Chapter Three

Citrine City

Mount Eden- Seekers of retributions, walk on these ancient grounds. Claimants of historical knowledge, learn the tale from the top. Feel the snow seep on your boots, and realize the water you feel has been static for eons. Only disturbed by the walking trots of the weary traveler. They say it all started here, the world as we know it stemmed from these great peaks. Kneel, or don’t, and pray for that fateful star, and realize just how lucky you are.

Cass just slightly looks up and reads the sign in front of her. Analyzing the text she’s amazed at the prospect of standing on ancient ground, though by doing so she feels a light sense of guilt, as if she’s disturbing the peace. She walks forward down the trail, catching up with Thistle and Riona as she lags behind while reading the sign.

Cass walks beside Thistle and asks, “So, what is this place?”

Thistle glances at her before looking back at the path, “Mount Eden, it’s a pretty popular tourist spot. People like to come here and take pictures from the peak. Never been there myself, but I heard it’s a pretty sweet view.”

Cass gives an unsatisfied look, “Um, cool. But I meant, what’s the deal with this place, like, what’s its story?”

Thistle glances at her, “Oh, ha. You read the sign. What’s this place's story? Which one!? This place has tales brought down from generations, its historical relevance is undeniable, but its specific role isn’t entirely known. The evidence is there, shapes, drawings, unreadable text, and symbols at the peak that burn through the snow, but no one truly knows. The most popular idea is that creation started here. Creation of life that is. This would be patient zero of all carbon-based life.” He pauses for a moment before continuing, “But that’s just a theory.”

“Huh, ok,” she says with awe.

Cass longingly looks at the top of the mountain, empathizing with everything that came from it, though hating it at the same time. This is the closest thing she’s ever gotten to a true connection with nature, something she already feels naturally connected to in a strange, biological kind of sense. She wonders if anyone else might be in her boots, not knowing what they are and wishing for someone just to come along and tell them the whole story. She longs for a book or a pamphlet with the title Who You Are, that would explain it all. That person could be close or far, on a far-forgotten island, or maybe right in front of her. Wherever they are, Cass takes some solace in knowing that at least now, she has something to blame. Though she, even with her silly nature, knows malice and a want for revenge wouldn’t solve any of her problems. Punching the one who did it all, is just that, a punch, not a solution.

Later on down the snowy trail, they come across a group of tourists gawking in awe at the old writing in the caves. Gates line the edge of the trail as a protective measure, due to the slippery, snowy nature of it. Security stands in front of the caves, timing the people in it and keeping people, whose turn it isn’t, out. There’s also a sign in front of the cave exclaiming, FLASH OR FLUSH PHOTOGRAPHY IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. Extreme lighting changes and magic backups may compromise the integrity of the drawings inside, due to the lighting conditions they’ve been exposed to for all this time, only a very dim red light is provided in the cave for adequate visibility.

Thistle looks at Cass, a pleasant idea rushes to his brain, “Hey Cass.” Cass looks at him, “You seem interested, wanna take a short detour to check out the exhibit?”

Cass thinks about it for only a moment, “Sure! I could use a little break.”

Though not directly being spoken to, Riona chimes in, “I wouldn’t be opposed to a short five-minute recess, my legs could use the rest.”

They entered the line and waited for it to be their turn, luckily the line at the time wasn’t extremely long, though a very long line did advance behind them as they waited. When the guard gave the word the previous tourists left the cave and they entered. When entering the cave they were greeted by only a dim light illuminating the pitch-dark cave, a guard from the inside escorted them around, as they had no idea where they were going. Soon they found themselves in front of a drawing on the left wall depicting crudely drawn pictures of meadows and flowers, a lot of nature, colored in green.

“Most of these plants and vegetation no longer exist in most places, they’re considered an extinct, or at the very least, lost species of ancient life,” Thistle informs.

Riona thinks out loud, “Drawings of old plant life on this barren snowy mountain.” now directed at Thistle, “Perhaps that could imply this mountain wasn’t always this desolate?”

