not my pet,” I replied. “Her name is Jessy.”
The man didn’t seem to take notice and glanced at the orb. “Don’t think you could have damaged it anyway. Now get you and your creature to that field down there immediately.”
“What about you?”
“Immediately!”
“Oh.”