PHANTASIA (20 page)

“We have a feud with them?” Red asked.
 

“No, we’re just their food.”
 

“They eat humans?!”
 

“Well not literally…but why do you think they call them bloodelves? They drain the blood of other creatures for energy.”
 

“I thought they’d eat critters or something.”
 

“They
do,
most of the time. But anyone that ends up in bloodelf territory after night is game for them.
Including me.
Daytime’s not too safe either, best to avoid that city entirely.”
 

“There’s night and day in Areopa?” Butz asked.

“Technically there’s only night in Areopa, it’s on the other side of Avalonia from where Echidna is. But the city has an artificial lighting and weather system that creates a regular day and nighttime. Nighttime is exactly what solstice is like, pitch black except for scattered lights. You
don’t
want to be stuck in Sanguine City at nighttime. Just remember that if you ever tour the kingdom without me.”
 

“Okay, got it,” S replied sharply. Red shared a curios glance with Butz, imagining that the both of them were thinking the same exact thing.
Lets go see Sanguine City.
He caught Raven’s eye right afterwards and her fixed stare seemed to be saying ‘
I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not happening.’
 

“We can get Red’s hand fixed the day after the ociramma. There are some really good places in Areopa that work with loss of limb injuries. The Alcazar has their own medical staff as well, they might be able to help. Fourth —”
 

Before Magnus was able to finish his next point, the ship had lurched forward and jumped out of the thicket of clouds they were rising against, suddenly granting view of a magnificent city unlike any Red had ever seen. The buildings were not tall like Echidna’s super structures, but richly made and expanded out into weird shapes — their architecture uninhibited by the vertical restrictions of land and gravity. Attractions like fountains and gardens were not planted into firm structures, but floated about serendipitously like birds. Everything here seemed to be connected by sets of long rails that twisted and curved through the sky. The building the ship made port in looked like a floating tent half made of cloud. It had no definite shape, nor any hint of an organized structure.
 

“Are people just walking on invisible floors?” He asked Magnus.
 

“They’re not invisible,” Raven replied. “Force fields.”
 

“Never heard of that before.”
 

“Yep — the guy who realized that forcefields could be used to construct buildings was considered a prodigy of sorts. But it’s such an obvious application, right? Nanotubes of different elements combined into lattices that can hold an almost indefinite amount of weight. It also means that structures in Areopa can be built almost instantaneously. Ofcourse, not everything is made out of forcefields. The majority of buildings, especially the older ones, use various forms of rock and cloud to make their shapes. There’s no metal in Areopa.”
 

Once the ship had officially docked and opened its gates, they followed Magnus to an opening in the port where all the rails were lined up haphazardly above them. A sign made of cloud read “Welcome to Areopa,” while another next to it read, “Sky Rail Lobby.” He turned to Magnus to ask him what the sky rail was, but then saw that Magnus had been flanked by a number of guards he was greeting with enthusiasm.

“He must know them from before,” Raven remarked. The next instant, as if everyone in the lobby had suddenly realized who Magnus was, a crowd rushed around him, covering him in a glut of shouts and questions. The surge of attention was so sudden, Red thought for a second that they were under attack.
 

“Is he also a singer of some sort that we don’t know about?” Butz asked.
 

“No, this is how royalty is treated,” Raven replied. “I saw it last year when I came to Areopa. Everyone here is crazed about their governing families and their going-ons. Magnus, being the younger brother of the next king of Alto, is especially famous.”
 

“Didn’t realize…it was like this…” Red admitted, suddenly bewildered by how modest and humble Magnus had been all throughout their years at Crest.
 

“I hope our entire stay isn’t like this,” S griped. The crowd continued to swell with more people, making it unlikely that Magnus was going to escape any time soon.
 

“It will be, at least if we leave the Alcazar with him,” Raven replied. “Luckily, we won’t be touring much. Only training.” S gave a nod of agreement, but Red could see the disappointment in her eyes.
 

“Do we just wait here until the mob disperses?” Butz asked. Linx hopped onto his head, seemingly for a better view of the crowd. Red noticed that every passing day, the Aeyz Cat was getting bigger and bigger. In another month or two, he would no longer fit on Butz’s head. Magnus suddenly broke out of the mass of people and rushed to them as his guards tried to follow behind. He gestured to Red for everyone to follow as he weaved through the crowd towards the other end of the lobby. Butz and S ran to catch up while Raven dragged on behind. Red could feel her resentment through the air — the last thing she wanted in life was to be a cohort of royalty. He ushered for her to move faster, and she reluctantly followed after he insisted several times. Luckily, the crowd seemed to have lost track of where Magnus was. Their center of attention was now focused on two of the guards who hung back. Red had a feeling that this was a well practiced maneuver.
 

“Well I didn’t really expect
this
,” Red laughed.
 

“Wait till we get to the city, if we ever go with Magnus. It’ll be a disaster,” Raven chided.
 

They crossed a set of double doors at the other side of the lobby into a room with only three walls and a single rail running through it. Unlike the other rails, which looked like thick silvery strings, this one was of a shining blue-green color. Four more guards were stationed in this room, watching them with unmoving eyes.

“Okay, so this will take us straight to the Empyrean Alcazar. It’ll only take us a few minutes to get through security there, and then we’re good to go.”
 

“What? We’re supposed to use
this
thing to get there?” Butz asked. “I’ve never been to Areopa, I don’t know how to work this.”
 

“It’s simple. You just grab on to the hook and it’ll take you straight there,” Magnus answered.

“How would it even know where I want to go…”

“The sky rail is telepathically controlled, even if you’re not adept at using your mind. It will always take you exactly where you want to go. It even reads your thoughts to see where you want to go
more
if you’re deciding between two places. Anyways, this one
only
goes to the Alcazar.”
 

