Bang! Bang! Bang!

A man laid in his bed and jolted awake. Jumping to his feet, he covered his ears, shouting obscenities at the door, “Do you know what goddamn time it is?!”

He swung open the door and saw a man of short stature, frazzled and wearing a torn guard’s uniform of Uren with a patch signifying he worked directly for the overseer. After a glance at the panicked man, he tensed up.

“Are you Samson Redding?!” The guard demanded.

“Uhh… yes?” Samson started sweating as his nerves shook. The day of earthquakes was like a bad omen, and then the water disappeared by morning. It now loomed over the city and invaded it with twisted rivers through the air and at everyone’s doorstep, threatening to fall and flood everybody’s home at any moment. Nobody in town had gotten much sleep with the constant dull glow from countless streams and the relentless noise. Samson realized it was still dark when this stranger woke him up and he could still hear the rushing water. “What is this about?”

“This is an emergency. I need you to send a message up the Boreal immediately, and I’ll pay you ten gold crowns.”

“What?!” Samson made that much in half a year if he was lucky. Whatever the overseer needed, it must have been serious. “What’s the message?”

“Do you have a pen? This is important.” The man gestured to his lower body.

Samson’s eyes widened and he shut the door, quickly throwing on a robe to cover up. “Dammit.” He grabbed a pen off the counter and shuffled around his desk for a notepad. Eventually he found it and ran back to the door before swinging it open again. Somehow the world was brighter like daybreak, but it was still all blue. He shielded his eyes and looked at the man again, eagerly awaiting the small fortune he was sure to make.

The overseer’s guard had turned the other way, also shielding his eyes. After following his line of sight, Samson saw a strange pit open up in the salt down by the infirmary and right next to that house that had appeared from the sky. The pit shined ever brighter like a beacon and the guard started running away, “Shit, shit, shit! No! Why here?! Goddammit, Cira!”

“No wait!” Samson stumbled out the door, “What’s the message?!”

___

“Don’t worry, Del…” Rosalie stroked her daughter’s head and held her close, trying to keep her calm while watching a pit of burning light open up across the salt, replacing the night with an eerie cerulean twilight. “We’ll be fine, I promise.”

Everyone at the infirmary was in a panic. They had run out of food again that day, but everyone was still rattled about the tremors. Some said the island would fall, or that it had already begun down below—the final stage of Fount Salt’s curse.

“Is… is Dad okay?” Del sobbed into her mother’s chest, constantly teetering between fear and worry. Her father had stopped by a few nights prior saying he would be going away for a few years to save the whole island. Now everyone’s hysteria had chipped away at the young girl, putting ideas in her head of certain doom.

“Listen to me, Delia. Your father’s a hero.” Rosalie assured her with a strong tone, “Of course he’s alright. And I’m sure she’s protecting him…”

There had been a few jealous thoughts lingering around her mind over the last few days, no matter how irrational she thought they were. A stunningly beautiful young woman, who’s ridiculously strong and summons ghosts, swooped in to save his life miraculously one day, only to call on him to bring below the surface for a few years until she’d even see him again.

But Rosalie trusted her, not only because she seemed earnest and kind, but because she was so far above them that there was no way Chip had entered her gaze. It took a lot more than good humor to woo a woman like that, she was sure.

Those concerns had completely gone out the window when the tremors started, of course. Rosalie had been with her daughter since the moment the group left Uren, but it was a hard day for everybody until the island abruptly went still.

Suddenly everyone around them gasped and their chattering got louder, pointing out at the horizon. This was starting to scare Del, and she looked up, “Mom, what’s happening? Is it morning already?”

“No…” She answered as her eyes opened wide. “It shouldn’t be.”

It was hardly past midnight, yet Fount Salt’s horizon had begun to shine from beneath with the golden light of dawn. What worried Rosalie was that it came from all around, as if the sun were rising from every side of Fount Salt, getting brighter by the second and pushing back the night sky.

There were those around them that started praying, speaking reverently to the sky, “It’s the new dawn! It’s finally come for us!”

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“M-mommy…” Del shrunk back for protection, “What’s that?”

She pointed at the radiant pit across the salt and Rosalie saw a massive diamond emerge from it, raging with the same light as Uren’s water which once again came to life, as if responding to it. The diamond was like staring into a lighthouse and she struggled to block it out. Then the reservoirs and rivers which had coagulated above them and branched throughout the city all aimlessly dripped upwards, converging to form a ring around the shining jewel to blanket the sky above Uren far beyond its bounds.

Beneath the jewel trailed a stout river that fell straight into the still widening pit, which now bore the same light as the surrounding dawn. She and her daughter both stared at the events unfolding in awe, having forgotten their fear for a brief moment as a massive golden ball ascended from below ground, bathing the whole city in unmistakable holy light.

