by John Bierce
“You will,” Hugh said.
Sabae grunted, then staggered off across the ceiling. The spellbook fluttered off after them.
Hugh could feel his mana reservoirs draining quickly, but all three had started off full, so he should be able to keep this up for a while.
Sabae almost dropped him when reaching up to open his door, and smacked his leg against the door-frame as she stepped out.
To Hugh’s surprise, she didn’t head straight for deck, instead heading for the cabin she shared with Talia.
“Talia,” she called, knocking on the door. “We’re almost to Lothal. Come up on deck to watch!”
“No thanks,” Talia called back, seeming miserable. “I’ve already seen Skyhold and Theras Tel from a ship, they were impressive enough for me.”
“Lothal’s near as impressive as either,” Sabae said, “and maybe even more distinctive. Hurry up already.”
Hugh heard a groan from inside the room. A long moment later, a miserable, seasick Talia poked her head out of the room.
“This had better be worth it,” Talia said, then stopped as she looked straight into Sabae’s upside-down face. “What are you doing on the… Hugh?”
Hugh grunted vaguely at Talia in greeting.
“Hugh here,” Sabae said, jostling him a little, “was refusing to come out of his room and decided to be difficult when I tried to drag him out.”
“Huh,” Talia said.
Hugh felt something bump against his leg, and he glanced back to see his spellbook hiding from Talia.
“Well, come on then,” Sabae said.
She turned and started striding towards the hatch to the deck.
“Don’t think I don’t see you, you dumb book,” Talia said. “I still haven’t forgiven you for dragging me across Skyhold by my hair.”
The book fluttered down the hall ahead of them, towards the exit. Hugh noticed the ship’s cat poking its head out of an open cabin, eying his spellbook cautiously with its eight eyes.
Sabae seemed like she would cheerfully call any bluff of Hugh’s, so Hugh slowly weakened his levitation cantrip before they got to the stairs. Sabae, well-used to Hugh’s overpowered levitation cantrips by now, expertly revolved her body in the air, landing gracefully on her feet.
She kept Hugh slung over her shoulder, though.
The Endless Erg halted a half-dozen leagues shy of Lothal, not reaching the sea this close to the Skyreach Range, which loomed just to the east of them. They didn’t have to leave the Ox, however— some previous ruler of Lothal had carved a massive canal for the sands of the Erg, leading straight to the edge of the city.
The first sign of the city itself came nearly a league out. A single curious stone column jutted from the ground to the side of the canal. It was pentagonal in shape and around the height of a grown man, fashioned of some dark stone.
Hugh thought about reaching out with his crystal affinity sense, but couldn’t summon up the energy or the interest.
Not more than a minute later, another pair of columns came into view along the side of the canal.
“Are they guideposts?” Talia asked, still looking queasy.
Artur chuckled.
Soon, the columns began jutting from the sand with such frequency that they resembled a stubby forest. A large number had fallen and were lying in the sand.
“Seriously, who carved all these?” Talia asked. “And why?”
“Hugh, why don’t you use your affinity senses to answer her,” Alustin said, from his perch on the railing.
Hugh sighed, but reached out with his affinity sense towards the columns.
Then frowned.
“They’re… not carved at all,” he said. “They’re just… big crystals. They’re naturally that shape. And they’re not connected to anything, just shoved into the sand.”
“Columnar basalt,” Artur said. “It’s what happens when liquid, flowing magma is allowed ta’ cool slowly. As the cooling magma solidifies into lava, it contracts inta’ these columns. It’s the same formation process as any other crystal, just on a larger scale than most. And as fer these particular columns, they were moved here ta’ act as a training ground fer Lothal’s stone mages.”
“Moved here from where?” Talia asked.
“From Lothal,” Alustin said, pointing towards the horizon.
Hugh looked, and saw a dark mass coming into view. At first, he couldn’t make it out very well, but the Ox quickly drew closer to it as it sailed down the sand canal.
