As they walked along walkways, ducking out of the way of people carrying loads – some employing their fields, a few others simply carrying the weight – and then people like them, out and about for the day, and people hurrying on their way to whatever work they were doing, Kaleb found himself swept up in Erid’s happiness. Kaleb did not consider himself a happy person. Or rather, he did not show his happiness to others in the way that Erid showed his obvious joy and delight at things. Kaleb believed that his own situation was due to years that he spent brooding on the possibility of escape, but he wondered if, after all, it wasn’t something of a defect in his character, as he stood beside Erid, who practically glowed with joy at the most trivial things. Kaleb knew his life hadn’t been as dramatic as Erid’s, and he wondered why it was that Erid laughed easily rather than him. He didn’t quite understand how the extremities of strength and violence and of lighthearted joy could exist so harmoniously in a single individual.

“Why are you so happy?” he asked, before he could think better of it. He bit his lip after the question was already out there. It sounded almost like an accusation when he’d said it.

“I’ve never been a tourist before!” said Erid easily. “It’s fun, you know, being an actual sightseer. I mean, I’ve already seen the sights here really, but not exactly as a tourist. I’ve got to show you some of the things here, seriously, it’ll blow your mind. But first! Food.”

And so they traipsed up a kilometer of steps and walkways up to the market street. Here it was a suspended walkway, more like a whole bridge made of thick steel and wires that was suspended between two pillars. Kaleb had seen it when He and Essan had arrived, but the bridge construction, which Essan had said was made in order to foster the connection between individual pillars and facilitate trade, was a more incredible construction than any he had seen yet, certainly something well beyond the humble engineering capabilities of Haethea, and it made him worry. The first time he’d set foot on it he had been so nervous about the unsupported seemingly floating nature of the suspension bridge that he’d practically tiptoed over it, shuffling his feet to the curious looks of other people, while Essan patiently waited for him at regular intervals until Kaleb became habituated to the thing. ‘After a mistship, you’re worried about a bridge?’ Essan had asked, shaking his head.

Kaleb couldn’t quite hide his nerves this time either, stepping gingerly onto the large flat surface of the bridge, while a bustling trade of stalls and individuals on rugs went on all about him. It was, unhelpfully, also possibly the loudest and most chaotic place he’d ever been. At least in Arbistrad the people were all moving in definite, certain directions. Here there were no such ordering principles. As far as he could tell there was absolutely no sense to any of it. People were exchanging coins for things, some large, some small, and dashing from stall to stall like scuttling lizards on the surface of the pillars. He fingered the beads around his neck. He still could not remove the image from his mind of all of this – all the trinkets, all the foods, all the people – suddenly overwhelming the cables that held the surface aloft and sending them all plummeting down into the mists. It didn’t help that he had to avoid bumping into people while his arm was still in its sling and he had to carefully navigate the roiling crowds.

“Come on!” Erid was already quite a few paces away, and Kaleb swallowed his nerves and plunged ahead. They made their way to a small stall with an old lady putting some dough into a sizzling oil. Erid bought two of the golden sticks that emerged, and the lady dipped both in a white powdery crystal. He was too nervous to taste them, but the overpowering sweetness of the powder caused Kaleb to salivate endlessly. It didn’t allay any of his fears, but instead gave him another confusing experience of dissonance.

Erid then took him… back to the mist shipyard. Kaeb frowned at this, though he was happy to be back on the more stable surface of the walkways. He followed along, wondering what Erid was heading towards. They moved through a series of dingy and less well travelled parts of the structure, when Erid abruptly stopped and pointed off to the right. Kaleb followed his gaze, and was taken aback by the strange shapes that emerged from the mist before him. There were figures, structures, forms and shapes all made of the same pale substrate as his home-town, the same ancient, simple use of the mist-dust transformed into an amalgam for the purpose of building. Yet here, it was in the form of bodies and buildings – in the form of a sculptural feature. He looked on in wonder, moving over to the railing and the gap that separated the walkway from the forms. The figures were stained from the flow of storm-water and the mists, and there was wear showing on all the faces of the figures depicted, but even so… Kaleb had never seen anything so incredibly detailed and refined as this in all his life. The figures were the same size as real people, it was as if someone had frozen life in clay. He saw, in the gaps and concave faces the remains of bright pigments. This incredible thing, this was once even more vibrant and colourful! Yet here it was, built around and hidden, in the back alleys of the shipyards and half-covered by sheeting. As it was, he couldn't even see the full length of it. He looked at Erid, who wasn’t looking at the wall, but rather looking at him, and at the expression his face with equal parts bemusement and satisfaction.

