The experience was unlike anything Zavier had ever experienced in his life. He found himself drifting in an empty black void. This level of weightlessness was unlike anything on Earth. He tried to swim around but could not get any traction. It felt like he was doing nothing except squirming around in space. There was no noise, smell, or sound. The only thing that led Zavier to believe he existed at all was that he had existed seconds earlier. After about ten seconds of this darkness, an abrupt flash of yellow light flooded the void. It was blindingly bright for his eyes that had been in utter darkness. He landed on his back on a soft surface that felt similar to a waterbed.

Zavier heard Yafu’s voice before his eyes had recovered enough to see anything, “I always thought those soft beds were pointless.” Zavier rubbed his eyes and started to get his bearings. Around him was a small room with a large door about ten feet in front of him and two other doors on his left. The mattress he was on extended vertically up the wall behind him and on the sides of the wall for about five feet. It was an open mattress cube missing the top and front sides.

This was because in front of him was his path way to the exit and on top of him was a metal circular brace that had a swirling ring not dissimilar to the ones he had seen Shen and Arigo create. It was clear he had fallen out of this portal and crashed into the mattress. Yafu and Anenna were standing on opposite ends of the mattress staring at Zavier. Yafu was cracking up and Anenna was unsuccessfully fighting a smile. It was clear there was a trick that he did not know to avoid just crashing into the floor on these portal trips.

Yafu extended his hand to Zavier which he accepted. Pulling him up, they walked over to Anenna. She handed them both robes similar to the ones Zavier had seen Yafu wearing when he first showed up to his house. Anenna then walked into one of the side rooms presumably to change. Yafu gestured for Zavier to take the other one. He did and changed in the room. Walking out he saw Yafu looking much more comfortable now that he was back in the robes of his world instead of the jeans of Earth. The far door and the door to the room Anenna had changed in were both opened. Yafu gave Zavier a quick smile, clearly amused to see him in these robes and then they turned together and followed Anenna outside.

The scene was breathtaking. They stood on an open air balcony about three fourths of the way up a black marble skyscraper. The skyscraper was built on an enormous rod of rock protruding out of an ocean below them with a flat plateau at the top. The equivalent of about twenty city blocks of buildings, mostly made of the same black marble material, shared this elevated perch with the skyscraper they were on. There were at least twenty or thirty more of these rod-like formations all extending about a mile or so in every direction above the crashing water. Typically about a quarter mile of open air gapped each outcropping. Each of them varied a little in height and size and had different amounts of urban sprawl dotting them. On three sides of this cluster of minimetropolises was the ocean stretching out far over the horizon. On the fourth side, to Zavier’s left as he had walked out, was a mountain range about a couple hundred feet from the furthest rock rod in that particular direction. Despite Revival City being so high above sea level, these mountains towered over even the tallest of the city's skyscrapers, blocking any sort of view of what lay beyond them.

As Zavier continued to look around more, the organization and infrastructure of the city began to take shape. The building they were on was centrally located on their stalagmite and was the tallest one in the cluster. As far as he could tell, most clusters had this same layout with a towering central building surrounded by shorter towers and eventually single story buildings along the edges. There were floating platforms that moved in a straight line from one central tower to another one in a uniform pattern. It was similar to urban traffic, just way more air and magic based. The weather was very humid despite the thin air. It was quite warm as well except when the wind whipped through the buildings in weird and inconsistent intervals. In Earth terms, the climate was a seemingly impossible combination of being up in the mountains and in the tropics by the beach at the same time.

Yafu had let Zavier take his time taking in the view. Once he had taken his second full rotational view, Yafu waved him over to the platform connected adjacently to their balcony. At the center of the balcony was a square table coming out of the ground. The square table had a ten by ten board of square slots that looked like a checkers table. Small tiles filled these slots. They were a dark color on one side and a distinctively lighter color on the other side. Anenna was carefully flipping some of the tiles to change the layout of dark and light colors on the board. Once she had selected the pattern she wanted, Zavier felt moving parts underneath the surface of the platform begin to shift like turning gears. Once this process had reached its conclusion, the tiles on the board glowed briefly. Anenna looked at Yafu, “We need you for this part, obviously.”

Yafu stretched his arms back, still a little slowly due to his healing injuries. As he brought them forward, a bright yellow discharge of energy emanated from his fingertips at the square table. The table seemed to absorb it without taking damage and glowed yellow in turn. The platform began to slowly move, clearly following a preset course. As they cleared the airspace of the cluster they had been on, the platform picked up pace and was now flying through the air to another, larger cluster in the direction of the mountains.

