The carriage rolls down the road, traveling with a marching patrol of soldiers. Acacia sits there, content to lean back against the wall as she stares out toward the sky behind them with a tired expression. Ever since the peak of the highlight of life she’s been experiencing lately, her body has begun going downhill again, despite her elation and wish to stay where they were at that point of jubilation. She’s leaned back on a cushion against the inside of the carriage, sitting in the back of it. A blood-spot-pockmarked cloth is held loosely in her resting hand. Empty glass vials roll past her feet.

“Your Majesty,” says Sir Knight’s voice from the coachman, sitting just behind her and guiding the carriage down the street. “We should stay home today,” he explains. “We’ll let the men handle the work so you can recover.” He looks over his shoulder toward Chicory, who nods in agreement.

“I agree with Sir Knight,” says Chicory. “This campaign will have no point except to destroy the nation for no reason if your illness takes you.”

Acacia folds the cloth in her hands together into a tight square, forcing herself to sit upright as she looks at them. “You will not utter such nonsense anywhere where I can hear it,” explains the youngest princess. She sighs, looking back at the bright blue sky and watching as a flock of honking geese fly across it, nosily making their presence known to the world. “Today promises to be such a good day, and you’re tarnishing it.”

“They’re just worried about you,” says Junis, her legs dangling off the back of the carriage. The elf lifts a finger. “Don’t be so uptight,” she lectures. Had this been said months ago, Acacia would have been likely to kick her boot against the elf’s back and shove her off of the moving carriage. But times change, and so do people.

Acacia narrows her eyes, opening her mouth just the same distance as she gets ready to retort sharply. But then, after a second, she stops herself and breathes out. “You’re right,” she concedes, almost deeply out of character — so much so that the others exchange a worried look. “What?” she asks, seeing their faces. Acacia crosses her arms, leaning back and closing her eyes. “Thank you all for your genuine concern,” she says, almost defiantly, as if saying it against her own will. “I am simply not used to receiving it from others.”

“Your highness, you have a team of agents shadowing you day and night,” explains Chicory. “Countless souls across the nation are concerned with your well-being and have been since the day of your birth.”

“I said ‘genuine’,” remarks Acacia, almost coldly, as she uncrosses her arms and looks at Chicory. “I do not care for those who are concerned for my sake because of politics or because it’s their job.”

The coachman turns his head, looking back at her. “It’s my job,” remarks Sir Knight.

“You don’t count, Sir Knight,” replies Acacia, her fingers tapping the floor of the carriage in annoyance. “Look. Leave me be,” she orders. “I will decide when I am in good health or not.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” says Sir Knight, looking back forward as the carriage rolls on down the road. Chicory, following his example, looks onward toward their path.

“Where are we headed today?” asks Junis from the back of the carriage.

“The hundred-bridge city,” replies Acacia. Junis perks up, looking back at her again, almost excited. Acacia nods to her, seeing her questioning expression that asks if she means it. “There have been plenty of rumors about troubles there in the adventurers’ guild,” she explains. “It seems they could use some help, as the capital investigators sent there have yielded no results.”

“They didn’t just yield any results; they went missing,” says Chicory. “Very unusual.”

“’Very unusual’ doesn’t cut it,” says Acacia. “A team of five level-one-hundred-agents sent by royal order don’t just ‘go missing’ in one of the biggest cities of the nation without a trace.”

“Still…” says Junis, almost wistfully. “It’s always been my dream to see it.” She wipes a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Actually, it’s where I wanted to go after I left our city,” she says. “You know… back when I wanted to go,” she adds, somewhat tentatively at the end. “I’m fine here for now, though.”

“It’s dangerous for us. The hundred-bridge city is loyal to the crown, Your Majesty,” explains Chicory. “Perhaps this really is ill-advised.”

“Nonsense,” replies Acacia, digging through her bag and pulling out her dark metal crown, a partially bent metal ring that is missing many of the stones once in it, leaving only empty sockets. Bite marks and dents are all over the metal, as if something had chewed it up with massive teeth in a forgotten age. She puts it on her head. “I wear the crown, and they will see so when we arrive.” She looks at the coachman. “Sir Knight.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” says Sir Knight, whipping the reins. Pepper marches forward, pulling them in through a black portal that appears in the middle of the road. “Hold on,” he instructs, as everyone grabs onto something.

A second later, as they vanish into it, the carriage hurtles through the void before coming out on the other side. The heavy springs rattle and squeak as they make contact with the road they appear on as they remanifest on the other side. The carriage rolls out of a shadow, the grinding of its wheels accompanied by a dense marching of boots, as on all sides of it now march a legion of blackguards — armored knights carrying pikes and halberds as they accompany the carriage. Several of them on the front and back sit on dripping, pitch-black manifestations that look just like anqas. They ride the large bipedal birds, who are front-runners ahead of the carriage, wielding lances and swords as they take the front. Acacia gets up, holding out a hand for Junis to balance herself as she walks a few steps through the carriage to the front, as both of them look out to where they’re heading. Banners of her kingdom fly above the procession, making their identity clear to anyone who has been paying attention to the recent happenings in the world.

Horns and signals blaze through the air as panicked soldiers run around atop a long wall and gatehouse made out of white stonework that water runs down the front of. The construct is embedded into the body of a mountain that towers over their heads. They’re signaling the alarm.

The spiked metal portcullis of the gate begins to drop, but the spikes never come close to making contact with the ground as they end up falling into a black hole that sits just below the gatehouse. Acacia’s legion and the carriage quietly travel beneath it, water roaring on either side of them as they move through, unhindered.

