The Second Carpenter

XXVI

XXVI_I_Flight_Without_Aerial_Building_Interruption

"This is . . ." stammered Suaroca, twitching and frowning, "This is nothing like I'd imagined it!"

Indeed, she was right. Not only about herself, but just about any human's first experience of riding a dragon. With the wind thrashing in your face and the cold of the height, it becomes almost impossible to even open your eyes, which makes enjoying the experience a bit difficult.

"I'm glad we didn't go the whole way like this . . ." Suaroca yelled aloud to be heard, "do we have to go the rest of the way on the dragon? Is there no way we can go back down?"

"I'm sorry, sister," Stan Riym responded with a louder but completely calm voice, "but the matriarch of The Savage Vault always liked my brother better than I. her clan is officially in friendly relations with Iglesueya, and therefore every other clan of The Savage Vault, but she still hasn't gotten over Veron's exile. If I appear there, someone might get angry."

"You have a dragon! Do you care if anyone gets angry?"

"Dragons aren't invincible, sister. And you have no idea what they have. True, they might watch themselves before a dragon; but it's not worth to risk the inconvenience."

"How are you people sitting so straight and comfortably? I would be blown off in an instant if I stopped grabbing onto Rasa'el!"

"Well, I've been riding dragons my entire life, sister."

"And I," smiled Rasa'el, "am not human. Remember?"

"You're my man!"

"Indeed."

"Don't worry, Sister; this one's fast. We'll get ther in no time."

"What's its name, by the way?"

"She doesn't have one. I just call her 'the green one'. No use gining them names if they can't talk."

"But people give all pets names!"

"I don't."

For a moment, Suaroca mustered up the courage to lean dextrally and, shielding her eyes from the wind with her arm, look down at the lands beneath them. The wild and dense forests of The Savage Vault looked completely unpolluted by humanity's craft. She could, however, se clusters of people, or at least what looked to be clusters of people, for one could not be sure from that height. Then, after a while, she saw edge of the forest. The border between The Savage Vault and The Desert of Skuls was so unbelievably distinct that it looked as if it had been drawn with a ruler. The forest just suddenly ended and the desert started.

"All . . . all right, we can get down now, right?"

"We'll get down once we get to the lunar forge."

"But we've passed the matriarch's lands! Why do we need still to be airborne?"

"Passing that distance in the heat of the desert, you'll miss what you have now, sister."

A while passed and as the Arx began to set, Suaroca, having never seen it nor heard a description of The Lunar Forge, knew that they had reached their destination. The structure was so distinct that it could not not be the destination.

It was a gigantic pyramid - over one hundred and forty meters tall - and was made of a stone. A stone, for it was not made of parts, but of a single great rock as though it were a stone cliff; but its geometry was so unique and symmetrical that it could not have been an aesthetically random work of nature; and although the whole structure looked alive, natural selection - in which the aesthetically random works of nature are selected and narrowed down to that which was considered beautiful - could not have had a direct influence on its existence. In the middle of each side of the quadrangular pyramid, there was a vertical hollow stripe where the stone had retracted and whence a pale crimson light flickered, which was what made the structure seem magically alive. In the middle of the structure, all four sides of the pyramid had retracted for fourteen meters, making a flat terrace around the top half, and making the top half smaller than it would have been without it. At the top of the pyramid was a great circular hole inside of which was shadowed and could not be seen. As they landed by the forge and dismounted The Green One, The Arx had almost completely set and they could visibly see the blue of the moon above their heads. An hour's worth of distance from standing directly above the center of the forge.