It began as nothing more than a dot on the horizon. Something that stretched up over the curve of the world to introduce itself in a gradual reveal that took hours.

  Three points in the distance. Two of them appeared to be natural to my eyes, the peaks of long distant mountains with pure white crowns at the crest. They appeared first and didn’t really catch my attention all that much, considering the sheer number of mountains I’d seen in my time on Vereden. They were a remarkable size, sure, but still seemed like normal, if not close together peaks

  But the third was not natural. This one appeared after another hour or so of travel, and it startled me to see it. Even from the great distance we were from the veritable blades upthrust into the heavens, I could tell that it was man-made, even if the details were indistinct from this separation. It gleamed in an almost crystalline manner as it reflected the sun, alternatively flickering between green and red. And yet…

  It only seemed to be slightly smaller than the natural equivalents it grew in a row of, centered between.

  I furrowed my brow at the sight from my position at the helm of the Astray, gazing out at the distant peaks. “Can’t be,” I said out loud, catching the attention of those who stood with me. Aveline was currently taking a nap, while Venix was meditating at the prow of my ship. Everyone else had gathered with me for the company as we veritably flew over the waves buffeted by extremely favorable winds. The flapping of the sails was loud enough that I was barely audible, and I think the only reason Azarus to my right heard me was because of his Perception score.

  The Dwarven Envoy of Tarus turned to me with a raised crimson eyebrow, tearing his own gaze away from the distant peaks. “What is?”

  I nodded to the distant dots on the horizon. “I’m guessing that means we’re close to Blutstein? I just thought one of them looked manmade for a second.”

  “Because it is,” An amused female voice said as Liora stepped to join me at the wheel, standing to my left. Behind us, Renauld and Fade paid us no attention at all, content to continue playing their game.

  I had no idea where the young Spirit Wolf had learned how to play Karat, the game of cards I’d been taught by literal pirates, but apparently he had. Still, I had to admit it was impressive how he was holding cards with his paws.

  And beating the pants off of the Gnoll Healer, from the faint cursing I could hear.

  “Those are the Three Peaks,” Liora continued, ignoring the side-show behind us. She nodded to the horizon. “Hengiskar on the left, known as the Elder Brother. On the right is Horsaval, the Younger Brother. They were named in honor of the two founders of the tiny nation of Herztal in the ancient past, long before the unification of the scattered Human kingdoms in the aftermath of the Initialization wars.”

  “And way before the ‘gods’ showed their faces,” Azarus continued, making air quotes with his fingers. I hid a smile at the gesture I think my Dwarven friend had picked up from me, as he rightfully mocked Lucretia and her co-conspirators. I hadn’t kept all the revelations about the origins of the ‘gods’ from my companions, and frankly, none of them had been surprised to hear them. While religion was still common in modern-day Veredenese cultures, reverence for the long-banished gods was not.

  Mockery and a general sense of ‘good-riddance’ was common.

  “And the middle one?” I asked them.

  Renauld wandered up to us grumpily with a smug-looking Fade trailing behind him. I don’t think I had to ask who had won the game. “That would be Kyronkar,” He said, tucking his deck of Karat cards away into his robe. “Blutstein itself lies in the valley between the Brothers, and Kyronkar…well. Let’s just say it’s smack dab in the center of that.”

  Kyronkar…something about that name sounded familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d heard it.

  My gaze flickered between all three of them. “Okay…but there’s no way that’s man-made, right? Right…?”

  Liora reached up to rub her snout with a faint smile. “Depends on what you mean by man-made. You’ll see, Nathan. Blutstein isn’t known as the City of Spires for no good reason.”

  I just narrowed my eyes at the three of them, standing smugly to my side.

  “Should probably go wake the kid,” Renauld said in lieu of an answer, a smirk on his own snout. “You never forget your first view of Blutstein. I know I sure haven’t.”

  I snorted, nodded, and then looked down to meet Fade’s eyes. He understood my request without my even needing to ask, wandering away and below deck.

