We approached the gates to the town a bit faster than we’d been traveling before. As we got closer, I noted that the walls were much more intimidating than our chain link fence. though they weren’t ridiculously large. I noticed that they seemed to be made of one solid block of stone rather than multiple blocks stuck together with some form of concrete, and I frowned. The only way I could think of to do that would be having people like me who were talented in shaping objects with mana.

We soon reached the gates, and the guards let us in without any fanfare, simply looking us over before dismissing us outright. We stepped through the gates, and I was greeted by a multitude of people walking here and there. I looked around, noticing that practically everyone had enhanced their mana in some form, having everything from unusual skin tones to scales growing on their arms. I gaped around like a tourist as we walked through the town, which was suffused with the same language that the group I was with spoke.

Interestingly, even though they spoke the same language, I couldn’t spot a single person who had the black eyes and hair that the group I was with had. There were the bright colored eyes and hair from enhanced mana, but other than that the hair color was almost exclusively blonde or a light brown, and their eyes were all green or blue with the occasional grey.

We walked through the crowd, with Alya stopping someone to ask a short question to one of the people walking around. She got a short answer, and I managed to catch the words for left and right a couple times, so I assumed we were getting directions to some place. I sat around, then followed along with the group as we slowly walked through the streets.

We soon arrived at a moderately sized building made of the same smooth stone that made up the walls. We walked into the building, leaving the cart outside, but they grabbed out all of the cores from it beforehand. I looked around at a space that reminded me of a bank, a few people standing behind a counter, with a pretty marble looking floor, fused together into seemingly one piece like the rest of the buildings I'd seen.

The group went up to one of the people at the counter, and handed over all of the cores to them. I was wondering what exactly the point of that was, when the cores were weighed, and then Alya was handed a bag filled with a bunch of chips of what seemed to be the same material the cores were made of. Looking at them, they had a small pattern on top of them.

Dmiyo then gestured for me to do the same, and I went up, handing over the four cores that I'd collected on the way to this town. They were weighed, and I was handed back a bunch of the chips of what had to be cores. Looking at them, they were a bit larger than a quarter, but octagonal in shape rather than the clean circle I was used to. At this point, I realized that they were likely to be a form of currency. They were small, convenient pieces of core, which could be used in any manner of applications. It was like how our coins used to be made of something we thought to have value, like gold or silver.

I took my money, and put it in my backpack, thanked the person with one of the few words I'd picked up, and followed my group back outside. Alya picked another random stranger to accost, and then we were off in yet another direction, though I wasn't sure where we were going.

We soon arrived at a place that had a cup engraved on a sign out in front of it, along with some symbols that I assumed were the written language of the place.

We walked in to see that it was a tavern, and my instant thought was that it would likely be an inn as well, simply due to the standard fantasy trope. I shook my head, fantasy trope, what have I gotten myself into. We went up to the person behind the counter, a large man with a prominent beer belly and scale covered forearms, and the group began to converse with him for a bit before measuring out a certain number of the chips they'd gotten from trading in the cores. In return, they were handed two keys, and they then started talking with him again, gesturing towards me. I was soon measuring out around twenty of my own chips for the man. Once I was done he handed me an old fashioned skeleton key attached to a plate with a symbol on it, which I was hoping was the room number.

Before heading up though, we sat down at one of the tables, and waved over one of the servers, an adorably small girl with mouse ears. They were soon ordering something, showing the room key to the small girl, so I showed my room key as well, then looked helplessly to Alya until she took pity on me and ordered something for me.

We weren't waiting long for the food to arrive, and I got a steak of some kind slathered in a bright red sauce, along with what looked like green mashed potatoes. Taking a bite of each, the green mashed potatoes tasted closer to broccoli, with a much smoother texture than normal mashed potatoes. The steak on the other hand, wasn't covered in a spicy sauce like I'd expected, but rather had a sort of fruity flavor to the red sauce, which went surprisingly well with it, reminding me of pork and apples in a way.