“How could they just leave this like this?”

“Times have moved on”

“But it’s incredible”

“Really it’s lucky to still be standing. In a way, it is necessary that it is hidden and out of sight. How much do you know about Veillard after all?”

“Um… nothing”

“This frieze depicts the founding of Veillard, nearly three centuries ago. It was one of the first outposts, you know. But old Veillard took up arms against Raeth, a major player of a city in the region – even now – became rebellious to the regime, and was defeated. This monument was hidden when the invaders arrived. But you know, it’s like Veillard’s secret heart. There are people here who still harbour hatred for Raeth even now… They plot and they scheme and they hope for a return to power of the Veillish…”

“And will it ever happen?”

“Probably not. Raeth is much more powerful now than it was then, and it has changed hands anyway. It’s not the same city it was… Now, AG runs one quarter of it, and the other two major companies in this sector run another quarter. The old council only holds out in the last quarter, and they lose power yearly.”

“Oh”

“But you know, it’s proof at least that there is still something… some resistance. Some pride. I mean, come and look.”

Erid walked over to a large cover that had been drawn over a section of scaffolding that hid a part of the frieze from view. Within it, illuminated by the crack of light from outside, Kaleb could see that the sculptures were being repaired, and the colours added back to the clothing and faces of the people and the buildings that surrounded them.

“You see, it’s hidden, but it’s still there… Veillard’s old beating heart”

They left the shipyard, and walked up among the hologram-like projections that shops sent out into the mists around them to advertise their services. It was a delirious cacophony of light, a second transparent skin on the world, and Kaleb’s eyes followed each animated movement, and found that by the time they had reached a quieter area, he was quite exhausted by all the moving pictures and words. Veillard was, as he had first noted when he arrived, much busier than Arbistrad.

Kaleb and Erid moved along walkways out of the main settlement, and Kaleb looked around at the comparatively blank space they were entering with interest. He wondered what sights there were to see in such a place. As they walked along long paths growing ever quieter and more deserted, the mist grew thicker and brighter. This tendency continued, until Kaleb could barely see Erid in front of him, and then they were suddenly at a T-junction in the walkways. He nearly bumped into Erid, and then steadied himself. There must be some extremely thick mist to occlude his vision like this.

“Here it is.” Erid looked behind him and smiled, “the thing I really wanted to show you.”

Kaleb looked around questioningly “I can’t see anything though”

“Give it a moment.” Erid reached out and grabbed his left elbow, and then pulled him closer to the edge of the intersection. As he did so, Kaleb understood what was so peculiar about the space. It was the light here, it was as if someone had strung up a hundred thousand compressed mist globes, or as if there was a single compressed mist globe large enough to copy that. It was overwhelmingly bright, and the mist that separated them from the glow was really the only thing that made it anything less than unbearable. Kaleb looked down and saw his skin illuminated in incredible fine detail, like nothing he had ever seen before in the murky light of the pillars. He looked up, to see what was casting this light, but all he could see was the indistinct flow of the mists.

“What is it?”

“Want to find out?”

“Huh!?”

Then Kaleb felt the sudden spark of field generation and Erid picked him up, as if he weighed nothing, and threw him out into the empty light. Kaleb screamed, and began to fall, then Erid appeared next to him laughing. Kaleb realised firstly that he was not falling. Then he was overtaken by a desire to punch Erid, so he did, awkwardly and with his left hand. Which only caused Erid to laugh harder, and Kaleb to feel a twinge of discomfort in his right arm at the sudden impact. Kaleb was surprised none-the-less to find himself afloat in thin air. Or, he supposed, thick air. Because the mist around them had grown so dense he could barely see Erid but a few paces away from him. The light of the mists was all around them and was spinning them both, and, he assumed, holding them up against the parallel field – though by what mechanism he couldn’t tell. He tried extending his field sensitivity, but got nothing back that made sense though there was, for the first time in his life, the absence of the sense of the parallel field.

