Scorio’s eyes widened in surprise—the man stopped walking and floated upward. With skill and poise, the man moved along the rope as if he were underwater. At first, it was easy, but then he began to struggle, his body rising behind him so that his feet pointed back at Scorio. He reached out, placed a foot on the riser of the next step, and then caught his balance and let go.
He now stood perpendicular to them.
The steps beyond the transition were dangerously short, with steep risers, so that from Scorio’s frame of reference they seemed to fall away in a precipitous cliff.
But they weren’t. They were simply the inversion of normal steps.
The man dusted himself off and continued into the depths.
“That’s just not right,” said Leonis, putting his hand to his stomach.
“Watch,” said Evelyn, and repeated the process. When she reached the mid-point, she grasped the rope with exaggerated deliberation, hauled herself across the gap with no gravity, and neatly stepped out onto the riser and turned to look… down at them?
Language felt inadequate.
“Looks simple enough.” Jova squared her shoulders and descended with confidence to the crossing rope. She grasped it and hauled herself into the weightless zone, her body rising up to float behind her only to droop as she pulled herself further down. She shifted her body, swung out, and stepped down beside Evelyn, who winked at her.
Jova scowled and looked away.
Juniper and Zala managed the same feat albeit less adroitly, and then they all looked down at the rest of them.
“You can do it, Lianshi!” called Juniper, exhilarated.
Scorio nodded grimly and descended with his three companions. He went first, and all was normal till his stomach began to lighten, his weight decreased, and then with another step, he floated up. He snagged the thick rope and barely restrained a whoop of surprised amusement.
It was fun.
He pulled himself toward the others, and for several yards simply swam through the air. Then his body began to grow heavy, but in the direction of the wall; his legs sank, his body straightened out, and his entire frame of reference shifted. Down became sideways, and he stepped out as if onto a ledge, tottered, then caught his balance and turned to help Leonis navigate the same transition.
He looked down the way they’d just come.
Fascinating.
“All right, feeling queasy,” said Leonis. “Shall we continue?”
Evelyn laughed. “If this makes you queasy, you’re in for a rough time in Hell. But let’s.”
Where before they’d been going down, now they began to climb toward the surface. The air was rich with Copper mana, but Scorio didn’t feel the need to Ignite; his Tomb Spark body had endless reserves of energy, and he climbed the steps with gusto, hands gripping his shoulder straps, eyes fixed on the bright portal at the head of the stairs.
It grew gradually larger, ever brighter, and then it seemed to rush toward them as the whole group picked up its pace in eagerness, till at last, they emerged into Hell.
Chapter 10
They fanned out and gaped.
Bastion yawned beside them, a massive pit nearly a mile in diameter. The central hub to whose underside the sun-wire was attached hovered in the pit’s center, an island easily three hundred yards across that rose into an abstract mound of aged and pitted ivory, its design long eroded past any legibility. The four huge causeways that held the hub over the pit were broad avenues of steel and white marble, each fifty yards in breadth and about a third of a mile long. Between them, Scorio could see the curved streets of the city below: hundreds of small buildings extending down the inside of the buried cylinder, minute and detailed, distant and as surreal now as the blue skies had been but moments ago.
Which caused Scorio to yank his head back and stare at the sky—then feel a moment of vertigo as the great blue expanse seemed to swallow him, endless and without depth.
Scorio staggered, his knees going weak. Ever since he’d been reborn he’d been confined in some way: by the Gauntlet, by the caves, by the city itself, or the endless halls and classrooms of the Academy. Always his world had been limited and defined.
But this?
For a second he felt as if he might fall up into the sky.
Naomi clutched at his arm, her grip brutally strong, and they simply leaned against each other, staring up at that cerulean expanse.
It took all his will to tear his gaze free. He lowered it and realized that they stood within a vast walled compound. The walls were monumental, lead gray and ruinous. They encircled all of Bastion, an ancient defensive measure that he’d studied in passing but whose scale he’d utterly failed to appreciate.
The wall’s base was broad, easily some hundred yards wide, but rapidly tapering as it rose several hundred yards into that carnivorous blue sky. Its top was ragged, some sections rising to what might have been their original height, other segments having collapsed, leaving fissures or entire chunks missing, and there its height was reduced to a mere hundred or so yards. Huge mounds of rubble had been stacked along the inner wall or left where boulders too large to be easily moved had buried themselves in the ashen dirt.
Four gates allowed access to the Rascor Plains beyond, each set diametrically across from the other. Compared to the wall’s dizzying height the gates appeared minuscule, but they were easily forty yards tall. Roads ran through each, bringing an endless stream of carts and wagons to the crane yards that clustered around Bastion’s rim. Thousands of workers bustled to unload goods and coordinate their delivery into the city below, their industry reduced to the labor of ants by the scale of the wall and the expanse of the enclosure.
“Look up there,” whispered Lianshi, hand moving to her mouth. “The whale ships.”
Overwhelmed, Scorio turned to see a massive air dock mounted atop a hale section of the wall. A column of ragged scaffolding was bolted into the wall’s face, supporting a staircase that wound back and forth as it climbed to the top. Elevator platforms rose and fell, affixed far above to huge wooden wheels in which companies of men slowly walked.
But it was the ships that held his gaze. There were six of them, each fashioned from the massive skeleton of a great whale whose bones were lashed together and upon whose back a great deck was built, complete with an aftercastle at the rear. Most boasted three masts, and four of them were House affiliated, two for House Kraken, one for Hydra, the last for Chimera. The other two were independent ships and Scorio couldn’t decipher their colors.
“I read about those,” whispered Lianshi, eyes filling with tears. “I once rode one to the Fiery Shoals many centuries ago.”
“They look kind of morbid to me,” grumbled Leonis. “Why not use living whales?”
It was Evelyn who answered, tone sober. “The last air whale was killed five centuries ago. They couldn’t be domesticated, but their aerite bones could be harnessed for safe travel. When that was discovered, their fate was sealed.”
“Oh,” said Leonis.
Scorio studied the closest ship. He frowned at the empty cradle of its lower jaw, the great smooth bone palette above, and empty eye sockets large enough for him to stand inside. A wave of sadness washed through him. What would they have looked like while they lived? What a wonder it would have been, to see them sporting in the sky.
“Done gawking?” Evelyn’s smile was tolerant. “Good. We’ve a long way to go.”
“Amazing,” whispered Juniper, turning in a circle. “What would happen if we walked out onto one of the four causeways and then leaped inside…?”
Evelyn eyed her. “That’s a weird question. You’d drop ten or so feet then be pulled toward the closest side where you’d splatter across a roof or some cobblestones. Can’t say I advise it unless you can fly. Let’s go.”