Lothal was nowhere near the size of the mountain Skyhold was built into or the colossal volcanic plateau Theras Tel rested atop— it reached maybe two hundred feet into the air at its highest point. It was, however, even more astonishing than either in its own way.
All Hugh could see of Lothal was a solid wall of columnar basalt. Countless thousands of the pentagonal stone pillars interlocked together, stretching thousands of feet in either direction. Hugh could see the figures of guards and lookouts patrolling atop the wall.
“Smell that?” Sabae said.
“Ah been smellin’ it fer leagues,” Godrick replied.
“Smell what?” Talia asked.
“Tha sea,” Godrick said.
Hugh sniffed, and thought he could smell salt on the wind.
Ahead of them, the sand canal continued through a vast tunnel in the city’s wall. As the Ox entered the tunnel, the temperature dropped immediately in the shade. In the light of the tunnel’s glow crystals, Hugh looked up to see that the ceiling was entirely formed of the basalt columns. He swallowed as he stared up at their pentagonal bases, partially convinced that they’d start falling down on the ship at any moment.
In the distance, Hugh could see a light at the end of the tunnel.
“How’s the ship still sailing through the tunnel?” Sabae said.
Alustin pointed to spellforms near the base of the walls. “The tunnel’s enchanted to keep a constant wind flowing through it. If you look at the sand on the other side of the tunnel, you can see it blowing back outward— the wind blows the other direction on that side of the tunnel.”
The tunnel continued for hundreds of feet before the ship sailed back into daylight. Hugh’s apathy had vanished entirely by that point as he gawked at the stones of the tunnel. When another ship sailed by in the other direction, far enough away he had trouble making out the faces of the crew, he realized that Indris Stormbreaker, the colossal dragon queen of Theras Tel, could likely stretch out her wings to their full extent in the tunnel, though maybe not fly down it.
When the Ox approached the end of the tunnel, Hugh cast a cantrip that Kanderon had taught him— one intended to shield his eyes from the light of stellar affinity spells. It should work fine to keep the sun from blinding him.
When they exited the great tunnel, the others all winced and covered their eyes, but Hugh gasped.
Lothal was a gargantuan cooled lava flow, entirely composed of basalt columns.
Lothal’s wall wasn’t a wall at all. The whole city was built out of the columnar basalt. All of the streets, all the buildings— everything was built with the pentagonal columns.
The harbor itself was a great sand pool near the top of the city. From it, the whole city sloped downward like a great trough, walls of basalt columns rising to either side. At the bottom of the trough was a second harbor, this one of water, not sand, where ocean vessels docked at piers built of columnar basalt. Out past the harbor Hugh could see the ocean stretching to the southern horizon.
The trough was by no means an even, gentle slope of descending columnar basalt. Terraces and switchbacking streets of all different sizes interrupted its descent— some not much larger than a staircase landing, other big enough to fit an entire village onto. Houses and businesses all looked like extensions of the immense lava flow, save for the glass windows and colorful signs. Looming above the lower harbor to one side was a great building that Hugh assumed was Ampioc’s palace, also constructed entirely of columnar basalt.
> Crowds bustled through the switchbacking streets, congregated in markets on the great terraces, and moved up and down massive staircases. It was one of the densest, busiest congregations of humanity Hugh had ever seen, even rivaling the crowds of Theras Tel.
“Welcome,” Alustin said, “to Lothal, the worst city in the world to drop a coin.”
Everyone except Godrick and Artur gave him an odd look.
“Because the coin will probably roll into one of the cracks between the columns and get lost?” Alustin said.
They just kept staring at him.
“It was funnier in my head,” Alustin said.
“Yeh probably shoulda’ waited ‘til we actually set foot on the columns,” Artur said. “Would have worked better then.”
Alustin just sighed.
CHAPTER THREE
An Entire City of Godricks
The first thing Talia noticed when she stepped off the ship onto the stone pier was the size of the crowd. Not their numbers, the actual physical size of the people in the crowd.