“So can people like, fly here?” Zavier asked, his mind imagining the implications for himself as he saw more and more uses of soul aura.

Yafu smirked and replied, “Kind of. People have leviated themselves before as a cool trick but it’s kind of impractical.”

“How so?” Zavier said still fixated on the possibility.

“The energy required is very high. Even high level users have to strain to keep themselves afloat a few feet off the ground. And you can’t really move around very fast or far and you can’t really do much else, you're so taxed by the effort.” Yafu replied

“Then how does this thing work? It seems a lot heavier than a person.” Zavier set indicating to the giant platform floating its way across the chasm.

“It’s made of special material that can absorb and hold energy. Every morning, the city has people who come in to charge it up. Yafu just needed to spark it so it ran the suspended spell to get us to our destination.” Anenna responded, taking the lead from Yafu for Zavier’s questions.

“That stuff, nightrock,” Yafu interjected, enthusiastically seizing the role of explainer back from Anenna, “was originally used as long burning lights at night as it slowly released the soul energy it was hit with at sundown. With a little manipulation, it can be used to build a great city or set some nasty traps. It all depends on what you're trying to do. The bits are also money! You know, since the material has value in almost any endeavor.” Zavier nodded after this and turned to stare out into the city. There was so much he needed to learn. So many different little things here that would mundane to the residents but literally otherworldly to him. He turned back and looked at Yafu. Clearly Yafu was going to enjoy showing him all he could handle. It would be the reverse of the whole car situation back on Earth.

The platform finally came to halt at the central tower of another mega stalagmite. This was clearly the main hub of the city. It had to have a sky-facing surface area at least five or six times the original rock they were on. This central tower not only towered above the sprawl it shared the rock with, but over the entire city. Zavier finally got a good look over this fractured metropolis. In addition to this, he also now could make out a huge carving of a human face on the upper cliff of the mountains in the background. It was too far away to make out any of the finer details but it was clearly a middle aged man. In Zaiver’s estimation, it was clearly angled in a way that was meant to “watch over” the city.

“Aye, it’s the guardian carving.” Yafu said after noticing it had caught Zaiver’s eye. “It was carved in the city's first hundred cycles. It’s supposed to be the Immortal King smiling over what we’ve built for him when he returns.”

“You mean the guy who disappeared on Earth?” Zavier asked.

“Will you shut up! You can’t talk about that in public! At all!” Anenna scolded in a harsh whisper. The conversation ended there. Zavier would have to pick Yafu’s brain more about the world but it might have to wait until they were no in Anenna’s company.

As the three of them got off, they walked along a circular pathway that spiraled up and down the exterior of the building to a platform on a lower floor. Yafu once again blasted the central square of this platform with yellow. Anenna did not put any special instructions in beforehand this time. The reasoning for this became apparent once the platform started moving. It was going straight down to the base of the tower. Clearly this one was designed to only go up and down like an earth elevator.

Once they got to the bottom, the street level looked almost like a normal American city except with no cars. A massive amount of people were bustling from place to place along broad gridded streets and up and down platforms that accomplished similar elevator-esque functions on smaller buildings. If every rock had a population this dense, there had to be more people here than in any city on Earth.

Zavier had little time to people watch as Anenna had almost taken a running start off the platform. Zavier and Yafu veered in and out of other pedestrian’s paths to keep up with her hectic pace. They went down about four blocks before they reached their destination; a large, wide building with a decent amount of steps and a plethora of stone columns in front of its large open rectangular entrance. To Zavier, it looked similar to a courthouse. The upper stone beam that was supported by the columns and connected to the roof had something illegible scrawled on it in large black letters. Suddenly the letters shifted and it read in plain English “Search House''. Zavier was initially confused by the seemingly callow labeling of this giant building, but it made more sense once he realized the lettering was made of the same nightrock material as the platforms. He had his translating ability for conversations turned on and the energy stored in the etching of the building’s sign must work similarly to a person talking by showing him the intention of what was said in the language it was written in. In other words, this building was literally a search house.

The interior when they first walked was a broad open room with several platforms taking people up a level to balconies that led to hallways deeper into the recesses of the building. There were also hallways breaking off from this room in ten foot intervals on either side of them. They followed Anenna down one of these hallways and to a door on the left. The door was wooden with a handle made of Nightrock. Anenna got out of the way and motioned for Yafu to blast it. He did for about fifteen seconds before a clicking noise was heard and the door swung open.

