Chapter 1
Grey Land
Municipality E-203, District E-2, East Sector, Dominion of Nylos
For all the lurid stories about the enigmatic Walled Kingdom, the truth about Nylos was far simpler and far sadder. There was a reason for the walls and the isolation, for the tightly restricted passage through the North and South Corridors. The truth about Nylos was that it was nothing more than a desiccated husk that never really recovered from the War of the Thirteen Thrones. Most of the population was concentrated in the four cities at the intersections of the transglobal rail lines to make the country look more heavily populated than it really was. Once you went outside those four cities, you would find little more than ghost towns decaying from decades of disuse. The illusion was maintained because Nylos had the most seats in the League Parliament of the twelve member states. If the others learned the truth, they would demand a reapportioning of seats and many of them would likely want to carve up all the unused land and put it to better use.
In these barren lands, food was scarce and strictly rationed. On a good day, the bread line was open three times a day. In leaner times, it would only be open once every two or three days. Today was somewhere in the middle, being open at morning and at noon. Supper was always the first meal to go because the administrators reckoned that you needed food to work. You did not need it to sleep.
Much like everything else around them, the Nylians' clothes were dull and simple, coming in faded shades of brown and grey. Clothes were nearly as scarce and valuable as food. If you were lucky, the government would issue a new set every five years, so the clothes you had needed to be treated with great care. Even a little cloth to patch holes was hard to come by. Growing children were particularly difficult. Sets of children's clothes might be passed down two or three generations in a family or else they would just garb the children in burlap sacks. Apparently there were those who said this was a waste of burlap.
In this miserable existence, where your own survival from day to day was more than enough to occupy your mind, no one paid much attention to the three new additions to the bread line. A family of three by the looks of it, all bespectacled. If people were paying attention, the spectacles would stand out because only the technicians were seen as being worth the expense. The child must have shown a lot of promise in his aptitude testing. Why else would you waste such an expense on a child?
You could not tell much else about them because even in the heat of summer people wore a hat outdoors and because of the poor air quality, they covered their faces with scarves unless they wanted to find themselves in an early grave with lungs like blocks of concrete.
When the family's turn came up, the man showed the clerk their ration cards. The clerk lazily punched a hole in each card and waved for them to move on. The baker served them each a breadroll about the size of a grown man's fist. Tempting as it might be to eat it right away, everyone knew to wait until you got to the soup kitchen. If you did not first soak the breadroll in some broth, you would likely break your teeth and a working set of teeth was too valuable to waste because you could not wait another hour or so.
The line at the soup kitchen was much the same as the bread line. Here you got a little bowl of soup with some boiled cabbage and bits of a few other vegetables if you were lucky. This was noted by one of the locals after the party of three took their seats.
"Look, mate, carrots," the man said to a broad-nosed companion sitting next to him. "Fortune must be smilin' on us today."
The bespectacled man looked at the shriveled thing in his spoon, more brown than orange and only worthy of being called a carrot by the most charitable soul. He sighed, then glanced at the woman with him and said, "You know I hate you, right?"
"Don't look at me," the woman said. "It's not my fault."
"You're the one who wanted to come here."
"You wanted to come too or else you wouldn't be here," the woman replied.
"I sure as hell couldn't leave you with him," the man said, referring to the child.
"And why not?" the child asked in turn. "Jealousy doesn't become you, Giger Taus. It's not like I couldn't trust you with Kamellia."
"Me!?" the man balked, pointing at the woman. "Jealous over that!?"
"Who are you calling 'that'?" the woman protested.
Even though this argument was carried out in hushed tones, it still managed to draw some looks. The bespectacled man had to clear his throat to try and deflect the unwanted attention and returned to his soup.
You would never imagine the man was the rogue wizard Giger Taus, having traded his gaudy robes for the plain work clothes of a Nylian citizen-laborer and crude thick-framed glasses perched on his nose instead of his signature teashades. He ruefully tugged at a shock of hair sticking out of his hat, the bright green dyed black to be more inconspicuous.