“Oh, lovely,” she said to Sabae. “It’s an entire city of Godricks.”
Talia guessed there wasn’t a single adult in the crowd less than six feet in height, and most were well above that. A few even looked taller than Artur.
She just rubbed her still miserable stomach and glared at the crowds.
“I can live with that,” Sabae said, a faint grin on her face.
Talia rolled her eyes at the other girl.
Godrick himself strode down the gangplank, carrying both his luggage and Talia’s. Not that Talia couldn’t carry it herself, but Godrick seemed to suffer mental anguish when he wasn’t helping someone with a task. It was a struggle to carry anything of your own when Godrick was around.
“Ah need ta’ find a new hammer while we’re here,” Godrick said. “Keep yer eyes open fer’ any smiths or enchanters.”
“Ah wonder how long this ‘un will last,” Artur replied, gently pushing Hugh ahead of him. “Anyone want ta’ place bets on when he’ll lose or destroy it?”
Talia noticed that Hugh actually seemed to be paying attention to the city around him, rather than just being withdrawn into himself. Maybe he was starting to move past Avah dumping him?
She quickly looked away, not wanting to stare. She was only concerned because she didn’t like seeing her friend sad, after all.
“We’ve got a couple of days until our chartered ship is scheduled to leave,” Alustin said. “Let’s get all our things to our inn, then you can all take some time to explore Lothal.”
Sabae had bent down to feel the top of one of the basalt columns that formed the city. “This rock’s almost black. Shouldn’t it be hot from the sunlight?”
“Lothal’s primary enchantments drain the heat from the stone and store it deep underground,” Alustin said. “There’s a massive cavern there where they use that heat to boil seawater and separate out the salt. They pump the water up into the city using that same heat, and then use the salt as one of the city’s main exports and sources of government revenue.”
The group’s usual method of maneuvering through a crowd involved simply having Godrick lead the way and following in his wake, but now they found themselves moving at a crawl. While Godrick and his father were still tall, even by the absurd standards of Lothal, they were hardly giants here, like they were most places.
Talia kept getting jostled by ridiculously oversized men and women, all loudly arguing, yelling out greetings across the bustling crowd, and gesturing wildly.
And on top of that, they were all speaking in nigh-incomprehensible accents even thicker than Artur’s.
At one point, Talia found herself separated completely from the others. She felt a slight hint of panic at that— she wasn’t normally claustrophobic, but she felt like she was about to get trampled at any second. On top of that, she kept tripping on the narrow gaps between the tops of the interlocking stone columns.
She got Alustin’s joke now, at least. If she dropped a coin, it’d definitely roll straight down one of those gaps.
She didn’t really have any spells that could help, outside of causing mass destruction and carnage. She wildly pushed around through the crowd for a moment, not seeing the others, until something flitted in front of her eyes.
It was a little paper crane.
Talia sighed in relief and followed Alustin’s origami golem out of the crowd, where she found the others all waiting for her on a slightly quieter terrace away from the crowd at the upper harbor.
And, of course, she tripped on one of the cracks between the tops of the columns and went sprawling forwards.
Before she hit the ground, she felt her fall slow, then reverse, and she came back up to her feet again.
“Thanks, Hugh,” she said, blushing a little.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Hugh said absently, turning away.
“We really do fall down a lot, don’t we?” Sabae said.
“Ah think that’s kinda our specialty,” Godrick replied. “But yeh’ll get used to watchin’ yer steps here before long. In some of the neighborhoods towards the edges a’ the city, there’re no cracks in between the columns, which helps. Construction a’ the city over the years loosened a lot of them.”
Talia ignored their conversation and fumed to herself. She hated this city already.
Sabae gratefully dropped her luggage on her bed in the inn room she was sharing with Talia. The inn was most of the way down the city, almost to the lower harbor. Her legs were burning a bit just from walking down all those countless staircases— she couldn’t imagine how much of a hassle it would be carrying a heavy load all the way from the lower to the upper harbor. There weren’t any wagons, either— cargo hauling was all done by porters or mages.