Could there really be a new dawn? I never believed in all that… She held her daughter closer, trying to shield her from the light as a fledgling star rose to the sky and above the airborne lake, sending transient rays of glittering blue and gold across the island’s surface. In that moment the horizon burned as another sun rose. A breath caught in Rosalie’s throat, and she slowly swiveled around, counting on her fingers as a chill ran up her spine.

Six suns rose around Fount Salt with a seventh in the center, bringing forth the brightest day its residents had ever seen—with them at the center bathed in sunbeams like the lights of Nymphus. Each time one passed over they could feel the mana envelop them. The golden light soothed the body and soul, but there was only intense pressure whenever the cerulean rays crossed them. Rosalie shuddered as each beam fell over them, clutching Del tight.

Gone was any trace of night and even the distant stars twinkled through a shroud of eminent daylight. The sky wasn’t blue but washed over with brilliant a gold haze like the first moments of sunrise, stained only from beneath by Uren’s relentless cerulean veil.

Rosalie’s jaw dropped as a moment of silence fell over the infirmary grounds. Everyone held a light in their eyes like they were watching a prophecy come to life, no matter how pious they found themselves five minutes prior, but Rosalie couldn’t look away from the seventh sun. Beneath it, she thought she saw something very small, hardly visible in the sun’s flare and through the swirling lake in the sky. It almost looked like the silhouette of a person, but it was too far away and too bright to make out.

“It couldn’t be…” she muttered under her breath.

___

Well, that sure was an inconvenient place to pop out. So much for a subtle escape. I guess it doesn’t matter at this point if anyone saw me. Cira was in a foul mood, and in her hands was the culmination of all the good she was trying to do here. It was no time to lose heart or get moody. It was time to act.

She really did reject me though. Just like I expected… Though it wasn’t at all like she expected, she was just being bitter. Nanri better keep her promise.

Spring Sense was greatly dampened and her sight over the island was getting blurry. She could hardly focus once she got close to Uru and beyond. Cira had watched Nanri for a few minutes as the witches confronted her, but she brushed them off and began her descent, likely headed back to the plague ward. Cira left her alone before long because it felt like she was invading her privacy, and that’s when she arrived in Uren where there was a mass of plague victims all staring up at her reverently from a few hundred yards away.

She doubted they could see her now, drowned out in the spectacle and surrounded by shimmering waters, but it didn’t bother her anymore. She also knew the Astral witch was flying far below in pursuit, trailed by her assistant who seemed to have latched on with a spatial tether, literally being dragged.

Cira had employed an illusion, taking advantage of her element and a little inertial trickery to make it seem like they were traveling rapidly as trails of light passed by, but they were going about the average elevator’s speed. Lyren took a nap, but she was confident the girl had caught on. Whether she didn’t want to fight Cira, or simply didn’t care, it worked for her.

“Now, what will I do with you, Uren?” Cira’s orbs of material were making their way over from the shore as her suns got brighter still to mask the increasing draw on her deritium. She already had a plan, but she was frustrated, “Whoever planned this city in the first place sucked. It’s not modular at all. There was like four chapters about that!”

To begin, she started shaping Uren’s sister city. “To hell with Earth Vein.” She clenched her fists, looking for someone to blame for the emotions she half-heartedly suppressed. Cira’s plans changed to such a miniscule degree that she couldn’t fathom the ripples a simple sign would end up causing.

The first step was to mold the salt. By her measure—whatever that’s worth—she was a master of practical geomancy and a legendary artisan of the salt by this point. The ground bubbled up next to Uren, forming walls of much sturdier make while orbs of salt the size of houses fell from the sky. They bulged and contorted until fanning out and forming blocks of homes, spread as thin as possible and hardened to create walls with sturdy honeycomb structures on the inside.

The salt kept falling, building upwards on impact and creating new districts—a marketplace, a common area, neatly arranged blocks of residences with clear paths to get around town and rivers effortlessly winding through it with well-placed bridges. No more than two stories tall except in commercial and state intended zones. Cira put more than a little thought into it.

In the center she left a sizable space wide-open and began constructing what would become the surface’s new agricultural district while deconstructing Uren’s. This was more brinstahl, but she wasn’t ready to take it earlier. Now she lifted the soil up in the air and formed it all together into a clump that cast a huge shadow over the city. Next, she burned off all deritium within through the process of floating it over, completely cleaning the dirt.

“I get that they were probably trying to simulate the surface of a fertile island, but… There was just so much wasted soil.” The ancients tended to think extravagantly and made all their farms cubes of soil. What most food crops needed was a few feet at most. Luckily for Cira, their lack of insight resulted in plenty of support to keep it high off the salt.

This ancient metal made its way up into the sky as well. Next on Cira’s list: The forecast this morning called for heavy rains upon the new city.