Heavy rain poured down upon the ground, turning what was a dry, dusty highway earlier in the day into thick, muddy sludge through which the ornate white and gold carriages must endure and persist. The morning sun was covered under swollen rainclouds that shot bolts of lightning of in the distance.

The cabdrivers of the carriages were muggy and miserable though they didn’t show it. They weren’t in a position to complain when they were told by their direct authorities to get to their destination on time.

In the front cab, Azriel sat cozied up against a spherical artifact that radiated heat like the flame of fire. However, unlike fire, the heat from the black marble was of a consistent soothing warmth no matter how close or far you were from it.

Azriel sat in a comfy and luxurious white seat across from Klaus inside the cab at the front. The weighty drops of rain pounded against the roof of the air-tight compartment while thunder shook Azriel to the core.

Heavy rain was rare in the region near Hilton due to the bigger clouds getting caught within the tall mountains. In Hildenfreide—a place located even further into the mountainous territories—Azriel had never seen a storm great enough to produce lightning and thunder. There, the worst snowstorms only occurred well into the winter, sometime around the winter solstice. It was, for him, a new experience that surprised and frightened him.

He recalled what he had read from his encyclopedic tome on the topic of lightning, that during the third era of Aarterra, within the ancient Graecian’s patron pantheon, they had worshipped a father god that created the lightning to punish humans who opposed him. This sire to other gods conflicted with Azriel’s understanding from Lazarus’s teachings on the Father God.

“How could a god procreate and produce more gods if all gods were one and the same being?” Azriel had concluded at that time, but now seeing the evidence before him that such a thing as lightning did exist, he could no longer simply write the notion of such a god’s existence off as being the ignorant interpretations of early civilization about a phenomenon that didn’t exist.

While no one may have been worshipping this ancient god in the modern-day, who was to say he wasn’t a being that existed and could’ve still. Azriel’s preconceived notions were being challenged as to whether or not he understood anything at all. As soon as he had thought he had worked it all out between his various contemplations, a long wrench was thrown into the works complicating his whole thesis and showing to the naïve boy that he knew little.

“What even is a god?” Azriel wondered.

After some reflection, he remembered that there were other gods not dissimilar to that one from other periods and eras. There was the Sky Father Iuppiter from the fourth era that was worshipped as the father of gods within the Remun Empire’s patron pantheon, and there was also the King of Rage Wōdanaz, who was still being venerated even in the fifth era and was also a father god presiding over the Aesir pantheon. Though in the case of Wōdanaz, it was his son, the Thunder Lord, Tonaraz, who wielded thunder and lightning.

“Are you feeling alright, Azzie?”

The hypocorism Klaus had ordained Azriel with snapped him back to his senses. Klaus laughed at Azriel’s distrait inattentiveness before explaining, “I’ve been trying to get you to say something for the last five minutes. You must really be tired today.”

Klaus swirled his spoon, mixing sugar into his tea before setting it on the table beside the warm black marble. “According to my ward, we’ll be arriving in Leonna ahead of schedule, meaning we can spend time exploring the city.”

Azriel tilted his head in confusion, asking, “I thought you said nobles didn’t like intermixing with the common folk-”

“They don’t,” Klaus interjected, “but I’m not like other nobles. I’m a… man of the people, one might say.”

Klaus’s clarification worked more as an obfuscation to Azriel, who hadn’t even fully understood or considered what hierarchical castes meant to the people under their influence. It wasn’t until his father had explained to him, now two weeks back, that Azriel had the mere conception of how people with superior authority viewed those below them.

“So, some nobles can think like peasants?”

Klaus furrowed his brow, making Azriel think he had said something inconsiderate again before laughing, “Azzie, you’re so silly. That’s not what I meant.”

Sipping from his teacup, he continued, “People don’t think like peasants or nobles, they think like people, and all people think the way they do not because of what they were born as but because of who they become.”

Azriel, surprised by Klaus’s sudden profoundness, queried, “Is that another one of the things your father told you?”

Klaus took a moment to respond—as though he wanted to claim the line was his—before nodding and sighing, “Yeah.”

Klaus’s head sloped forward with a penitent expression. He was remorseful to his father, whom he loved dearly as Azriel had come to know well over the last two weeks. In Klaus’s eyes, his father was the best person who had ever lived, and now that he was gone, Klaus was left shattered into pieces. Not even his mother could stand existing a world apart from his father, so much so that she willingly forsook her only child to be re-embraced with his presence.

Azriel couldn’t understand what Klaus was feeling. The barrier between Azriel and interpreting his own emotions was tall; taller still was interpreting those of others. However, Azriel knew of one thing that had personally soothed him whenever he was crying.

As Klaus ashamedly tried fighting the urge burst into tears, Azriel stood up and climbed around the table to the seat on which the crying Klaus sat, then hugging him consolingly as Lazarus had him in the past.