  The benefits of the Familiar bond.

  ……………………………………

  Hours later, everyone was gathered on the deck of the Astray to greet the growing city on the horizon. The view of Blutstein wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen before, while it was new for Aveline, Fade and I. Azarus had agreed to take the wheel for me, while my Familiar, my charge and I stood at the prow.

  The City of Spires…

  I could see why it was called that.

  Blutstein was…it was easily the largest city I had ever seen on Vereden by an order of magnitude. It absolutely dwarfed Rhoscara, the previously largest I’d visited on these shores. No pun intended, but my God. It had to be on the same level as a modern major metropolis from back on Earth. Not quite on the level of something like New York or Tokyo perhaps.

  But still pretty damn big.

  The city itself stretched off into the horizon for miles, situated in a vast valley that lay between the two large mountains known as the Brothers. It was so large that there was barely any space in that valley not occupied by humanity in one way or another. The entire coastline which lay in the space between Hengiskar and Horsaval was dominated by either the immense walls and fortifications of the city proper, or by the single largest harbor I had ever seen on any planet. The docks alone were easily twice as large as what I had seen in Elderwyck, and that city was meant to be the largest trading hub in Herztal! I…could only guess it was the central location of Elderwyck that contributed to that because there were more ships in the harbor of the City of Spires than I’d thought existed on Vereden. I almost absentmindedly realized that Grey’s own White Gull had to be somewhere in that forest of bobbing sails.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  But…by and large…what drew the eye the most were the towers.

  Or rather, spires.

  It seemed like the Herztalians of Blutstein had a desire to build up, rather than outward. Most buildings I could see stretched up at least four floors, and those were just the small ones. The larger spires of the city stretched up into the blue yonder in a manner similar to that of skyscrapers from back on Earth. Not all of them were that tall, but for the most part I could see dozens and dozens and dozens of towers and spires of all shapes and sizes stretching out across the entirety of Blutstein. Because of this, there almost appeared to be different tiers to the city, and in more than one way.

  Although the valley between the two mountains was still at a higher elevation than the coastline, making it harder to make out certain details, some things were just evident. Blutstein seemed to have very distinct levels to it, each separated by a different rise and its accompanying high walls. The overall effect was almost akin to that of a tiered hill, with the construction in each circle of the city never reaching over the massive height of the walls dividing the layers.

  From what I could tell, there were three of the levels, with outlying necessary services like the docks and even some farms outside the tiers.

  The lowest and by far largest level that encircled the whole city looked to be residential to my eyes, and its tower homes seemed almost…quaint in comparison to the rest of the city. They barely seemed to comprise three to four floors at the most, and looked to belong to the lower, working class. It was tightly packed together with narrow streets snaking their way through the vertical buildings. The effect of it all was almost akin to seeing a tall patch of grass encircling the roots of a taller tree.

  The middle level seemed to be the business district, taking a guess. The towers were larger in both height and width, looking far more decorated and fancy in this tier of the city. The streets were much bigger as well, and even from a distance, I could see innumerable different carts and wagons winding and clattering their way up and down cobbled lanes. They almost seemed to be arranged in some way to resemble, well…

  I’d been right, earlier, to compare the outer tier to blades of grass surrounding a tree. If I didn’t know better, every building in the middle tier was deliberately set into winding lanes, in a manner evocative of great roots bursting from the surface of Vereden.

  And of course, if the middle tier were the roots, and the outer was the grass that bearded them…

  Then the central and core layer was the tree itself.

  In the center of Blutstein rose the peak that I had seen earlier on the horizon, now fully visible as it rose to dominate the landscape.

  Kyronkar.

