NOVEL NEXT 138 - To the City 1/3 - To The Elysian Wall
For the first time in his young life, Archmund sat across from his father in their carriage, rattling along the dusty roads of Granavale towards the Outpass, the mountain gate that connected them to the rest of the Empire.
"It was a good idea, redeploying the less useful soldiers as laborers," his father said. "I questioned your unwarranted generosity, but this road has felt far smoother ever since you told them to."
"Small comforts," Archmund said. "I worried, frankly, that you would see it as the excess of a spoiled noble child. Smooth roads are only worth anything to those who travel them."
"But they're far better for merchants and their caravans," his father rebutted. "And those who travel to Greenroot, Blackstone, and Redmont will find it far easier to justify a stop to our humble lands if our roads are well-maintained."
He hadn't even been thinking about that. So many of his achievements were in ignorance.
"You should be proud," his father said. "In many ways, son, you are exceptional. You may not be at the level of an Omnio heir, but you could achieve much if you chose to. So I beg you — let me know if there's anything I can ever do, for though you should be proud of your own power, I am your father. I am your blood. My power is yours to wield, and I do not wish to repeat the mistakes I made with Amelia."
"Thank you, father," Archmund said. Something about this offer felt uncomfortable to him, as if he wanted to stand on his own two feet, a self-made man, the glorious isekai protagonist bringing modern civilization like Prometheus with fire. But he'd learned his lesson about not rebutting the very useful gifts of others, and he needed to see the world to know what he could improve about it.
They said little more as their carriage traversed the narrow mountain pass to the rest of the Empire.
They traveled until dusk, when darkness fell across the land. Archmund had never really thought about it when he was under the familiar Granavale skies, but the night truly was dark. There was little to no light pollution. Though the moon and stars cast faint light over the land, the world beyond the carriage was unfamiliar. Anything could have lurked there.
His father touched his finger to a Gem embedded in the carriage's roof, one rather like Archmund's own Ruby of Energy, and a warm light flickered to life. Archmund stared. It really had been hiding in plain sight. He'd thought they had maybe 15 Gems total before he'd conquered the Dungeon, and yet…
"Surely you're not surprised," his father said. "This is all but the same as what you've mastered."
"But to spare such an expense on a carriage…"
His father's eyes flickered with understanding.
"An unreasonable expense from the perspective of these outer lands," his father said. "But for the capital? An absolute bare minimum for your carriage to have Gems."
Archmund stared at the light a bit longer. A sense of unease settled in his gut. He wasn't sure where it came from.
"Rest assured that I have no regrets about granting you one of our Gems," his father said. "You have done far more with it to advance the status of our house than any amount of cheap adornment ever could."
That made Archmund feel simultaneously better and worse. On one hand he was proud of what he'd done. On the other hand, he was clearly outmatched when it game to the complex world of social maneuvers in the capital.
But trapped in the carriage as he was, he was along for the ride.
He wondered, for a second, if it was motion sickness. Even though the night had come, they kept moving.
"Are we going to keep traveling?" he asked his father.
"Yes indeed," his father said. "We can make good time. Only a fool would attack a noble's carriage."
Archmund looked at the flickering light of the Gem. It was like a lighthouse beacon, only instead of warning for rocks it screamed "here be magic, come and rob us."
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"Even for robbery, or ransom?"
"You don't have to worry about being ransomed, son. Not while I'm here with you," his father said.
It took Archmund a moment. His father thought his concern of being ransomed was for himself, because who else would it have been for. But moreover his father was utterly unconcerned with the potential of robbers or brigands or beasts of the night.
He was, despite everything Archmund had to believe, a noble. A noble at the Fifth Awakening. A noble who had stood by and let his son and some peasants fight undead Monsters rampaging through his county.
"I've never seen your full power," Archmund said. "Why didn't you use it at the tournament? When everything started going wrong?"
His father grimaced. "When we get to the Imperial Capital, you'll see."
It had better have been a hell of a good explanation. Archmund had spent a week in bed after the event, and people had died. Commoners, true, but they were the subjects of Granavale — and his father, if nothing else, claimed to believe in noblesse oblige, all while sitting on his hands.