“I’m going to wander down to the lower harbor,” she told Talia. “Want to come with?”
“Nope,” Talia said from where she was sprawled on her own bed.
“That was mostly rhetorical,” Sabae said. “You’ve never seen a proper sea before, right?”
“We’re about to be on it for weeks,” Talia said. “I’m sure my stomach will hate it just as much.”
“Come on,” Sabae said, grabbing Talia by the hand and hauling her out of bed. “Quit being all grumpy, your stomach should be feeling better in no time. I’m getting enough sulky from Hugh.”
“He’s not being sulky, he’s just—” Talia said.
“He’s being sulky,” Sabae said. “Nothing wrong with that; he just had his first breakup. It’s normal, but it’s still a little exhausting. I bet you were like that after your first breakup, too.”
Talia gave her a level look.
“Well, maybe not sulky so much as dramatic,” Sabae said. “And angry.”
Talia kept staring at her.
“Anyhow, just saying, Hugh’s being dramatic, yes, not ridiculous,” Sabae said.
“We should drag him out with us, too,” Talia said.
“I’d planned on it,” Sabae responded. “Keeping him busy will help.”
Hugh, at least, came willingly without being dragged— at least in part because he knew Sabae really would drag him. He’d already had a couple weeks to sit around and mope, and it had probably been good for him— better than dwelling on the battle atop Skyhold, at least.
Alustin and Artur were waiting for them in the half-full common room of the inn as they descended the stairs— which, of course, were made of columnar basalt. An absurd amount of magic must have gone into the construction of Lothal— there’s no way they’d simply carved buildings straight out of the basalt without many of the columns just falling apart.
She frowned at Alustin, but quickly wiped it off her face. Things had been strained between the two of them since their confrontation in his office. Sabae still hadn’t decided whether to tell the others that the events of the last year, including Bakori’s breakout and the awakening of Jaskolskus, had been engineered as a coup by Kanderon, with Alustin’s help.
Sabae had long accustomed herself to the idea that she and her friends would be pawns in the games of the great powers, like Kanderon or her own grandmother. Or, at least, she thought she had. But something rubbed her the entirely wrong way about the callous manner in which she and her friends had been used as bait for the demon Bakori. There had been safeguards, sure, but those had proven woefully insufficient.
“We’ve got a lost city to talk about,” Alustin said cheerfully, waving them over to the table.
“Should you really be talking about that in the open?” Sabae asked.
Alustin shrugged and turned to a nearby patron at another table. “Hey, do you know where the lost city of Imperial Ithos is located?”
The man just stared at him, confused, then his face went blank and he looked away.
“The Exile Splinter’s power hasn’t faded entirely yet,” Alustin said. “It took a year and a half of me testing you and exposing you to knowledge of it before its hold on you was broken.”
Artur grimaced. He’d only found out about Imperial Ithos and the Exile Splinter a week ago. Kanderon, the primary creator of the mysterious Exile Splinter, had the ability to shield others from the effects of the weapon that had cast the capital of the Ithonian Empire out from the world of Anastis. Directly shielding Artur from the effects of it had left him with a debilitating headache for several days, however.
Kanderon wasn’t the only great power with knowledge of the Exile Splinter, however, or the impending return of Ithos to the universe. Other great powers and nations had that knowledge as well as the ability to shield people from some of the Exile Splinter’s effects— most worryingly, the Havath Dominion, the expansionist power from the east of the Ithonian continent that considered itself the rightful inheritor of the Ithonian Empire’s mantle.
Sabae and the others sat around the table with the two older mages.
“So, we have five major potential sites for Ithos we’ll be investigating on this trip,” Alustin said. “They’re all along the southern coast of Ithos, so we’ll be sailing east to check all of them out. There are some other minor sites we’ll likely be inspecting if we have time as well.”