Knights of the Grey City

Chapter 73 - HUMANS

City lights competed with the golden glow, adding splashes of colour to the scene. The mist formed apartment buildings, streets, and alleyways, and where we stood, the grass and scattered trees of a city park. Someone was playing music on a stage to a mid-size crowd of cheering people.

This scene wasn't like the others we'd created here. It wasn't as solid. The golden energy was still visible, and when I twitched my tail and accidentally sent it through a telephone pole, the scene dissolved around the break and reformed itself.

It felt weird to be here in the Leviathan's form, even though the people weren't reacting to me. Deciding that Rayne had the right idea, I shrank into human form, putting my hands in my pockets. Katie joined me, but Huang remained as the Gargoyle. He gave us a nod, then spread his wings and flapped up into the mist, keeping an eye on the scene from above.

The Angel was up ahead, turning in a slow circle. She extended her blade and cut through the nearest building, but the bricks reformed. She could cause no damage.

Sound filled the scene. The blaring of the amps competed with the crowd, blending with laughter and shouts. Jewelry clacked on wrists and people sang along to the music.

"Where are we?" I asked Rayne.

"My first music festival," she replied, and the last parts of the scene clicked into place.

Now it was alive. The smells and sounds snapped into existence, and running underneath them, an indescribable sense of energy. It wasn't energy like the weird power of the Core—or anything to do with the Grey City at all. It was the energy of a crowd excited about the same thing, of inhibitions tossed aside, the low-level buzz of a beer or two. Woven into that was a feeling of discovery: a small, content realization of these are my people.

I was caught up in it for a second before remembering the danger we were in. I looked at Rayne. "How are you doing this?"

She smiled at me, an unusually radiant smile, showing she was also affected by the scene's energy. "I have memories, too. Might as well use them."

The three of us moved further into the scene. I instinctively tried to avoid pushing through anyone, though when a stray arm clipped my shoulder, it simply passed right through. The memory-people around us didn't react to our presence at all.

They didn't react to the presence of the Angel, either, who floated in the middle of a New York alleyway up ahead, ten feet tall and wreathed in armour and mist.

We passed by a small group off to the side, talking and laughing, one of them crying. The crying girl was Rayne: a teenager, her hair straightened, rubbing her face while she tried to say something but couldn't seem to find the right words. The other people in the group exclaimed in dismay, several of them reaching out to envelop young Rayne in a hug.

A sense of warmth filled the scene, pinging an ache in my own heart I hadn't realized I had until that moment. I don't know if I'd ever felt that I belonged anywhere as much as Rayne had felt she belonged with those people in that moment.

Up ahead, Yael flinched. She raised her blade and cut a wide circle around her, slicing through several memory-people. They didn't notice, the mist reforming them as soon as the cut had passed.

"Yael," Rayne called out.

The Angel's head swiveled towards us, her blade twitching.

"I know you failed," Rayne continued, "though I don't know exactly how. I just want to talk to you, one Knight to another. One person to another."

I had been preparing to drag Rayne away from a sword strike from the Angel, but Yael seemed to lose interest in us. She reached out one of her four arms and the copied sword in it dissolved into black mist. She tried to touch the brick wall next to her, watching her fingers sink into its surface, sending a ripple through the golden mist that formed it.