Knights of the Grey City

Chapter 51 - SOUL

"This is such bullshit!" Katie exclaimed.

I sighed heavily. "All right, Huang, break out the notes."

He shot me a look, but pulled a notebook out of his school backpack. We were gathered in the Sanctuary, the golden light briefly fading as a massive shadow passed overhead. The round table hosted all four of us, the massive sword still stuck through the middle.

"It's a little hard to sit across the table from people when there's a massive sword in the way," Katie complained, jabbing the hilt.

"Can you remove it?" Rayne asked, leaning back in her chair.

Katie frowned, then secured both hands around the hilt and yanked. Neither the sword nor the table budged in the slightest.

"Is this a sword-in-the-stone situation?" Huang asked, reaching over Katie to give it a try.

"Butt out, I'm not done trying!" Katie snapped, shouldering Huang out of the way as she climbed on top of a chair, her hands still firmly planted on the hilt. She tried to wrench the blade out of the table again, but it seemed the sword was secured immovably to the table and the table immovably to the floor.

Katie sighed and dropped into her seat. Huang gave it a shot, trying to wiggle the blade (with a fairly low level of commitment) and failing as well.

"Anyone else want to try?" he asked.

"Maybe we could just get this meeting over with so we can go home?" Rayne asked from behind the sword. "It feels like it's already been a few hours. I have something I need to do in Toronto tonight."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, time usually doesn't pass in the real world while we're in here," I said. "At least, not much."

Huang placed his notebook on the table beside the sword, flipped to a page, and pulled out a pen. "Okay. What did we learn today?"

"Can't get there via current," I said, leaning on my hand.

Huang made a note. "And why not, exactly?"

"It's not active," I said. "None of the demonic currents are. There used to be a kind of one way connection so that demons could travel through them and I couldn't, but now there's nothing. Since we got ahold of No Man's Land, the demonic currents just don't flow at all. They're like threads that sit there and don't move."

"But they're still there?" Huang asked. "You can still sense the current when it's not moving?"

"Well... yeah," I said. "They're not really currents of water, like I've said before. More like streams of ideas. And all the demonic ones aren't streaming anymore, they're just floating there. I know that doesn't make much sense, but I can't think of another way to describe it."

"That will do," Huang said, finishing up what he was writing. "We know we can't use them to get into the walled district, anyway. Katie?"

"I've had a very boring evening," Katie sighed. "I can't break through the wall no matter what I do. I can't even make more than the smallest crack, and fire does nothing."

Huang nodded. "And the top?"

"I flew up for what felt like an hour," Katie said. "No end in sight. And when I turned to fly back down, I got to the bottom in only a few minutes. There really is no top."

"Mmh," Huang grunted. "Did you sense anything interesting?"

"Not really. I can sense that there are demons on the other side of the wall—almost felt like they were watching me try to climb it." Katie shook her head. "But I didn't actually see a single one, and I couldn't tell you how many there were or what they were doing."