Nalaar bleated at other goat men as he passed them, walking into a wide, dirty street. The dusty road was replaced with cobble. Buildings stood three stories tall on either side of the road, piled against each other. Nearest the gate, many buildings stood empty, leaning on old and rotting bones.

The biggest, unemployed buildings appeared full of soldiers. Whatever translation spell Interface cast didn’t work on the signs, but a few of the buildings looked like guard barracks. In the few open lots, men and women sparred outside.

“It’s been almost a week since the last Bleeding.” Nalaar said, stopping as children ran in front of him. They played in the streets, dashing in and out of alleys. There must have been a hundred different species here, but most were human looking or some amalgamation of them.

“Alright. The hell is a bleeding?” I asked.

Nalaar pointed at the distant rifts in reality. Looking at them hurt my eyes. It was like staring into a kaleidoscope; shifting shapes and patterns flashed through them. They seemed to slowly open and close like a living thing, breathing. They rose far up above the distant border of the city.

“The World Wound bleeds once a week.” Nalaar said. “That’s why this prison is here. It holds back anything that escapes from rampaging in the rest of the continent; or worse, living in the untamed Wilderness. Then they throw any cultivator up to the Fifth Realm down here for good measure. Though most of the people living here have lived here their entire life.”

I felt Interface’s intense scrutiny even though he didn’t say anything.

“So this entire city is just a prison?” I asked. “What does everyone eat?”

I felt a bit of worry. Interface began doing math in the background on the farm fields that filled the valley outside the city, confirming that there was no way the farms produced enough food to sustain this.

Nalaar bleated.

“There are three towns.” He said. “And the World Wound produces enough food for everyone.”

That felt ominous. It sounded like the things that came through the portal were monsters.

As we went deeper in, the ramshackle buildings fell away for nicer ones, often assembled of stone, and the road grew wider until we stepped into an open air market. Blacksmith forges roared at the edge of the plaza alongside food stalls. Some stores sold furniture; others, bottles of glowing liquid. Interface highlighted crafters using magic techniques in their arms and heads as they worked all around us.

We skirted around the edge of the market. There must’ve been hundreds of people filling the plaza. Most of them were inspecting weapons, armor, and mysterious circular objects. Interface highlighted the spheres as filled with the world’s ambient energy.

Then it started to highlight the weapons and armor, then the potions, then the food, then the forge… almost everything here was enchanted, even if only temporarily. Extinguished forges dimly smoking showed diminished energy compared to the ones being worked.

Nalaar kept to main streets, turning down another cobble road with wagons pulled by their owners with superhuman strength.

I hadn’t seen a single live animal here. Yet every street vendor was selling meat, and every armorer had leather.

The town seemed almost peaceful — there weren’t ruins of burned buildings or conflict in the street — but there was an undercurrent of tension among the adults, not to mention that almost every person carried a weapon.

“They let you buy swords here? In jail?”

“They encourage it. The prison sells a few themselves, though they are little more than scraps by the time the army is done with them.” Nalaar said. He turned to look at me as he talked, licking at his face.

"Why would a prison want you to be armed?” I asked as we exited the more broad plazas and roads and stepped into smaller roads. There were still people of all kinds, but more and more of them shared goat like features. Some lost human features in exchange for more alien ones — goat people with stone skin, or who were bipedal, or quadrupedal goats with almost human bodies rising from the front, like centaurs.

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“To slay the Celestials — unthinking monsters, mostly, but their cores are filled with qi. If you can’t provide food for yourself and haven’t inherited Innate Techniques or manuals then the prison will sell them to you.”

I nodded.

“Prison labor. Got it. The prisoners kill and butcher the monsters, and the prison keeps everyone contained. And this entire ecosystem has grown inside. Are people… comfortable living here?” I asked. I wondered if everyone lived here because breaking out was too much effort. There was no way they actually guarded every possible exit from the prison, not when it stretched to fill an entire mountain valley.

Or if they were like me, living forever with a bomb collar around their neck.

“Comfortable? Some.” Nalaar said.

“Where are we going?”

“To the Broken Mountain Manor.” Nalaar replied.

[Danger ahead.] Interface said.

I stopped in the street. Nalaar continued forward.

“What?” I whispered.

