Two-World Traders (progression fantasy)

Hundreds of docks circled the merchant metropolis of Sailor's Rise, but Elias could not say which one of them Constance was taking him to. While ports sprung from the mountaintop city likes spokes on a ship's wheel, its inner neighborhoods possessed a little less poetry and a lot more in common with a poorly planned labyrinth.

Though in truth, a poorly planned labyrinth was precisely where our protagonist found himself now. Elias had no idea where he was headed, down what twisting path, through what dim alleys, toward what ultimate destination. Constance was taking him to the Gray Academy, that much he knew, but the Gray Academy was an idea to him, not a real place—much as Sailor's Rise had once been the naive dream of a teenage boy.

Elias spotted a dozen opportunities to escape during their somber walk together, though he knew escape was a false promise. As she'd told back in the office, he had already been found out. He could not run from a truth once revealed. Nor was he confident he could run from Constance. She possessed the same sight he did, that of the Serpent Moon School, only hers was undoubtedly sharper. Constance was a genuine rarity: a transcendent collector.

And Elias—Elias was just in trouble.

"So, how do we get to the Gray Academy?" he asked as they passed through a busy intersection near the northern end of town.

"Through a sky rift," she replied, weaving around a carriage.

Elias, meanwhile, nearly walked into the horse.

"Watch where you're going, idiot!"

Constance waited for him to catch up. She had the better sight, indeed.

"I gathered that much." Elias picked up the conversation. "Where is the sky rift taking us?"

"To the Gray Academy."

"If I must suffer an interrogation, can you at least indulge my curiosity?" he pleaded.

Constance sighed a resigned sigh. "I will tell you as much as you will soon see for yourself." She pondered before determining where to start. "As I'm sure you've read or heard from Jalander, air travel unlocked the discovery of sky rifts a century ago, but it was one of ours, a Serpent Moon collector, who first found the island. As the story goes, a powerful transcendent named Millard Fullmore wished to build a safe haven for collectors, somewhere our kind could trade secrets and build a stronger society without the risk of discovery. So precise was this wish of his that it led him where no one had ever traveled before. Fullmore followed his vision. He and two others sailed the Void Sea for hours and hours, aboard an old airship scarcely bigger than your office, and then…" She paused.

"What is it?" The eagerness was obvious in Elias's voice.

"Just a stray cat," Constance said, smirking. They were passing through another winding alley, and whatever dock she was taking him to could not have been far now. "Fullmore and his crew saw the cloudy sky before they spotted the solitary island beneath it," she went on. "An island surrounded by endless ocean in every direction. An island far, far off the cost of the Great Continent, farther than anyone had ever sailed by sea. And there, under the gray sky, the Gray Academy was born."

For a fleeting moment, Elias nearly cast aside his fear, blinded by the silver lining of seeing such a place for himself. Reality caught up with him quickly, as it tended to do these days.

Reality, in fact, was suddenly right in front of him. They had arrived at a skinny, rather crooked dock that looked halfway destined for Lowtown, tucked behind a quiet neighborhood Elias had never had occasion to visit. Under the cover of night—for no oil lamps reached this unremarkable edge of town—they walked down the creaking pier toward a compact ship. She was hardly more than a silhouette floating in a sea of starlight.

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But the airship's intricacy revealed itself as Constance beckoned him on board: the texture of the Valshynarian vessel's metallic hull, rugged yet sleek like the scales of a fish, and the faultless finish of carved oak details on every railing and door. The ship appeared as if it had never seen weather, its small crew as if they had never suffered a splinter.

Indeed, Elias and Constance had company. A slender man and a stocky woman stepped out from the great cabin, the latter carrying a swinging oil lamp, casting its amber light on the face they had come here to find.

"I asked them to stay back and allow me to speak with you alone," Constance explained as an invisible mechanism pulled up the gangway. "Consider it my final favor. From here on out, nothing is simply between you and me, you understand. You are among the Valshynar now, and you are on your own."

* * *

Only a transcendent collector could see far enough to reach to the Gray Academy, Elias had been told. When he quietly tested this claim, employing his own sight, he saw the truth of it firsthand, which is to say he saw nothing at all. Constance and Constance alone guided them through the endless, windless, lukewarm black.

Hours earlier, they had entered the Void Sea through a sky rift surprisingly close to Sailor's Rise, inconspicuously tucked behind a mountain peak, though not one Elias had any inkling of. While his own map of sky rifts and their respective destinations was a partial forgery, copied from the one Jalander kept in his apartment, he was certain he would have marked down a rift this close to the city. Which meant there was only one explanation: it had not been included in the original map either. The secrets of the Valshynar were multilayered, and this one was particularly well guarded. Though he supposed he now knew the sky rift's location for future reference, if his sense of direction could be trusted.

Elias had spent his first hour aboard the vessel exploring every nook and cranny of their remarkable airship, or at least the portion of it open to him, which amounted to everything above deck and the great cabin. Inside the cabin was a cleared circular table and a well-cushioned alcove with many silk pillows. It was far more luxurious than any ship he had been on before. It was the details. The craftsmanship. They too had a map of sky rifts, though they did not keep it hidden in a drawer but rather framed on the wall. If his own map reminded him of stars, looking at theirs was like staring through a telescope.

Unfortunately, Elias was not permitted below deck and, no, he could not see the engine room or whatever the hell it was they kept down there. He still had absolutely no idea how Valshynarian vessels stayed afloat absent any hydrogen balloon.

Whenever he asked the question, they denied him the answer, though one part of him wondered whether the stocky woman and the slender man—at least one of whom always remained by his side—knew themselves. As he had gathered already, secrets were multilayered among the Valshynar.

But as time passed, even the extraordinary grew mundane. Elias had never sailed the Void Sea for so long, not that he doubted their navigator. Constance spent most of their trip at the wheel, focused on her task and whatever else was running through her head. Elias figured that once their direction was set, there was not much she needed to do until they came close to it. There were no changing winds to adjust for nor islands to navigate. But she was the only transcendent Serpent Moon collector on board, and she acted the part of busy, certainly too busy to offer their curious captive additional advice.

The ship itself, meanwhile, was smaller than other Valshynarian vessels Elias had seen, perhaps half the size of The Sapphire Spirit, and its tightly wound crew were similarly uninterested in conversation, responding to his queries and comments with single-word answers when they responded at all.

But Elias's growing boredom eventually and instantly dissipated alongside the Void Sea itself, as the still air he had grown accustomed to cooled and blew against his skin. As the black sky eased into an early-morning gray. He jogged up the stern and bent himself over the bulwark like a bowsprit, peering down at the solitary island beneath them.

And there it was: a gray fortress beneath the gray sky. The century-old complex looked like it had grown in spurts over the years, adding new wings and towers and outbuildings in different stones and styles, and yet it all seemed to coalesce into something cohesive. Unlike Sailor's Rise, the Gray Academy had an order to it.

Elias spotted the docks, where two much larger Valshynarian vessels were presently parked in the ocean a short walk down from the academy. Sprawling gardens provided a connective tissue between them. Like the ship he stared down from, their manicured trees and hedges and flowerbeds were as immaculate as nature allowed, as if also immune to the weather, as if encased in some invisible greenhouse.

Yes, the Valshynar were a multilayered people, and their capital would undoubtedly be a multilayered place. There were no walls on the island, but Elias had learned that the best defenses were the ones others could not see.