Ryn stood at the rail of Wanderlust’s maindeck and looked out over it into the sea of clouds.

The clouds were thick here, on their fourth day of travel, allegedly somewhere over Farr and nearing Shun-Pei every moment. Massive rolling lumps of white and grey dashed past beneath the ship, interlacing with the pale blue of the Farrian sky.

Just occasionally, he imagined for a brief moment jumping over the rail into them.

Sorrow still tugged down at Ryn’s heart. It had helped, forgiving Nuthea, Vorr and himself, for everything that had happened. Even killing Vorr had helped, in a way, though it had been the forgiveness that had really helped him, in the end...

But in his dreams he still saw the faces of his parents, his friends, the other people of his hometown. The dreams were less vivid and, damn it, he was aware that he was even beginning to forget exactly what their faces looked like. But he imagined them anew each night in his dreams and in the flashbacks that still came to him unbidden throughout the day. He heard their screams, felt the heat from the burning wood of the houses of Cleasor, saw Vorr’s sword sliding out of his mother’s chest.

And in forgiving, then killing Vorr, he had lost the goal that had been driving him forwards for the last however many months. With Vorr forgiven and dead, Ryn found he no longer had a purpose. In his previous life, as he had come to think of it, he had had a clear enough purpose: Finish school, take over the farm, marry Carlotia, read books and go exploring in the woods on Seventhdays. It had been a trivial purpose, perhaps, but it had been his purpose. And after finding and killing Vorr, the person who had taken it away for him, it remained unavailable for him to return to. The emptiness between his ribs ached.

Sometimes it was tempting to want to escape from the flashbacks. Sometimes the sadness was so thick and heavy that it was tempting to want to just be free from that too. Forever.

But there was something that held him back, that stopped him from throwing himself over the rail into oblivion.

What?

Of course he knew what it was, really. But at times like this, left to his own devices by himself, looking out over the ship’s rail onto the sky below, he had to deliberately call it to mind and hold on to it.

What was keeping him going now was that he had a new purpose.

His new purpose was to find the rest of the Primeval Jewels with this crazy bunch of misfits. His new purpose was to find the rest of the Primeval Jewels in order to keep them from the Emperor and stop what happened to him and his hometown from happening to anyone else. His new purpose was to find the rest of the Jewels and see if the ‘legend’ was true, to see if when they were all gathered together they could be used to bring back his mother, his father and his hometown.

Oh, and of course, his new purpose was somehow to get Nuthea to fall in love with him. Carlotia had only been a crush, after all. Nuthea was a golden-haired princess who could sling lightning, and whenever she spoke to him individually lightning struck Ryn’s heart too.

Mother. Father. Hometown. Found Vorr. Got Vorr. Forgave Vorr. Killed Vorr. Stay with Nuthea. Win Nuthea’s heart. Find the Jewels. Try to bring back my mother, father, hometown.

That was a pretty long list. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to keep reciting it in his head at that length. He would have to work on an abbreviated version.

But the thing was, he realised, looking down into that rushing sea of cloud, while he did have a new purpose, at the same time he had to choose it. Each day, each hour, each minute, each moment. It didn’t just come to him automatically, like the purpose of finding and killing Vorr which had come to him each morning bright and hot and angry like the fire that had leapt from his hands and consumed the Imperial soldier in Cleasor after he had first touched the Fire Ruby. Instead, moment by moment, he was faced with a choice: throw himself over the rail into sorrow, despair, and death, or choose his purpose.

And sometimes it felt hard to choose it by himself. So sometimes, just sometimes, he had started to dare to reach out to someone else for help in achieving this purpose, though he hadn’t told anyone else this yet.

One God, Ryn prayed as his eyes scanned the clouds, help me in this purpose. Help me to find the Jewels.

“We’re here!” shouted Nuthea, running up onto the deck in her new lilac dress. “We’ve reached Shun-Pei!”

Ryn’s stomach lurched as the ship began to descend. Nuthea must have been down in the viewing bubble and have already told Sagar over the speaking tube.

She joined him at the rail as they punctured the topmost cloud layer. Cold and white and moisture washed over them for a few moments, obscuring their vision, and Ryn almost put his hand out to take Nuthea’s, suddenly fearing that he was going to pitch over the rail into the clouds accidentally.

But then Wanderlust came out the bottom of the cloud layer and the light changed from bright and golden to grey and faded, filtered by the clouds above.

And then they saw it.

Green, jagged mountains rose to greet them in the grey below the clouds, but one mountain rose higher and greater than all of them. One mountain thrust out of the earth twice as tall as its nearest neighbours.

And this mountain seemed to be covered in hundreds of smaller mountains which dotted it in layers; myriad spikes reaching upwards from its surface.

As they flew in closer, Ryn saw that the spikes were actually buildings with pointed roofs. Not hundreds, but thousands, perhaps millions of them.

“There she is,” said Elrann, joining them at the rail with Cid and Vish. “Shun-Pei; the Crossroads of the East.”

Ryn could see firsthand now why the mountain-city was called a Crossroads. Hundreds of other airships flew towards the mountain, or took off from it. They were coming in from particularly high up above the cloud layer, but as they came lower Sagar had to steer a path through the other airships to avoid collision. Most bore blimps like their own, but there were other styles of ship Ryn had never seen before, ships with great spinning blades holding them aloft; ships with no outside deck where the hull seemed to built into the blimp itself; ships with only single small baskets for a hull suspended underneath gigantic, colourful balloons.