Interface highlighted invisible swirls in the air high above me. The underlying magic that pervaded this world — qi — began to swirl ahead of us, all of it seeming to head in the same direction. Nalaar stopped and turned, staring at me.

“You can sense her. Is that part of your mind technique?”

I swallowed.

“Sense who?” I asked.

“The Matriarch. Come on, she’s on our side.” Nalaar looked to me, then to Mora. “Do me a favor. Carry her.” Nalaar said suddenly.

Then he stepped up, removing the swaddle that was tied around his chest. It smelled like sweat. He had been in that prison cell for days with the baby.

Mora started crying.

“Hey, whoa! No — don’t, its okay!” I said to the child. It didn’t stop crying. Nalaar tied off the blanket behind me, making a tiny hammock for carrying the child.

“It’s alright Mora. Doesn’t he look like your mother?” Nalaar asked, looking up at me. Mora stopped crying, one hand grabbing loosely onto my shirt.

I rocked her and followed after Nalaar, who turned to lead me farther into the city.

We turned down another few streets. The style of the buildings changed from wood and organization to more and more lopsided stone, until houses seemed to appear from out of the cracks of pile of boulders. Then we reached a large stretch of wall we had to walk down before finding a gate. The inside opened to a plaza.

There were training dummies in the yard, alongside strange flickering magic Interface couldn’t identify, seemingly buried into the rock ground of the compound. I stopped outside.

The swirling qi seemed to center on this position, draining from the sky and rushing into the open windows of the sprawling complex. The front door was huge and open, seemingly erupting from an artificial mountain, complete with dirt and plants growing from the top. Children of a dozen shapes and sizes clambered around the top and played. Some of them demonstrated Techniques, chasing each other.

Armed guards stared at us. Nalaar sighed with relief and walked inside. One of the guards waved me forward. There must have been a dozen just hanging around.

I followed behind. The complex opened into a floor of refined, decorated tile. The walls were wooden, and the place smelled like a mix of oak and earth. Power swirled through the walls themselves; though the windows and doors were all unlocked, the entire place felt as if it were magically guarded. I didn’t want to find out how.

The place was lit with warm light glowing softly from yellow amber embedded in the ceilings which grew dimmer as we approached the center of the complex. The qi raced along the walls so fast here it made a gentle hissing noise, softly displacing the air.

We stopped at the threshhold of a central chamber. These hallways were odd — far too large for just humans. Too large for even the gigantic centuar goats or the giant who had chased us.

The center was pitch black. I flinched as the entire room seemed to move, shifting in the dark with the whisper of cloth on cloth. Interface began to highlight the shape of the gigantic thing moving in the dark.

“Nalaar.” A voice boomed from the center of the room. It was deep, baritone, rumbling with foreign authority and all assured power. It reminded me uncomfortable of a handler’s voice.

“Matriarch.” Nalaar said. Then he kneeled.

“Tell me, descendent, was it worth it?”

Six eyes, glowing bright red and shining in the dark began to rise in the center of the room. The amber lights on the walls started to kick on as the qi stopped rushing into the room. Instead, a massive weight of it fell on me like a hammer. I grit my teeth, staggering as the pressure on me suddenly doubled, as if I had stepped into a place with multiple times the gravity.

“Marvelle is dead.” Nalaar said. His tone was hurting. I wasn’t sure how much of it was the pressure, and how much of it was the unknown emotion of how he had killed him.

“Good.” The matriarch said, self satisfied. “Next time, do not be so stupid as to attack during the Bleeding. Your place is here, caring for the young, not on the battlefield. You are not a warrior, Nalaar. My cousins — your ancestors — are not so easily felled. They are, however, smart enough to sense opportunity and pounce upon your weakness. You are lucky the Treeguards found you first.”

Nalaar bleated. As if in reply, the pressure on us doubled. Nalaar hit the floor, head on the ground.

The Matriarch made a noise of disapproval.

I circled Hellfire to stay standing, gritting my teeth. Mora started to cry, and the pressure let up instantly.

The matriarch’s form was slowly revealed. She was like a goat person as well, though she was gigantic. She would have to crawl to leave the hallway. Her fur was black, specked with red arrows across it.

“Oh? You certainly trust this one, Nalaar. What is your name, boy?” The Matriarch asked.

[I suspect that this is one of the so called Celestials.]