After a satisfying lunch and a few hours for Claud and Lily to complete their final preparations, the two of them checked out of the inn and stared at the afternoon sun. High above them was a floating island, and Claud took a deep breath as he ran through the many different hazards and the best way to deal with them in his mind once more.
Lily patted his hand. "Don't be scared."
"Easier said than done, really," Claud replied. "But I'll consider that piece of advice very thoroughly."
He closed his eyes.
The Celestia Ruins were generally hard to access. Either one flew there, or went to the Marsh of Remembrance, where there were portals that would either bring one to the ruins or to somewhere deep inside the forest. Since the books he had read were mostly focused on people who had directly chosen to fly there, neither Claud nor Lily knew what these portals were like, other than the fact that they were red doorways.
Incidentally, those red doorways would also randomly appear in Celestia too. For those who didn't have a way of landing from a high height safely, this was their only ticket off the place.
"Well, we can't stand here forever," said Lily. "People are beginning to look at us oddly."
"Right. Let's leave the city first, and then begin our flight to the ruins." Holding Lily's hand, the two of them made their way to the gates of Lostfon, only to realise that the city perimeter had been surrounded by multiple lines of fortifications.
Duchess Lacuna's forces exemplified the definition of efficient, if nothing else.
"No choice," Claud replied. "We'll just hide ourselves and then fly away directly. It's a waste of a skillstrip, though…"
Taking to the skies, the two of them looked towards the doomed Quies Dukedom. Now that a few days had passed, they could actually see, if only vaguely, the outline of an incredibly dome at the border between both dukedoms.
"Um…is it me, or is someone copying you?" Lily asked, her eyes fixed on the dark dome at the distant horizon.
"…I demand my royalties," Claud replied.
"You are absolutely free to knock on that thing and ask for them." Lily blinked innocently, an impish grin on her face. "I'll eat some cake and watch."
Claud clicked his teeth. "You're supposed to dissuade me from doing something this dangerous, Lily."
"You weren't going to do that in the first place, so I don't really see the point in making my tongue tired."
Claud found himself speechless for a moment, and then rolled his eyes. "Fine. You're the boss. Still, why is the great Dark fortifying such a small place? I mean, the Moons literally blocked off an entire sovereignty. The great Dark's response seems a bit pathetic when we look at that."
"One side has three times the territory." Lily bit her lip. "When you put it that way, you do make a lot of sense."
"As a rule of thumb, I usually make sense…"
Claud knew that the Moons' forces wanted to gain control over the Terra Jewels in the Istrel Sovereignty, which would allow the Moon Emissaries to turn the entire area into the base in which grand workings and rituals could be conducted on. The same probably went for the great Dark, but to be honest, the disparity was a bit too large…
"Let's not waste time on that, though. Between the Moons and the Dark, I naturally support the former more," said Lily.
"I think both are bad for us," Claud replied. "Hang on tight. We'll be ascending really quickly now."
"Mm."
Wind howled as Claud channelled his mana into the spiritual structure of Flight. Charging towards the floating sky ruins, Claud hurtled onwards madly, increasingly cognizant that this was the first time he had flown at such heights. Although Flight made it such that the two of them could ignore many things, Claud hadn't quite accounted for the issue of it being freaking cold at such heights, and their teeth began to clatter.
"S-stop!" Lily called out. "I'm freezing!"
"M-me t-too." Claud stopped in mid-air, once again very aware of the fact that the ground was far, far below them. "Any ideas?"
"Let me make a flame first. We'll have to slow down," Lily replied, and a flame burst into being. "Fortunately, we're quite close."
"Next time we go to this place, we'll align ourselves right underneath first, and then shoot up with all our strength." Claud huddled close to Lily, taking in the comfortable warmth and hugging her at the same time.
After warming themselves for a little bit, the two of them continued on. Once again, Claud infused mana into Flight and surged towards the ruins madly. The biting chill assaulted his skin, but both Claud and Lily knew that it would be a sad waste if he had to use another Flight skillstrip.
"Endure it, endure it…"
"The air in front is different!" Lily called out. "I think we're closing into the ruins' sphere of influence!"
"Alright!" Encouraged by that good news — there were no records of the ruins being horribly cold — Claud bit his lips and continued their mad flight onwards.
"There! Hurry!"
"Hold on tight!"
The chill gave way to a soothing warmth as Claud charged through the rippling, distorted air. At the same time, the world changed. The ground below them had been replaced with the backdrop of the night sky, with a gigantic globe hanging below.
The two stopped for a moment, before Lily cleared her throat. "We don't have time to admire the scenery. You don't have much time left on Flight, right?"
"Crap." Speeding up once more, Claud brought Lily to the ruins quickly, only looking around the place when they finally landed.
The Celestia Ruins looked like a city. Lots of tall, tall buildings could be seen peeking out from towering walls, each of them made out of what seemed to be glass. Giant, ballistae-like weapons lined the top of the walls, each of them giving off glints that sent chills down his spine.
Whatever those things were, they were incredibly dangerous.
Metal carriages littered the place the two of them were standing on. On closer inspection, Claud could see leather seats and…what seemed to be dried blood on them.
"So, people sat in those things?" Lily muttered.
"And then they died. Or maybe because they died, that they were seated here. Like coffins." Claud examined one of those metal carriages. They reminded him of a coffin, just that they were larger or something, which served to bolster his earlier suspicions.
"Coffins that can seat a lot of people at once? But why leave them out here? Usually, we bury them underground, right?"
"Lily, dear, this is another world. Who knows what those people have as their culture?" Claud looked around the place. "Look. There are lines…no, rectangles arrayed on the ground nicely. I bet they're for those tombs to be placed nicely on. I know Caroline was working on making the new graveyards more orderly."
"Hmm." Lily looked at the lines. "Well, it is more space-efficient. Look! There are even squares stacked up together, and if we look over there, there's three of those coffins stuck on the same…rack or whatever."
"Right?" Claud looked around the place. "So much metal or something. Should we push the empty coffins off the ruins and collect them when we go down?"
"…Really?" Lily looked at him. "Putting aside the fact that these things will kill anyone they land on, I'm sure all of them had a body loaded inside at some point in time. Look at that wheel-like thing in the front seat; it has blood on it."
"Oh." Claud grimaced. "Alright then."
They took another long gaze around the weird graveyard. It was surrounded by a small wall, like most other graveyards, with only a gate in and out of the place. Perhaps, in a more peaceful time, this place would have been more orderly, but whatever disaster that had struck this graveyard…
Walking out of the gate, Claud turned back to look at the sad place, and then sighed.
"Feeling pensive?" Lily asked.
"I hate it when people die in general," Claud replied. "It's…the end of potential. Of possibilities."
Lily pondered over his words for a moment. "…Me too."
"Right?" Claud fiddled with her right hand. "If only everyone had pure-ranked lifestones forever."
"That's wishful thinking." Lily poked his cheek, and then looked at the gate. "Odd. The language used here is the same…"
"Well, some sources claim that our language came from Celestia, so I'm not really surprised." Claud looked at the rusting sign. "Uh…ISV Carpark 1A? Not sure if I got it right, though. What's that anyway?"
"Parks, huh? I suppose greenery is quite a good place to place tombs in…maybe the grass withered away or something." Lily sighed. "Come on, let's go."
As the two walked towards the city, Claud remembered something. "Right, our status! Let's see if it really changed!"