Preternatural (Worlds & Secrets) (38 page)

“
Now whatever you do, do
not
break out of the circle!” he exclaimed. But suddenly, upon the termination of his statement, his face began to tremble as his eyes lit to shimmering gold – at which point he and Jade burst into thin, light grey smoke and disappeared. We gasped but before taking another breath to respire, the opposites next to Robbie (which were Liam and Jojo) burst into smoke and disappeared as well. Then, Tammy and Jaden vanished, until I was left alone with grey smoke billowing around me, slowly settling into the humid air.

I was on the verge of attempting to look back whe
n I too disappeared. I felt as if I were falling over a thousand feet. Miraculously, the sensation of landing on firm ground after falling from such a height was all I felt. I landed steadily on my feet but with my hands suspended in mid-air, balancing my unsteady and dazed body. I was too dizzy to notice where I was. I could only make out the luminosity of the extended rows of streetlights on my left and right hand sides. Suddenly, my vision settled and I could make out Jade in front of me, snapping her fingers in my face.

“
Come on, snap out of it!”

“
Where are we?” I asked, my head rolling around my long neck. My impaired vision instantly fixed itself and everything came into focus. I was in a marvellous city that was lively enough to fool anyone that it was daytime – despite the nocturnal sky blanketing our world. The roads were paved with smooth, grey bricks in an organised fashion. The place was very wide and alive; shops on both sides of the street which were all contributing to the dazzle of the city, plenty of squabble surrounding us, massive and
enormous
alien buildings that shot up way into the sky – all of them high-tech and all too futuristic than I imagined. I had been living in the countryside of Vernaesce where nothing could be seen. I was mistaking this planet for a medieval one but it was much more advanced than I had cared to admit. There were lanes up above in the silver-clouded sky that had trains zooming on them at ferocious speed whilst emitting green sparks in their trails. Strange sorts of automobile-seeming hovercrafts glided in the sky – obviously for those who could neither teleport nor fly.

“
Where are we?” I asked again.

“
This is the Suscatio Roundabout. One of the capitals of Porto-Pyro,” said Liam. We began heading through the large crowds that rushed towards us.

“
I love Suscatio. You know that nearly every night is as lively as this in this area, just like a carnival,” Robbie said, a broad smile slapped on his face. We walked deeper into the depths of the Suscatio Roundabout and we eventually found ourselves in the actual
roundabout of this area. We looked ahead and saw a very large fountain with a marble base. The water flowing out of it was crystal clear and seemed to reflect everything passing by it as if it were a liquid mirror. Different sizes of silver pennies had been dropped in and people were casually sat on the fountain’s rim whilst others walked around it.

Behind the
fountain was a very large marble building that ran down the entire street opposite us in both directions. It was nowhere near as tall as the other alien structures though. It had long marble columns that looked close to limestone and the entire construction was so arcane and majestic that it seemed like it could collapse at any moment. Yet something about it told you it was fortified in manners we wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t abandoned, because men and women in suits and very smart attires seemed to be walking on the balconies and into the rooms there. Maybe it was a large building where business people could hold conferences?

Suddenly, I tore my wandering eyes away from the building and I looked closer at the fountain, noticing its actual structure
. It was a man holding up a corpse – well, a woman (but effortlessly beautiful) that was dead nonetheless. The water was overflowing from the utmost top of the body held in the main figure’s hands; I’d say probably around the section of her stomach. The water flowed like blood. It had a strange illusion around it: a thick, dark crimson substance flowed from the marble statue’s body but turning into a liquid, mirroring, crystal flow of water a metre or so before it landed into the circular pool around the man’s feet.

The man
holding up the corpse seemed to be wearing medieval clothes and had a mass of frizzy hair like I once had. The sculpture’s height was staggering. There were two roads on each side of the fountain and the circumference of the pool around the statue’s feet was incredibly wide. Around me, there were people on stilts and jugglers flipping balls of fire. Stands were put up by people promoting delicacies such as pastries and bizarre gizmos. There were also numerous sounds of klaxons that were constantly being honked; you couldn’t avoid hearing them.

“
Who is he? He
must
have a history,” Jade asked, pointing at the fountain’s statue figure. She suddenly then pulled out a thin sliver digital camera from her back pocket and began taking pictures. Jaden and I scoffed and rolled our eyes. “Tourist,” we muttered.

“
It’s the Trim Ridge fountain,” replied Tammy, “and
he
,” Jojo started “is Markmardowal of Vernaesce.”

“
Can’t I just call him Mark?” Jade jested, snapping another picture.

“
Most people do,” Robbie replied, smiling naïvely at Jade’s suggestion.

We turned inside the long road on the right of the fountain which had more lights and branches
to different streets. Surprisingly, the shops were still open at this late hour and people still roamed as though it were day time.

Suddenly, a
tree trunk as thick as a corner shop shot out of the ground and escalated into the air. As soon as it came up, the extra part of it at the top slanted downwards and quickly grew to the ground, winding like a snake and landing with a loud, ground-quaking thud. A teenager, approximately nineteen, was walking down it hotfoot with his hands stuck out beside him for balance as he waddled unsteadily. He landed firmly and continued walking when a flash of green sparks appeared behind him. What I assumed to be a police officer dressed in the same attire as the medieval-modern sentries at the Samhain ball stopped the young teen. The officer looped his right index and middle fingers around the boy’s hands from a distance. With a flash of green pixel-looking fragments, a pair of cuffs appeared around the teenager’s wrists.