I finished off my meal with gusto, and then the group chatted while I picked up a word here and there. I thought I'd figured out the grammar system reasonably well, but I still had a lot of words to learn before I became fluent. The chat soon died off, and I followed the others to the stairs at the back of the room.

At the top of the stairs were lots of rooms, each with a symbol I was assuming to be the number system on them. I walked around for a bit until I found the one that matched the wooden plate attached to my key, and let out a sigh of relief as it opened. Inside, the room had a bed, a wardrobe, and a desk with a chair looking over a window, all made of seamless looking wood. I was starting to believe that everything was made by people like me, who could shape things using magic, rather than having people chop things up and connect them with glue, nails, screws, and the like.

I shrugged off my backpack, put it in the wardrobe, and undressed before hopping in bed, placing my cuirass and clothing into the wardrobe alongside my backpack. I lay in bed for a while, wondering how on earth I was going to find a way back to earth, but eventually I fell back asleep, thinking it couldn't take to long to find my way back.

I woke up in the morning with one major goal - getting some new clothing. I got out of bed, dressed in my horribly dirty clothing, threw on my cuirass and backpack, and trudged downstairs. I arrived to see the group I was traveling with already sitting down having breakfast. Sitting down, I waved over the serving girl, and after showing my room key, I was prompted to give it up. Handing it over, my room key was soon replaced with a breakfast of some kind of porridge with some shredded meat in it.

Thinking that trading breakfast for the room key was a good way to get people to check out, I finished off the mild but still tasty food. We soon went outside, and I started talking to Dmiyo, saying the word for shirt and pants a few times, until he figured out that I wanted to get new ones, and he nodded, having Alya grab yet another local to ask for directions. We took a sharp turn onto a wide road, and soon I could see a multitude of shops with symbols, none of which I recognized, with writing in the same language I'd seen elsewhere beneath it.

We stopped at one store that actually had something I recognized on its sign, a tunic and pants. Heading inside, I was met with many different types of clothing. I gaped around for a while, before we were greeted by an old lady, with the common blonde hair and blue eyes I'd seen everywhere in this city, her horizontally slit pupils making me wonder what monster she'd gotten them from. Alya instantly started talking with her, then gestured towards me, prompting her to come up to me with a measuring tape, and started to take my measurements. I stood there awkwardly, arms to the sides like the default position of a video game character, until she was satisfied, and then she went back a bit and grabbed some bolts of cloth.

I was wondering if we should leave, as I thought it would likely take a while to get it done, when she, rather than grabbing scissors or something to cut the material, simply measured out some marks, then dragged her finger along it, cutting out a small circle, then cutting the bolt of cloth, cutting out two more pieces. She then ran her fingers up the side of the tunic, fusing it together, and used the two pieces she cut out to make simple sleeves. I was impressed. She made a sleeved tunic in less time than it took for a coffee place to make me a drink. I watched in admiration as she repeated the actions for two more tunics, then three pairs of pants and a couple boxers.

She handed them all to me, and I stuffed them into my backpack that had been mostly empty after I used up all the scales for my cuirass. I then took out the bag of chips I had gotten, as she took out a scale and put some weights on one side. It took a majority of my chips to match the weight, which made me very surprised, but Alya seemed to think it was fair, so I dismissed it and finished measuring out what had to be around two hundred chips.

I had just gotten my clothing in my backpack, when I was shoved into a small booth, with a cloth covering. I was confused for a bit, until I realized that this had to be a changing booth, so I was soon wriggling out of my current clothing and into the new ones I'd just gotten.

My first thought was that they were surprisingly comfortable. I'd expected them to be rough and coarse, but they weren't too different from modern cotton clothing. Stepping out of the changing booth, I got a nod from Alya and Lilya, while the guys were being guys and ignoring the fact that I'd changed clothing.