  It…I think it had to be the single tallest man-made structure in existence, either on Earth or Vereden. It stretched high enough into the sky that I could see clouds floating through the heavens flowing around its upper reaches, and wide enough that it put the Citadel at Helstein to absolute shame. I was finally able to tell why the distant peak I’d seen had gleamed in the light as well. The capstone was a single enormous gemstone, what looked to be an emerald with a solid core of ruby. The rays of light from Tarus that streamed through the impeccably carved crystal made it gleam almost like a second star, emerald one second, ruby the next. The rest of the tower was constructed of a stone I wasn’t familiar with, not quite as striking as the capstone, but still remarkable. It was a dark green of some kind, with striking inclusions of bright, crimson red within. Despite the height of the spire, it was strangely clean and polished-looking, almost unbelievably so. The enormous artificial mountain appeared to have what looked to be seven sides to it, each carved with impeccably straight lines and sheer flat surfaces that thrust out of the base within Blutstein. Actually…

  I tilted my head and furrowed my brow.

  “Is it…a star?” I asked out loud, as Aveline gasped in amazement from her place up on my shoulders. I had to admit I shared her feelings, but I was letting my Core Ring handle all of that, while I did the task of analyzing the awe-inducing sight of Kyronkar.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Azarus seeming almost…disappointed in my lack of visible reaction. I repressed a smirk. “Aye, it is,” My Dwarven friend answered, regardless of the letdown.

  “The base is shaped like that of a seven-pointed star,” Liora picked up patiently. “From there, Kyronkar grows into the sky to become the lesser peak of the trifecta, a little over a mile in height and a third that in width.”

  “Almost like a monument…” I mused to myself and then stopped. “Ah. I see. This…is something that the gods did, isn’t it?”

  “Yup,” Renauld said, popping the word. “It’s in the name, after all. Kyron-kar. Kar means peak in old Herztalian, and Kyron…”

  “Was the name of the Human god of Magic,” Azarus continued, crossing his arms. He spit off to the side. “He was one of the Order gods, and he carked it along with the Dwarven God of War, Yorgun.”

  Kyron and Yorgun.

  It struck me, then, why Kyronkar had sounded so familiar to me. Back during my confrontation with Rhazal, he had mocked me by saying that ‘Kyron and Yorgun are long dead’. He had apparently been talking about the Human and Dwarven gods.

  Who had both likely been part of Lucretia’s conspiracy against the Netherim.

  That made me wonder just what their real names had been.

  “Kyronkar was his citadel, the seat of Magic’s power on Vereden,” Liora picked up, unaware of my thoughts. “And Blutstein his city. His Gem City, as they are called. The base of the entire project was, according to Herztalian legend, magicked into being with a single wave of his hand. Then the Lord of Workings spent seven days and seven nights conjuring the spire of Kyronkar itself, growing it from deep beneath Vereden in a single unbroken length of stone.”

  “And then,” Renauld continued in a ‘spooky’ tone, waggling his fingers at me. “Legend says when he died, his body was interred in the peak. The ruby is really his blood. OoOoOh.”

  Liora shook her head tolerantly with a small smile on her lips, long used to Renauld’s theatrics. “These days Kyronkar is home to both the royal family as well as the nobility of Blutstein. The spire is not actually a solid piece, you see. It’s mostly hollow, and as a result there are large floors of it owned by families of ancient blood. The ruling house lives closest to the Zenith Crystal, while they conduct business on the ground floor. The throne is there too.”

  I nodded and then shook my head to clear it, jostling Aveline as I did so. She seemed to enjoy it, from the laughter I heard from the little girl. “Well, whatever. Time to go dock and find Grey. Presumably, one of you knows the way to the Academy.”

  “Course I do,” Renauld said, sounding almost offended as we all walked back up to the Helm. “S’not like I haven’t been going there for years or nothing. It’s in the middle layer. But, uh…we really should flag down a carriage if we’re looking to get there anytime soon, Nate. It’s a bit of a hike.”

  I set down Aveline, causing the little girl to take back off to the prow with Fade in tow. Meanwhile, I took the wheel from a grateful Venix and began angling the Astray towards one of the open berths, a dockhand already waving me down. I shook my head at Renauld. “Nah, I’d like to see the city. I’m probably going to spend a long time here, so it’s best I learn it.”

  Soon, Grey.

  Soon.