“Aye, that was tiring.” Yafu remarked. It seemed like the lock handled soul energy like a tax. Yafu had to discharge a certain amount to unlock the door and use the room. Inside there was a terminal similar to the one on all the platforms except this one had a twenty by twenty board of tiles and an opened book with different board combinations next to scribbled gibberish. Since this was a plain paper book, the writing did not auto-translate for Zavier, but he thought it was a safe assumption that the scribbles were names and the book had to be a type of phone book.

Behind this board and book was a dropbox-like device made of nightrock. Anenna reached into her robe pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. On the paper there was a checkered pattern scribbled into it. Anenna worked efficiently to input this combination into the checkerboard. Once she had finished and double checked her work she again motioned to Yafu. Yafu sighed. He was clearly growing weary of being the soul energy donor. As Yafu blasted the tileboard, the turned over tiles glowed and then the platform it was connected to glowed as well. After a few seconds, and some mild vibrating, the drop box behind the tiles and the board opened and a roll of paper rolled out. The board with the tiles then vibrated and the entire board flipped back to stone. It looked like the nightrock had been pulled to the downward facing part of the board like a heavier liquid filtering to the bottom of a drink.

“What are they?” Yafu asked. Zavier was glad he had hesitated to ask so someone else besides him could do it for once.

“Invitations.” Anenna responded.

“I thought we were supposed to find the Regir women immediately and not veer off the course.” Yafu responded, doing a crude Arigo impersonation on the back half of the sentence.

“That’s what I’m doing.” Anenna responded, clearly not amused. “You know how these work, no?” Anenna indicated at the board and waited for Yafu to nod before continuing for Zavier’s sake. “This combination is a secure one to find Ms. Regir. Clearly she presets our combination, along with several others I presume, to spit out her next scheduled event, so that she could be reached there. These invitations will get us into whatever this event is. She will be there. We will give her the letter there. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Yafu sarcastically replied. Walking over to Anenna and holding his hand out, Yafu said as he grabbed the paper, “Let me see those.” Anenna was taken aback by the aggressiveness of Yafu and did not let go of the paper. However, she angled it so Yafu could see the contents. Yafu scanned it quickly, his eyes moving from line to line, and when he got to the end he practically yelped in excitement.

“Oh shit.” A mischievous smile crept along Yafu’s face as he spoke. “This is a very fun ticket to have for tonight.”

“You know this event?” Anenna mused.

“No. But I know the neighborhood.” Yafu answered, his smile reaching its climax as it stretched wide across his face. Snapping back to a normal facial composition, Yafu exclaimed, “It’s not for a few hours, so we have time to kill.”

“We need to stay low and out of sight until that time.” Anenna responded, her tone clearly trying to damper down Yafu and retain focus on the mission.

“Great, we can go to my place.” Yafu said, maintaining his good spirits.

“We should not frequent places people might be looking for you.” Anenna countered.

“Don’t worry, no one looks for me there. In fact, I’ve avoided the Junta in their own capital city for several cycles there.” Yafu’s reasoning was enough for Anenna as she relented and let Yafu lead them out of the building.

“What’s the Junta?” Zavier asked.

Yafu stopped and pointed to a few men down the street. Each of these men had dark robes with a large white triangle on both of their sleeves. “They are the Junta. It’s the military group that rules the city. Even though their territory is symbolically only the city here and the End Mountain on the cold planet, you’ve got to watch your back pretty much anywhere in the Biterrain if you're on the wrong lists. Those guys are one stars, but the higher ranks are pretty damn scary.”

“Very bold of you to be pointing at people hunting you.” Anenna said disapprovingly.

“Like I said, one stars,” Yafu answered while gesturing again toward the men, “and my crimes are several cycles old and very minor. They’re more worried about terrorist groups like the Poison Fang than some kid who was just trying to eat. Besides, they’re just the bitches of the powerful families here. Right name or seal and you have immunity and a private army at your disposal. As long as I don’t piss off the wrong heir or heiress, I don’t have to fear walking innocuously down the street.” Despite Yafu’s assurances, Zavier still kept his head down as they moved past the post of the men.

They soon reached a building at the edge of a plateau. The building stretched widely along the cliff with several platforms moving in and out of it in a constant stream of travelers. Once inside, Yafu led them to the first open one, entered some coordinates, and started the platform up. This ride was longer than the last one as they moved closer to the mountain. When they finally reached a small outcropping, the three of them were only several hundred feet from the mountain’s edge. Zavier could see that climbing this mountain any normal way was impossible. The profile of the cliff was almost straightly vertical outside of the King’s Carving and there did not seem to be any climbing reprieves anywhere on the mountain side.