The broad-nosed companion of the man who made the comment about the carrots was staring at the woman and said, "I ain't seen the like a' you 'round here, lady."
Honestly, none of them blended in that well with the people of the local stock, but the woman stood our more. You would not find anyone like Galatea Garamonde—or Narumi Takahashi as she was known in a previous life—around here. Fortunately, Giger had an excuse at the ready.
"You'll find 'em out in W-1," he said. "Bunch of Pingese stuck on the wrong side of the wall after the War."
Actually, there was over three thousand kilometers of Aquila you had to cross before reaching the borders of Heping, but Giger was counting on the Nylian not being that well educated in geography, one of the safest bets he had ever made.
"You from way out in W-1?" the broad-nosed man asked.
"N-2 actually," Giger replied. "Used to live in NW-Prime until Central sent us out here."
"Ain't never heard a' Central relocatin' anyone so far. What the hell'dya do?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I'll bet not," the carrot man said. "Well, this ain't no Prime, but I reckon it ain't no better an' it ain't no worse'n anywhere else. You gonna be workin' at the plant?"
"I'll be logging statues," Giger said.
"What?"
"Central needs a survey of the Hollow Sea for the Ministry of Antiquities in Belmondo. Either of you ever been out there?"
"Holla Sea's forbidden," the carrot man said stiffly.
"That's not what I'm asking," Giger replied. "You can relax. I'm not with SecPol or anything."
"That's jus' what summun fro' SecPol'd say," the broad-nosed man said. "Anyway, we ain't been out there. Ain't no one here been out there."
"I'm sure SecPol will be happy to hear that," Giger said, deciding not to push the matter further.
"You goin' out there with the missus an' the li'l' one?" carrot man asked.
"Three sets of eyes are better than one," Giger said. He tapped his glasses. "Or would that be six?"
The joke sailed through the empty air, striking not a single funny bone along the way. This caused Giger no small amount of consternation. He was beginning to wonder if his familiar Priscilla was just flattering him all the times she would laugh at his jokes.
Setting that aside, he then said, "I was wondering if you might know where we could get a couple weeks' provisions and a buggy to carry it in."
The broad-nosed man held up his breadroll and said, "It look like we got any two weeks a' provisions ta spare? Ah, I s'ppose if ye got a reckisishon order fro' Central, ye might get sumpin'."
"And who would we talk to?"
"If ye want thin's done, ye go to the magistrate, I reckon. Ain't they tol' ye that?"
"Oh, you know how they can be."
"I ain't never dealt with Central meself, not personally, but I reckon I can imagine."
"Ain't nothin' out there," carrot man said. "No water, no growin' thin'. They say there was once ruins a' ol' cities fro' before the Cat'clysm, but all the stone an' metal an' such been carried off, went to make the cities we got here. All that's lef' is them damn statues. Got 'em all set up leadin' the way ta the Heart a' Disaster."
"The Heart of Disaster?" Gally asked.
"Legend says it's a bit a' star that fell ta earth. Caused the Cat'clysm."
"You seem rather well informed," Giger noted.
Carrot man cleared his throat.
"Jus' stories is all. You'll hear sech stories anywhere on the edge a' the Holla Sea like this'un. Maybe there's men that went out an' brought the stories back. Maybe there's nothin' to 'em. Holla Sea's forbidden after all, right?"
"Right," Giger said. "Well, I want to thank you for your help. Here."
He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a handful of aluminum coins that he set between the two men.
"Try not to spend it all in one place."
The two men's eyes lit up at the sight of the coins and they both slapped their hands down on the table.
"Hey! He's givin' it ta both a' us!" the broad-nosed man—whose hand had been a little slower—objected.
"I was the one what tol' the story 'bout the Holla Sea!" carrot man snapped back.
"An' I was the one what tol' him a' the magistrate! Halfsies!"
