The Mechanical Crown

Blue skies

"I know that!" Tarn said, bounding onto the disc without a second thought. He took the symbol in his hand and looked at it closely, while Eris leaned backwards in surprise. "I've seen this in my dreams."

"You must be Tarn," Akila said, breaking out into a broad smile. "It's an honour to meet you at last."

Kirya saw Tranton turn and throw her a quizzical glance. She shrugged in response.

"I don't dare ask," Fenris said quietly, taking Akila's hand in an unusual physical display. He held it for a moment, then looked up at her face. "Are you from Aviar?"

"Yes, we are."

"The city still stands?"

"After a fashion."

"What happened? What really happened, when Aera and Kraisa took the battle north centuries ago? Who won? Was it real?"

Akila held up her free hand. "One at a time, please. There's a lot to tell, and a lot for you all to take in. Come with us, we will show you."

Galisai, Hatch and Stefan looked towards Tranton, who threw up his arms. "I'm not in charge here," he said. "My little inspirational speech was before our flying merry-go-round friends arrived."

Having had enough of the indecision, Kirya stepped forward to join Tarn on the disc. "I'm not going back to the valley without something to show for it," she said, "and anything is better than the prospect of walking around the edge of this crater."

"Works for me," Tranton said, hopping aboard. The Bruckin contingent followed, glancing suspiciously at Akila and Eris.

"This may be a little overwhelming," Eris warned. "Feel free to sit down if you feel faint. You will have questions. What you are about to see will shift your perception of the world."

Tranton leaned in close to Kirya and whispered in her ear. "This is worse than someone claiming a joke to be the funniest the world has ever heard, before even telling it."

There was a tiny, almost imperceptible shift in inertia as the disc drifted away from the crater's edge, then began to rise. There was a slight background whine but there were no telltale signs of machinery.

Tarn held his hand up to the air and waved it about in front of him, as if dispersing smoke. He looked over his shoulder at Kirya, grinning from ear to ear. "Can you see it?" he asked, obliquely. Even after spending all this time together, he could still mystify her.

The ground dropped away effortlessly, the relative silence of the disc belying their increasing speed and height. The air around the disc was thick with fog but the immediate area atop the vessel, where they stood, remained clear and dry. They passed up and into the low cloud layer, which parted above them, opening up like an iris to reveal blue skies. The cloud was all around them, with all sense of travel and orientation gone other than the blue circle above, and then they abruptly emerged, lifted up into a different world.

The top of the cloudscape stretched out all around, punctured by mountain peaks to the south, but their attention was drawn entirely to the vision that was suspended in the sky before them: a tremendous expanse of jagged rock, miles-wide, seemingly torn from the ground below, looking like an inverted mountain as it hovered in the sky. Waterfalls tipped from its edges, vapourising as they fell before merging with the cloud layer.

They continued to rise, moving from beneath the floating rock to above, in the process revealing what lay atop in all its gleaming grandeur and improbable spectacle: a city, white and gleaming in the unfiltered sun, entirely covering the flat top of the rocky, inexplicable island. As they drew nearer the scale became fully apparent, with the city on a scale almost to rival Treydolain. Smaller, separate floating islands were attached by walkways and cables, as if the city had expanded beyond its original bounds and had raised up more of the world below to compensate. The island city, at least, showed signs of identifiable technology, with enormous turbines harnessed to its edges, while a lattice of scaffolding and steel stretched over the surface, reinforcing its integrity like a hand desperately clutching at precious, fallen belongings. The turbines were evidently not sufficient to be suspending such a large mass, but it was somehow comforting to see a sign of familiar physics.

The disc flew them across the city, above the buildings, and Kirya knelt at its edge, gazing down into unfamiliar streets and plazas. She could make out people below, and wished with all her being to be down there, talking with them and learning all that they had to offer.

Nobody spoke a word.

In the centre of the city was a tower, twice as tall as the next tallest structure, sharp and slender. Arches curved out from the tower and extended across the entire island to its edges, reminding Kirya of the aqueducts used in the south valley.

It took her a moment to find her voice. "Where are we going?"

Eris pointed. "To Aera's spire," he said. "That's where you'll find answers."

"That's good," Tranton said, "because all I have is questions."

All her life, Kirya had been told that Lagonia was the jewel of the world: the crown atop humanity, an example of civilisation at its finest, technology at its most advanced, art and construction in perfect unison. In a moment, Aviar had stripped the valley of its achievements, torn that pride from her childhood. As they drew nearer to the tower, Kirya knew that her world had been forever changed.