Where the pair had ended up on their walk through the City had a far more untouched feel to it than when they set out that night. The destruction from the collapsed spire was hidden behind the decayed and broken remains of others.
They were biding time, admittedly. The decision made not to act until they were united in the real world. Gale, as such, took longer to absorb his surroundings than he had the most recent nights. The need for action had always been there, yet tonight in the inbetween it gave him that lost opportunity.
It brought a tear to his eye this time.
When he thought the City's state was dire he'd never realised how much. Crevices smashed through the smooth stone broadwalk, its patterns and inlays once fit for nobility were now faded and smooth. Splits ran up walls, shattering the faded and eroded sculptures and once intricate mouldings. The towers and spires of a thousand colours had been greyscaled and muted.
The City now was barely of form. Its elegance and vibrance sapped away, with all that was left behind cracked and broken. He looked down a crossroads, and off in the distance could see what looked like a sloped cliff.
Only when looking up did he see that wasn't quite it. The severed districts didnt even fall anymore, they just drifted. Towers hung in the air mid fall, their debris still drifting away. It was like time had slowed, that this was the City's last breath and it was just drawing it out for as long as it could.
There was some grace to it. Even in death it tried to be beautiful. To a first time observer it was a staggering sight no doubt, yet it was merely morbid when someone knew what it once was.
"It's like you're waiting..." Gale whispered aloud. He didn't say it to anyone, but he knew it had heard him. Somehow, it was willing. He pleaded to it. "I can't go any faster, you will have to wait a little more."
He looked upon the ground. Dust and sand from the desecrated spires left a thin coat upon it, some had reformed to chips under his feet. His fading aura had sharpened. The restored land from his will had regained a colour. A shimmer almost. It would wait for him.
Gale coiled down and leapt into the sky. His flightsuit alight once again, he worked his way through the ruins scattered amongst the skyline. He tumbled and weaved amongst them, taking in each piece as he went by. So many memories, from so many...
All turning to dust and rubble.
After what felt like an age of flight, the never ending canyons of broken stone and crystal ceased being never ending. They reached a grey end, anomalous at first until the faintest trails of dusky fog crept into detail. The spires and towers became more scattered, like the waning edge of a forest. Their tips became less tall and proud and more shallow yet dignified. Each one of them was stopped with a crowning spike made of what seemed as pure white marble, their true form lost to the echoes of time as anywhere else.
The final end of the City was sudden. A mere wall of black stone, no higher than one's waist, seemed to endlessly run into the distance. It was a distinct line drawn around the City's true end. The causeway between it and the bases of those last towers was still adorned with intricate knotwork, the scale of the artistic pattern was huge for such a simplistic design. Yet the weathering and erosion that had scoured the City still left its mark, yet never taken from its form.
Gale landed next to a large obelisk, the definitive end of this broadwalk into the depths of the dream. Thousands more sat along the city's boundary, standing silent guard at the end of its broadwalks, each one still glistened faintly with the faded light.
As Gale stood up he heard the wind of an object pass him by. He thought it was, at first, the wind.
"Hi." Carola said, standing up as well. she gestured towards him. "Thought you were on your way?"
"I am, I just couldn't get to Dover in one night." He answered with a shrug. "Should be there by tomorrow night though, I've just got one more thing to do beforehand."
"Ok..." she nodded slowly.
"Nothing to worry about. Won't take too long, hopefully." Gale hurriedly thought of a way to move the topic away from... that.
"Well when you get here head for the church, the big one. Hard to miss." She'd noticed the uncomfortable expression he'd donned, so she made the move for him.
"You know you're being very trusting."
"What you mean meeting you in the real world?" She chuckled like someone had told her a daft joke. "Yeah well, I haven't got anything or anyone to lose. But if you do try anything don't worry, I'll be ready for it."
Gale nodded, flashing both his eyebrows. "Yeah neither do I. Not anymore."
"Bad things happen?"
"The worst." He said, brushing the topic away once again. He gestured up the City's edge. "Come on, time to discuss the plan... again."
"Right." Carola said assuredly, throwing down her ever loyal flightboard as Gale kicked off into the sky. After they both steadied in flight she pointed towards the City's edge. "So why are we here?"
"It's the last anchor to this world." His voice echoed in her helmet. "It's the only other place I can think of that has a connection to everything else."
"What, to the fog?" She asked, dodging out the way of what seemed to once be a balcony. She took a look at the distant wall of cloud. It looked more akin to smoke, dense and thick. Its surface rippled on invisible currents, wisps and jetstreams pulled it into strands. It looked enshrouding, it looked unbreakable.
Yet there was one thing that pierced it.
"Exactly. There it is."
Carola's flightboard kicked back as she reeled in surprise. It was abrupt, its presence was without warning. They crested the edge of the City's perimeter and there it was. One long span jutting out into the clouds. The end of a mighty causeway that looked no different from any other. it had been the only one to grow out of the City, yet it's presence felt integral.
As it breached the faded edge of the smallest towers it's architecture changed entirely. The gaping arches akin to an aqueduct were replaced with long spans of flat crystal, it's surface rippled with every colour imaginable, even as the City became greyscale. Its light flowed into it, it fueled the City. That same light that flowed amongst the City in its prime, flowed from here never endingly.
Large supports were emblazoned with an almost gothic design, ancient beyond even the City itself. The mammoth towers that rose to meet it were hewn from stone that matched the darkness of the wall. It's surface pure as night, yet engraved and chiselled with indelible accuracy. Even amongst the corrupted purity that had overran the City's great skyline, it still held strong.
It was damaged and broken, no doubt of it. Some towers never rose higher than a stunted lump of rock, and many more had the great beams between them dashed across the floor below, or worse, into the abyss itself. However whilst the immaterial components of its structure had failed, the bridge of light itself ran unbroken, even when the space between its supports stretched for miles, it still held straight and true. It plunged into the fogbank. It was all that was left.
"We need to break this..." Carola asked as she kicked up over the bridge's precipice. She landed on its surface with a gentle step. The landing was seemingly unnoticed like stepping off a bus. Gale landed like the end of a high jump, far less graceful about it than times previous his was more like stepping off an escalator. "How the hell do we do that? Does our power get magnified if we're nearby?"
"Not quite, that's for part two of the plan." he said, running his hands across the pure crystal. He folded the glove away, the crystal was warm on touch, the light flowing beneath was pure. "The City is weak to the forces of the real world. It caused all this." He looked to the shattered spires in the distance, to the cracked and sundered districts just drifting away. The City's last breath. "So if we can bring something here from it we can break it free."
"Sounds like killing it," Carola stepped up to gale. Her eyes on the skyline, backlit beautifully in the fading dawn light. "Thought you wanted to save it?"
"If doing that is ending its suffering..." He said, mournful. He felt the tug of the morning upon him. "It's a gentle balance. We break it free, then wake up-"