“Exactly!” Thistle said with a playful tone, “It’s likely that in its prime this place was lush with life, new life obviously. Oh how I would’ve loved to see it.” he said with an overwhelming grin on his face.

Cass looks at his smiling face, “You really love this stuff, huh?”

“Well yeah! This-” he puts up finger quotes, “‘stuff’ is like my everything!” Thistle exclaims.

Thistle turns to the other side of the room, and Riona and Cass follow him. On the right wall of the room lies more drawings depicting slightly less crude drawings of animals, seemingly unrecognizable. They seem to depict multiple creatures, a griffin is the obvious one in the middle, connected to two other drawings of a different yellow feline-like creature, and a white and dark brown winged creature.

Riona looks confused at the drawing, “Um, yeah. No clue.”

Cass points at the one in the middle, “Well that’s a Griffin, I recognize that one.” she looks up at Thistle, who is still analyzing the drawings, “What do you think?”

He gets slightly startled by her question due to his immense focus, “Huh, what?” he looks around before looking down at her, then back at the drawing. He analyzes the drawings being connected to the middle and uncomfortably squints at them, “Uh,” he holds for a while, “I um, I’m not sure. Let’s look at some of the other ones.”

There are multiple drawings on the same wall with a similar motif. They begin to walk over to the other drawings but before they get to them the guard beside them yells, “TIME!”

The guard escorts them out of the cave and lets a new group of excited young children into the cave, along with their mother.

Cass, annoyed, yells, “Hey, hey! We weren’t done!”

The guard answers, “Sorry, we have to move the line along.”

Thistle looks down at Cass and pats her head, “Hey, it’s ok. We learned a lot in our little time there.”

“I suppose,” Cass remarked.

They continue down the trail they were on, Cass seeming increasingly disappointed as they walk along. From where they are they can see a tall building made of stable stone, decoratively outlined in yellow. A ginormous yellow ball lies at the top of the building, it’s dim and seems to be in critical condition.

Thistle puts his hands on his forehead, shielding his eyes from the increasingly lowering sun, “Hey! Look at that. That’s Citrine City, we’re almost there.”

Riona watches the lowering sun as they walk, they exit the snowy path and re-enter a field cross. The sun goes from an orange to a dark carmine red the farther they go down the path. The sky changes as the sun does, going from a velvety blue with a darker purple hue on the horizon, to an entire light purple sky, soon to be a fairground purple in only an hour or so. They pass the occasional tree as they walk the path, the number of trees increasing as they continue until they’re eventually back in a forest. But they were only there for a moment as they exited as fast as they arrived. When exiting the forest they’re met with a river, a bridge connecting the two ends. A sign lies next to it, The Kaleidoscope south border ends here. Crossing the bridge and passing a few trees they see a beaten-up sign, dented in metal, the words on the sign are extremely faded but still slightly legible, it says Welcome to Citrine City - Home of the biggest imbued object market in all the state. Clearly, that notion hasn’t saved it from wreckage.

Riona looks at the wrecked sign and destroyed walkway with a disgusted face, “Um, you sure this is the place.”

Thistle sighs, “Yup, I figured this was a possibility. They used to have ads sent out all over the country, I’d get them all the time. When they stopped coming, I figured something might’ve happened.”

They walk into the city, and Cass looks up at the unstable scrapers in horror. She covers her mouth through the mask she’s already wearing and thinks to herself, “How could this have possibly happened?!”

“There might still be some sensors in some of these store displays.” Thistle optimistically thinks out loud.

Though not seeing a sensor he walks into a store, having the name Goods and Glory spelled on a half-broken sign, the Glory part of it almost hitting the ground. Cass and Riona follow him into the store. Thistle takes a few moments to look around.

Riona looks up at the increasingly darkening sky, “Um, we should probably try and multitask a bit, I’m gonna go check some other buildings.”

She walks out, and Cass follows her as Thistle walks to one of the doors in the store to find a journal lying on the floor in front of it, the name Dr. William J. Shining written on the front. Thistle take his staff and leans it on the front desk, he opens the journal and begins to read it.