Twisted Skies, Chapter 8 - Path Through Heliana

 Right outside the station stood the gate the guards of Heliana would use to handle immigration. The gate itself had no wall to its sides and was only a simple open frame of wooden logs, but no one dared rush past it. Everyone could see the sparkling bronze formations that started on the gate and stretched to the ground and all the way into the distance. According to Thurain's master, these defenses had been set up all around the city and formed a ring no mortal would be able to cross. Since the mortals had been informed of these details while they waited on the station, everyone remained obedient as they filed into the ever-growing beast of a city.

When Thurain followed them to do the same, he didn't even care about the dirty stares from the guards, Officer Conogan among them. He was far too preoccupied with the view before him.

Now that he was at its door, he could get a much more intimate look at the city. Although the image before him was a mesh of all colors Thurain could and couldn't imagine, the yellow bricks produced through qi-infusion dominated the living quarters before him. Since the spirals were much thinner than the wide strips of farmland in between them, there was a need to build tall. As a result, he saw houses as tall as ancient trees wherever he looked. Only the stone strengthened with qi wouldn't collapse under its own weight when stacked to such heights.

Back when he had first heard about these modern cities from his master, he had imagined wide-open roads and grand manors. Yet in reality, everything appeared crammed and tiny. Despite the city's size, there were just far too many people living there, and the numbers would grow every day. The fact that the living areas could only be built on the yang-dominant spirals of the giant formation only exacerbated the problem.

Right out of the gate, he stepped past another line of guides and scammers who awaited their customers and victims from the station. These were just more of the same, parasites who would live off the goodwill of the new arrivals before they could be corrupted by the cynicism of the city folk. Rather than fight another losing battle with them, Thurain stepped up a set of stairs and into the city's shadow.

Because of a lack of space, the city's roads led across the rooftops of the lower houses, with even taller buildings stacked on top to create a confusing mess of towers that cast the entire road in darkness. In a gentle arc, the shadowy road would lead from the main gate all the way to the center of the giant array. There, the estates were larger and the spiral formation carried a much more powerful concentration of qi. The whole of Heliana was built like a giant funnel, to extrude the yin and yang qi from the surrounding world and feed it into the center. This very center was where he would find the goal of his journey: the Elemental Path Sect. Since entrance examinations would start today, he didn't get hung up on the outer city and made his way along the path.   

Above his head, he could see a few shadows fly past from and to the center of the city, high-level cultivators who had both the ability and were allowed to fly in the city. However, most people weren't special, and neither was he. Thus, he had to join the massive crowd on the narrow road atop the houses.

Although as a future member of the Elemental Path Sect, there was no reason to bother with the outer city, he still took in the liveliness on the way with endless wonder. His previous bad mood was blown away by a relentless attack on his senses. The flat roof he was marching on was quite wide, so people had enough space to set up stalls and offer all manner of products and services on the edges.   

He saw grilled foods, fruit, cheap qi-talismans as well as tarot readings, shoe shiners and key chains offered on folding tables and tiny carts. These were the city's day traders, the cheapest of the cheap merchants this place had to offer. Every time someone would walk past – which was all the time on this busy street – they launched into a screaming match against each other to attract the busy customers, always ready to pick up their 'shops' and vanish whenever police showed up to break up the disturbance.   

Much better off were the traders who owned properties within the adjacent buildings at this elevation. The buildings had been stacked up like shoe boxes, with one block of housing on top of the other. The blocks further towards the top lined the road, and some of their owners had opened their windows to use the convent traffic around them to offer their own products. As expected of the city's outer edge, many were offers for things he would need for expeditions out of the city, like lanterns and sturdy boots, while others were here for those fresh arrivals looking for a place to stay or move further inward, like hotels or carriage and rickshaw services.   