Stepping out to the street, I felt a bit more relaxed blending in with the people walking around. We were soon walking back the way we'd come into the city, and arrived outside. The first thing we did was get back to sparring practice, where I was beaten into the ground as per usual. After I was done getting brutalized, I wasn't sure if we were going hunting, or if our journey was to continue. I wasn’t until we'd killed a few more monsters and started heading back to the city that I knew we were simply hunting for the day. This time, we loaded up the wagon with the bodies of a steel boar and some snake like monster that I didn't know the name of.

We headed back into the city, traded in our cores for more of the chips, and then stopped by a building we hadn't been to before. Walking in, I was hit with the smell of blood, and I realized that this had to be the equivalent of the butchery, and was likely one of the reasons that our group had a small wagon in the first place. We traded in the bodies for more of the chips, and they handed me a share of them, then we went back out to hunt again.

The day was almost over by the time we had finished our second hunt, so we headed back to town to get a meal that wasn't the dried meat we'd been snacking on. The next few days, we went out hunting some more, and I was starting to wonder if I would have to go explore for another gate on my own when one morning there was a loud horn, making me jump in surprise.

I was quite confused as to what the horn was, and looked to the group to see their faces filled with worry. I looked around the rest of the common room, seeing everyone match their expressions. I shook my head, I needed to find out what was going on, but I didn't have enough fluency in the language to understand when i asked "what?" simply getting words I didn’t know in response.

The group was soon heading for the walls, and I was going with them, along with basically everyone who was wearing any form of weapon, along with a few people with a staff made of some odd extremely dark looking wood. We soon arrived at the walls, and we climbed up, standing on the six foot or so wide area on top of it.

In the distance, all I could see was a cloud of dust rising, and I was starting to get worried that there was an absolutely massive goblin wave, or that there was some gigantic monster coming. It didn't take too long however, until they first came over the horizon, and with my new vision, I could make them out well enough to figure out what they were.

They weren't the monsters I had expected, they were simply humans. They wore matching uniforms, each of them having a cuirass of some kind of metal along with a red undercoat. Once they got closer, I got a better look at their weapons. they each had what looked like a wand, along with a shield, and a sword hanging by their side, likely to be used as a backup weapon.

Looking around, I saw serious expressions on every single person on the walls, so I turned to Alya and asked "what?" in their language.

"Tesser," Alya said with a look of disgust. I wasn't sure why they warranted such dislike, but I wasn't going to argue. As they approached, I could make out more and more details about them. They seemed to be organized into groups of people who had the same mana enhancements, people with warg ears or eyes in one group, people with syth characteristics in another, and so on.

They soon came into arrow range, and hundreds of arrows were sent flying. Iosyo said something that I could only interpret as "idiots." I looked at him in confusion, until the arrows hit something in the air, and stopped cold before falling to the ground. I watched, as a few mages, ignoring the failure of the archers, sent fireballs flying towards the Tesser, only to have them splash harmlessly on the the same thing that the arrows had hit. With the flame splashing around, I could see it was a dome shaped something that wasn't letting anything through.

I sucked in my breath, they had freaking forcefields. As the army continued to move towards us, I started to worry. Did I really want to be up on the wall? I wasn't willing to shoot at some people just because they were attacking a town I was in. I took a few steps back from the wall, only to have Dmiyo sigh and gesture for me to go. I hid my head in shame, but I wasn't willing to kill people simply over them attacking a town I was inside.

I walked back towards the inn we had stayed at, thinking about what was going to happen, worrying about my group. I knew they were strong, but I had no clue how their strength measured up to the average denizens of this world.

I soon arrived at the inn, and knocked on the door to be let in. Luckily, the rotund owner opened it for me, and asked me something I couldn't understand, only catching the "What." I took a random guess he was asking what was attacking, so I answered "Tesser." He sucked in his breath and his expression changed from worry to what seemed to be almost outright horror. I was starting to think that these Tesser had a very bad reputation.