Sagar took Wanderlust down further still, joining a stream of inbound ships that seemed to be heading for the base of the mountain. As they drew in closer, Ryn saw that the mountain was actually arranged in concentric circles, the base layer being the largest, progressing upwards in smaller and smaller layers. This was no purely natural feature. The mountain was either man-made, or it had been shaped by some sort of human design, with what kind of power he could only guess.

Lower still, and now Ryn could see the tiny dots of people moving to and fro from the mini-mountains, the pointed buildings, swarming in what must be the streets around them. There were too many to count.

Shun-Pei wasn’t so much a city as an enormous ant-hill.

They reached an airfield and at last Sagar set Wanderlust down. The thrum of the turbines ceased and they touched down.

Ryn breathed a sigh of relief, and he noticed Cid doing so too. It had been a long time in the sky.

At once they were beset upon by all manner of street-sellers and peddlers, just as they had been those months ago when they had landed in Ast.

Only this time, there were a lot more of them.

“Carry your luggage?”

“Where are you staying?”

“Rat on a stick?”

“Come with me, I will show you the best inn in the lower circles.”

“Best deal for a pull-cart. You stick with me.”

“How much for your ship? She’s a beauty.”

“Rat on a stick? It’s good.”

The words came from men and women of all different colours and shapes, but Ryn observed that the majority of them had tan skin and eyelids that were slightly taut, like they had been pulled to each side. He assumed that these must be the native Farrians, born here before the advent of steam travel a few hundred years ago.

“I’ll take you to a massage palour, hmm? Sexy sexy!”

“No, no, you want a hot bath, I can see it. Come with me.”

“These rats on a stick are really good.”

“Tour of the city for six gold pieces.”

“Need to refuel? I’ve got you covered.”

“How much for the purple-haired boy? I’ll give you a good price.”

“You sure you don’t want a rat on a stick?”

“NO THANK YOU!” shouted Nuthea at the top of her lungs.

Ryn half expected her to give a little flourish of lightning, but on this occasion she held back.

Miraculously, the street-peddlers went quiet for a moment even without it.

“That’s better,” said Nuthea, peering down at them like a Queen addressing her court. “We don’t need any of your services just now. We seek an audience with the Governor of Farr.”

The street-peddlers were quiet for a moment of close-lipped surprise.

Then they burst out laughing, erupting into a cacophony of guffaws, giggles, shoulder slaps and belly shakes.

“What’s so funny?” Nuthea asked, turning to Cid.

The old man stroked his beard. “It would seem that getting an audience with the Governor may not be so easy…”

Once they had calmed down, the street sellers moved on to the next airship that had just landed. If nothing else, Nuthea’s request had served to get rid of them.

Something slammed onto the maindeck. Sagar had vaulted down from where he had been steering the ship up on the forecastle, not bothering to use the steps.

“Well, princess,” he said, “it looks like we’re going to have to go and find this ‘Governor’ by ourselves. Let me lock up here and then we can make our way.”

They climbed down the handholds from the ship to the dirt floor below, taking only some coin which Cid kept in the common purse, as they had eaten lunch together relatively recently. Cid and Elrann said that the Governor resided in the structure at the top of the city, so they began their trek up the mountain to try to see them.

It took a long time to walk together up to the top circle. Their path consisted of finding the road that led from the airfield to the main road that wound its way round the lower circle, until they got to the place where it led up the massive ramp to the next circle. They proceeded in this way, progressing upwards through the circles of the mountain-city by finding the path that led to the next level each time.

As they walked, Ryn couldn’t help from staring at the people they passed. Many of them were tan, tight-lidded Farrians, but there were also people with very dark skin, people with slightly less dark skin like Vish’s, very pale people with white eyes, people with hair that was dark, brown, blonde, red, blue, green, purple or white, men with long bushy beards that came down to their feet, women in long flowing elaborate floral dresses, women in tunics and trousers, women wearing nothing much at all, children of all colours scampering around underfoot, single or conjoined parents trying to catch and control their children.

The world is so vast, Ryn thought. And there are so many people in it, each with their own dreams, desires, hopes, fears, sorrows, each with their own story. And I am just one more person in it. Who am I to think that I could have any special significance?

With each new circle they ascended to, the earthen streets became a little cleaner and clearer and calmer, the hangings decorating the pointed dwellings became a little more opulent, and the people walking the streets became a little more polite and--apparently--wealthy. Although Shun-Pei was the tallest mountain in this range, it must still not be particularly tall, Ryn judged, because there was no snow to speak of.

To get onto the third-last circle, of ten, they had to queue. A Farrian official flanked by two enormous but seemingly unarmed guards was inspecting people, sometimes turning them away if they didn’t meet whatever criteria he was assessing them by. When they got to the front of the queue he gave them a quick look over and let them in straight away. It was fortunate that they had been kitted out with new clothes (even changes of clothes!) in Manolia. Ryn was wearing a smart shirt and wool breeches. Nuthea wore her lilac dress with the purple sash. Sagar wore his high-collared brown leather skysailors’ jacket, as ever, but now with a much cleaner undershirt. Elrann looked particularly impressive in her new yellow-dyed overalls. The Manolians really did love the colour of gold. Vish was the only exception, still wearing his usual black outfit which covered everything except for his eyes, but he looked pretty smart at the worst of times anyway.

When they got to the entrance to the second-last circle, things weren’t so easy.