“Property damage; you cannot use spontaneous travel to damage public property –” I heard the policeman
say whilst whisking the boy away in a swirl of green embers. I walked on with the others who were laughing at the event underneath their breaths. It seemed like a casual thing, nobody seemed to really bother about the arrest. As we were about to walk down the street to the right of the Trim Ridge fountain, I looked at the face of Markmardowal and the strangest thing happened, but it
must’ve
been my imagination. His head turned and looked at me as I walked. It became clearer that he was but nobody noticed, not even the passers-by. Whether it was because his head was too high up, I didn’t know…but I could so visibly see his droopy, sorrow-filled eyes tailing me.

“
Wait!” Robbie quickly halted us all.

“
What is it?” Liam then asked, growing exasperated.

“
We’re going
there
.” Robbie pointed to a long field – partly tiled and partly grassed – filled with rollercoasters, other shops, more fire-breathers and ordinary fair games involving Vernaescian abilities. I could make out a pyro shooting game where one had to shoot fireballs at constantly moving water-balls to win a prize. But that wasn’t all.

Our eyes fell on the
large, three-storey shops filled with expensive items, mechanical equipment and books. After a couple of seconds of direct enchanted staring, we marched, enthralled, towards the fairground. Most people occupied there were families. We walked ahead around the Trim Ridge Fountain and into the opening of the vast terrain. It wasn’t so different from Earth, really. But I looked up and my mouth dropped as I gaped away.

“
Whoa. What is that?” I asked mechanically, impressed at the structure that stood before me. It was a colossal, towering glass building. We watched, bemused, as it shot into the sky and took up most of the perimeter before us.

“
Oh, that’s just St Balowin’s,” Tammy said nonchalantly.

“
What is it?” asked Jaden.

“
Shopping centre,” replied Robbie all-too-casually. He looked at us and pulled a comic face causing us to laugh hysterically. We walked on and as we continued further down, St Balowin’s appeared more godly and overawing than it was from a distance. We finally reached its entrance and I realized that it was surrounded by a moat and had a bridge set out. The chains connecting the bridge to the walls were made of strong, sturdy rings of Tartalum. We walked on the Tartalum Bridge among a crowd of common people indifferent to the grand infrastructure they were marching into. As we entered, we were given many glances by numerous people on our sides.

“
This place was already opened but then had to close for refurbishments. I guess that during the closure they added external features to the building; it’s been inaccessible to the public for two whole months,” Liam spoke.

“
Two months?!” asked Jaden

“
I know, ridiculous isn’t it?” Robbie then replied.

“
No, I mean it only took two months
to reconstruct…
this
?” asked Jaden. Liam scoffed.

“
Don’t be silly, Jaden – it only took three
weeks
. It was just closed
down
for two month to add more shops and gain new investments,” Tammy perkily answered.

“
Construction isn’t a problem over here, buddy. Everything’s done and dusted before you could say
Noble’s Antilles
,” Liam said.

The
shopping centre’s interior was tremendously grand. The structure’s ceiling was visible from the bottom floor, but it seemed miles away in height. Expensive lights hung on the walls and chandeliers spiralled down from the utmost ceiling, illuminating the shops of many different brands. Further ahead was some sort of large junction which led you to other different places in this magnificently-designed building.

Inste
ad of elevators there were green sparks that flew in clusters and hovered like flies in front of certain walls. The one piece of machinery I recognised here were the escalators.

“
What are those?” I asked, referring to the green sparks, “Jojo?” I then turned to her, expecting her to answer my dazed question.

“
They’re Chrono –”

“
What’s Chrono?” I asked, interjecting.

“
It means time – they’re Chrono Enhanced Transports but more commonly known as C.E.T.s. They work like elevators and you see those hovering numbers made out of green sparks –?” she said, pointing to the ember-like ashes above. I was able to identify that each group of sparks on the bottom floor had a hovering number formed from the green embers.

“
What about them?” I asked.

“
Well, they indicate which floor it transports you to,” she finished explaining.

B
enches were aligned near certain stalls and in the centre of the ground floor was a marble column that stretched all the way to the highest point of the entire structure’s ceiling. Robbie stopped and pointed at a C.E.T.

“
Ah, there’s our transport.”

“
What the –” I was unable to continue speaking since we were all walking hastily. I wouldn’t want to be left behind here. We waited in front of the C.E.T. nonchalantly with a group of other people. Liam tapped the soles of his shoes out of profound boredom as he looked around. His head landed on a little boy that stood next to him, holding the hand of his mother. The tiny boy held a double-decked ice-cream in his hands as he looked up at Liam with bright, red, round eyes. Liam looked at him ordinarily when the infant suddenly pulled an unpleasant face and stuck his tongue out at Liam. Liam looked around coolly and looked back at the little boy. He stuck out his tongue, rolled his eyes to the top of his head so that his bright electric eye-whites showed and vicious blue static coursed through his afro and face. The child instantly began crying, dropping his ice-cream. Liam immediately – as quick as lightning – dropped his eyes, stopped the visible static flowing to his hair and face, stuffed his hands in his pockets and got back to looking around inconspicuously.

U
nlike most of the others around me, this C.E.T wasn’t made out of green sparks but red ones.

“
Why is it red?” asked Jaden out of curiosity. I was confused, until they suddenly lightened to a stunning green. People burst out of it and continued walking, going about their private business. I guessed that when they glowed red it had to do with them being occupied.

“
Okay, come on. We’re stopping on the thirtieth floor,” Robbie ushered.