Red glanced outwards and saw how easily people grabbed onto the hooks and flew through the sky rail — as if riding on a rail that cut through the middle of the sky while holding onto nothing but a hook that looped around the rails were a perfectly sane thing to do. Some jumped from one rail to the other, and he wondered how no one accidentally fell off.
 

“It feels natural once you’re on it. The rails make you jump from one to another to get you to where you want to go,” Raven replied, as if she had read his mind.
 

“You just let go and fly onto the other one?”
 

“No one falls off the sky rail if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s not possible. The hook will make sure you land on another rail safely,” Magnus replied.
 

“Isn’t there another way to get there?” Red asked.
 

“There is… most of the royal family rides on Ozes, but those are boring. This is much more fun. I’ll go first so you can watch,” Magnus answered. In a single leap, he grabbed on to the hook on the rail and shot away through the sky. At one point the path curved upwards and he saw Magnus let go of the rail he was currently flying on to swing through the air and land safely onto another. The impact was so harsh Red wondered how it didn’t break his arm.”
 

“Ugh… and I have to do this with my left hand.”
 

“It doesn’t look
that
bad, to be honest” S replied. “I saw you leap from the top of a spire about the height of a super structure, and land straight into the ground in flames. And you’re afraid of doing something even the old people here do?”

“That was…
in the moment
,” Red relented.

“I’ll see you at the palace,” S winked before leaping forward and grabbing onto the hook.
 

“Well if she can do it, it can’t be
that
difficult,” Butz snorted before directing Linx to hold onto him and following behind S. Red heard him wail in terror a few seconds after he got on.
 

“I’ll go behind you. You won’t fall.” Raven said.
 

“I hate flying. I don’t even like it much on ships.
And
I have to do this with my left hand.”

“I know. I’ll figure something else out for us when we’re at the Alcazar.”

“I should’ve just had a syntechdage installed in Echidna. Impatience always gets the better of me,” Red grumbled as he approached the hook at the edge of the room. Figuring there was no point in delaying the inevitable, he jumped forward like he was leaping for his life. Surprisingly, he reached the hook with little effort, and it suddenly occurred to him that the gravity in Areopa was obviously being manipulated. His movement through the rail started off as a slow glide, but rapidly progressed into an uncomfortable dash. He tried to compare the feeling to something else in his head, but ended up imagining it was exactly what it sounded like,
flying through the sky by way of a rail that ran through the clouds — secured by nothing but your grip on a hook.
But as he went faster and faster, the sky rail felt more and more natural.
 

The hook put no pressure on his arm, it felt like a natural extension of his body. The strain that should have resulted from soaring through the rails at his speed just wasn’t there; it was replaced by a feeling of comfort, like something was holding onto his hand rather than the other way around. He finally understood what Magnus had meant by the sky rail being intuitive. He felt like he was being carried to where he wanted to go by an invisible force, as if it just wasn’t possible to fall off the rails. Daring himself to test it, he tried to let go of the hook, but couldn’t. An odd sensation, like someone else was controlling his left arm, had taken over. It reminded him of the feeling he had before bursting out laughing in Raven’s dreamscape.
Another thing to ask the truth sayer. Something else was controlling me. I know it.

At one point the rail curved upwards and the line abruptly ended. Before Red could try and stop himself, he flew off the end in a leap he sure was going to be his last. Soaring freely through the air felt surreal, similar to the rush of being carried by the geysers in the twilight caverns, but more liberating. There was no pressure lifting him here, only the momentum of his speed. If the dreamscape had freed his mind of the inhibitions of reality, this freed his body. He felt a mix of fear, adrenaline, and excitement, before gathering awareness of his surroundings. He was falling towards another rail now, but the line was so thin, he imagined it would be impossible not to miss catching it.
 

He took a moment to breathe in the city around him. Now more than ever, the world seemed to be bursting with life. Not just the people, but the clouds, buildings, decorations, even the air. He could see other people flying through the clouds in their rail lines. Ironically, despite their incredible speeds, everyone here seemed to be far more relaxed than the stiff figures he remembered at Echidna. Everyone here seemed…
free.
Like the rush of traveling through the rails wasn’t a rush at all, but a slow voyage where the journey itself was what they craved.
 

He crashed into the other rail before he realized he was close enough to grab onto it. Somehow the hook he held onto knew to perfectly align itself with the sky rail. As he continued racing with the wind, he secretly wished that the rail would break off again, letting him get lost in the rush of flying once more. Landing back down had somehow reminded him of the qualifiers, grounding him back to the reality he had left just a moment ago.
 

 
Areopa was a series of one wonder after another. The city was not incredible the way most advanced cities are; there were no buildings larger than life nor unseen technologies besides the forcefields — which Red realized was nothing technologically advanced, but simply a creative way of applying a very basic form of technology — instead the city was simply rich with culture, a vibrant sense of energy, and the strangest feats of engineering he had ever seen. One building resembled a long floating shoe, another was constructed purely of cloud and shaped out like a dragon. As he marveled at one building after another, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of nostalgia. Even the people riding Ozes looked familiar to him. And then, in a flash of remembrance, he realized that he
had
seen this place before. He had seen it all in one of his dreams. He had seen it all in a nightmare. The memory rushed back to him the way the contents of a forgotten dream could strike out from the lethe without warning. He had seen the entire city doused in black flames, people on Ozes running from the tendrils of a breathing fire, and him, at the helm of a burning anarchy. Another break in the railway came, and this time, he soared straight through a populated city center, consumed by a sense of vertigo but with only one question on his mind.
What makes black fire?