Junis gasps quietly next to her as they enter through the gate. The sky above them is sealed by tons of solid rock and masterful stonework as they follow a wide, strongly-made path of gap-less bricks of the same bright white hue. The bright masonry catches the colorful, magical fire of massive braziers all around them, reflecting the light further and further as if it were mirror glass. Acacia looks around herself, at the many statues of soldiers and knights all around them. A few of them are out of place and misaligned. It’s almost like they had come to life and begun to move from their pedestals, but had, at the last moment, decided it would be better not to.

After a minute of moving through this tunnel, the world opens up around them with a roar and the song of a hundred blowing horns and trumpets that carry up toward a cavern ceiling so high above their heads — inside of the mountain — that birds can be seen flying around in the darkness together with bats in flocks of the same feather. The procession of her soldiers lines up in a tighter formation as they march in a straight line across a white-stone bridge that is easily a kilometer in length and many more in height, which leads to a central, massive column of stone in the center of the cavern. Like a tongue inside a closed mouth, the pillar of stone rises up as a singular structure inside the hidden cave. All across it glow lights. Houses made out of the bright, white stone that the inside of this mountain is made out of cover the top of the pillar in stacks and stacks on top of each other, growing in height like the formations of a crystal so as to make the most of the space available. All across the central pillar, at many heights, shine lights from all sides out of the core of the titan’s stone — houses, pathways, and balconies carved from the central node that look out over the abyss in all directions.

Acacia climbs out, standing next to Sir Knight as the wind of the underground chamber blows past her and through the carriage as she looks all around them at the other bridges, just like this one they’re entering on.

Like the legs of a spider large enough to bite a god, thin columns and pillars shoot up out of the dark abyss below them at a height that must have taken the work of generations of masons to achieve. They hold up gargantuan bridges that criss-cross in all directions around the central city inside the cave, all of them at various heights that span all heights around the mountain. Water surges down in waterfalls strong enough to crush bodies as it pours from the top of the hollowed-out mountain core into the abyss below. Much of it is captured by watermills and turning wheels built into the rock, which are used to grind the harvests of the deep-farms into powders or to strike the auto-hammers of the massive forge operations that run deep below at the base of the mountain, where magma is used to melt the metal mined here.

Above their heads run rows of soldiers of the city, forming lines on the bridges that cross above them at differing angles and heights. They take position and aim crossbows, others manning large, embedded siege weapons that sit dug into the rock of the mountain, and aim large arrows the size of people toward them. All around the inside of the cave, lights shine and glow as torches and lanterns reflect off of bright, polished stone in countless directions, together with the shine of magic from countless schools of war.

“It really is like being inside of a glass ornament,” says Junis quietly, looking around in awe as they move, answering to something she had been told a long, long time ago.

The city of one hundred bridges is a core node of the kingdom’s power. It had been built inside of a hollowed-out mountain in a time so long ago that nobody really remembers who began the construction as the first man. Forever, it had been a fully independent city, seen as entirely unconquerable. It is fully self-sustaining. Even if a person were to seal off the main tunnel, there are hundreds more, and even if those were sealed too — then they could provide enough for themselves just with the mountain’s internal uses to sustain themselves in perpetuity. If someone were to breach the exterior of the city in a siege, the defenders could simply choose to destroy the bridge in question, making the central node unreachable as the abyss below is so deep and long that no man would ever survive the fall, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have enough years in his life to climb all the way back up. Plus, given the varying heights of the bridges, it makes for the perfect defensive fortification, as she can see right now with all of the crossbows aimed her way. The only reason it now belongs to the kingdom is because of a historical quirk from a crisis that has long since passed.

“Just keep moving,” orders Acacia. “They won’t do anything,” she says confidently, standing there unprotected as she looks at a row of crossbows, trailing her.

“Perhaps we should have been more subtle?” suggests Chicory.

“I don’t do ‘subtle’, Chicory,” says Acacia. “Sir Knight,” she orders, looking at him. “Make my point clear.”

Sir Knight nods, a shadow leaking out of the body of the coachman like a snake crawling out of a corpse’s hollow eye socket. It slithers around the marching legion of her soldiers, manifesting into new bodies that appear in the marching mass. Blackguards, holding horns and trumpets, appear within the march and begin blowing a shrill cry in all directions that overpowers all of the warning noise buzzing inside the hive they’ve entered. A flurry of noise fills the air, making the commands being trumpeted to the defenders entirely inaudible, as a chaotic jumble is the only thing audible within the mountain. An instant later, a massive vortex appears in the space above their heads — first as only a pinprick, but then as a swirling black hole that sucks in the sounds of the city, muting it entirely as the only thing audible anymore is the sirening of her guard, who make her presence clear and undeniable as they move toward the end of the bridge.

People run in all directions as a row of local soldiers with tower shields set up a defensive blockage at the ramp into the city. Their faces are looking increasingly nervous as the mounted blackguards march closer, step by step, until they are only a breath away.

And then everything stops.

The blaring of trumpets stops, the running of people stops, the carriage’s grinding wheels stop, the shaking and moving of metal armor and weapons stops, the magic above that had been sent as a display of power stops, and then it is as if an entire piece of the world has simply fallen into utter quiet.

There’s a small slapping sound as Acacia’s boots hit the stonework as she jumps off of the carriage. The noise, as quiet as it was, seems to almost echo and carry around the mountain with impossible reverberance as it bounces from house to house and ear to ear. Her blackguards clear a path for her, all of them standing dangerously close to the edge of the bridge with fearless posture as she walks between them straight toward the line of soldiers from the local regiment who block the path. Her black cloak flows behind her as she walks by herself toward the wall that stands in their way. Nervous faces look through unfastened helmets that had been put on in a second’s hurry as she stops a few paces on the other side of a wall of tower-shields.

