The morning air was fresh, and was accompanied by the stench of uneasiness. One week had passed since the ordeal in the waterfall chasm, and Elijah had been on a numerous number of walks around the city, and even walks in the inner city that is crudely overpopulated during the daytime. From the looks of it, anyone who had managed to find a place to stay when their home was destroyed, were always out in the streets during the daytime selling whatever they could to make a living. These poor people probably made a deal to only take refuge in their temporary homes to sleep.
The tension in the kingdom continued to rise not just from the food rationing, but also the next to zero progress on retaking the walls. What the kingdom needed was an all out war to solidify their survival, but before that, must come the slow destruction and dwindling of the horrid and new beasts that roamed the outer lands.
Subtle knocks were heard at the door of Elijah's bedroom in the evening. A voice that Elijah had been so dearly waiting for was finally here.
"It's Amaris, can you open up?"
The voice was not the same cheery voice as he had always had. The seemingly cold man had truly turned cold.
"Hello Ama–. Woah! Wh-what happened to your arm?!" Elijah opened the door to see the familiar white-haired and blue eyed man. Only this time, part of his left hand was missing as if it had been split down the middle in a diagonal line. Amaris' thumb and index finger were the only things attached with the missing part covered in gray and black skin.
Amaris took a seat on the chair in the corner of the room. "Ha! There is this really tricky humanoid beast with an affinity I have never seen before. Just being touched by its power disintegrated my hand almost instantly."
Elijah thought back to his astral projection experience. "Decay."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Did this creature have long squirming limbs coming from the top of its body?"
"Yes?! How do you know that?"
"Something Happened before I left for my mission. I think I left my physical body, and was able to pass through anything physical and fly wherever I wanted to go. I went to the outer region, and I saw the same humanoid beast, and it somehow saw me even though I was invisible to the eye. It also tried to use a weird type of magic on me, but I was able to escape." Elijah told the truth without sounding like an expert. Amaris was trustworthy since he too wanted to explore outside the outer walls.
Amaris gave a deep sigh. "Elijah, You probably have no idea what you did, but your soul left your body during something called soul wandering. It is a phenomenon that has been shared in secret within different cults of the kingdom I came from. However, to let your soul wander requires either an immense amount of energy, or pure and intense amounts of concentration that is seemingly impossible."
Elijah told Amaris the truth of how it had happened, and his meetings with a mysterious man with a jumbled face.
"Elijah, I need you to tell me this man's name." Amaris' voice shocked Elijah. His tone made Elijah presume he knew Abel.
"Abel."
Amaris quickly stood up from his chair, and paced around the room in circles.
"Dammit! How is Abel? Where is he?!"
"Uhhh, he says he is stuck within The Catacombs. Something I haven't told you yet, is that every time I jump into the area underneath the whirlpool, I end up in the same cavern with Abel calmly being by himself. Also, Abel tells me he doesn't remember much about his past, and only knows his name."
"Elijah. If what you are saying is true, then you cannot trust him. He was one of the people that came to this kingdom with me and I fear that he is being controlled."
"What?! Controlled by who?"
"I don't know. When I first came here as a youngling, and blended into the streets of the inner south, I stayed close to the people I came with. We rose through the ranks of the hunter guild, but something happened within The Catacombs many times over that triggered me to never return there again. I was betrayed, over and over again. I lost the people I had become friends with, over and over again. That is when I became friends with a hunter captain who started to take me outside the walls. Everyone around me never wanted to go outside the walls in the first place, but the goal was to capture more animals for food if they were seen, or kill the beasts and collect their cores as resources. The beasts outside the walls are wildly different compared to the beasts in The Catacombs. I think there are people within this kingdom that are the reason for the eeriness, and I want your help to either stop those people, or kill them."
Elijah felt a warm feeling wash over him. For the first time in the world that seemed like sunshine and rainbows, he was finally able to empathize with something going through the same troubles. "Okay, I agree. I want to help you. I want to learn what is going on with this kingdom. I-I love this kingdom, or at least, I did before the wall fell."
"That is good to hear. That flight ability of yours is rather special, you know. Back in my kingdom, abilities like these were something people like us would obtain, but or a cost... These abilities could be flight like yours, but also speed, strength, telekinesis, and even shape shifting. These abilities come from something I have only heard about in passing. The Gods. In fact, we have a magnificent stature in the very center of our Kingdom known as Lancius, the Lightbringer."
Elijah compared Amaris' words to his personal experience. The voice that he sometimes heard in his head asking him to save someone, or the remnants of conversations he had with an unknown figure correlated with the idea of gods existing. However, only one question was on Elijah's mind. "What was your kingdom like?"
"Haha! Do you mean the way it looks? The culture? The food?"
"Yes! Everything!"
Amaris sat back in the chair. "My kingdom is called Gion, and is at least twenty times larger than this kingdom. If you think this place is beautiful, then you will drop to your knees when you see Gion. The entire kingdom uses a heated river that comes from somewhere deep in the earth. This river is coursing with immense amounts of mana and the spout is where the royal square is located, which houses the royal families. The King however, lives on a floating island created by a geyser of mana. There are many different districts including the noble, market, farm, industrial, red light, oceanfront and even a district in the outskirts known as the slums. While my kingdom is nowhere near perfect, and definitely capitalizes on the weak, most people truly enjoy living there. The motto is basically contribution, as you get what you deserve. I could talk about the endless body of water that sits on pearly white sand, how the waterspout has been monopolized as a healing center and as a source of drinking water for the people, or how the beasts are handled within the borders and foreign regions of the kingdom. But… I would rather you see and experience it for yourself. I won't say much else, but I did want to let you know that our kingdom doesn't rely on magic at all. We manufacture everything using the resources in our abundant environment, and even use the mana crystals to create magical equipment for hunters that do not have mana cores. Magic in this kingdom is a commodity, something so common it is seen as unnatural to not have it, whereas in Gion, having it grants you status unlike anyone in the kingdom.
"Incredible!" The vast differences between the two kingdoms made Elijah think about the origin of magic. The density and normalcy of magic in the Kingdom of Astraea makes it seem like all magic originated from here, from whatever made the crater that the kingdom survives around. The idea of magic being used more frequently in the creation of magical equipment also sparked ideas in his head. Do Gion's methods involve runic symbols?