Two tiny girls with startlingly bright white hair streaked with blue sat on the pretty marble sidewalk, their knees tucked up to their chins. One dared to put her hand out to Huntress, who tilted her head at the child. Nash gave his Familiar a subtle nod, and the husky padded up to the outstretched fingers and booped them with her nose.
“Call off your beast, or it will be thrown outside the city!” a guard barked, his expression alarmed.
Have they really never seen a dog before? The mind boggled.
Huntress snarled at the guard but did as she’d been told. The child looked sad as she drew back her hand and stared at the spot where Huntress had nuzzled it. Meanwhile, a woman rushed from a nearby house and stood horrified for a second before hurrying to the children. She snatched them up by their arms and dragged them inside before they could get another dangerous nose-booping from the harmless husky.
Under the ever-watchful eye of the armed soldiers, we continued through seemingly endless streets, each as pretty as the last. The soldiers had spread out slightly, which gave us a bit more room to talk in private.
None of the houses were squished close to each other, and each one had a front garden where curious plants grew—flowers whose petals had formed in the shape of conch shells, tufts of purple foliage with plump green succulents emerging from within, and slim trees with pale branches bearing unusual-looking fruits. They were round, like oranges, but their blood-red skins stood out against the otherwise oceanic color scheme.
“Oh my days!” Melody chirped, clasping her hands together. “Look, Luke! Finch, look!”
I turned my gaze up the street and understood her sudden excitement. Where the street came to an end, a vast piazza opened out, which the guards ushered us into. Atlanteans wandered around at their leisure, pausing beside the windows of shop fronts that lined the sides, peering at the latest robes and jewelry on offer. There seemed to be cafés and restaurants, too, with chairs and tables set out on the pearlescent stone that covered the square. The chatter that echoed across the open expanse fell eerily silent, as hundreds of eyes rested on us.
“I guess we don’t exactly blend in, huh?” I whispered, looking at Nash. “Well, except for you. Throw on a robe and splash some paint on your face, and you could fit right in.”
“I’ve been wondering about that paint.” Melody bristled with bookish enthusiasm. “Everyone seems to have the same four markings, with few exceptions. The teardrop, I think, represents Water. The frond, or whatever it is, must be Earth. The three thin lines might be Air, and the star is probably Fire. Like I said, almost everyone seems to have those four, though I’ve seen a couple of people with two or three instead. But it’s the others that have me intrigued. The one closest to their eye seems to be their ‘other’ ability—the one not tied to an Elemental ability.”
I glanced at a terrified local who shuffled backward as subtly as possible. Sure enough, he had the four patterns Melody had described set in a square underneath his cheekbone. But there was another just below his left eye, shaped like a lightning bolt. That had to be the universal symbol for electricity, meaning he had to be an Electro.
“Couldn’t someone just paint one on, though? Like, if they were a Shapeshifter and wanted to hide it, couldn’t they put something else there?” I asked, curious.
Melody paused. “They could be magically imprinted there, somehow, to stop that kind of thing from happening. This way, everyone knows what everyone is, to avoid suspicions and deceptions. It’s quite clever, really, if a little… hmm, what’s the word?”
“Fascist?” I cut in.
She shook her head. “Not quite what I was going for.”
“But probably what they’re going for.” I flashed a mischievous smile.
Luke made a noise of agreement. “You’ve got to admit, there’s something off about this place.”
“Harmonious societies always have the darkest secrets.” I could think of several sci-fi series where they’d come across peaceful peoples only to find out they were drugged to their eyeballs or killing people for the “greater good.”
“Exactly.” Luke narrowed his eyes at a group of Atlantean ladies who had been ogling us, prompting them to shriek and scurry away.
“And what if the Atlanteans are the exception to the rule?” Melody suggested, eyeing Erebus and Davin to make sure they weren’t listening in. Fortunately, they were sticking close to Kaya a short distance ahead. “What if they’ve mastered the art of a truly peaceful society because they’ve had the time to make it that way, and they haven’t had any outside influence or threats to mess things up?”
“Then I’d say they’re living in a fantasy world.” It certainly felt like a dream, or a city that had been carved from pure imagination. Willy Wonka would’ve gone nuts for it.
On the farthest side of the piazza stood a towering building of exquisite beauty, with coral-esque spires covered in orbs of glass and gemstone. It reminded me of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, while the smaller buildings surrounding the piazza had a flavor of the Casa Batlló. Instead of stark lines, the stone took on a curved, fluid quality that suited its watery location.
I sped up to fall in step with Ryann-Lux, away from the others. “Everything okay?”
“I do not want to talk about it,” she replied sharply. Yep, definitely fine, no problems here, what are you even talking about, Finch?
“I mean with Ryann. Is she okay? Is she… in one piece in there?”
Lux smirked coldly. “Your precious mortal is safe. As I promised.”
“If anything happens to her—”
“You will what?” Lux cut me off. Silence hovered in the air between us.
“Just… protect her.” I clenched my jaw, hating every second of this—of Ryann being trapped by this Child of Chaos.
She strode off ahead of me, leaving me in anguish.
We pressed on across the piazza, parting every group of people we walked toward. The guard led us past the beautiful building, which looked like a city hall or something, and marched us along a road to the side of the structure. Another square extended behind it, with more of the same remarkable architecture, though this piazza was almost empty of people and had four of the majestic buildings on each side. The men we saw were dressed more formally, in what looked to be the Atlantean equivalent of suits, with blunt-collared jackets that reminded me of Indian formal dress and loose satin pants that flowed with their movements. The women wore a similar get-up, though some chose sweeping dresses with the same blunt collar at the neck. Instead of wariness, these folks looked at us with a mix of concern and disdain.
Looks like we found the elite, everyone. No matter where you went, that brand of haughtiness always indicated the upper echelons. These had to be the politicians and businesspeople. I’d recognize the scent of wealth anywhere.
“What does your mind palace tell you about this place? Has anything come up now that you’re actually here?” I asked Melody as we continued on our way through Atlantis. It was wishful thinking more than anything.
This wasn’t exactly the tour I’d have liked, but at least we were getting to see some of the city instead of being carted through it in their equivalent of a squad car. Which, oddly, begged the question of why we hadn’t seen any mode of transportation. Did they walk everywhere? In a city so big, that didn’t seem feasible. Maybe they had a subway or something, deep below ground. Or maybe they used those bubble pods to whoosh around between docking stations across the city—the kind Kaya and the guards had arrived in to arrest us.