Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

The lift floor indicator read 456 just before the doors opened. Yuriko and the others piled inside, and they practically filled the entire space. But that was fine. The entire wall was filled with lift doors, and the only thing that distinguished it from every other kind of door was that it was made out of bronze, and there was a viewscreen at the top, and a call button next to it.

But once they were inside, Yuriko didn’t know what to do. They were basically inside a small room that barely fit the seven of them, with Fluffers taking up a full third of it. The upper part of the walls were mirrors, or viewscreens that were showing their reflection. The ceiling had a nice pattern, and there were a couple of reflective glass domes at the corners.

There was a REI-space thread that poked out of the viewscreen next to the door. Since she was keeping her aura close, she only noticed when it connected with her Autotab. Her visor was tucked away in her backpack.

“Floor 150, transport area,” Gwendith muttered as she inputted the keys on her Autotab. Only then did the viewscreen show the details. A moment later, they were in motion. Yuriko felt as if the floor under her dropped away, but that was only because of how fast the lift descended. Then it jerked over to a side, then back downwards. It only took half a minute before the lift stopped and the doors opened into a bustling corridor.

And the difference between those here and those above could not be starker. Yuriko frowned at the sight. It wasn’t just that the corridor was narrower. It was that the place wasn’t as clean as the lobby. She noticed stains left at the corners, and where the walls joined the floor. She noticed dust swirling in the air. She noticed that the ambient Elemental energies were far thinner here than what she felt when she first arrived here. And the lift doors behind them snapped shut, and there was no indicator, button, or lever to call it back. In fact, when the doors closed, what remained on this side looked no different from the walls around them.

“Insufficient authority to call lift to upper levels?” Gwendith muttered. She shook her head and muttered, “Never mind, we’re not going back up there just yet anyway.” She glanced around, then winced at what she saw.

Yuriko had initially focused on the environment, but the people were no less…grungy. Unlike up top, everyone around here wore a visor of some kind, but about half of them had automata eyes and the nerve link that made using it possible. More than a few sported automata arms or legs too, and they also had the same kind of eyes. All of them. She wondered if that was this region’s Anima refinement method, or as the Profile labelled it, Developmental Discipline. Hers had been filled up when she reached it, labelled as Arcana Weaver, Magi. It was untrue, of course, or perhaps, it was only a part of her skillset. She can Weave the Elemental energies, even if she was barely proficient.

So was replacing their limbs, and probably senses these people’s Development Discipline? Not that she was interested in mutilating herself, since she was sure her physique would reject the additions and grow back any lost parts. It was still interesting to see. She activated her Chaos Sight and hummed in appreciation. Of the people walking around with automata limbs, nearly all of them had strands of their Anima permeating throughout the metal. It did not encompass the entire limb, of course, but more like tiny and narrow lines extending from where it was still flesh then throughout the limb. She wouldn’t be surprised if they could eventually feel through the metal as if it were flesh once their Anima adapted.

Still, the majority only had those thin threads, and the strangest she could see was barely twice as thick as their weaker fellows. And that man looked like a grizzled veteran warrior. Interesting.

Oh, the veteran must have felt her gaze since he turned to look her in the eye. Suspicion filled his metallic gaze, and she gave back a reassuring smile.

Oops.

Yuriko casually looked away but kept her peripheral vision on the man. She also held down her Mien, and thankfully, she saw the veteran laugh ruefully and shake his head, hesitant for a long moment. It took Gwendith tugging on her arm and Heron interposing himself in between him and Yuri for the veteran to slowly leave.

‘Now isn’t really the time to flirt, my love,’ Gwendith giggled.

‘I didn’t mean it!’ Yuriko protested.

‘You never do, yet you steal and break hundreds of hearts every day.’

‘Hmph!’

Gwendith pulled her along as they traversed the nearly endless maze of corridors. They were supposed to reach their new home via a thing called a monorail, though she had no idea what that was. Her lover cradled the Autotab in her hand, and on the viewscreen was a map and an arrow that slowly moved along a highlighted path.

“These are the directions we should take,” Gwendith explained as she tilted the Autopad towards Yuriko. “We’re about a couple of hundred paces away from the Metro Station.” She grinned. “I’ve been exploring this thing for a while now, and I’ve stumbled into the surface of REI-space, and a dictionary. I don’t get all of it yet, but it helps to look things up. Once we’re secure, explore it a bit more.”

“Alright.” Yuriko agreed.

She glanced back at the others and nodded. Thankfully, they had stopped using the travel chests. They’d trimmed down the luggage over the week they spent in Herrera City and managed to fit everything in their backpacks. Even Fluffington had saddle bags strapped across his back. Small, tasteful and discreet saddlebags made of fine, sandshark leather.