Acacia stands there, with her hands folded behind her back, as she looks around the city at the thousands of faces watching her from all manner of cubbies, holes, and homes carved into the inside of the mountain. Her gaze, almost boredly slow, turns down toward the soldiers standing ahead of her.

“Kneel,” says Acacia plainly, not even lifting her tone.

A sea of metal rattles behind her in a second as hundreds of armored bodies drop, holding their hands against their hearts and bowing their heads. Even the summoned anqas drop down on a one-legged bow as they lower themselves to the ground with their riders atop them.

Many people all around the city drop to a knee, as do several men behind the shield wall do as well, falling down to their knees — but still holding an arm against their shields that block her path. Acacia tilts her head, watching around the space as confusion moves through the ranks of the people here.

They’re in quite a knot.

She is, after all, a royal. Even if these people are loyal to her brother and not her, that doesn’t change the fact that, from a perspective of blood and social hierarchy, she is their god and master.

Acacia lifts a hand, holding her index finger and her thumb together as she stares at the soldiers. “I will not tell you twice,” she says coldly before snapping her fingers a single time. The click reverberates around the mountain core.

In an instant, all around the population, hands appear out of nothing, pressing down on their shoulders and forcing them to their knees until the entire city has dropped in respect, whether they want to or not. A wedge of shadow presses through the center of the shield wall, as if a log were splitting apart. The soldiers, grabbed by an unseen force, slide over the ground as they’re torn out of the way.

Almost unimpressed, Acacia waits for the dust to settle and then walks forward by herself through the lines of the local defenders, who all watch her in various states of terror.

She does her best not to smile as she turns her head back forward, looking toward the collection in the center of the mass she is walking toward. Given the clothing and adornments she sees, she feels safe to assume that these people are the governance of the city. Most of them look a little disheveled, as if they had been torn out of their homes on a second’s notice.

Behind her, the blackguards rise again and march forward through the broken blockade. The local soldiers all look at each other, lost and fully overwhelmed. None of them know what to do, as no clear order has been given — chaos has moved through the ranks. Her surprise visit was, in fact, no different than a surprise attack. But the difference is that no blood has been shed, and so, none of them have a clear direction as to what to do. No regiment captain will order his soldiers to fire an arrow, no engineering team will collapse a bridge or a walkway — nobody is going to stop them because her appearance here was so overwhelming and sudden that it breaks their entire defensive doctrine.

Acacia looks at the governing council, a collection of men and women of various bloodlines. “I am Acacia Odofredus Krone,” she says, looking at them in the eyes to make herself clear, even if they already knew who she was. “I am the rightful heir to the throne of this nation and your queen-to-be,” she proclaims, looking around at the eyes of a full city’s worth of people looking her way as she stands there in their core. Blackguards stream past her in all directions, moving down streets and paths by the hundreds as they almost seem to multiply in the seconds where nobody is looking at them. Despite the fact that a few hundred had come over the bridge, by the time the minute passed, easily a thousand have begun distributing themselves everywhere — like ants invading an enemy colony. “Your city is now under my protection,” she explains, her words sounding more like a threat than a generous offer. “Rise.”

Shadows force tens of thousands of bodies to move at once, as Sir Knight’s magic — having long since infiltrated this place and spread — works to make them do so.

“Your Highest Majesty,” says a stuttering elven man, approaching her. “We did not expect your visit.”

“I know,” replies Acacia. “I expect my welcome wouldn’t have been so warm if you had,” she remarks. The man opens his mouth to say something, his face falling pale for a moment, before he lowers his head again. “Do not worry,” she says. “I am not here to harm what is mine and has done wrong, like a child throwing a tantrum against a pet that bites,” promises Acacia as she walks over to another one of the council members, reaching down to help her stand up straight herself as the magic hadn’t quite done the trick. The woman is much, much older and is very feeble and weak on her legs. Acacia looks at them. “As a good steward, I am here to fix what is broken, not cast it away.” Sir Knight stands behind her. “So, where are my missing agents?” she asks plainly.

The council members exchange a series of worried glances.

 

---

 

Acacia sits on a soft sofa out on a balcony that overlooks a waterfall, sipping from a cup of tea that she has brought with her. The tea itself, as well, is an import she had purchased from Tatze’s tea house back home. It’s a display of power, minor as it is, to show that she can bring such trivialities with her at a time like this. She turns her head, looking out through the large stone columns of the open-air balcony, and stares at the waterfall that cascades down the inside of the mountain in the distance.

They’re inside the residence of one of the council members.

“Disrupting this city’s logistics will do great harm to your brother,” says Chicory, standing next to her. “Respectfully, I think this is unwise. The war effort cannot be sustained if you are tearing the core of the nation apart from the inside while the enemy is gnawing on our skin.”

Acacia calmly sips her tea. “Chicory,” says Acacia, not adding anything after as she swirls her tea around, looking at the spiral of tea leaves that spins around in the center of the cup.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” asks Chicory.

“I will remind you that I am intending to dethrone him,” explains Acacia. She turns her head and looks at the royal agent, dressed as a priestess. “I will do what I have to do in order to make this happen, and if that involves blood, I will go so far as well.”

“I understand, but -”

Acacia sets her cup down into the saucer, the sharp clinking cutting Chicory off. “You must come to decide if your intent to serve the royal family means you wish to stay with me, or if it means you are my enemy, Chicory,” explains the youngest princess of the nation, clearly and without any fluff to her statement. “Despite the fact that I am coming to agree with you as a person, given that I have learned that I can still be kind to those souls who I have found to be disagreeable in the past,” starts Acacia. “- Your fence-sitting on the matter of your goals is testing my patience.” She looks at the priestess. “Choose who you are and what you want. But do not speak of sympathy for my brother as you stand behind the person he cast out to die alone.”