Klaus silently wept, wetting the shoulder of the fanciful clothing Azriel had been dressed in. The crying child tensed up in surprise at Azriel having hugged him but didn’t pull away or complain, which signaled to Azriel he had done something right.

A few minutes passed by before Klaus’s weeping subsided. Azriel crawled back to his seat, thinking back to the time his father had hugged him, and wondering what it was that made it so comforting. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what about the action soothed his soul so thoroughly, whether it was the action itself or the connotations it may’ve implicated.

Azriel laid on his back atop the seat, as did Klaus soon after. Laying in silence across from each other intersected by a small white table built into the cabin floor they listened to the pitter-patter of the pouring rain hitting the roof of the carriage. Azriel didn’t know what to say to make Klaus feel better, or if such a thing was even possible.

For a few minutes they sat in awkward silence before Klaus spoke up, saying, “You know. You kind of remind me of him… my father I mean.”

Azriel didn’t respond; he didn’t know how.

“He gave me lots of smart advice like you do.”

Azriel was caught off guard by Klaus’s remark. He lacked the self-awareness required to realize he had been doing that the entire time since meeting the boy until it was pointed out to him. His eyes widened in panic that he may have had unintentionally revealed too much about himself.

“N-No…” Azriel hastily retorted. “That stuff was all things my father said to me.”

What Azriel said was partially true but mostly a lie. He had given Klaus insight into many topics but most of it came from his own personal experience rather than the things his father had told him.

“Your father must be a pretty cool guy.”

Azriel’s widened eyes relaxed back into a normal state. He was relieved knowing Klaus didn’t catch onto his true nature. He knew he was going to have to be more careful with he said going forward to avoid making the same mistake.

***

Klaus had fallen back asleep wrapped in a thick blanket while Azriel remained stationary laying in the exact same position that he hadn’t moved from hours ago. His nose itched but he didn’t scratch it. He hadn’t scratched it for the few hours he had spent focusing on it. Somehow for those last few hours he had put his full attention on the way it felt as though that were some kind of entertainment to pass the time.

Eventually, the heavy rain grew quiet while the sun shot riveted shafts of light through the shuttered window on the cab’s door. Azriel shot up to look through it when he spotted what looked like another city.

Unlatching the window, he saw in the distance a city with unprecedented proportion. Its size dwarfed that of Hilton’s and made Hildenfreide look like a drop of water in the ocean, a grain of sand lining its beach, a sapling within a forest of mighty redwoods, a tiny little bug in that forest, one that couldn’t see farther than a few feet from itself if even that.

Azriel was floored by what he saw. The sight of the city provoked in him an emotion that made his throat painfully clench, his cheeks sting with joy, an immovable smile in awe of the superlative handiwork for which he hadn’t any idea existed.

Before leaving Hildenfreide, he had thought the whole world would be like Hildenfreide, more of the same with minor differences here and there. When he was told of cities, he thought of Hildenfreide but slightly bigger. When he saw Hilton, he was surprised at first. He would’ve never thought so many people would have come together into one place, but when he saw this city his expectations were shattered and shattered once over.

He saw in the distance a place that must have housed more houses than he could count. Like the stars in the sky or the straws in a bale of hay, were he to try and count the roofs of every individual house he could make out, it would have taken many hours and a lot of recounting.

Azriel was in a state of euphoric glee. The measly understanding that so many people could collaborate as one cohesive unit stunned Azriel. He couldn’t look away from the view even had he wanted to. He hadn’t, he hadn’t in the least.

For minutes he stared at the sight before him drawing closer and closer until he had finally reached it, his destination, the reason for the journey, the place where his parents, friends, family had sent him down the path of discovering a sight, alone enough to leave those he had loved so dearly behind in its pursuit, and the enlightenment that the discovery provided that filled him with wanderlust: Leonna, the city of two-hundred-thousand living, breathing, thinking individuals with long lives filled with long history and constant development, constant change, constant wants, needs, thoughts, quarrels, love, hate, pride, humility, efforts, ambitions, ingratiation, and ingrates.

Azriel finally understood for what reason his parents made him come here, to give him—a foolish ingrate—a gift, an opportunity, an exciting experience, something they could never live to see themselves, a selfless desire to see Azriel prosperous and content without expecting anything in return. It was that selflessness he had so daftly disregarded that allowed him to live, see, and enjoy the joys that he had never expected to exist.

Now he saw it, a light at the end of the tunnel. He was no longer contented by the idea of Hildenfreide when he could have more. Part of him worried that this path of wanting more would lead to ingratitude for what he already had, but he cared not; the prospects of having more was far too appealing to abandon, and he couldn’t simply forget of its existence and return home as nothing had changed.

Azriel wanted to travel the world, see new places, learn everything there was to learn, do everything there was to do, and after it all, when his hair grew grey, his mind tired and weary, he wanted to return to that little section of land he called home, that place for which he longed to be, but also the place that could’ve only held him back, restrain this newfound ambition and his capability of actualizing it.

This city was where his story began.