“What is this place?” Kaleb asked.

“‘A miracle of the mists’ they call it – though it is, as far as I can see, a purely physical phenomena. There’s a school of philosophy that contemplates the light here, and they believe that the mists end here, that their souls and the souls of their ancestors are carried down into the shining world on currents and eddies of the wind. I’m actually not sure of all the specifics.” Erid paused for a moment, spinning idly in the strange absence of the parallel field. Or… not the entire absence, Kaleb realised, as they were slowly descending through the near-viscous mists. “It does become deadly in a storm.” continued Erid “The wind here turns the mist so quickly that the vortex we’re in becomes like a shining beam of light. I’ve seen it once, from afar. It lit up the world from ten pillars away. I’ve never seen anything like it. But that’s not what’s so good about this place.” Erid smiled, and then Kaleb felt the charge of field generation – a tiny, insignificant charge, and then Erid floated upward. It was as if he were using the barest of field generation and moving through space. Kaleb felt realisation pass through him like a wave. Natural field generation allowed for only the barest of strength – one could lift, at most, however much one could lift with only muscular strength. This meant that typically, flight was nearly impossible for those without spikes.

Kaleb charged a field himself, a tiny bubble, and, to his great surprise, felt himself shoot upwards at the pulsion of his field. The parallel field was weak, and he could move freely. He yelled with delight, uncaring that the mist and his mask dulled the sound to nearly nothing. He spun in midair with another field pulsion, and then experimentally moved in all three dimensions. This was a freedom reserved for those with spikes. The freedom of movement that power granted. He detected Erid’s presence from a distance away and moved off towards him. Erid smiled as he approached.

“You’re getting better at sensing people’s fields, aren’t you?”

“It’s really very useful”

“Don’t rely on it overly much yet… once you get to the level that you can sense everything around you, be it physical matter or field generation… then you’ll really be able to see the world and use it to your advantage.”

“Can you do that?”

Erid only smirked, then glanced downward.

“We’re slowly falling out of this space, so be ready for touchdown.” he said, as he reached out and grasped Kaleb’s left arm again.

And then, just like that, another walkway slipped into view through the bright white glow of the mist, and they landed as gently as anything on its metal surface. They bounced along for a few steps and then they were out of the slowly spinning whirlpool of mist. Kaleb looked around and back at it. It was hard to tell that there was anything except an unusually bright and thick part of the mist in the space. There was nothing that indicated the miracle inside it. Erid was smiling again, and Kaleb thought he saw within it, illuminated by the glow of the strange phenomena he’d just been in, the outline of the reason for Erid’s happiness.

Kaleb was allowed to go out unsupervised now that Arbistrad was so far away – the influence of Arleigne wouldn’t extend here, though Essan had cautioned him to be careful. Thus Kaleb was walking around the city alone a week after his and Erid’s sightseeing trip, using his field sense to try and gauge more and more about people and what arrays they had, when he encountered something strange.

It was a set of spikes that were completely unlike anything he had encountered before. They were also charged and pulsing, but not with excessive power or energy. Instead they seemed to be… in conversation with something. He extended his sense, to try and find out the other participant in this communication, but there was nothing in his range. It seemed odd that this individual should be able to sense whatever incoming message they were receiving, while Kaleb could not detect it at all. Kaleb focused his eyes on where the signals were coming from, following his field sense, but abruptly the communication stopped, and then the array disappeared and was replaced with another, much more regular array. Kaleb knew that such a thing was possible, of course, one could switch to different arrays or activate different parts of them. But it was unusual to do so in a manner that one’s capacitance in each array was shut off entirely. It indicated, Kaleb thought, that someone didn’t want anyone to know that they had such an array, or were actually only pretending, like he was, to have a typical capacitance array. As he thought this, his eyes searched for the person this array belonged to, but the crowd was too thick, and he had only noticed their activity thanks to its peculiarity, and his awareness of their location hadn’t been very precise.

Kaleb shrugged and resolved to ask Essan and Erid about it later. By the time he returned to the hotel, he’d forgotten about it completely.