The next hour was spent waiting in worry, until I started to hear a loud banging noise, like hundreds of people banging on pots, but after a minute or so it stopped, and then I started to hear yells, and soon after, screams. I tried to drown them out, wishing I was willing to work on making something, while knowing that I should save my mana just in case.

The sounds of battle continued, sounds of explosions, sounds of people screaming in pain, and a constant background noise of yells. Eventually, I noticed I was playing with my bullets in worry, checking that all of my magazines were full. I repeatedly made sure I'd loaded up my special bullets, as I wasn't sure if my guns would be able to get through their shields. I shook my head, why was I worrying about my bullets getting through their shields. If the invaders made it through, I was just going to surrender.

It had been what couldn't have been more than thirty minutes, but what felt like hours, when I heard a massive crashing noise, and a loud cheer. I bit my lip, I hoped that wasn't the Tesser getting through somewhere. I took in a deep breath not long after, as I started to hear yells and screams getting closer and closer to me. I tried to drown it out, but started to get more and more tense, taking my rifle and holding it not quite at the ready.

The yells and screams had reached us, when the door was crushed inwards, and the round innkeeper instantly put his hands up, and started saying something, when the soldier with wolf ears got a sneer on his face and pointed the wand towards him. The innkeeper said something, voice trembling, and the soldier said something in an arrogant tone before saying a word and fire streamed out of the wand he was holding, the innkeepers eyes widening for half a second before he went up in flames.

The soldier then started to turn the wand towards me when I pulled the trigger, making the soldier writhe as electricity burst from the bullet, then collapse, a clear hole in his armor. I let out a breath in a shaky manner, then raised my gun up again. I had already shot one of them, and if they noticed, they were not going to be happy about it. I shoved the gibbering little voice that kept repeating that I had killed a man into the back of my head, and took a deep, shuddering breath.

I stood there, every second stretching to infinity as I watched the doorway, waiting for the next soldier to poke their head through it. I didn’t have long to wait, even if it felt like it, as another soldier stepped through the door. He went to check on the soldier I had shot, and I took aim. I didn’t let him notice me, and fired again, hitting them in the skull. I watched in an emotional numbness as his brains splattered out upon the ground.

I stayed back from the doorway, just waiting for the next one, and this time one came through with their shield leveled, covering almost all of them. Unfortunately for the soldier, their head wasn’t covered, and I was a good shot, so their fate was the same as the previous two. I took another shuddering breath, and pulled the bolt back and pushed it forwards, trying to comfort myself in the routine of shooting, something which had always calmed me down.

I tried to convince myself to just think of them as targets, but I couldn’t get the image of their blood and organs splashing from out behind thm out of my brain. I sat there, waiting until the next one, and this one rushed inside, shield in front of them. I waited for a second as they got inside, then fired the second they lowered their shield to look around. The shot painted a table in brain matter, the freezing bullet encasing their entire head in ice, the brain coming out in a slushy mixture.

I took a deep breath, I only had six shots left, but I had plenty of magazines. The next to come through the door were two of the soldiers, one soldier covering the top, one covering their front. I sent a bullet through the gap in the shields, but only got a loud scream of pain, the first time I hadn’t gotten a kill with one of my bullets. The one screaming lowered their shield however, and I got a look, their shoulder had been entirely encased in ice. I fired my next bullet, which landed squarely in the center of their chest, encasing that in ice as the other soldier raised his wand towards me.

Pulling back the bolt this time seemed to take an eternity as he aimed at me, and the only reason I managed to get off the shot was because their wand got caught on the body of the soldier I’d killed. I took a deep breath after that happened, and decided to retreat to the top of the stairs, where they wouldn’t have as good of a shot towards me, but I could still cover the doorway.

