Noah’s estimate turned out to be roughly accurate. It was several more hours before they were anywhere near Aqua Terra. The closer they got, the more impressive the city became. He was also able to figure out why the word Aqua had made it into the massive structure’s name.

  Rivers of water poured through the many tiered layers of the megalopolis, writhing and flowing through its entirety like ever-moving snakes. They were dotted with dozens of lifts and small boats that doubtlessly ferried people and goods throughout the city.

  Noah didn’t quite have the chance to confirm. What he’d initially taken to be mages flying around turned out to be a hell of a lot more.

  It wasn’t people that the air was dotted with. It was enormous suits of armor, ranging from just over the size of a man to well over forty feet tall. They bore massive halberds and hammers and an assortment of other equally huge, unwieldy weapons. Every single surface of both the armor and the weapons were covered with so many glowing runes and imbuements that they were practically miniature suns.

  Noah hadn’t had to think all that hard about why the huge swarm of terrifying, heavily armored guards was buzzing around the sky of Aqua Terra. He got the feeling they didn’t really like it when people flew over the city unannounced.

  The huge lines of people stretching out around the dozens upon dozens of entrances leading into Aqua Terra like the tentacles of some eldritch octopus made it pretty easy to guess where he was meant to go.

  He pulled the mask that Eliana had made him over his face before directing the flying sword down to land a few hundred feet from the end of the line.

  They weren’t the only ones joining the queue. All around them, other mages arrived in just about every manner imaginable. Some flew under their own magic, while others sported wings or used an assortment of imbued devices.

  Noah found his eyes lingering on a man with what could only be described as angel wings. They were huge, easily three times the span of his body, and covered with pristine, fluffy white feathers. Lee looked equally as interested in him.

  “He’s part chicken,” Lee whispered.

  “No, he isn’t,” Noah whispered back, picking his flying sword up and sheathing it. The man did look rather chicken adjacent. He hadn’t seen anyone quite so… biologically modified in Arbalest before. But the angel-winged man wasn’t the only one that seemed a few steps more than human.

  Just about every third person had some manner of modification. Some had glistening scales, while others walked on hooves and sported the curled tails of a swine. There was just about every manner of, well, everything.

  Noah pried his eyes back to the city as he took Lee by the shoulder and guided her toward the line. The temptation to just stand there staring was strong, but they were looking a little bit too much like tourists.

  “Can you smell anyone?” Noah whispered as they approached the winding line.

  “I can smell a lot of someones,” Lee replied. Her brow furrowed slightly. “But I think you mean someone we care about.”

  “Yes,” Noah said. “That is an astute guess.”

  Lee sniffed the air. Then her brow furrowed. She sniffed the air again, stronger this time, almost like she was doing her best impression of a hungry anteater. The creases in her features grew deeper still. “I… huh. This is weird.”

  “What is?”

  “I smell lots of people outside the city,” Lee said. She slowed slightly. “But I can’t smell past the walls of Aqua Terra at all. It’s like a giant wall of stale bread or something. It’s absorbing everything.”

  “Seriously?” Noah asked. He squinted up at the city. Now that they were near its base, he could only make out a tiny portion of the massive structure. The rest of it vanished up through the clouds up above. “You think they’ve got some kind of imbuements to stop you from smelling things? That seems a bit targeted, doesn’t it?”

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  “I dunno,” Lee replied. There was unease in her voice. She increased her pace to make up the few steps she’d lost. “But I don’t like it. I want to be able to smell things.”

  “Maybe it’s just something that blocks stuff outside the city from entering it,” Noah guessed. “But stay close. I don’t like the idea of getting separated if there’s even a chance that you won’t be able to sniff me out.”

  And then the time for conversation was over. The two of them were upon the back of the line. People piled in behind them, making any attempts at a private conversation completely pointless.