“Your Majesty,” says Chicory. “He had to. That was bec-”

“- Enough,” warns Acacia sternly. Chicory falls quiet. Acacia sips her tea. “What is your opinion on the matter at hand?” she asks.

Chicory crosses her arms, leaning back against a pillar. Her eyes wander around the lavish furnishings of the space, the balcony being adorned with luxurious couches, chairs, and tapestries. Ornately hand-crafted lanterns, shining with a magical glow from the glassy crystals contained inside them, wash the place in a slowly pulsing, rhythmic light.

“It’s hard to say with such little information,” replies Chicory. They’re speaking of the matter of the missing royal agents, who had been sent by the capital to investigate a series of troubles here in this city. Missing people, reports of unusual sightings, and so on. While these would never be of any concern for the capital under usual circumstances, for them to be happening in one of the crown jewel cities of the nation has allowed for extra attention to be focused on the matter.

The troubles persist, however, and now the royal agents who had been sent are gone and missing, presumed dead.

This raises even more alarm bells, given that these people are some of the most renowned and capable people in the nation. A royal investigator is no less than a literal champion, capable of everything from slaying dragons to witches. People like this don’t just ‘go missing’, especially at times like the ones they live in now.

“We’ll need to investigate their trail,” says Chicory. “We’ll start where they started, and hopefully, we’ll find out where they ended up.”

Acacia nods, drinking the last of her tea and looking down at the collection of leaves stuck at the base. She tilts the cup and her head, staring at the sludge. They say that you can tell your fortune by looking at tea leaves, but honestly, she’s not sure if it looks like anything discernible.

Sticking a finger into the cup, she pushes the leaves around, squishing them together into a round blob with a long protrusion with an angle at its end. Smiling, she proudly shows it to Chicory. “…What is it?” she asks.

Acacia sighs, setting the cup down and shaking her head. “It’s a duck, Chicory,” she explains, as if it were obvious. The young princess grabs her black cloak, clasping it around her neck, covering her bare shoulders and back with the fabric.

“I see. Very beautifully done, your Majesty.”

“Come,” says Acacia. “Let’s get to work. My kingdom needs me.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” says Chicory, walking after her and sparing a glance back down at the mess inside the cup.

She doesn’t think it looks much like a duck. Maybe a goose?

But it isn’t her place to question royalty, as she is so constantly reminded.

 

---

 

 

This was a little more than what she was bargaining for. She almost got squished when they landed. Everything seems to have fallen quiet now.

Hase lets go of her grip now that the scene has fallen quiet. She dangles there, a few centimeters over the stonework below, her body suspended in an adult’s leather belt that is wound around the inner undercarriage. Letting go with her hands, which had held herself steady on the frame, she opens the belt and drops to the ground on her back.

She sighs in relief, taking the belt and rolling it up as she crawls out from beneath the carriage toward the back. The thief pops her head out from below, looking around herself in confusion for a while. “Where the…” she mutters, not really understanding where she is or how she got here.

It must have been another one of Sir Knight’s tricks. He might think that he and her have settled their problems with another, but he’s a sap if he thinks she’ll be bribed to disappear with some low-level job like the one he had tried to have her vanish into. The girl is a princess; she had no idea. But that explains why Sir Knight is the way he is. That’s fine. Hase doesn’t care about her.

The vildt girl crawls out from beneath the carriage, standing up and dusting herself off as she slinks away. Her eyes are scanning the city, which really does do its best to paralyze her with awe. But she can’t stand still here. She has to get a move on if she’s going to pull this off.

She’s still going with her plan. She’s going to capture Sir Knight and take his stupid armor from him. Actually, she’s even more determined now than before. If he’s an actual, real royal guard, then his armor will be enough for her to live like a noble for the rest of her life, not just a few years.

— Something stirs and rattles behind her.

Hase, panicking and her mind still unsettled by the pressure of being in a new place that she’s never been before, far away from the only home she’s ever known, runs back to the carriage rather than away from it.

She grabs a small box, picking it up to try and blend in.

However, the noise doesn’t come from someone walking around the bend to the alley where the carriage is parked. It comes from inside the carriage. A large crate opens, as if by itself, the lid sliding away as a head full of black hair pokes out and looks around, the man’s eyes locking onto her as she stands there.

Both of them stare at one another, frozen.

Not sure what to do, Hase lifts her arms. “…I carry boxes,” she says, making up a lie on the spot that seems reasonable, even if not asked for, as if she were obligated to answer his questioning expression. Somehow, she doesn’t realize that she isn’t the suspicious person in this situation. “This is my job.”

A red hat pops out of the crate, the man placing it on his head as he climbs out, dusting himself off. He looks down at her as she stands there before jumping off of the carriage and slowly reaching over to take one of the pieces of cargo himself. “So do I,” explains the man in vivid red clothes, grabbing a random crate of apples.

The two of them stare at each other quietly.

“…Keep up the good work…” says Hase quietly, trying to sound convincing while walking away in one direction with the box in her hands.

“You too,” nods the man in red.

Quickly, both of them divert and move down separate alleyways, both of them wondering in their heads how exactly they just managed to pull this off as they chase after their prey.

 

---

 

 

“Wow…” mutters Junis to herself, walking down the street of the city as her eyes dart from place to place as she takes it all in. She’s seen drawings of this city in the textbooks she spent days hunched over and paging through during her studies, always dreaming of moving her life to this place. She’s not really sure why exactly this particular city had won her heart so early, compared to other places like the capital. But after escaping her home and arriving where she did, working for the cruel baron as a maid, maybe her mind had latched onto the concept of living in what may be the most secure place in the entire world.

