Trial by Fire

The two soldiers shared a confused look, but quickly collected themselves and led Lily around the side of the Citadel to a path that didn’t exist on her version of this beach. She tried to act as naturally as she could, even though she had no idea what passed for natural here. Her eyes darted down to the odd, vicious-looking sidearms strapped to the soldiers’ belts. She guessed that her best bet at making it through this episode was to play along.

It was a long walk around. The Citadel was a castle on top of the highest hill, surrounded by a circular wall that was backed up against the ocean. Ballooning out from the seawall that Lily had walked alongside stretched a much larger wall that seemed to go on forever. Lily tried to see around it and decided that this larger wall must encircle the whole city. She scoured the landscape for something familiar but saw no landmarks she knew. The tallest buildings of a strange city poked up above the massive wall. Looking at the soaring spires, Lily had to forcibly calm her breathing so she didn’t start to hyperventilate. A busy metropolis had somehow sprung up to replace her little town.

From her vantage point on the Citadel hill, Lily could see a section of the city. It was dense and imposing, but the buildings were not the modern glass-and-steel skyscrapers she was used to seeing in her world. There were no rigid pillars of concrete, rising like arrogant middle fingers into the sky. Instead, a congregation of airy hives and nests spiraled and arched into the air in twisting ringlets, dripping green plants off their tiered sides. This city bloomed with vegetation on every available surface. It looked like a latticed bouquet, reaching high into the sky.

“Lady? Would you care to open the gate?” asked the soldier on her left. They had come to a stop while Lily had been gawking and now waited expectantly. She looked up at the massive portcullis in front of her, feeling exposed and vulnerable. Did they expect her to lift it up with her bare hands?

“I c-can’t,” she stammered. Her escort gaped at her, perplexed. The soldier on her right glanced down at her neck and drew in a sharp breath.

“Your willstone. Lady, was it stolen? Were you attacked?” he asked urgently.

Lily touched her bare throat. She noticed that both of the soldiers wore similar silver stones around their necks, and they were staring at her so intensely that it was clear that not wearing one of those willstones was a big deal. Lily had to think fast. The soldiers’ distress was quickly turning to fear, and she knew from experience that people do strange, even irrational things when they are afraid.

“I can’t discuss it with you,” she said, pulling rank for the first time in her life. The only thing Lily had in her favor was their deference to the Lady that they had mistaken her for. “I need to go home. Now.”

The soldiers responded to her imperious tone immediately and yelled for the gates to be opened. The portcullis slid to the side like it was weightless. There was no groaning metal or clanking chains, just a faint whisper of wind as the thirty-foot-high and three-foot-thick wall of latticed metal swept to the side to let them inside. Ignoring that this effortless entry flew in the face of physics, Lily strode forward fearlessly, playing the part of a lady for dear life.

Holding herself to the calmest pace she could manage while her heart hammered away, Lily passed more staring soldiers and entered a large courtyard. Beyond the courtyard stood the keep of a giant castle. Lily recalled the old soldier calling it her Citadel. Forcing her shaking legs to carry her, she clenched her jaw and strode toward the entrance as if she owned it.