Knights of the Grey City

Chapter 66 - WAITING

I pulled the heavy door to the Sanctuary open and stepped inside.

The golden light was as soft and soothing as ever, actually dissolving the tiniest bit of tension from my shoulders. Katie and Huang entered after me, the door shutting with a clunk behind them.

"Things still seem normal here," I commented. Nothing seemed safe anymore, but at least the Sanctuary was protected for the time being.

"Hey!" Footsteps echoed from the atrium, and Rayne appeared at the far end of the entry hall. "What happened?"

I couldn't find the words, so Huang took over "I'm afraid we lost the Glass District. Really lost it. She even destroyed the sentry tower."

Rayne grimaced. "What does that mean for us?"

"Nothing good," I grunted.

She gave me a sidelong look, then turned around. "Well... come into the Atrium. I think I've been making some progress today. You'll see."

I followed her and entered a space three times bigger than expected.

I blinked and took my next steps cautiously. The central island in the atrium was about the same size as before, healing platform included, but the cathedral walls no longer curved all the way around the island. It now only took up about three quarters. The rest of it had turned into a thick forest.

The gnarled trunks were packed so tightly together they may have as well been walls. In tiny breaks through the leaves, a soft golden light shone.

"What happened?" Huang asked.

"Well, I don't really know," Rayne admitted, twirling around to face us as we entered. "I was standing on the platform, doing the same thing I've been doing for days now, just looking. I was getting a bit frustrated, and I ended up doing something weird where I sort of... grabbed the story I was listening to and pulled it down." She made a hand motion as if plucking something from the sky. "Then bam, the atrium changed to look like the place in that story."

Huang stepped forward and, in a flash of light, transformed into the Gargoyle. He effortlessly leapt across the moat, which was now about ten feet wide, and landed on the grass in front of the trees. He poked them with a talon. "Huh. They sure feel real. Why didn't this happen before?"

"You ask that question like I've ever had a clue what's up with this place," Rayne said dryly, hand on her hip. "Best I can figure is that something changed. Maybe the fall of the Glass District triggered something."

I shook my head. "We can talk about this later. Rayne, before the tower was destroyed, Leviathan tried to upload himself to the Sanctuary. Can you go up there and see if you can sense him?"

"Maybe this is his doing, then," she said, turning towards the platform. "You should come with me. Since you're connected and all, maybe only you can actually talk with him."

We hurried to the top of the platform. The golden sky buzzed with energy far above us and Rayne turned her face towards it, closing her eyes.

"Well? Anything?" I demanded after a few seconds.

She opened her eyes to glare at me. "I don't know yet, Camilo. You need to help me out here. Try and sense what's going on up there, inside of that energy."

I tried to relax and push my spatial sense up toward the golden sky. It was powerful, certainly, but not in a way I could easily describe. It was kind of like electricity, but it also reminded me of the kind of buzz you feel in the air when a lot of people are emotional about the same thing: concerts, rallies, worship services, that kind of thing.