Tales of PulchraGea, Vol. 1

Chapter 12

 It was a few days later that we were in the back of the PulchraGea National Library, in secret so as to prevent certain political opponents from catching wind. Katy Greyson, Doug Clintwood, Crystal Clear, Robin White, Bridge Parker, and myself huddled over the control table with a recently discovered book containing Alex Shepherd's notes on building the gates and how they worked. Luckily, Katy read even the most ancient dialect of Sirren-thal, which is good because that's what the book was written in, changing tribal dialect with nearly every sentence to throw the reader off. We did discover the correct order for the stones, though. At the top was the purple stone of the Narakh-kono, then then blue, the red, the yellow, the green, the white, all in a circle. In the center sat the large black one, the Master Keystone.
  We pressed every stone in turn, in order, and the Gate lashed out like a tree frog's tongue. Everyone tried to jump out of the way, but I was up front and had nowhere to go. As it sucked me in I felt someone grab my flailing arm. It didn't hinder my progress through the portal in the least, but I appreciated the sentiment. However, even though the portal didn't let me go, neither did my hanger-on. We were both sucked inexorably through the wormhole.
  I thought it was bad my first two times, but those were nothing. There was no telling up from down, like a spacial undertow. The vertigo almost made me puke, but I simply couldn't. It was both eternal and instantaneous, spitting us vehemently out the other side within what seemed like both seconds and eons. We finally came out on a hard white metallic surface, not unlike quantanium but almost rubbery. It had a clear give to it, but was also apparently strong.
  "Where the hell did they get risilium in these quantities?" Katherine Elizabeth Greyson marvelled from beside me. "It's, like, the rarest metal in the world!"
  I was kind of glad that it was her here, but I was mildly confused as to why her first instinct had been to grab for me rather than jump for cover. My next thought was to look around. We were on a narrow platform about the width of the gate's arch, shouldered by short waist-high panels. Below was nothing but sky. It was hard to breathe, so we must have been pretty high in the air. Honestly, I'm surprised we didn't drop dead from embolisms due to the immediate pressure shift. What we did do was turn toward the gate to see if it was still open. Nope.
  Crestfallen, we turned the other way. I began walking down the platform. It must've been a mile long, because it took a moment before buildings came into view. It looked vaguely eastern European, with a little Middle East thrown in for good measure. Moreover, it seemed this platform we were on was like the stem of a clover; there seemed to be three "leaves," one with agricultural fields, one with what could only have been houses, and one that might have been a market district or something similar. In the center of all these was the thing we'd been searching for all this time, the Palace of Kings. This platform we were on connected only to the Palace: we couldn't have avoided going there if we'd wanted to. Instead, Katy and I trekked the distance to the doors. Inside were guards who were even more surprised to see us than we were to see them, and shouted at us in an odd dialect of Sirren-thal that even Katy had trouble following. When we didn't follow their apparent orders, they drew swords on us and attacked. A poor move on their part.
  They were disarmed in the space of a breath. Apparently these guys didn't train regularly like most PulchraGeans. Katy and I knocked them out with their own scimitar-like blades, and held onto them since our own weapons were still back in Oasis. Something about their reactions didn't sit well with me; why attack at pretty much first sight? Why not try to get to the bottom of it, take us to whoever was in charge? Katy said he had said something about 'submit or die,' but his dialect had made it unclear. Not knowing what else to do we kept going deeper into the palace.
  The architecture was phenomenal, even for PulchraGea. It was familiar but unique all at once, ancient but surprisingly modern, and almost completely in the metal Katy had called 'risilium.'
  "It's a crazy metal that can remember whatever it's original shape was," she explained. "If it gets crumbled or deformed, it can automatically pop back into shape with no outside intervention. Not even our best scientists know why, and it's always been too rare to really experiment on."
  She brushed a door arch wistfully with her fingertips.  "You never find it made into anything really substantial, just dumb small stuff like jewelry."
  "You don't think it's rare because it's all here, do you?" I asked. She nodded.