Lifting her eyes, she looks up toward the hollow cavern ceiling that hangs above them at a titan’s height and at the floating lights that drift around — magic particulate that has nowhere to go. While the city is certainly abuzz and not in its natural state at the moment, there is a beauty to its streets that she can imagine as she walks through them. It looks like they're preparing a festival. Carriages full of barrels are moving around the streets, making deliveries to all manner of odd places. Barrels that she assumes are full of ale are stacked along the edge of the city and in dozens of streets. They must really like to go wild here during their special days. Houses sit stacked on houses in all manner of angles and directions, like the stacked stones of a cairn. Balconies and walkways just out and intersect in all manner of directions. People are moving around, bustling from one hustling merchant’s stall to the next as they go about their days. Junis turns her head, looking at a sign.

‘Adventurers’ Guild’.

They even have one hear — together with a dungeon like in her own city that is accessible across one of the bridges. Laughter and cheers come from the other side of the heavy door, as people live their lives just as rambunctiously as they do back home.

She considers opening it for a moment, but then keeps on walking, wanting to explore in broad width rather than depth at the moment.

Junis walks down the road, nobody paying her much mind as she doesn’t really stand out that much in any way, which she actually likes a lot. There’s something to be said about just being… nobody. It’s nice to just be another woman in the crowd. She makes a stop at a vendor, buying some sort of local drink that seems to be popular. It’s sold in what look like old potion bottles, but all filled with the same brightly green and somewhat bubbly, very thin, liquid. If you pay extra, the vendor will give you a small wooden witch’s hat-shaped cork to reseal it with. But she opts to skip that. It feels like it would bring bad luck in a way she can’t explain.

A group of laughing fairies flies past her, weaving down the street as they chase one another.

She just spends her time exploring, looking, and thinking about what life would be like if she lived here.

Eventually, Junis finds herself in a large, half-moon-shaped plaza near the edge of the inner pillar of the cavern. There’s a fountain in the middle, adorned with statues of some people who were very important here a long, long time ago. Around it is a half ring of benches on the outer side, some of which are sat at, others of which are empty. Sipping from her bottle, Junis looks at a black, scruffy-looking dog that lies on the cobblestones beneath one of them, and she heads over toward that bench, sitting down. She swings her legs over the bench, staring at the city.

“And?” asks a growling, deep voice. “Is it what you expected?” asks Sir Knight.

Junis watches the crowd in the distance from this place that is just a tiny bit away from them — not enough to make her separate from them, but far enough that she still has enough room to breathe her own air.

“It’s beautiful,” she says, watching the lives of the people here.

In a way that’s hard to explain, it feels like they are completely different from the lives she sees people living at home every day. Even if these people are doing the same things, having the same conversations, and engaging in the same habits and routines, there’s something about being in a place that’s so different that makes all of these mundane happenings seem almost exotic again. Perhaps that is the bewitching spell of travel. Junis watches the world, sealed below endless tons of rock and stone. “I wonder what my life would have been like,” she starts, her finger resting on the lip of the bottle that she has set on the stone bench. Idly, Junis lightly tips it and spins it around on its base. “If I had come here instead of our city,” she says, talking to the dog that is lying below her feet.

She thinks for a while as the black dog lies there quietly. “I know it’s a little… selfish,” she says. “But I wonder if I would have been happier this way or that way.” It’s quiet as she spins the bottle, the green liquid inside it swirling around.

“What if you could pretend?” asks the dog in Sir Knight's voice.

Junis blinks, looking down at him. “Huh?”

The dog looks up at her, not having lifted its head. She looks at his eyes for a second, but then looks away, because the sight of his mouth moving and contorting to speak human words is a little unsettling, honestly. “If you could play a pretend game,” starts Sir Knight. “In which you were the happiest person you could be,” he explains. “Then what does that person feel like?” he asks.

“What does that person feel like…?” repeats Junis quietly, looking at the fountain.

The black dog slowly sits upright and then shakes itself out noisily, skin and fur flapping around as it rests on its hind quarters.

“I don’t know,” she replies after a minute of thinking. “I’m not really, you know, good at these sorts of imaginary things,” explains Junis, scratching her cheek with one hand as the other holds the bottle that comes to rest. “I guess…” She’s quiet for a while as they watch the world go by. “I guess I’m actually pretty happy about my life right now, really,” she admits, almost guiltily, as if this were a terrible thing. “If that makes sense.” Junis looks down at the black dog, resting her hand on its head and scratching behind its ears. “But, is it weird if that feels wrong for me to be?” The dog gives no response, which, under normal circumstances, would perhaps be the ideal scenario. But his leg does twitch as her nails land behind a specific corner of the back of his ear. Junis notices, pressing there for a little while with her nails and laughing as his leg hits the ground. “I guess I always lived my life figuring that I’d be happy when I did this one thing in a year, or I’d be happy when I got here and achieved this other thing — because I did something else, and so on, and so on,” she explains, shrugging. “…But now I’m actually pretty happy before any of that all happened, and… and well, I guess I don’t really know what to do now?” ponders Junis. “I mean, what do you do when you’ve been working to become somebody, but then one day you wake up and realize you’re already that person? Where do you go from there?”

He nods, and it’s quiet for a while longer. “Personally?” replies Sir Knight, looking up at her after a moment of thought. “I became a dog.”

Junis snorts, covering her mouth with one hand to stifle herself in an attempt to not make the strangers around her think she’s weird. A snotty dog’s nose touches her other hand, which was on its head. Junis yelps, throwing the arm back, losing her balance, and falling off of the back of the bench on the ground.