The urban sprawl on this particular rock, about five by five city blocks, looked much worse for wear than the first two blocks Zavier had seen. It appeared even alien cities had slums. As they landed and locked into the docket on the rocks edge, Yafu hurriedly motioned them forward. The streets were much narrower here than on the other outcroppings as the buildings were packed much closer together. Even though Zavier felt like there were less people here, the tight urban design created much more congestion. He got shoved and jostled more than once as he kept pushing his way through behind Yafu. They finally arrived at a building adjacent to the tower at the center of the rock. Yafu pushed the front door open.

Inside was a tavern. There were a couple very old men sitting by a table sipping on drinks. A middle aged woman sat behind the counter. Zavier felt his throat burn. The dust here was an issue for him. Yafu moved quickly and deliberately to the stairs. There were no floating platforms here. Just old metal stairs. They trudged up six stories to the penultimate floor. Exiting the stairs, Yafu moved a detached piece of wood serving as a makeshift door. Beyond the old plank was a hallway with three doors on either side. Slumped in front of the nearest door sat an old man who was breathing rather heavily. He was dirty, balding, overweight, and he desperately needed a shave. His face lit up when the three of them entered the hall. Zavier suspected he did not get out much to see others.

“Yafu! I almost moved my stuff to your room, you were gone for so long.” The man's voice was the most gravely thing Zaiver had ever heard. It was like he had half a dozen grimly rocks lodged in his throat and was vocalizing through the cracks.

“Just away on business Eeyl, and you don't have any stuff.” The man broke into a cracked smile at this retort from Yafu. His teeth were a very dark shade of gray.

“You've got some beautiful friends.” Eeyl said, giving a look that made Zavier rather uncomfortable. “They aren’t blooders are they?” Eeyl then looked back at Yafu.

“Not at all, not at all.” Yafu replied in a very friendly tone as he opened the door on the left at the end of the hallway and motioned Zavier and Anenna in. He very quickly shut the door after they had all entered. Zavier was rather grateful for this expediency.

They were in what Zavier presumed to be Yafu’s room. It was just that. A single room with a chair, a table, and a stained mattress. Shredded and burned papers sprawled across the floor and the walls had a rainbow of stains splattered across them. There was a small vent in one of the upper corners of the wall. The sunlight peeking through the blinders was the only thing illuminating the dreary room.

“You don’t really live here?” Anenna said slowly. Even she could not hide her concern.

Yafu brushed her worry off as he answered, “Here and the room across from us on some nights. The only people on this floor since I started squatting here are Eeyl and I, so you guys can get the room of your choice all to yourselves here. This is the only one with a table though.”

Zavier was scanning the discarded papers on the ground. A lot of them were typed reports and architectural drawings. He thought about asking Yafu about these items but decided against it in lieu of a different concern.

“Your hallmate, he’s not crazy is he?” Zavier needed to know if he should lock his door at night.

“He’s pretty far gone but he doesn’t really move except to go get food and drink once a day downstairs, so I doubt he’ll bother you much. Just say hello when you see him and it should be fine. He’s been my only neighbor for almost an entire cycle now and we’ve managed the hall together fine.” Zavier disagreed with Yafu's characterization of fine, but this wasn’t the time for cleanliness judgment.

“What are blooders? Should I cover any wounds around him?” Zavier inquired.

Yafu had a little chuckle. “No, no, you’re fine. Neither of you are blooders anyways.”

“What is a blooder, though?” Zavier asked a second time

“It’s a pretty derogatory name for those with red aura. There is a lot of disdain for people with that color from the majority of people on the warm planet, who have a yellow aura.” Anenna injected from the opposite corner of the room. She had laid down on the old mattress, a de facto claim to the table room undoubtedly.

“So it’s like racism for your world?” Zavier asked. The more he could get Earthen equivalents, the better he might be able to navigate this world.

“What’s that?” Yafu asked. Zavier looked at Anenna. Anenna gave a look back that clearly indicated she was letting Zavier field this question.

“Some people, not me, but some people…” Zavier paused to find the right words, “are prejudiced against other people with a different skin color than them. It’s a big issue on Earth.”

“You mean like people who are tanner in the face than others?” Yafu naivly replied.

“Kind of, but not entirely. It’s way more complicated.” Zavier was very much ready for a topic change.

“Well that’s fucking stupid!” Yafu exclaimed abruptly.

Zavier shrugged. “How is it different from the aura color thing?”

