The storm system that had blown through, the one we left behind in the fringe city, had caused some flooding in the area, which left the roads muddier than expected. It wasn't until early afternoon on our third day of traveling that the capital came into view. It was a spectacular sight, unlike anything I had seen, yet somehow still somewhat familiar. The unceasing night of the world was seemingly held back over the sky of the capital. Golden rays of light spilled from soft, white clouds, causing long shadows to trail from every building. The whole city had a splendor that radiated for miles.
As we got closer, the scale truly hit me. The city was surrounded by a fifty-foot wall with towers placed periodically along it, but even that was dwarfed by what it protected. In the middle of the city sat a palace made of concentric rings of golden crystal. The layers were irregular, with varying heights and non-regular diameters, which made it even more imposing. The rings converged on a central spire that stretched into the sky for what looked like triple the height of the walls. But no matter how grand this palace was, it was dwarfed by the crystal statue of serpentine figure with six pairs of wings and myriad legs that was coiled around the entire palace from the base to the tip of the central structure. Being made of a clear crystal, it was transparent, but it refracted the light that shone through it, creating a sort of kaleidoscopic image of the palace within its body.
"Close your mouth. You'll catch flies with it open that wide."
"Ah, yeah, sure, sorry."
***
There was a small collection of buildings at the base of the wall, one of which was a frankly incredible stable with space for dozens of horses, which is where we dumped the carriage. The other buildings didn't quite constitute a town. There were no houses, instead there were a number of hotels and restaurants, all of extremely varying qualities. Everything was built on a grid, and the orderliness of it was throwing me off.
"I'm not used to being able to see this far down streets."
"Yeah, well, get used to it. The grid of the city proper may be circular, but it's big enough and the streets are wide enough to give you plenty of anxiety. For the time being, focus on what's down the streets. Notice how the buildings get worse farther away from the main street? Tell me why."
"The land near the road is more expensive? I think I heard someone talk about the buildings around the courtyard being way more expensive than the rest of the buildings in town."
"True, but the money they'd gain from being on the main street would more than make up for the initial purchase and operating costs, especially with how low the initial purchase and operating costs would be; I mean, just look at them. They can't cost that much."
"Alright, so you either asked me a question to show how much more you know than me or to teach me something. Which is it?"
"Fast learner. Good. Then I have two things to teach you. The first is that two things can be true at once. The second is that economic disparity has physical reflections. In this case, areas intended for lower classes are kept distinct from areas intended for upper classes. What are the reasons for this?"
"They don't have the money, but you said reasons, which means there's more to it."
"Astute observation. We'll be at the portcullis shortly, and I have another question to ask, so spin those gears faster."
"Yeah, it's just that easy. Can I at least get a hint?"
"Sure. Erin?"
"Where did you live in your town?"
"A small apartment in the middle of the front area. Why?"
"How would you feel living in a mansion?"
"How should I… oh I see your point. Big, fancy spaces are scary. So, people like to stick with what they're used to?"
"They do, yes."
"Okay, two things. First of all, Erin, I told you to give him a hint, not give him an answer. Secondly, that's about half of it. People don't like to deviate from what they're accustomed to, you're right, but that works both ways. People used to king-sized beds and bedrooms the size of entire apartments get claustrophobic in single-story buildings just the same as people who've only worn rags and hardly know privacy would get uncomfortable with… I don't know, marble floors and shower curtains or something. You get the point. People will keep themselves separated, usually by parameters they themselves choose, and of course, that leaves people as the second half of this. As a general rule, poorer folks don't like to deal with uppity rich folks and vice versa. It's especially funny when they both think it's beneath them to deal with the other."
"Okay. Good to know."
"Riveting response, thank you. Now, look at the wall. What do you notice?"
In the time we had been talking, we continued our approach towards the wall. There was a line of people stretching out a few blocks from the wall, many looking tired and the rest impatient. They were all lining up to get into a gate at the base of the wall. It wasn't even the height of two people and barely wide enough to fit three, and on either side of it was a guard clad in shining silver-grey full plate armor holding a halberd the height of them and a half. Each of these guards stood at least a head above the people in line. Similar guards were stationed in Aarkile, but their armor was a matte gray which bordered on black, and their weapons were varied, likely based on the preference of each guard.