A passing shadow is kind enough to make sure that her drink doesn’t spill, though.

 

---

 

 

But as lively and brightly vivid the city may be on its higher bridges and on the many levels surrounded by shining lights that float through the hollow cavern, the deeper one goes, the darker things get. The large, airy, open plazas and streets begin to tighten the moment one takes one of the many staircases or walkways that lead down toward the insides of the massive pillar that holds the city aloft. Its core has been cut through in all manner of weaving tunnels that lead to homes, shops, warehouses, and other places that don’t have any windows or any walls that aren’t made out of hardened rock.

'The Whistling' is what the people of the city call the lower section — where it is, of course, much cheaper to live, given its confinement. The name stems from the fact that the rising cavern air from deep, deep below rises up through the stonework tunnels and cuts along the many sharp corners, creating a prolonged whistling noise that never really seems to stop. It’s like the exhalation of a banshee that never had taken in a single breath to begin with, like the hissing of a kettle over a fire that burns without fuel.

And the Whistling is much less lively than had been the case above. Here, people hustle past each other through the tight corridors, doing their best to not make eye contact or even acknowledge the presence of others as they slide past them an inch away from each other.

Tapestries and fabric curtains hang over openings to domiciles, rather than doors or such being fastened into the rock. Some had tried in the past, as is evidenced by the many pieces of rock on the chipped corners of entrances. But it would seem that the powerful gusts that break through here like raging spirits every so often had torn them off of their hinges — blowing strong enough by the time it reached them to pull deep metal bolts out of stone. So all of the doors here are covered instead, like this.

Some are closed; others are open, with people sitting inside and watching those who walk by as there is little else to do. Gambling and drinking become more and more popular the deeper one goes, and eventually smoke begins to fill the tunnels — not because of fires or hearths, but because of the dens full of the haze of burning drugs that lull those who dwell in them into long, peaceful sleeps that are unlike anything the body could ever give a dreamer by itself. While this is technically illegal, there is no enforcement against the practice, unless someone in city politics is going after a specific target they wish to strike against with an easy weapon.

In the Whistling, one staircase leads up, one staircase leads down, each on either end of the massive pillar.

And down it goes—far, very far.

The Whistling stretches on for dozens of such passageways, taking hours by the time you begin to reach the lower floors on foot simply because of the almost mind-breaking back and forth through what appears to be the same corridor over and over again. It is only ever differentiated from those that came before because it is darker than the last, because the fabrics of the curtains that cover doors become ever thinner, older, and more tattered and covered in the waxy residue of old smoke from generations past, until eventually one reaches the bottom floor.

The bottom of the Whistling is as far as people are permitted by the city to go into the abyss — at least the normal citizens. The people who live here are those who do not even count as destitute, so much so that the city officials and tax collectors only spare a glance at the number of heads who live here every few years. There is nothing to collect from these people. If there are any children here, they do well to never make themselves seen, always only peeking out from far-off doorways, as if checking if they needed to run away because of the sound of approaching people.

Nobody comes down this far, not from the city. Only people looking for trouble come down to the last of the Whistling.

“What do you know?” asks Chicory, sitting on the floor on her knees as she looks across the room at an old woman. The room, her home, is really just nothing more than a single square of loveless rock. The only way in or out is the hole that acts as a door, covered by what Chicory is very sure is actually an old burial shroud.

There are still stains on it.

Fabrics and clothes — old, cut dresses and shirts with deep, brown stains on them around tattered segments — cover the floor and the walls all around them. They’re stuck to it with a paste, or hung from old bolts driven into the walls. Anything that has been discarded by those above is used here. A table with three legs sits there, upside down, between them so that the broken legs jut upward like poles. The woman has hung more clothes from them; these are still dripping dry.

“Don’t know anything,” replies the old woman, her bare hand scooping around through a pot that is filled with some kind of… mixture. A soup, maybe? Chicory isn’t sure. She watches as the woman stirs it with her fingers, her hand half buried in the goop, before she scoops her fingers out and sips from her own cupped palm before licking her fingers very slowly. “Haven’t heard anything,” says the woman, shaking her head. “Whistling is too loud,” she explains, before looking back down at her soup. She sticks her hand in again, stirring it around some more, as if it would be a problem if it settled.

Chicory stares at her. The woman is old, much older than anyone she has ever known. Her face looks like it had once been a hard one, but her crooked nose signals to have been broken many times over her life, and her dotting, some-there, some-not, teeth show similarities to that life pattern.

People who live in places like this know that shutting up means life. The Whistling isn’t unique. There are places like this in every city, from the capital to their own; there are corners where silence is the only currency. Those who see things and those who say things pay high prices. This woman has learned this lesson from the day she was born in a place like this, a long, long time ago.

Chicory takes out a coin, puts it on the upside table, and slides it over.

“I need to know if you saw anyone in the last month,” she says. “Anyone who looks like they didn’t belong down here.”

The old woman looks at the coin. Slowly, she shakes out the food between her dripping fingers and reaches for it, picking it up to look it over and smearing a dark green, thick broth onto it. “Ain’t no stores down here,” she says, setting the coin back down onto the table. A splatter of the soup that covers it causes it to stick for a second as she slides it back. “Ain’t seen nothing,” says the old woman, shaking her head as she goes back to eating her soup.

Chicory stares at her in silence for a time, watching her eat. She then stands up, pulling at her own sleeves. She takes off her priestess’ robe, folding it together into a neat bundle, before sitting back down and holding it out. “If you can tell me what you saw, it’s yours,” says Chicory. She rubs her hand over the material. “Pure northern cotton with a silk lining,” she explains, running her fingers over the white, regal robe. She scratches it with her nails, letting the sound fill the air as the old woman eats another scoop of her soup from her hand.