I was sitting there, waiting for someone else to come through, when I started to smell smoke. They’d set the building on fire. I ran towards the back of the building, there was a window there, and I figured I could survive the drop from the second story just fine. As I reached it however, I spotted some soldiers watching the back, and one of them sent a stream of fire towards the window. I cursed, and fired back at the direction they were at, and was pleased when I heard a scream after the explosion of that enchanted bullet.

I looked out the window again, and this time there was nobody to fling fire at me, so I dove out, rolling on the ground as I landed, as much to put out the flames licking at my brand new clothing as to alleviate the momentum of my fall. I came back up, only to see a wand pointed directly at me face. I raised my hands, sure of my fate as the man said something that would probably be very rude if I could understand it, and tightened his grip on his wand. He had just started to say the word the other soldier had said to blast the innkeeper when another soldier with a very prominent crest on his helm barked something at him.

The man angrily yelled back, but he clearly wasn’t the one in charge as he backed down, keeping his wand trained at me, but no longer allowed to kill me. The soldier in charge, who was absolutely massive, and had ears that I didn’t recognize, took my rifle from me, and then started to grab my pistol when he sharply turned around. I looked where he was looking, as the group I was with came around the corner. They closed with him before he could even raise his wand. The massive man managed to use his shield long enough to get out his sword though, and then started to duel with Dmiyo, as Iosyo circled behind. Alya and Lilya simply cut down the man who’d had his wand pointed at me before he could even say the trigger word for his wand. The massive man was soon taken down as well. While it looked like he could keep up with Dmiyo, he barely lasted a few seconds against Dmiyo on one side and Iosyo on the other.

“Oh thank god,” I said. I wasn’t sure what would’ve happened to me if they hadn’t shown up, but I was quite happy they had. I stood up, grabbing my guns back, and reloaded to a fresh magazine for my rifle.

My group instantly ran into the burning building I had been defending, running up the stairs and into one of the rooms, where I realized Grigyo had been hiding. I blanched, if I hadn’t been there to defend the building, I don’t know what would have happened to him. We went room to room, getting out everyone hiding there before the building was entirely engulfed in flames.

We then started running around, leaving Lilya back to protect Grigyo and the others from the inn, and I began to see why the Tesser had brought out such disgust in everyone I’d seen. Every building we went into, there seemed to be burning bodies, and in any building that held a girl that was even somewhat attractive, there seemed to be a couple of the soldiers laughing as they took turns with her.

My guilt was slowly chipped away as I saw scene after scene of cruelty. Sometimes we managed to get there in time, far more often, we were too late.. For a vast majority of the time we’d been running around, I hadn’t fired a shot. I let my group do the killing. My life was no longer on the line, but after enough time, I started to think that I should join in dealing death. Even with the thought in my mind that I should join, I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. I wasn’t willing to kill them from behind like we were doing, eliminating the pillagers while they were practically defenseless.

I eventually snapped though, when I saw a soldier taking a girl that couldn’t have been any older than eight. I instantly raised my gun, and put a bullet through his head, this time feeling no remorse whatsoever. I would have put more bullets through him if it wouldn’t risk the girl getting hit. After that, I let go of my compunctions about putting bullets through people. Towards the end of the day, we stopped running into the Tesser soldiers, and we headed back to the walls. We soon arrived at the gates to see that had been completely blown open, the walls around where the gates used to be crumbling.

There were hundreds of Tesser soldiers crowding around outside, but there were massive amounts of their bodies lying around the entrance, making large piles in places. The Tesser soldiers at this point were hanging back rather than charging in, and from the occasional arrow sent their way, I could see they were hiding within their forcefield. I frowned. I’d wondered why we had been able to clean up the soldiers who had gotten through without the entire city being overrun. Apparently they had gotten through, and then had been cut off from continuing inside.

The sun was starting to head down, and I was starting to relax. I was even thinking that we may be safe for the night, when I heard another of those massive explosions. Looking a distance to the right, I saw tens of the Tesser soldiers pouring through a new gap in the wall, and the people on our side trying to pick themselves up off the ground after being stunned by the explosion, only to be cut down from behind.