The town at the base of the wall didn't actually each the base of the wall, something I noticed once we passed the end of the line. I had moved to get in line but caught myself after seeing everyone else keep walking. The people impatiently waiting threw us angry glances, but they didn't say anything on account of the giant that was Bear walking with us. Just past the end of the line, the buildings stopped abruptly. There was an empty space of about two blocks between the base of the wall and the edge of the town.
"You mean the people or the comically small gate?"
"Portcullis, and yes. That and the space at the base of the wall. Why?"
"The gate almost looks like it's an afterthought, like they built the wall then knocked a hole out to put a gate in. As for the space, I assume they just don't want people getting close to the wall without being seen."
"Wrong on every account, but don't worry, you'll get better with time. First of all, it isn't a gate, it's a portcullis. A gate is just something that optionally stops passage through a… well, passage, and almost always swings horizontally, whereas a portcullis is specifically a vertical gate that can be quickly dropped to stop enemies when needed. It's a very important difference."
"Okay, sure, it's important, I guess, but why do you care so much about it?"
"Because, when you get to my age you start needing to find things to entertain you, and sometimes being really nitpicky about something random just to get a reaction out of people is funny."
"There are four of us walking with you. Why not just talk to us to keep yourself entertained?"
"Are you kidding? You're the only one who's spoken more than a dozen words this whole trip, and half of them have been right now. I didn't pick Bear and Erin because they were entertaining; I picked them because they were the best choices for the job I needed to do. But enough of that. I told you your answers were wrong, so come up with new ones."
"I don't even remember the question anymore."
"Humph, fine. The portcullis was actually made as an afterthought, which you somehow guessed even though there's no evidence supporting that. The rough shape of the walls was constructed with magic, after which they went through and poked holes for the entrances. The reason they made them so small was to severely limit the advance of a wave, should it make it to the city, and even outright stop some of the larger beasts from entering. For the second part, you weren't wrong in saying that the lack of buildings around the base of the wall prevents people from approaching without being spotted, but that's only a perk. The real reason is to let us shoot down on the beasts piling up outside the bottleneck of the portcullis without the buildings getting in the way. Now shut up and don't say anything to make the guards suspicious."
We had made it to the front of the line of people, incurring spiteful glances the whole while which I did my best to ignore, and were now truly approaching the gate. As we got close, one of the guards stepped forward to intercept us. The Mayor, or rather Owl, reached into his pocket and produced a small icon with a "bet you didn't expect that" grin, holding it uncaringly between the tips of his fingers. I was still getting used to what was to me a new name. The icon he produced, a sort of badge type thing which I never got a clear look at, was simply a piece of metal on a leather backing. It was the same one Bear had shown at the hotel. The guard took a second to look at it before stepping back into his place. Owl then repocketed it and continued forward.
We passed through the wall completely unmolested. Just inside the vestibule was another pair of guards, followed by two more pairs at the halfway point, guards two doors on either side of the hall, followed by a final pair at the exiting side. About a third of the way into this tunnel was a cutout in the wall, wherein sat a man checking through the paperwork of everyone who passed. Due to the width of the tunnel, the person who was already being inspected was forced to press himself against the wall to let us pass. The passage through the wall was about thirty feet long, meaning the walls were just as thick. From the outside, it was impossible to gauge their thickness, and the unexpected depth almost made me feel claustrophobic. At the exiting side of the tunnel was another gate, help up like the last one by some unknown mechanism, or a rope, and passing under it, we were finally in the city proper.
Stretched before us was a street wide enough for dozens of people to walk side by side, made of regularly placed cut stones. It was slightly raised in the middle, sloping into gutters which ran along either side of the street. These gutters denoted the edge of sidewalks, along which were countless shops and restaurants that ran on until hitting a large square with a simple yet elegant marble fountain in the center. The breadth of the street allowed a completely unobstructed view of the entire form of the palace in the center of the city. Rays of soft golden light beamed through fluffy white clouds, dissipating just above the skyline, and bathing the entire city in an orange-gold light.
