The Travelling City was a closely monitored paradise of euphoria. A place where every thought could be turned into reality, and every new reality spread like the most seductive sickness. Much of the city’s history had been washed over by ever-renewing fantasies of what life could be like. And most of its inhabitants did not care which version they lived in as long as life continued in a way that suited them.
Growing up in the Travelling City was dangerous, and its inhabitants did not value children. Every new person posed the risk of tipping over the precarious balance the colony had carved out, where humans could use their manifestation abilities to cause life-ending catastrophes. Often unattended and wild amidst the chaos of everyday life, many children fell to their deaths, tumbling over the cliff edges of the Travelling City’s rock face and descending deep into the cloud sea. Some turned each other to stone and could not turn back in time. Some disappeared, wandering the lightless streets at night, never to be found again.
Most parents knew and accepted this. It was the way things had always been. But some were eaten up by grief and begged the dead gods and the universe to return their children for a second chance.
The most reckless and desperate amongst them created manifested copies of their lost offspring, their longing and love shaping reality until it gave them what they thought they wanted. Those false children, first celebrated and coddled upon their arrival, inevitably failed to live up to their parents’ memories. Soon, they became unwanted shadows haunting the Travelling City’s streets, feral and confused, banded together like dogs to survive. They stole and killed and could not understand why their bodies turned this way or that as their parents’ impression of them changed.
Some parents had enough good sense to put their creations to rest before they caused too much harm. For the others, Reihan and the Enforcers were called.
One of the visitors to the Asylum had spotted a small colony of shadows in one of the abandoned settlements just below the Weeping Stairs. There had long been talk that the streets of the abandoned district were haunted, and now the rumours had been proven correct. A troop of Enforcers from the Artisans’ Quarters was asked to investigate, and given the location one of the Asylum seaver was obligated to accompany them. Reihan had volunteered for the job. She didn’t relish the idea of returning to patrol, but she did not want one of her junior colleagues to be chosen for it.
That’s just how it goes, she mused as she walked behind the Enforcers, who were nervously chattering amongst themselves. The Asylum attracts bad energies. Unwanted, lost things feel at home here. She felt her sword heavy by her side. It was too much to hope that today wouldn’t end in death. One had to be realistic about these things.
The abandoned buildings grew on either side of their path like the ribcage of a giant beast, its edges uncaressed by light. The deeper they pushed into the quiet district, the more the Enforcers fell silent, their steps on stone-hewn streets a beat that matched their quickening hearts. Reihan pushed forward, guessing at the men’s fears. As a seaver, manifestations did not affect her, rendering her safer than the humans surrounding her.
Nobody protested their change in formation. The skies were full of clouds, but down here they were protected from the madness. The rock face painted deep shadows onto the streets, a melancholic set of colours that dripped into the heavy air. Reihan hadn’t been surprised when she’d heard that the district had been abandoned. Humans needed light to function. It was only the seaver who were able to traverse the darkness they left behind.
Finally, they found the shadow children. They were too tired to move, having lived on the energies of their parents’ initial manifestations for too long. With dull eyes, they glanced upward, uncomprehending what they saw. Now they were little more than old pets who had to be laid to rest. Reihan heard silent groans and fluttering breaths behind her and, not for the first time, remembered how young this group of Enforcers was. Barely of age, they were now asked to cut down the helpless, crude human copies in front of them. Reihan glanced across the swarm of shadows. They had huddled into the space between two buildings, deeply nested in the darkness where their bodies had started to blur together. Pairs of dull eyes swimming in a sea of black.
“Mother?”, a voice echoed from the chorus of beings, and she did not know who had spoken. One of the Enforcers cursed quietly. Reihan closed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head.
“I don’t need you. Stay back.”
“That isn’t protocol, seaver”, the leader of the Enforcers replied, a tall man whose name she had already forgotten. She could hear the hesitation in his voice, but he knew his place. Reihan gave him a small smile.
“You know you are not allowed to question my orders. I need you to watch the perimeter in case of any surprise attacks.”
Both knew that there would not be any forthcoming attacks. The shades were too weak to move, let alone conjure a beast to ravage them. The Enforcers nonetheless formed a half-circle around Reihan, looking out towards the black tower-like buildings rather than down at the dying shades. Reihan pulled out her sword, hearing the blade sing in the open air.
