Chapter 186: The Entry

Chapter 186: The Entry

The silence inside the carriage compartment turned suffocating as both of them moved inside.

Mo Fei sat perfectly rigid, his top hat pressed firmly against the leather headrest. Directly across from him sat Aiziq Grieger, the linen blindfold over his eyes remained steady while his covered eyes watched the cabman.

Outside the glass window, the mundane streets of Ciradyl were rapidly dissolving. The dim light of the gas lamps stretched out into long, weeping needles of sickly green fire before vanishing into featureless, charcoal-grey shadows.

Up on the driver’s seat, the clatter of the horse’s hooves had thoroughly changed. The sharp clip-clop against cobblestones had turned into a hollow pounding against invisible, shifting earth. The carriage navigated through the city, guided by a creature that belonged to the dark that he still hadn’t realized yet.

’One shilling for each, then it’ll cost two shillings.’ Mo Fei thought, his expression completely flat as he watched a fountain of muddy water drift past the carriage window. He counted the money in his mind; in the current economy of Ciradyl, even four pounds were good for a casual life to fulfill expenses... Although it couldn’t give a luxurious life, he had a better advantage being a Midnight Wings because alongside the monthly salary — paid on nearly 20th day of a month — he also would get a few pounds from different investigations and anomalies.

He adjusted his cuffs, focusing his spirituality inward to suppress the dull, malicious heat throbbing within his crimson stitches. The closer they drew to the City of Light, the more his Flesh Authority contamination reacted, the phantom stitches were doing their job well in suffering.

Aiziq suddenly tilted his head, his deep, resonant voice cutting through the rattling of the carriage frames. "Well, Sherlock. You don’t seem quite old, have you completed your university studies?"

Mo Fei blinked once and said, "No, I was a student who was studying to be a physician."

"What a coincidence." Aiziq replied calmly and continued. "Do you find history interesting too?"

"A bit, in my university, we had to strictly learn history too."

The Angel leaned back and spoke in his casual tone. "We can learn many things from history. I became a historian to understand the past, while I was a physician before that."

"What can we even learn from history?"

"That we do not learn from history. Besides that, sometimes to understand yourself, you need to understand others first."

"In this era, even history matters. I suppose I can learn more of it from a professor like you." Mo Fei replied quietly, maintaining his guarded gentleman persona. "My professors used to say that history is a clock that someone forgot to wind. We look at the hands moving, but we are just waiting for it to run out of time."

"A reasonable deduction." Aiziq murmured, his melancholic smile widening slightly. "History repeats itself, Sherlock. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Maybe it’s not the way we may anticipate, but it’s in a way that clearly shows us how one can affect textbooks."

With a sudden jolt, the carriage ground to a halt. The mist outside the window parted, revealing a landscape of absolute desolation. Great, crumbling pillars of white marble jutted out from fields of ash-grey soil, their surfaces carved with worn, unreadable glyphs that predated the divine wars. Above them, a broken vault of stone blocked out the sky, suspended by ancient spatial anchors.

They had arrived at the outer perimeter of the City of Light.

The carriage door clicked open. Mo Fei stepped down onto the ash-covered ground, his boots sinking slightly into the dense soil. Aiziq followed him out, his long linen robe rustling softly in the dead air.

Up on the bench, the driver sat frozen. The Victorian hat was tilted forward, but the flesh on his face had completely withered away during the transit through the veil. A bare, yellowed skull stared down at the grey earth that only Aiziq could see. The jawbone trembled with a terrifying, clicking sound as the residual aura of the Angel of Death pinned his spiritual structure to the wood.

Aiziq walked toward the front of the carriage, his blindfolded face turned upward toward the terrified spirit. "Mr. Sherlock." Aiziq called out softly, his voice carrying the calm, clinical cadence of a university professor finishing a lecture. "Kindly take a few steps back. I must properly settle the fare with our industrious friend and pay for the ride."

"Professor Aiziq, it’d be a bit selfish of me, if I called you here, so it should be my responsibility."

"That’s a basic courtesy for an adult to pay for young ones; you may prepare first and wait."

Mo Fei’s spiritual intuition gave a warning throb. He simply gave Aiziq a small bow and moved. Turning on his heel, he walked precisely ten paces forward to reach the main entrance of the city, placing his back against a broken pillar inscribed with ancient protective runes.

Aiziq reached into the folds of his charcoal-grey robe, pretending to pull out a silver coin.

Clink.

A silver coin clinked against the ground as he bent down to get it, but while doing so, he tapped the wooden wheel of the carriage with his index finger.

A wave of absolute stillness erupted from his fingernail. The skeletal screamed violently, but the next second his trembling jawbone instantly locked into place. The phantom horse, the wooden boards of the carriage, and the iron-shod wheels began to rapidly turn into fine, glistening gold dust, crumbling into the ash-grey soil in a silent transition.

The spirit was reaped cleanly, stripped of its earthly contamination, and returned directly to the underworld cycle without triggering a single ripple in the surrounding space.

Aiziq pulled his silver coin and put it back into his pocket. He turned back to Mo Fei, his silver pocket watch clicking softly in his palm.

The spirit had been pulled back into the underworld... the greed of trying to take two spirits instead of one with its carriage had become the very reason for its fall.

"The path into the interior is open, Mr. Sherlock. Let us discover who is whispering the name of Andronicus inside your head." The Angel spoke, the golden points of light beneath his cloth burning brighter.

At the very next moment Aiziq took a step inside the city, the shadows casting from the pillars violently trembled. The darkness lurking around the City pulled their steps back in fear as a sudden quietness fell upon the streets.