The GATE Academy [Please read description]

Chapter 30: The Fated Arrival... Kazekuya

The wolf-drawn carriage was an exhilarating experience. Imagine riding in a dogsled, only, now, in a large, slightly-less opened carriage drawn by massive, magical wolves at about 50 miles per hour. The cold wind brushed over our cheeks as we rode along, as its previous violent tendencies had been contained under the power of the storm god.

The wolves barked and howled between each other as they pulled us, 6 to a carriage, and I figured that we'd still have quite a journey. I couldn't imagine how long the trip would have taken if we went by foot (or worse, by me). The carriage had a bench around its circular interior in which we stored our bags under and I sat down on it. I had gotten into the same carriage as Faith, Keita, Riku, and Koneko, who sat down with me after I had.

"So... That guy was a god then?" Riku asked.

"Yeah,"  I replied, "Something like that."

"How was he?" Keita, surprisingly, asked.

"He was..." I wondered how to put it, if I told him how go-lucky he was, that might ruin Keita's view of him, "He was a good guy. Put up a great fight and then earned our respect afterwards, like a true warrior."

Keita nodded, "As expected. I am surprised you and even Mizu survived... Legends say that very few people cross paths with Susano and survive."

With Keita making it sound more and more like Susano was a mythical deity, I was starting to regret acting how I did. That guy had been around for millennia and I had acted a bit too impatiently. Susano was definitely a character I would never forget, and the way he carried himself made me reconsider how I carried my own self... How do others see me?

The cold, icy landscape around us began to even out until it was just eventually a forest setting with unsettling storm clouds above us.

"Yo Shizuo," Riku said, nudging me with an elbow, "I think that this is it!"

"What?" I said, shaking my head from a daze and looking out in the direction we were headed. Sure enough, between trees, was the unmistakeable kingdom of Kazekuya. There were no walls around the kingdom, however, at every 200-foot interval stood an about-200 foot tall silver metal pylon with a golden globe on top. The kingdom looked like a perfectly normal suburban city with a more urban appearance in the middle with high-rising corporate buildings. Well, normal besides the large silver castle standing in the middle of the city, looming over it with an eerie beauty.

The wolves stopped at the silver pylons and barked at it. Keita hopped out of the carriage and walked up to the nearest one, placing a hand on it.

"The dogs are smart, we would have been fried if they had continued," he said, stroking the panel down. There was a low rushing sound that signaled the shut down of the panel.

"If they didn't know we were here already, they do now," Keita said, walking ahead through the pylons and into the backstreets of a small, residential community.

The wolves leading my carriage looked back at us, as if waiting for us to leave as well. We did as seemingly expected and followed behind Keita. I looked back at the wolves and they simply sat down and began to groom themselves, a few of them looking up at us and yipping happily.

"Awh, are they going to wait for us? That's so cute!" Faith said, clapping lightly before taking and hugging my left arm.

I laughed lightly as I tugged my arm back from Faith, "It seems like it, Susano trained them well."

Keita was leading us through the residential in the middle of the street and it made me feel like we were some type of gang claiming a territory. The weather here was almost completely the same as it was back at home and was pleasant. A bright blue sky sat behind a small fleet of fluffy white clouds, the only thing missing was a sun, but from previous observations, it seemed evident that there was no single source of light in Hell and that day and night was dictated by a supernatural darkening and lightening of an area. I was surprised to not see anybody out and about, but it didn't occur to me until later that the people of Kazekuya would be at work like any other day.