The old woman slurps noisily, watching Chicory for a while, before taking another scoop of her meal that drips down her chin and front. “I had such pretty hair too, when I was young,” she says after a minute, licking her hand ‘clean’ again. “Like you.” She reaches out. Chicory pulls the robe back, so that she doesn’t get green on it. “I bet your hair smells pretty,” says the old woman.

“A deal?” asks Chicory.

The old woman stares at her, almost leaning over the table now. She slowly nods. Chicory lowers her arms, giving her the robe. The old woman holds it, feeling it with her hands and squeezing it, and then she lifts it to her face and breathes in deeply as she smells it. Green stains cover the fresh fabric.

Chicory sits there quietly, her hands resting on her lap. “What did you see?” she asks, watching as the old woman holds her face buried deeply in the robe.

After an unnervingly long time, she lowers it to only cover her mouth and looks at Chicory. “Four men went through the Whistling three weeks ago,” she explains quietly, lowering her voice and speaking into the folded robe so that her betrayal of the dark place’s secrets doesn’t carry around the echoing tunnel. “But only two men came back to the Whistling one week ago.”

“What?!” asks Chicory, surprised. “They came back up?” She leans in toward the old woman, who now pulls back, as if afraid she were going to take away the robe again. “Where are they? What happened to them?” asks the royal agent with a sense of urgency in her voice.

The old woman, her haggard face still half-buried in the robe, watches her quietly as she studies her. “I had daughters like you,” says the old woman, speaking into the robe that is covered in assorted off-yellow smears. “They smelled so pretty,” she says. “I smelled their hair often,” she explains, rubbing the side of her face on the robe and feeling it against her cheek.

“What happened to them?” repeats Chicory, a faint whistling coming from the corridor behind them. The burial shroud flaps in the breeze. She doesn’t receive a response, as the old woman just sits there, rubbing her face on the fabric of the robe quietly. Chicory sighs, reaching down to the leather strap around her leg, and she pulls out a knife. A second later, there’s a sharp slice and a gold mass dangles in the air. A thick braid of her hair, held in a bundle by a band on either end, dangles up in her fist as the last thing that this woman would consider to be ‘of value’ that she has to trade on her person. “Where are they?” repeats Chicory again a third time as the old woman reaches out with a shaking hand. Chicory snatches her wrist, grabbing it tightly. “Where. Are. They?” asks Chicory firmly at the old woman, who lets out a sort of long, groaning exhalation as her red eyes are locked onto the braid.

“The Whistler ate them,” says the old woman.

“Not your daughters. The men,” replies Chicory.

She stares blankly, her eyes glazing over as she looks at Chicory, confused. The old woman looks around her room, and then back at the priestess. “What men?” she asks, looking at her in confusion. “Who are you?” asks the old woman in worry, as if she didn’t recognize Chicory at all. “Oh! I had daughters just like you once,” she mutters, her eyes looking down at her soup. “Pretty… They were so pretty.”

Chicory studies her face and then sighs, letting go of her frail, thin wrist. She gets up. The woman doesn’t have anything else. She’s gone. The information is lost due to her age.

“Dear. Dear,” calls the old woman as the royal agent turns around to leave. Chicory looks back at her. She’s holding out the braid of hair. “You forgot this,” says the old woman, suddenly almost genuinely concerned, as if the cut braid of hair was an actual possession that Chicory had left behind by mistake.

“It’s yours to keep,” replies Chicory, shaking her head.

She leaves through the hole in the wall, pushing the twisted burial shroud back into place, but not before seeing the old woman drop the braid of hair into her pot of soup and stir it around with her hand.

“What do you think?” she asks the hallway as she steps out into it.

Acacia stands there, leaning against the wall. “I think you’re gonna get a cold,” she remarks, looking at Chicory. Lifting a hand, Acacia reaches into her cloak, using Sir Knight’s little trick. Her hand rummages around inside the void until she hoists out a rucksack that had been floating inside with great effort. She drops the bag down onto the ground, letting Chicory dig through it to find a spare set of clothes. “What do you think she meant?” asks the girl, looking toward the end of the long corridor that leads to an iron gate that blocks off any deeper progression. “’The Whistler ate them’?” she asks.

Chicory throws on a replacement robe, which may actually be one of Junis’, considering that it doesn’t fit quite right. She shoulders the rucksack. “If I had to guess?” asks the royal agent, walking alongside Acacia as they head toward the gate at the end of the corridor together. It’s a series of iron bars that reach from the ground to the ceiling of the cavern tunnel. It had once been chained, a long time ago. But the chains seem to have been broken apart rather recently by powerful magic. “They fell.”

Acacia nods.

That makes sense. If this place is called ‘the Whistling’, then it only makes sense that ‘the Whistler’ is what the people here ‘lovingly’ name the abyss from which the heated winds rise.

“I think so too,” she replies, her hand pressing against the gate and slowly pushing it ajar. “But this doesn’t add up.”

Chicory nods, as the two of them share the same thoughts.

Five royal agents come to this city.

Four are witnessed going down into the abyss.

Three come back up — Two weeks later — only to presumably then immediately fall to their deaths as they hurriedly made their way back to the surface.

This all doesn’t add together.

There are still too many questions and missing factors.

The two of them stand there for a while. “Thank you, Chicory,” says Acacia sincerely after a moment of getting over her own ego, nodding to the agent. “I really appreciate what you just did,” she explains, placing a hand on Chicory’s arm and looking up at her. “I mean it.”

Chicory shakes her head, looking back down into the darkness that the gated staircase leads down toward. “It’s just hair,” she says. “It’ll grow back,” remarks the royal agent.

