Star City - Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Infinity

They were right behind her, she could hear their mechanical roars, the vibrating clangs of their iron feet off the top of the dome...

She glanced down at her feet in terror. The dome. They were sprinting over its surface, outside Marlaya? They were on top of the city. In space. The star was right there.

The shield began to slope away under her feet, curving downwards. She was going to fall off? Going to fall! Koretta began to scream. As her feet began to slide, she twisted around, falling hard, slipping down the dome on her stomach.

The Elder Guards.

There were four of them. Four towering metal soldiers, a searing blue light burning from within their helmets, vast four-barrelled guns clasped in both iron claws. A fear like she had never known sliced through her. But then she fell, her feet and hands leaving the shield.

For several seconds she just plummeted downwards, Marlaya streaking past before her eyes, the glinting city of diamonds. But suddenly everything slowed down and she became almost motionless in space, breathing calmly. Breathing?

She floated serenely downwards. It was so pretty. The vast dome beneath the stars. And that’s when she had the idea to look down. There it was. The ferocious, spitting star, its surface writhing with rearing golden fires. She didn’t feel any heat though.

Was she ever going to stop? It was then that she realised she was about to drop below the bottom of the dome. Would she see the fusion reactors? The orbital suspension grid? Or something else entirely?

She held her breath as she floated downwards…

Impossible. Her mind wildly rejected what her eyes were seeing.

Gripped to the bottom of Marlaya was a vast, coiled dragon, like a serpent… the fountain, she thought distantly. The dragon swung its vast head towards her, and she found herself staring far into the soulless black eyes…

The gaping mouth fell open and the mighty beast leapt at her-

‘Koretta, up.’

She flinched, ripped painfully from unconsciousness.

‘Good morning to you too,’ she muttered darkly, glancing at the entrance to her bedroom. He had disappeared. She pushed herself into a sitting position, pressing a hand to her temple… such an unsettling dream. The black eyes of the dragon burned in her mind.

She shook her head and stumbled over to the window, ripping back the silver blinds. The glistening spires at the centre of the city stretched out before her. She breathed in deeply. Just visible at the core was the beautiful Elder tower.

In minutes, she had showered, and pulled on her white study uniform, the academy insignia emblazoned over the left breast in red thread. What else was she going to wear anyway? She stood in front of the ornate walnut bookcase beneath the tapestry opposite her bed, sipping the fresh black coffee clutched in her left hand. Her eyes wandered over the spines of the old books…

Shaan’s Voyage Through Knowledge, The Journal of Metaphysics, A Guide To Ontology, The Two Dogmas Of Empiricism, Marlaya’s Normative Ethics…

The familiar prickly feeling of frustration stabbed at her mind. They spent their whole lives rigorously taking apart the nature of knowledge, rebuilding it in a different form, taking it apart again, studying the foundations of morality and truth, analysing the ethical meaning of life… But what was it all for?

They wasted away, safe in their infernal shield dome, watching as time slipped by, meaningless. What difference were they making in the universe? Their existence spanned merely a blink of time’s great eye, and they would happily spend it doing nothing. She was terrified of death, of dying alone, anonymous, worthless… and of being forgotten the moment she left reality behind. There had to be more? This couldn’t just be it. She refused to accept such an existence. It was not her destiny. She yearned for freedom…

A sudden resolve cemented itself deep in her very soul. She wiped her eyes, which had blurred involuntarily as she had been staring at the books. Downing the last dregs of the coffee, she drew her shining silver hair back into a high ponytail, grabbed her journal, slipped on her sandals, and hurried down the spiral stairway.

‘Hurry,’ her father snapped as she stopped in the entrance hall.

He was resplendent in the sparkling jewelled robes of the Great Council. The rich, dark red material was covered in beautiful gold patterns, lined with a sleek, black fur around the high collar. He solemnly pulled the thick hood over his head so it just obscured his eyes, picked up his ornate, ceremonial staff from beside the door, and pressed his palm to its surface. It slid back with the familiar hiss, and Koretta followed him into the light.

They walked quickly towards the end of the alley, the entrances to the other Council towers sliding back as the dignitaries hurried out, all robed in red, gold, and black, all clasping the heavy staffs, each mounted by a different diamond totem. She glanced at her father's, a glistening phoenix, rearing up as though about to take flight, its curving wings raised either side of it in a solemn salute. It was meant to signify time, time's ethereal beauty, their burning star, and so the One. To Koretta, however, it was a glimpse of freedom, and adventure.

They stopped by the oval station at the first crossroads along with another dozen or so councillors, and almost instantly, a sleek pencil train drew up with its tell-tale hum. Her father lurched forwards into the foremost cabin, pushing in front of a tall, green-eyed woman who muttered darkly.