I raised my gun and started to fire, killing some, but there continued to be more soldiers rushing through. A pair of people, one guy with massive muscles, and one tall lithe girl, both with wolf ears, ran to the new hole in the wall, making me wonder what on earth they thought they were doing alone. My confusion soon faded however, when they met the enemy line. Wherever they went, it was like a hot knife through butter, the enemies seeming to melt before them. The massive man would crush through them, treating their armor and shields like I could treat a soda can with his metal club, while the woman managed to dance around, always slicing into the few parts not covered by armor. They stayed in close enough that the Tesser soldiers couldn’t use their wands without hitting their own men, and the soldiers were no match for the pair with just sword and shield.

I continued to shoot, keeping my aim a good distance away from the two, as they closed on the gap in the wall, a few more people joining them as they shook off the stunning effect of the explosion. I was going to continue shooting at the soldiers on that side, when I heard a shout from my side. Soldiers had started rushing through the broken gate beside me.

I instantly switched targets, but heard a clink after a single bullet, and ducked down to change out my magazine. My ducking down managed to save my life as a stream of fire went by right where my head had been. Sweat trickled down my neck as I did my best to swallow my fear, and I eventually managed to get my magazine changed with shaking fingers. I didn’t stand all the way back up though, but knelt as I started shooting in places where I had a clear line of sight.

Our fighters impacted the Tesser soldiers with a loud crash of weapons on shields, but the soldiers behind the front line continued to throw lances of fire in the direction of me and the other mages. I watched as one of our earth mages built up a wall to protect him, only to get ignited when he stood up to cast at them. On the other hand, I also saw one of our mages controlling a wall of water in front of him, using it as a shield as he created lances of ice out of it that would go screaming towards the enemy soldiers.

I ended up taking cover behind the small wall that the earth mage had made, popping up for fractions of a second to shoot and then get back down behind it. Occasionally streams of fire would hit the wall, or go flying above it, and each time I had to shove the gibbering little voice in my head into the back of my thoughts. After popping up a few times, I noticed my group was part of the front line, cutting into the Tesser soldiers much more efficiently than those around them, reaffirming my thoughts that they were quite strong.

Once the sun was almost down, the lances of fire casting dark shadows in the twilight, the Tesser soldiers fell back to their magical forcefield, and started to retreat. Wondering what had happened at the other hole in the wall, I looked over, to see the two people from earlier utterly drenched in blood, and surrounded by a practical wall of bodies. As things quieted down, I started to hear the moans of pain from all around us. Looking around, for the first time I noted that our group hadn’t fared quite as well as I had thought. There were two Tesser bodies for each of ours, but there were far more Tesser soldiers than there were defenders, and if they blew another hole in the wall, or god forbid, two more, then we probably weren’t going to be able to continue defending.

I looked towards my group and the two people who had held the hole practically alone. If it weren’t for them, I think that the area might have been completely overrun. We needed to get away somehow, we weren’t going to be able to hold for long.

I had gone up to my group, when the two ridiculously powerful fighters came up to our group and started to converse with Alya and Dmiyo. At first it was peaceful, but as they continued to talk, Dmiyo got more and more annoyed, eventually yelling back at them. Alya grabbed him by the arm, and started saying something quiet enough that I couldn’t hear it. Dmiyo slowly calmed down, and then got a defeated look on his face before turning to face Iosyo.

He talked with him for a bit, and Iosyo got nearly as offended as Dmiyo had, but he eventually relented after enough conversation. Dmiyo then turned to me, gesturing for me to follow Iosyo. I nodded, and we went back to the inn, which wasn’t burning anymore. We fetched Lilya and Grigyo, then headed back to the wall to meet up with the rest of our group, along with the two I didn’t know the name of. We arrived, and Dmiyo still seemed angry, but Alya holding onto his arm seemed to be mollifying him a bit. The two people with their wolf ears came up to us and started talking to Iosyo and Lilya.