Nothing disturbed them that night, and when the sun rose, it no longer rose over mountains. They had left the valley of Granavale for rolling green meadows and bucolic hills. The occasional happy little tree dotted the landscape, as if painted by Bob Ross himself. Wild horses pranced across the meadows, free and unrestrained.
"Are we really heading deeper into the Empire?" Archmund asked.
"We are," his father said. "This is the Elysian Wall. A moat of undeveloped land, you might say, set forth by Alexandrian Decree two thousand years ago, so that there would always be a division between city and country. Any who lived within the Wall would be the first city nobles, and any outside…"
He sighed.
"But I can't see the city," Archmund said. "How wide is this Wall, anyways?"
"To the very edge of the horizon," his father said.
"Meaning?"
"When the Alexander Omnio stood at the full height of his palace and gazed upon his land, he imagined that all civilization fell within his eyesight. Anything beyond was uncivilized, and he demanded it remained such. Thus, the Elysian Wall, that stretched inward towards the imperial capital. Within the Elysian Wall, the only manmade structures allowed are roads."
"Oh," Archmund said, his voice small.
He looked outside the window. "I… it doesn't really look like a wall."
On Earth, when he thought of majestic imperial walls, he thought of the Great Wall of China, or perhaps the Walls of Rome or Babylon. Not this… emptiness.
"It's a metaphor," his father said. "A willful gap. The barrier between lawful peace and natural war. That the Emperor's eye stretches to the very end of civilization itself, and all beyond is the same as the encroaching savagery. That is the purpose of the Elysian Wall."
This was actually a bit like the "National Mall" in Washington D.C., the capital of the United States of America. When he was a little boy, he'd assumed that it would be a shopping mall, a tawdry hub of commercialism, existing solely so those who populated it could hawk their wares onto an unsuspecting populace, so he had been quite surprised to see a paradise of greenery in the service of civic national goodwill or something like that. This was just like that.
"I guess the symbolism is what's important?"
"Symbolism so often trumps the truth," his father said with a mournful laugh. "Anyways. Have you any interest in horticulture?"
Archmund wasn't sure what gardening had to do with the construction of a metaphorical barrier between civilization and savagery, and now that he phrased it like that he suspected he was missing something incredibly obvious.
"I suppose I should show it more respect," he said diplomatically, given that he'd ruined the manor gardens when he was training.
His father chuckled paternally.
"Those trees aren't native," his father said. "Imported from the west for their fruitbearing yet hardy properties. Neither are those. Those birds are known to catch pests; those flowers make bees produce the sweetest honeys known to man. All of it pilfered from across the Empire and the myriad islands of the Endless Sea."
Archmund understood immediately.
When European conquerors had come to America, they had assumed the lands were wild. Untouched. Pristine. Nature's bounty, unleashed in wild form.
But that was quite far from the truth. The woods and plains and buffalo herds of America appeared wild, but they were anything but. They had been cultivated for generations by the native peoples with a hand so deft they were indistinguishable from the grace of nature herself.
The Omnio had done the same, but on purpose. They had turned a whole ring around the Imperial City into an earthly paradise.
"Why grow bountiful fruits and seed sweet honeys in a moat?" Archmund said.
His father chuckled. "Right. Why indeed."
Their carriage ground to a halt.
"Are we allowed out here?" Archmund said, but stopped immediately as his father opened the door, and the sweet perfumes of fruit and flowers buffeted his nostrils.
He blinked, stepping out into the midmorning sun. The air rung with birdsong and buzzing insects. They'd been so silent out in Granavale, and in the dead of winter.
His father walked forward to a tree and picked an orange from its boughs.
"This is—"
"An orange," Archmund said, exhaling. He couldn't remember the last one he'd seen one of these, if it had even been in this lifetime.
"I see you know of them, but have you ever tasted one?" his father said.
Archmund took the orange and peeled it, the rough citrus skin falling apart underneath his fingers, feeling the membrous fruit beneath him. He peeled apart a segment and popped into his mouth. Tart and sweet mingled upon his tongue. Was it more sour than he remembered, or was his palate simply less refined, still a child's addicted to sugar? But the juice, bitter and sour and sweet as it was, reminded him of life.
"So you do know of them," his father said. "All fruits cultivated here are strictly forbidden for removal from beyond the Elysian Wall. But we may enjoy them as we visit, and as we approach — for we are nobility."