Koretta positioned herself at the glass prow, pressing her forehead against the curving window as the automatic engine moaned beneath her feet, and they accelerated rapidly over Marlaya. The single track climbed towards the spires, and the train wound its way towards the cultural heart of the city, just over two kilometres from the Elder tower.

'It's a question not of the necessity for a certain climate, but of what that signifies, what it represents in society, the symbolism of such a tradition.'

Koretta glanced over her shoulder. A slender man, hooked nose and thin lips just visible beneath his hood, was arguing quietly with her father. The man's knuckles were white around his staff, its totem, a frowning female bear.

'You are mistaken. The question itself originates with its necessity, and the answer lies in this realisation. Is it fundamentally required?' her father said slowly in his dry tone. She soon tuned their grating voices out after the next few words. They were talking about the shield's light filtration system and whether or not the city should darken in the night. It was a topic debated at every meeting, and the status quo had never changed. Again, pointless.

A white-hot surge of anger rose within her as she felt herself becoming suffocated. The pencil train curved in a wide loop around the dark pit at the heart of the city. And for one wild, fleeting second, she suddenly imagined the brief freedom that would be experienced by leaping off the precipice, plummeting down towards the Deep Gates, and to sweet oblivion.

But within seconds they had passed, and soon she was looking down on the open arenas of the Marlayan acrobats, the sprawling gardens of the city's wine makers, the cavernous halls of the Museum of the Gods as its pearly colonnades reflected the light. And then they were slowing as the most beautiful structure in all of Marlaya rose up before them.

The Grand Theatre.

Built by the Creators at the city's birth, it was like three shards of glass curving upwards into the sky where they met at the highest point. Stretching down from this mighty spire were nine sparkling pillars that parted gracefully before an arching entrance that tunnelled into the heart of the building, where it eventually broke into the back of the theatre hall itself.

The revered stage had hosted the ballets of the National Dance Academy; slow, elegant stories of the search for the nature of wisdom. Koretta had once been captivated by the writhing dancers, now it was all just part of the illusion.

The Marlayan Philharmonic Orchestra had also graced the stage, their most famous performance to date being that of Raylarn's Symphony No. 6, the Age of Light, almost two centuries ago, a tribute to the One. And many other operas, plays, recitals, musicals, and lectures had been presented before the 12,000 strong crowd. The Great Council, however, took place in the stunning glass observatory suspended above the Grand Theatre itself.

The pencil train took them directly to its entrance, and Koretta couldn't help gasping as she stepped out into what appeared to be thin air.

Her father swept in front of her down the glass passageway, his staff clanging off the floor. As they stepped into the main hall, she merely stared in awe.

A semi-circle of forty-three silver seats ringed a raised podium at the far end of the large space. Scattered around these were an assortment of smaller booths and benches where a select number of approved guests were permitted. Koretta had secured one of these intensely contested positions. Or her father had done so, she corrected herself darkly.

The slender podium itself was draped in a similar thick, red material to that of the councillor's robes, and emblazoned on its front was a golden figure of eight... infinity. She had always considered this slightly ironic. The Elders were represented by this perfect symbol of unity, an elegant paradox, the embodiment of honesty and truth, simplicity and equality... and yet they were clearly hiding vast secrets, and the city was being run with an undeniable air of oppression, possibly even corruption. There was just so much they didn't know. For a people who spent their entire lives studying knowledge, this contradiction was laughable.

'Remember,' her father hissed menacingly as they descended towards the seats, 'don't say a word. Not one, unless-'

'You tell me too,' she snarled with almost enough malice to provoke him. But he was soon distracted as the seats began to fill and he greeted the others. Koretta retreated from the cluster of noise and tension, sliding onto a bench somewhere behind her father's chair. She studied the faces of the councillors in disgust, their feigned air of grace and modesty, their slow, over-stated movements. As each of them took their allocated seat, they pulled back their hoods and slotted their staffs into a holder on their left.

After another ten minutes or so, the final few men and women lowered into the throne-like chairs, and the final totems were locked into place. Forty-three glinting diamond creatures all now faced the podium, waiting.

A great silence descended upon them and the lights dimmed dramatically. Several seconds of utter quiet passed as the onlookers collectively held their breaths. And then a metallic groan cut through the air. A panel slowly slid back in the ceiling and a platform hissed its way down from somewhere above them. Standing upon it, like a God floating down from heaven, was the Chief Advisor.

It was only then that Koretta looked to her left and realised who was sitting beside her.

It was him.

The boy with the medallion.