“Mother”, the shades repeated, all eyes looking up at her in a single motion. Reihan shook her head in distaste. The children had merged into one being now, and it was slowly becoming one with the darkness that surrounded them. Why does it always have to be me?
She brought down her sword, and the pleas turned to wailing. Sick, suffering copies though they were, the children cried as they died, as they felt each other die in the darkness. There was barely any weight beneath her blade as Reihan cut through bodies, arms, and legs, but somehow the children’s voices rang within her head all the same.
When she was done, she panted, leaning against her sword. The troops turned around. Reihan couldn’t read their emotions at first, but she hoped for gratitude or at least for pity.
“Do you declare the mission complete?”, their leader asked in a strained voice.
“She’s killed them all”, one of the men whispered to his comrade.
“Thank the dead gods”, muttered a third, “Only a machine could do this.”
“Let’s go”, Reihan said with a heavy voice, “I have to return to the Asylum.”
They always wanted to trade. No matter who came to the Asylum, whether it was a parent, a sibling, a friend, or a concerned neighbour, they all thought there was a bargain to be made. As if Reihan and the other seaver could be convinced to do the right thing with enough honey-dripping words or sweet-laced tears. Maybe the humans thought that the seaver wanted to keep them all here.
The man in front of her was no exception.
“What can I do?”, he repeated. Reihan shook her head, more an implication than a response, then pulled the registration sheet closer.
“Tell me your name”, she asked, in the same tone she used for everyone. There was no real benefit to modulating her approach to accommodate the different visitors’ emotions. She just didn’t understand humans well enough.
“Phillippe. And this is Alexander”, he replied, gesturing at the man beside him. They shared the same skin and the same eyes, but Alexander’s were unfocused, blankly moving with the random sways of his body. They had tied him around the chair for convenience, even at Phillippe’s repeated protestations.
“That’s fine”, she said, taking note of both their names, “And you said you are brothers?”
“Yes”, Phillippe responded quickly, as if the speed of his answers would have an effect on the outcome. Another common thing humans did.
“All right, Phillippe. How did this happen?”
“Well, we –”
Phillippe’s eyes grew almost as glossy as his brother’s, and for a moment, Reihan wondered if he had also been infected by the madness that lurked beneath the rock face, seeping up from the sea of clouds.
“We went past the Undercity”, he explained, “Down to the World’s End.”
“The pub?”, Reihan clarified.
Phillippe nodded.
“You know that’s past the recommended borderline, right?”
“Well, yes. We did – we do.”
“And so why would you go there?”
Phillippe’s eyes narrowed.
“Does it matter? Can you help us or not?”
Reihan sighed internally. There was really nothing she could do, and Phillippe should know better than to ask. Still, she had to fill out this form.
“I need to know how long you were exposed for”, she replied, “It is important.”
It was a mandatory box on the form, so she always filled it out. She reckoned some researchers wanted to correlate the length of exposure to the mind fog with the severity of the madness experienced by its victim. But no one in the Asylum had ever recovered from the Submergence, at least not while she had worked there. It seemed like a pointless dataset to collect, but Reihan didn’t think it was worth arguing over.
“Half a day. Or something like that. It was hard to tell when we were immersed and when we weren’t.”
Phillippe’s voice was shaking, and Reihan nodded, more to appease him than to agree. She wouldn’t know. She would never head down there, even though she was supposedly immune.
“And were there other people at the pub?”
“Yes. That’s why we thought it wouldn’t be so bad. That we could go a little further even.”
“How many people?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe five or six. They didn’t really speak to us.”
“What were they doing?”
“I don’t know. They were mumbling amongst themselves.”
“Right. Had it occurred to you that they might have been manifestations, not humans?”
Phillippe stared at her.
“That’s possible?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
He kept staring at her, and Reihan shook her head.
“All right. And then you proceeded?”
“We … just stepped outside. We didn’t go any deeper or anything like that. There’s a ledge outside the pub, and we went to look down into the clouds. We thought the closer we were –”
“The more powerful your ability to manifest would be once you returned to the city. Yes, I am familiar with the concept.”
