The Tale of a Hybrid and a Siren (old version)

The Capital City

Marina seemed petrified when she looked up to the sky at a distant close-up. Just a few hours after Vaeludar flew north, Sora and her father decided to escort King Uragiru back to the Capital City. But it was a long way away, and it would be a long journey.

So, Sora decided to take Marina on flight on a pegasus. The take-off was too traumatizing for a sea creature, and Marina screamed loudly, from the top of her lungs.

On the other hand, Sora was a professional air flyer and the most skilled when in the air. While she was skilled in close range of the arms, she was more proficient in the air. And in the air, she felt the most alive and most thrilling of her life: flying in the air. As a little girl, she always thought of flying in the air and always imagined herself as a bird. For years, she thought of traveling through the air, and since he took the air back in her younger years. She watched him fly for as long as she could remember.

When she turned ten, she finally got the chance to learn to fly and she learned flight on a pegasus. For two years, she learned how to fly and bond with such a creature of purity. It was a trial for her to learn, and she felt the wind in her face and skin, like a bird trying its first flight leaving its nest.

Marina wasn't the same as Sora, and she had no taste for the air. Water was all she knew about, and little on land, which she learned more with Sora's guidance. But without proper guidance of flight, Marina wished she never left Siren's Cove; it was too late for her to think otherwise. She kept her eyes close, and her arms clutched to Sora.

Sora's pegasus flew spent a few hours flying from her home village western. They headed to the Capital City, which was spanning upon the view. And the size of it was far beyond the size of the village.

A nine-leveled, squared-wall temple-looking castle. It was long as a hundred miles wide. It consisted of nine walls, spiraling from a south entrance towards a high point where the real castle was. Each level went thinner on the next level. It was a wide, long pyramidal castle built over dozens of miles of landscape. On the top, there was a regular looking castle built atop the square, pyramidal castle: a castle over a castle. And it was the capital city of Shimabellia.

The higher levels oversaw many marketplaces, blacksmiths, and tradesmen on every section of each squared wall. On the lower levels, there was surprisingly farmland.

Basically, the capital city had the supplies needed to survive for years if it was ever invaded by an army. At the looks of the capital city, it would take more than a hundred thousand men just to get to the third level, which had tens of thousands of soldiers.

Three million or five million could easily live in the Capital City with supplies for five or seven years. The city is spread just deliberately, so there was a civilization to thrive if an invasion were to happen.

On the second highest level, platforms reached out for messages by wing were to drop and fall. About more than a hundred of flat platforms spread across the second level from the Capital City's top.

An army of pegasi riders flown, and everyone is mostly a messenger flying in many directions. Many departing or arriving were too much for Sora's single pegasus, and Sora's pegasus landed on a platform with fewer departing flyers and making it difficult to land.

Sora got off with ease while Marina, who kept her eyes closed all the way, was shoved from the pegasus. The horse itself liked only its rider it bonded with over the years, not some stranger riding on it.

Sora kept Marina from dropping on solid marble stone and aroused the siren to the capital city. She felt Marina's arms and legs tremoring with a sudden vulgar. "Not much of a flyer."