  The line fortunately moved quite quickly. As a matter of fact, it never slowed. It just continued in steady march toward the city. That was a very, very good thing. Even the slightest of delays with a crowd this large probably would have meant waiting multiple days just to enter Aqua Terra.

  But a steady march was still nowhere near fast.

  Noah craned his neck to look up toward the distant walls of the first tier of Aqua Terra. Then he looked back down at the backs of the mages in front of him. He suppressed a sigh.

  This was going to take a while.

  ***

  It took 5 hours to get up to the gates of the city, and approximately one second to stride right through them.

  The pair of thirty-foot armored guards at either side of the entrance Noah and Lee had chosen didn’t even glance in their direction. People just strode right on in as if they were walking into their grandparents’ house, so the two of them did the same.

  A faint ripple of chilly energy rolled across Noah’s skin the moment he stepped over the threshold between the outside world and Aqua Terra. His skin prickled and he could have sworn that, for the briefest of instants, he could taste the ocean on his tongue.

  Then it was gone, and he was inside the city.

  Before them spanned an enormous square. It was so big that Noah’s brain struggled to process it for a few moments. The square was clearly just an inlet point for one of the many gates leading into Aqua Terra.

  But that alone was so big that it felt like someone had stolen it right out of some heavenly kingdom. No fewer than fifty fountains dotted the massive expanse. All of them were elaborately decorated with marble busts and structures of mages in dramatic poses. No two fountains were the same.

  Hundreds of shops and restaurants ringed the edges of the square. The smells of food mingled with just about every other smell that a city could have — both the good and the bad. But the buildings ringing the square were far from the extent of the merchants in the area.

  People had set up carts all throughout the square in a makeshift market. There were people selling everything from food to weapons and everything in between.

  All around the square were nearly as many paths into the city as there were salesmen. No fewer than half of those paths were the rivers themselves. Boats floated down their lengths as their operators called down to the people waiting in designated spots along the banks. The boats never even stopped. People just jumped onto them and went on their merry way.

  There was so much happening all at once that Noah’s brain short-circuited for a moment. Fortunately, the press of the crowd at his back didn’t really give him any time to stand around and think. He and Lee were forced forward, moving until everyone who knew what they were doing had managed to escape the throngs of the crowd.

  That left them standing roughly in the center of the enormous square, surrounded by tens of thousands of mages, and buried somewhere within a gargantuan city.

  Noah and Lee stood silently for nearly five minutes as they simply tried to process everything happening around them.

  “So,” Noah said as he finally found his voice again. He peeled his eyes away from the incredible chaos that was Aqua Terra and turned to look at Lee. “Can you smell anything? Any of the others here already?”

  “No,” Lee said. She swallowed. “I smell everything, but I can’t smell anything at the same time. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like there’s something messing with my nose.”

  “Everything and nothing?” Noah asked. “So it’s not the stale bread anymore?”

  Lee shook her head. “No. It’s different. It’s like there’s so much here that all the scents have somehow canceled each other out. But that’s not possible. I know Aqua Terra is huge, but this is different. There’s some kind of magic in the air that’s actively interfering with my senses. Try your domain.”

  Noah blinked. Then he reached for his soul, reshaping it and letting a tiny amount of his domain trickle free. All that met his magical senses was a buzzing static. It was far from comfortable. Noah grimaced and pulled his domain back in.

  “Okay. Yeah, I see what you’re saying. There are definitely some kind of imbuements in Aqua Terra meant to keep people from prodding around too much.”

  “You think that stops people from fighting? If you don’t know how strong somebody is, maybe it means you’re less likely to pick a fight,” Lee guessed.

  “Huh. Yeah, that might be it,” Noah said. He blew out a slow breath, still trying and failing take in the enormous city rising all around them. It didn’t feel like mankind had any right to create something of this scale. Even Arbitage looked pathetic and puny in comparison. “Right. Let’s go look for an inn and get situated, shall we? There’s still some time until the tournament… and I want to take a look around to see what this place has to offer.”

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