Reihan suppressed another sigh and completed her notes. If she had any power in this word, she would use it to tear down the World’s End, that blasted pub at the edge of the cliff on which the Travelling City rode the cloud sea. Largely abandoned, drenched in madness, and absolutely forbidden, it drew in the foolhardy and desperate with the force of a mother’s open arms.
“Can you do anything to help him?” Phillippe’s voice was very small in the Asylum’s registration hall. He did not look like a man who usually spoke quietly, Reihan thought. His hair was long and well-kempt, raining over his chest and adorned with tiny pearls and gold strands. His skin practically glowed whenever a bit of sunlight touched it. His eyes were large and rimmed with fading black coal, and his cheeks were just a little too red.
He refused to look at his brother. Reihan waited until he looked up at her, however.
“You know how this works, don’t you?”
“I know that he was exposed.”
“Exposed to the force of an entire city’s collective unconscious. To the mind fog.”
Reihan gestured around her.
“Every one of you humans produces manifestations from your conscious will. And that’s nice because that’s the way everything works around here.”
Phillippe didn’t know where to look. His gaze shifted from the space between her eyes to the corners of her eyebrows, landing somewhere in the landscape of her right ear.
“Now, manifestations aren’t only caused by conscious thoughts. The products of your unconscious desires, fear, anguish, lust, and joy gather towards the bottom of the city, clinging to its cliff sides and crevices like vermin refusing to die. Humans look up – it is natural for them. So, we get to live on top while everything below gets succumbed in madness.”
Phillippe opened his mouth, but she interrupted him.
“So, don’t go down into the madness. It is the one rule you really, really have to follow.”
Phillippe stared at her, clearly never having been spoken to like this, least of all by a seaver.
“Don’t tell me what to do”, he snapped back, half-heartedly.
“You’re here asking for help. I can tell you whatever I want to.”
“So, help him! Do something other than filling out that damned form.”
“No.”
A part of Reihan enjoyed watching Phillippe’s face slip as if it had melted just a little, outstretched by a hot sun on a summer’s day. Seeing small ripples appear on the young man’s skin, she quickly shook her head, dispersing the thought. Not now.
“What do you mean, no?”
Reihan assumed he hadn’t noticed the shifting and stretching on his skin.
“I mean that I can’t help him”, she clarified. She gestured to his brother, his eyes as empty as the light, his body limp and cold.
“We’ll keep him here for caretaking and observation, but I’ll not lie to you. None of that is going to help him. None of that is going to bring your brother back. You took a risk, and it didn’t pay off. And that’s really all there is.”
“But you – at the Enforcer station, we were told you’d help us here. That you knew what to do.”
“This is what we do. We take your problems and lock them away, so you don’t have to look at them.”
Reihan’s eyes and voice remained cold. She’d had this conversation one too many times, she feared. Perhaps they shouldn’t let her speak to visitors anymore.
“Why would you say that to me?”
Phillippe’s voice was still shrill, but it assumed a layer of calm that Reihan found unusual. His eyes fixated on her, almost as if he was intrigued by the callousness lurking behind her words.
“Because I didn’t cause this, Phillippe. Because I was created to solve a problem that you humans could so easily avoid if not for your petulant greed and insistence on breaking every rule, no matter how well-meaning.”
“We had no choice”, Phillippe replied, still with that eerily resigned tone of his.
“I don’t believe that. All you people can manifest at least to a degree. You’ll never truly go hungry, and you’ll never truly go cold. Hells, if you get sick, you can make yourselves healthy, and when you get old, you can make yourselves young, at least for a little while. Everything else is a choice.”
“You don’t know – you wouldn’t understand.”
“No. I wouldn’t. I will take your brother with me and wash him and feed him until he lives out his natural lifespan. And in doing so, I am the one who has no choice.”
Phillippe stared at her.
“You seaver really don’t feel any emotions, do you?”
“Does it matter?”, Reihan asked, “You don’t need me to get emotional. You need me to do my job. And you just wanted me to lie to you, so you’d feel better about fucking up.”
“I don’t want you to lie”, Phillippe replied, and somehow, Reihan believed him. His eyes were almost as cold as hers, and his voice had lowered. It was always better if they were angry at the seaver caretakers rather than themselves. Reihan still remembered the instructions clear as day from her time at the Upside-Down Palace.
