Ordinaries

Chapter 8

The feeling, or lack thereof, didn't last long. When the sensation left my body, I opened my eyes to see a black sky that felt eerily familiar. Then I felt the air on my skin, frigid and brisk. I immediately started to panic, but tried to rationalize and calm myself down. I'd never seen a body of water bigger than a pool in Ether. But my mind insisted on anxiety. It wasn't completely far-fetched, after all. I had no idea how big Ether's outer parts were. This could've easily been somewhere I'd never explored before.

Jade voiced my fears. "What in the hell was that? And what happened to the sky? It looks like—"

"No." Camila cut her off and shook her head absentmindedly. "There's no way we're back in Ether. It was basically occupied by the Necrose. And besides, we're two days' worth of travel away from Ether."

Noah shifted uneasily. "Then where are we?"

The boat jolted, and we all stood up and exited the vessel. A long expanse of sand stretched out in either direction, but the bank quickly turned into a sparse forest. I turned defensively towards the direction we'd come, expecting the Necrose soldiers to burst through at any moment. Now that I was standing still, I could see the vibrations that marked the presence of a force field. My scalp prickled uneasily; I felt like I was missing something. Was that feeling I'd experienced what it felt like to enter Ether?

"Wait a second," Eric said. "How did we even get through that thing? Last time we had to use that disc thing from the Necrose."

We all turned to Jade, since she'd been the one to get us through the force field in Ether. I could practically see the gears turning in her head as she tried to come up with a reasonable answer. "I don't know. Maybe you don't need to do anything special to come in from the outside. After all, the Necrose wanted to keep Ordinaries in with it; the only things they were expecting to come in were themselves."

"That makes sense," Camila said. "They probably don't want to bar themselves from entering. And who'd be stupid enough to go in voluntarily, right?" She shook her head and looked up at the sloping sand. "Let's get out of here. I don't like the idea of being so close to the force field, even if the Necrose probably aren't coming through."

We muttered our assent and started through the forest. After only few minutes, I started to hear noise, and lots of it. Pounding music, incessant chatter, like that in a high school cafeteria amplified a thousand times over.

The trees ended abruptly, and our group let out a collective gasp. My mind stopped in its tracks, and for the second time in forty-eight hours, I was tempted to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming.

A sprawling, vast city spread out past the tree line, lighting up the black sky and issuing a million different kinds of music. I couldn't tear my eyes away from it; I stared in dumbfounded horror, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Dark-colored buildings, winding streets overflowing with crowds of people, the scent of alcohol drifting on the air. Even the designs of the buildings—it all looked just like Ether. The atmosphere couldn't have matched it better. It was like going back in time.

Jade looked like she was having the same thoughts. She stared in disbelief. "This can't be real. They couldn't rebuild Ether in a matter of days. Could they?"

"Maybe they didn't," Noah said. "Maybe this isn't any place we know. I know it looks...more than similar to Ether, but maybe that's just because it's a city. How different can you make them?"

Camila plopped down in the sand. "So what now? It's not like we can go back where we came." She looked longingly at the buzzing city. "And we can probably get food down there."