The corridors remained crowded as they pushed on. Although she knew they were in the bowels of a massive building, and by rights it should feel claustrophobic, the viewscreens strategically placed along the walls displayed coherent and continuous scenes outside the building. It was as if they were walking across a skybridge rather than what was technically a tunnel.

Soon enough, they reached the Metro Station, or what she assumed was it. It was a large, multi-level place, and there she finally knew what a monorail was. A Commuter Tram that hung under a trail made out of shaped stone and steel. She watched with interest as a tram… oh, most people around her called it the metro train, pulled out of a platform after it unloaded passengers and loaded up a new batch. It zoomed off at full speed, faster than any kind of landcraft back home, or the Steeld carriages in Bresia. In fact, it reminded her of the locomotives she saw in passing back in Irvalla’s Karcellia.

Her Autotab buzzed and when Yuriko looked, she saw a blue box pop up. ‘Tired of paying for every stop? Take the Daily Metro! Pay only 199 AC to use the Metro Monorail for the entire day!’ Terms and Conditions apply. 

Those terms and conditions were made out in letters a third the size of the regular ones. If her visual acuity were worse than what she had, she wouldn’t have been able to read it at all. Of course, the text was so thick she was starting to have a just from looking at it.

“How do we get to that…uh, tower? I mean, do we use the Metro the entire time?” Yuriko asked Gwendith.

“Until we get to Tower 1D-L15-12,” Gwendith said. “Though we have to switch monorails at L5 and L10.”

“How much is a ride?”

“To L5 is about 29 AC. 39 and 49 AC for the next two.” Gwendith glanced back at Yuriko and added, “117 AC total each.”

“Oh, so it’ll cost us less to pay per stop than to use this.” Yuriko showed her the pop-up blue box.

“Yeah.” Gwendith nodded.

Huh, well that was a bit surprising. She thought it would have been a bargain, but only if she intended to ride the monorail for…well, the entire day.

“I’ve got the tickets,” Gwendith said and piled into the line. Soon enough, they climbed aboard the metro and walked towards the last segment where there were a few seats open. The segment had mixed seating. About half of them were forward facing, while the other half of the area had a bench beneath the windows. Fluffington settled towards the corner but was forced to stand and squish himself smaller when the crowds pushed into the train. By the time the metro left the station, they packed in it with barely any room to move.

The cabin lurched as the monorail exited the station. Yuriko and the others were at the rear, and they were standing next to the windows. It took a few seconds before they left the mega building, and Yuriko couldn’t help but look up. And up, and up. They were roughly two-thirds of the way down, and the building’s width made it look like they came out of the side of a cliff. Well, one covered in opaque windows. It was well past noon, and they were headed northeast, but the building cast such a wide shadow that the only way she knew was because of the map that was tracking their movement in real-time.

She looked towards the ground. They were supposed to be a hundred and fifty storeys above the ground, so it was at least six hundred paces high. The view below was a bit startling, but not because of the height. She was used to flying, of course, but no, that wasn’t it. There was a cloud covering the land underneath, brownish and black. What she could see underneath that was just a splotch of brown and grey. Even when she activated her Enhanced Sight, the most she could see was an outline of a building, a smokestack, or what were probably hills. Well, those and what looked like more monorails, except those tracks looked rickety and worn out, crumbling to bits too. There were elevated roads, too, and it didn’t look like they were deserted.

As they moved farther away from the mega building, she could better perceive what was below. Indeed, there was a criss crossing of elevated roads, and there were figures moving there. Actually, there were people fighting there.

She tightened her Enhanced Sight and focused on a small portion of the highway. There was a group of six people, uniformly armoured and masked, wielding what looked like guns that were longer than pistols but not quite as long as a rifle. On the opposite side were other people wearing bits and pieces of armour that were as unique as each person, and armed with the same kind of gun. They were shooting each other from behind overturned vehicles and rubble. Except that their bullets continued to stream from their weapons faster than Yuriko expected. Some of the bullets even trailed lines of red light as they crossed the distance between the skirmish.

Far above them, she was tempted to extend her perception aura using tendrils. It would just be within reach if she pushed. However, the speed of the monorail moved them away from the firefight before she finished deciding whether she wanted to peep or not.

The thing was, that wasn’t the only firefight if the streaks of red light she saw could be believed. She didn’t always see who was fighting who, but as they left he first building, the fights near the ground became just a bit more numerous.

Then, they were inside another mega building and the monorail’s doors opened to let out the passengers who wanted to alight. And then new passengers squeezed into the transport, pushing everyone inside into a much tighter squeeze.