I paused for a second on just the other side of the wall, taking the whole sight in. The form of the palace was far more impressive from this much closer. My focus on the view was interrupted when someone who had been waiting on the sidewalk approached us. He was a man with an average build and an unremarkable visage, with short black hair and a clean-shaven face. He was dressed in a simple black suit, neither expensive nor cheap, free of any excess adornments but not lacking in the standard elements. He had a soft smile on his face and was holding something under his arm.
"Hey, old man."
"Are we late?"
"No. I told them when about you'd be getting here, and they made the necessary adjustments."
"Good, then let's go."
The man took out what he was holding, which turned out to be a folded wheelchair. Owl took the seat quickly, passing his crutches to Bear, who slid them between his back and his crate. We started moving right after he sat down, the new addition to our party pushing the wheelchair. I noticed him give me a questioning look, and I gave him much the same type of look, but neither of us said anything. Everyone was calm, but there was a strange feeling in the air, something close to urgency and anxiety, like they didn't want to be here but didn't want to move. Unfortunately for them, the streets were completely empty, with nothing and no one to slow them down.
We walked for a while, which gave me time to soak in the size of the city. We kept on this main street, seemingly headed straight for the central palace. Every building around us had multiple floors, something I was unused to. The width of the street helped to stave off a feeling of claustrophobia, but only to a certain extent. What didn't help was that every building felt the same. There were differences, of course, but the architecture was all the same, the materials were all the same, the height was almost all the same. There was an uncomfortable amount of order to it all, at least to me, having just come out of a completely disorderly, unplanned, and chaotic mess of a city that I had nonetheless become accustomed to.
As we passed through the square with the fountain, I looked down the two streets on either side. To my left was more of the same of what I had already seen. To my right, however, the pattern broke. A ways down the street, the buildings, multi-level and always made of the same white brick, turned to single story, wooden things. Some even seemed to have simple blankets tossed over them, although I couldn't be sure due to the distance I was observing from. To my understanding, we had entered from the north side of the city, meaning this section, which was clearly the slums of the city, occupied the northwest quadrant, minus a bit of area. It was a bit off-putting to me; the city was uncomfortably opulent up until an arbitrary line, wherein it became run-down and grimy.
I knew there were poor people, of course. The town I had just come from was only a step above these slums, and we had just discussed the way the different classes viewed each other, so seeing wasn't exactly surprising. It wasn't the presence of the slums that made me uncomfortable, which should've been a given but still took me a bit to realize, but rather it was the juxtaposition of the slums to the rest of the city that threw me off. To go from such luxury to such poverty, in the span of what I assumed to be a single street no less, seemed simply unnatural, but I didn't believe this was something the city itself would've implemented. Of course, I had no way to know one way or the other, and frankly, it didn't matter; no matter what the reason for its existence was, it existed, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. Putting that out of my mind, my thoughts started to wander to other topics.
Something I had noticed, although I didn't think about it too carefully until now, was that the street we were walking down and all the streets I could see down were completely devoid of people. I had seen empty streets before, usually during especially bad weather, but even then, there were people with business to attend to that required them to be outside. I would've expected to see at least a couple of people here and there, even if infrequent, but there was no one. Even after nearly half an hour of walking, there was no one.
By now, we were nearly at the center of the city. There was a wide street that wrapped around the palace, the same width as the main street we were on. Being this close, the scale of the palace, and by extension the statue built upon it, were far more evident, seemingly reaching into the veil of the sky itself and completely dwarfing all the buildings in the city. It took us another few minutes to walk around it. As we approached the other side of the palace, the south side, the sound of a large crowd began to fill the air. It wasn't loud, the people were clearly trying to be quiet, or perhaps instructed to be, but a large group is bound to make noise no matter what's done to prevent it. Soon after, the source came into view.
On the south side of the palace was a massive square area. There were other squares in the town, but this was truly the town square. There were thousands, even tens of thousands of people crowded in this square, enough to where the noise they were making was impressively quiet. At one end of this square, a large wooden platform had been placed, clearly temporary, but still of high quality. There were a comparably small number of people on this platform, only a few dozen, but they were made to look even less by the fact that they were all stood around the center of the platform. Near the front of the platform were two noticeable things. The first was a wooden podium, behind which stood a man in white clothes. The second was a wooden box big enough to fit a person of average build; a coffin.