Yafu hesitated, clearly trying to pick the right words. “I don’t really agree with it but there has been some history. Red aura people are originally from the cold planet, and the yellow aura people are from the warm planet here. If you have children with two parents of different aura colors their kids will all have the same aura color as one of the parents at random. This has caused issues for people who are rather prideful with their soul color. The weird thing is the Immortal King allegedly had an orange aura color, the only known one in history. The same people who celebrate that as a symbol of his unified destiny to rule sometimes are the ones who want to keep their colors sorted, so to speak. There was also a really bad failed revolution backed by a lot of people with red aura about a hundred cycles ago. It really should be ancient history by now but there’s a lot of people who hold grudges from before they were born.”

Zavier definitely had a counterpoint to make a long with a small history lesson for Yafu, but he bit his tongue. He was just too tired for that right now. Anenna was also giving them an exhausted death stare from the mattress. She was clearly ready for them to leave her be. Zavier and Yafu took the hint and filed out to the room across the hall. The room here was almost as dirty as the other one but there weren’t as many damaged papers as the other room. This room lacked a table but had two mattresses propped up on opposite sides of the room. Perfect.

Zavier crashed on the one to his right. Yafu accordingly took the one of the left. As he sank into the mattress, he was comfortable just by how tired he was. The mattress was pretty much shot and did not smell very good at all, but felt so soft to his tired limbs. It had been a long day.

Right before he was about to fall asleep, Yafu chirped up, his voice carrying across the darkness of the room, “I think she’s wrong, you know.”

“Who’s wrong?” Zavier mumbled not lifting his face from the mattress.

“Anenna. She’s wrong about you.” Zavier gave an inquisitive grunt in response to Yafu, providing tacit approval for him to continue in the lowest energy way possible. He was vain enough to want to hear this out. Anenna had not said much that was kind to him.

“When we first met, I thought I had won the lottery.” Yafu started, clearly building towards a monologue.

“I love you too man.” Zavier interrupted sarcastically. A period of silence followed. Zavier got a little nervous. He hoped his crassness had not discouraged Yafu. His uncomfortableness with whatever this was had just shined through.

To his relief, Yafu brushed off his teasing and continued in a serious tone, “I felt like an idiot most nights the last two cycles. I had decided one day to track and take down the most notorious group of people in the Biterrene from this dump. It was crazy and incredibly ill-advised for me to try this. I was very likely wasting my time. But I did it anyways. I was sick of talking myself out of it. What I really wanted to do and stuff. I just decided I would rather embarrass myself and prove how hopeless it was than live how it seemed I should while ignoring my goals. It was the wrong choice despite my journey since. The odds were against me and I was more lucky than prescient on things and I still think this will ultimately end poorly for me! When I met you, I tried to treat you like everything else in the world. An obstacle to what I wanted. But for whatever reason, you helped me. Not because you cared for me, but because you made the same choice I did. You had an inertia you hated and took the worse path just to break it. It’s the wrong decision that so many want but few become so determined to actually take. I think Anenna sees that as stupid and a sign of the failures of your life which she blames you for. Whatever dissatisfaction you had with your life, I don’t really blame you. I don’t really believe any of us were born free of our circumstances. Who we are is so much forced on us by everything and everyone we share our existence with and it makes it practically impossible to change that. Unless you're willing to lose so much and so badly. You took that on. You fought back against yourself. I’m sure there are others out there, but you're the first person to show me that I’m not alone. So Anenna is wrong, you might be pathetic but your choice to help me with Shen is a step away from it not towards it. You doing that …I don’t feel as crazy and stupid as I did before I met you.” There was a long pause after that. Zavier racked his brain, grasping for some filler words to buy him time to give a well thought response to Yafu. Before he found the right selection, Yafu bailed him out, “You don’t have to respond. I don’t want you to. Just know that's what I feel if you ever feel like an idiot for making the choices you made.”

Zavier obliged Yafu’s request and left it be with no comment. He probably would have lied to Yafu, affirming it. Zavier felt like he owed him that after Yafu let Zavier into his soul, if only briefly. But the truth was he did not think Yafu and him were very similar at all. He knew better. Yafu was truly courageous. The shredded papers on the floor in the other room were testaments to this. Zavier could easily imagine Yafu spending night after night in squalor here for the exact reasons he had outlined.

Zavier was different. He really did grab onto Yafu irrationally out of existential desperation like Anenna said, but Yafu was still the catalyst for everything. Whatever the equivalent choice was in his life, there was no way he would have taken it without Yafu. He was as sure of that as just about anything. The same dissatisfaction Yafu described burned deeply within his own life, so deeply that Zavier latched onto Yafu’s drive the second he could in order to escape. But the idea that he would have done anything on his own was an outright lie. He walked down this path because Yafu put it in front of him, and ultimately that is the opposite of breaking inertia. Zavier always went down the path in front of him no matter how much he longed for a different one. As Anenna correctly assessed, truly pathetic.