However, no matter what shop it was, all of them would offer masks in addition to their usual business. There were masks everywhere, in all bizarre shapes and sizes Thurain could and couldn't imagine. Now that he looked more closely, almost all people he crossed on the narrow road had a mask or two somewhere on their bodies, though most didn't wear them to hide their faces. He wondered if this was part of the city's culture, or maybe they just brought them for a special occasion. The sect's entrance examination was today, so Thurain assumed that it would be accompanied by a city-wide celebration.

Now that he got a closer look, the people and houses didn't look quite as impressive as he had first thought. From up close, everything within the city had a dirty, green tint, the result of the refuse that would remain in the air after an unclean qi separation. Meanwhile, many people Thurain crossed looked quite unwell, with heavy bags under their eyes and gangly limbs, sure signs that they suffered a persistent invasion of yin qi throughout their daily lives.   

Many wore the exact same clothes as well, and they looked cheap as if they were made for beggars. While they couldn't quite be considered rags, they had the functional utilitarianism that told Thurain all of them had been made as cheaply as possible, by the same array, inside the same giant factory. The worst however were their eyes, sunken deep into their skulls and devoid of any spark of life. Most people he met on the city's outskirts appeared not like living beings, but like qi puppets instead.   

These were the unfortunate laborers of the city, the ones who had come here to find fortune, but had been crushed beneath the competitive, cutthroat nature of the city instead. From time to time, he would find those better off, but they were few and far between and often either owned the permanent shops to the side or stayed inside the hotels.

Although Thurain also needed a place to stay, he ignored all the mention of hotels and marched straight ahead, further down into the city's basin, further towards the Elemental Path Sect. While he continued to ignore scammers and puppets alike, he made his way further, until the number of interruptions lessened.   

Further into the center, fewer and fewer people would talk to him or even walk past him. At the same time, the number of those poor souls at the edge reduced, until the people around him began to look presentable. This far inwards, the spiral became more and more narrow as its arc got harsher. While towards the outside edge, the road was wide enough to accommodate stalls and shops on both sides, now Thurain was walking along a single, thin strip of road with claustrophobic walls on both sides. The frequent narrow alleys that sprawled off from the main road only increased his unease.   

At last, he knew that he had reached close to the Elemental Path Sect's central gates. All around him, the city was still an unreadable mess of roads, stairs and alleyways, leading up and down the uncoordinated buildings to create a three-dimensional maze, but Thurain could read the qi perfectly well. Only a few steps to both his sides, the city's yin qi concentrated, so the road couldn't get much more narrow than it already was and still accommodate the thick yang qi all around.   

From time to time, he could feel the flow of qi interrupted at the edges. It appeared as if some crafty businessmen had built their own small arrays next to the spirals to disperse the yin qi where the two forces met. In the process, they had created areas of mixed yin and yang, just livable enough to put down more apartment blocks. Of course, such an environment would be dangerous for the people living there, but building space inside the city was limited in the first place. At least the buildings this close to the sect looked somewhat clean in comparison to the rat holes further outside.

At last, the evening sun hit his face again. He was finally through the narrow road ad saw the light again. A second, much grander and much older stairway than the one on the outside led him down the house and back onto the earth, into an empty ring of open space between the spirals of the city's living quarters and the central area, where the sect was located. Maybe this would be the place where the people would congregate during festivities, though he couldn't see any of the many masked celebrants he would have expected. Either way, it appeared to be a central plaza of sorts.

Yet to Thurain, the plaza held no significance. It would just be another sight along his journey towards revenge. As he closed in towards his goal – the large gate at the center of the plaza that lead into the sect – his chest began to tighten with fearful anticipation. However, he forced down his emotions and tried to look like a polite and eager student while he marched straight up to the central gate.

Since the plaza was empty – despite the imminent entrance exam – Thurain assumed that enrollment would happen inside the sect itself.

Yet when he marched up to the door, there weren't even any guards outside, nor any other way to contact the inside in any way. How had all the other students entered? Annoyed, he paced up and down the ancient stone gate and observed the arrays along the equally old walls. Some way or another, he had to get inside. As he searched for some bell or messaging formation, he reminded himself of his purpose, of the real reason he was eager to enter the Elemental Path Sect.