I stood there awkwardly, unsure of what I was supposed to be doing, until they finished talking, and soon all of us were heading to another part of the city. We grabbed what seemed to be a cart of some kind, but it had seats on it, proper suspension, and a lot of runes scribbled on it. Noticing a pair of handlebars, I realized that this was probably a medieval style car.

I was wondering what the point of it was, when we headed to a small gate that I hadn’t seen before at the back of the city, and they had Iosyo, Lilya, Grigyo, and I all load up in four of the available chairs. At this point I realized what was happening. We were getting sent off, likely to warn a larger city about what was going on, and Alya and Dmiyo were going to stay behind to help hold the city. At this point I got out of the car. I wasn’t going to abandon the city, but they continued to refuse me staying. They did their best to get their point across, eventually pantomiming that I needed to be there to protect Grigyo. I was very reticent. Grigyo should be fine with just Iosyio and Lilya, but after looking back and forth between Dmiyo and Alya for a bit, I sighed, and decided I’d listen to them.

I got in the cart, feeling it sag just a bit under my weight, and sat down in one of the chairs. Alya and Dmiyo gave hugs to everyone, which made me realize I still wasn’t sure what their relationships were, and soon the small gate was creaking open, and I was starting to get seriously worried about any enemies that would block the way.

I needn’t have worried though, as Alya, Dmiyo, and the two people whose names I didn’t know ran out ahead of us as Iosyo drove the cart. We were quickly outpaced, and I soon started to hear shouts and screams. We kept driving, and it wasn’t long until we saw what used to be a blockade on the road, that was now filled with nothing but bodies. I shuddered as we drove by. I may be a killer now, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed death.

That thought made me shudder even more. I was a killer now. I wasn’t sure what I should think about that. My thoughts sank down as we drove around the bodies. I was shocked from my introspection when we got past the blockade when the cart sped up immensely. Apparently we’d just been driving on a low speed before. It wasn’t modern car fast, but it had to get at least forty miles per hour.

The rest of the night passed in silence, our group getting as far away from the city as possible to discourage any pursuit. Iosyo started falling asleep at one point, and I took over driving while he got some rest. The controls were simple, push forwards on the handlebars to accelerate, pull back to slow down, and turn them to turn. I soon got the hang of it, and drove until the sun started peeking over the horizon. I was originally planning on having Lilya do some driving, but I couldn’t get the scenes of what the soldiers had done, and the deaths I’d caused out of my head. I sat there, driving, scared to try and go to sleep in case I’d see more of my thoughts.

It was only later that day that we arrived. The first thing I noticed were the massive walls, the second were the buildings which should be physically possible. There were floating buildings, there were buildings that were wider at the top than at the bottom by far more than should be safe, and then there were buildings as tall as skyscrapers — that were made of stone. I gaped at the view as we approached, and hadn’t closed my mouth by the time we arrived at the gates.

Rather than going in however, we stopped, and Iosyo talked to one of the guards, showing a symbol he probably got from the two people last night. One of the guards nodded, and grabbed someone who looked more important. The more important man then started to guide us. It wasn’t long until we arrived at one of the floating buildings, which was chained to the ground, seemingly to keep it from floating off. I was wondering how we were going to get up, when the guard had us all step onto a stone circle in the ground. He then waved a small medallion over the center of it. In response, railings instantly grew up from the ground, and then the entire stone circle began to rise up, depositing us at the entrance to the building.

We went inside, and I gaped. There were beautiful tapestries everywhere along the walls, the ceiling was painted in a scene of what seemed to be some holy being smiting a demon looking creature with six arms, and the ground had an absolutely beautiful marble pattern. I admired the different everyday scenes in the tapestries and the art upon the ceiling until we arrived at some large stone doors. I took a deep breath as the guard waved his medallion, and the doors began to open without a whisper of sound.