“Good. Because seaver don’t lie. We weren’t designed to.”
She sighed, this time out loud.
“Your brother is in good hands here. You won’t need to worry about him. He is the burden of the city now in exchange for past and future services you provide.”
“Do any of them ever recover?”
“No.”
“Ah.”
Phillippe’s gaze softened.
“And will I be able to visit him?”
“As often as you like. But everyone stops coming after a while.”
She saw his expression, then added:
“But you may do as you please. That is your prerogative, human.”
Phillippe fell silent for a while, and Reihan took that as her cue to wave over some of the other seaver. They pulled Alexander up, one on each arm, and led him down into the cell where he would be staying. The inmates barely ever reacted to stimulation, so they did not require much.
“Have you been doing this for long?”, Phillippe asked, still fixating on her.
That part surprised Reihan. They usually left as quickly as they could once they realised their bargain had failed.
“Over a century”, she admitted. She was technically one of the higher-ranking seaver at the Asylum. Not that it mattered, as the rota of tasks remained cyclical, and few of them preferred one responsibility over another. And she did not look senior because seaver bodies did not age. They were created and would die at the peak level of physical fitness that was appropriate for their position. They were given an instruction manual on how to best take care of their bodies. There were even places you could go to customise your exterior, but many seaver never did.
“And you’ve gotten sick of us by now.”
It wasn’t a question. Phillippe’s hands interlinked, twisting and turning at the knuckles. Reihan considered the question carefully.
“I wish I understood you better. It’s frustrating that I don’t, because many of the things humans do end up being my mess to clean up. But I am not sick of you. I’m not even truly sick of the work I do.”
“But it seems pointless to help us because our mistakes seem to serve no purpose.”
“Yes. You always crave more power, and you always fail. Every time.”
“Hm.”
Phillippe rubbed his eyes and smeared a little coal across his cheekbones. He is gorgeous, Reihan thought, and he’s clearly enhanced his natural appearance, if not completely changed it. She wondered if he was an escort or an actor. Nobody was born that good-looking, so a good deal of his mental prowess had to go into maintaining his looks.
“I see how you’d get frustrated with all this”, Phillippe mused. Reihan raised her eyebrows.
“You do?”
“Sure. Every time I got us into trouble, there was this moment when Alex looked like he was ready to throw me off the rock and watch me drown in the cloud sea. Because, as he never failed to tell me, none of the shit I put us through had to turn out quite as bad as it did.”
“I take it he never did? Throw you into the cloud sea, that is.”
Phillippe shook his head with a laugh.
“No. That’s where the brotherly privilege comes in. We make mistakes, and we deal with the consequences together. Although I suppose I took advantage of that privilege far more than he ever did.”
He smiled. Reihan did not think this would be a good time to mention that Phillippe would never speak with his brother again.
“So, are you telling me to cut you people some slack?”, she asked instead. Phillippe winked.
“What if I am? Would that work?”
Reihan genuinely thought about it, something that seemed to amuse Phillippe. They held each other’s gaze until she finally shrugged, feeling both awkward and intrigued.
“Sure. Let’s say it worked.”
“Great!”, Phillippe replied, yet another smile blooming, “Then I shall look forward to a more pleasant conversation next time.”
“Next time?”
“You said I could visit as often as I like. So, you will find me a very constant presence in your life, seaver.”
Reihan sighed.
“Reihan”, she said.
“Reihan?”
“My name. It’s Reihan. We’re not all called seaver, you know?”
Phillippe blinked a few times.
“I guess that makes sense. It had never occurred to me to ask any of you for your name. How rude.”
“Indeed.”
“So, who names you? They grow you in tubes, don’t they?”
Reihan scoffed.
“Great tube mother names us, of course. Glory be to her grace and wisdom.”
“Really?”
“No. There’s a book of names, and one of our instructors chooses one at random.”
“Ah. And Reihan was one of those?”
“What’s wrong with Reihan?”
“I don’t know, it’s just so –”
“It’s so – what?”
Phillippe shook his head, the smile a ghost amidst his slowly returning despair.
“Nothing. Until next time, Reihan.”
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