Both of them are, however, thankful for the gust of air that comes from below, a shrill, sharp whistling filling the length of the corridor. It overpowers the one loud sound of wet slurping that had been coming from behind them.

Acacia, having tallied all of this up in her mind, can't help but count down just another number further to what comes first before all numbers.

 

---

 

 

Fires burn across the countryside, the hungry flames rising up along the legs of towers like swarms of insects crawling up the legs of corpses that litter the battlefields — which they do. Bodies fall by the thousands every day all across the horizons visible from homes and cities as armies of soldiers collide into one another again and again. Swords plunge into hearts that had grown strong from nuzzling on their mother’s love for years, only to be pierced through by metal. Faces that had once smiled for morning sunshine and the wiles of songbirds now scream as explosions blast down all around them. Others carrying a dead hardness to their eyes, as if they were already one of the many bodies lying tattered at their feet. These marching dead press forward with their hands and arms held stiffly as they strike with weapons and magic, killing the same as they themselves are being killed.

Skirmishes have erupted everywhere, coming closer and closer to the capital of the kingdom as the enemy nation of the Empire from the north-east breaks through the defensive lines and pushes on to the next row of walls, towers, and fortresses.

Casters who had studied the ways of magic their entire lives die out through unspectacular deaths as wayward arrows plunge through their necks. Men and women with swords and spears who might have been great heroes in times of peace, in which their skills could be put to use in protecting their kind from the monsters that roam the world, splatter onto the rocks as weapons of siege and power destroy the ground they stand on. People who could have become great scholars and creators instead fracture and shatter apart like broken glass as the ice-spells that had washed over them freeze their flesh and bones.

It does not matter if it is night or day; both are filled with the same endless screaming from all sides. The only difference is that at night, that is when the monsters come.

Drawn in from the bloodshed all around them, drawn in from the mass of carcasses that is too great to clean away with dignity at this stage of war, they feast. Those soldiers who sit in their camps at night by fires listen and hear the cracking of bones out in the meadows, and the ripping of wet, splattering flesh as teeth sink into the bodies of their compatriots of the prior day, who did make it back with them. By the time the morning comes and the sun rises, there is only red grass that remains, before legions of soldiers crash into each other again anew as they fight once more for the same patches of dirt and mud that they had fought the day before.

And then the night comes.

And then bones crunch and gristle pops in the darkness, stealing the sleep of those who lie there, staring with quiet horror toward the stars above their heads that shine with almost mocking light. These people might remember the days when they stared at those same stars, back as children, back when the world seemed so fantastical and amazing, back when they dreamed of adventure and great things — back when they dreamed of becoming great people. Now those same exact stars, glowing with the same exact light as a decade ago, almost seem to be mocking, rather than inspiring. It’s like they’re the laughing eyes of a great spider that hangs over the world, watching as they eat themselves and waiting for its chance to simply drop down and take what is left. They wonder if tomorrow it will be their turn to be eaten.

It’s not even the monsters that kill them. It’s always the other men and women. But the monsters come and eat, grow, and multiply. The burning forests are full of them. The cratered hills are pock-marked with burrows and dens full of teeth and claws.

But when the day comes, they’re nowhere to be seen. There are only ever other people.

Horror is what life has become in these parts of the kingdom of Odofredus Krone.

And in the distant regions, far away from the front of the war, monsters grow just the same — only perhaps less abundantly, given the lack of meat, like they have there.

In the distant north-west, things stalk the flat lands in packs of sinew and gangrene. In the south-west, near the neighboring nation, a growth of undead has been reported — because of the abundance of death present there too, given the civil war. In the south-east, near the ocean, ships seem to go missing before ever arriving at their destination harbors — as if having been swallowed whole by monsters that only appear in the densest, thickest ocean fogs, so that they cannot ever be seen.

There only seems to be one place that is really quiet in the world these days.

The core central rebellion of Acacia Odofredus Krone is because of the seemingly endless legions of soldiers who follow her banner. Strange, mysterious men and women in black armor, the color of old gravestones, march day and night through the forests and dark places to clear them out with swords and axes. They work from sunrise to sunrise without pause, building roads, towers, and stops along the way where travelers and people escaping from their old homes can find a place to breathe for just a moment. They guard the region, repelling the few spare soldiers the kingdom can try to send to squash her rebellion. Nobody can really explain where they came from — this seemingly impossible force that causes not only the stability of the region to be remarkable in the context of this burning, inwardly collapsing world. But also, it’s economic prospects surpass those of the rest of the kingdom as people from all around — drawn by this stability and promise — make their way there on the run from war and monsters toward what feels like the new heart of the world as they stream past the banners held proudly by soldiers in black armor.

To say that the war is escalating is an understatement. To say that the world is becoming more volatile by the day is an understatement.

However, this promise of safety, even if it comes from a person who has contrastingly rebelled against the nation itself, is enough to win the support of thousands. The people in the city itself, many of whom were skeptical at first, are won over when they see how much their lives have begun improving thanks to all of the changes. The people who come swear loyalty and allegiance to her because of the fact that they were offered shelter here to begin with — results speak louder than words.

And the results of the game that has been playing out are clear to see for everyone who is watching the stars with horrified eyes every single night, waiting to find out if they are the next ones to become the prey of the enemy or that of monsters. The results show clearly that the kingdom of Acacia Odofredus Krone is a safe haven, a pinnacle of development in a dying world, and a beacon of prosperity that shines brightly like no other.

As such, it is as great a threat to many as it is a bounty to those who have begun to find their way there.

War pushes in deeper from the borders, coming from the north-east from the enemy and soon from the south-west, as the civil war from the southern nation begins to creep across the under-guarded border.