"Sixty-forty!"
"Halfsies!"
"Se'enty-thirty!"
"That's e'en less, ya bleedin', oozin', dirty, filthy, no good, no-count—"
The bespectacled trio took the opportunity to take their leave. There might have been a small corner somewhere in Giger's heart that felt guilty about potentially ruining a friendship over a few bits of junk metal. Desperate circumstances have a way of souring the milk of human kindness.
After returning their trays and exiting the soup kitchen, the boy spoke up.
"I swear, leaving you to handle negotiations is going to give me an ulcer. This body is so inconvenient."
"I handled it just fine, old man," Giger said. "Need I remind you that I've been running a successful business of my own since you were in diapers? The second time, that is. Do you have any idea the number of shady deals I've made? And I never got caught once."
"What a thing to boast about," the boy replied, rolling his eyes. "I'm pretty sure I didn't teach you how to be such a successful criminal."
Despite appearances, the boy was no mere boy, but rather the reincarnation of Mordekai Grummond, Giger's mentor. The story of how one of the masters of the Phoenix Guild Mages' Academy came to his current state is a long tale better told elsewhere. Mordekai was careful to act his apparent age in the presence of strangers, deferring to his former pupil in spite of how it chafed against his sensibilities. There was some irony in an old man in a child's body still seeing a grown man as a child.
"What do we do now?" Gally asked.
"We get what supplies we can and make for the Hollow Sea," Mordekai said. "I doubt we can get enough to last us making the trip on foot or even on muleback, but once we're out of sight of prying eyes, we can arrange other, more efficient means of travel."
"You don't mean..."
Mordekai smiled.
"Oh, no..." Gally moaned.
"You better not scream the whole damn time," Giger grumbled. "I swear my ears are still ringing."
Gally had not much enjoyed the magic-assisted leap where they bounded over Nylos' formidable border wall and this was not the first time Giger complained about his ears ringing from the experience.
"It sounds like your fellow Ancients will be leading the way to our destination, Galatea," Mordekai said.
"What'll we find when we get there?" Gally asked.
"Where all of this started," Mordekai said. "Maybe even what started it. That's what the legends say and the Nylians have worked very hard to keep anyone from investigating the matter further."
"Has no one tried sneaking in like us?"
"Anyone who might have tried did so without the support of the guilds or the sanction of the League. I certainly have never heard of anyone living to tell the tale."
Gally furrowed her brow at this and said, "I feel this is something you should've mentioned earlier."
"I did say it would be dangerous, Galatea," Mordekai replied. "However, assuming the Nylians are actually abiding by the terms of the Mage Ban, the Cerberus Guild will not be there to ward off intruders. Mundane security we can thwart easily enough."
"And if they aren't abiding by the Mage Ban?"
"Then our work will be a mite more difficult."
"It's not too late to turn back," Giger suggested.
"What are you saying!?" Gally balked. "We've come this far. We've got to go on."
"Sounds like famous last words to me."
"Come now, Giger," Mordekai chided. "She doesn't have any intention of turning back and neither do you."
"It'll cause problems later if she's not all in," Giger said. "Dragging around a mundane is pain enough as it is."
"You underestimate the value Galatea brings to the table," Mordekai said. "She is the only one who knows what the world was like before the Cataclysm. She might be able to tell us something we would have no way of knowing otherwise."
"And I think you overestimate her," Giger countered. "She knows about as much about the world then as any shop girl knows about the world now."
"Sorry for not being the Encyclopedia Imperialis," Gally muttered.
"The what?"
"Nevermind."
"Alright, enough banter," Mordekai said. "We've got a long journey ahead of us. Let's get what we can and get going."
Unfortunately for Mordekai, Giger was starting to feel that the promise of unraveling the mysteries of the world were looking rather pale in comparison to a hot ham and cheese croissant sandwich and a glass of cognac at a sunny outdoor table at his favorite cafe. Motivation is truly a fragile, fleeting thing.