We agreed and followed him down the remaining flights of stairs and into a blindingly bright courtyard. For a magically created environment, the City of Magic’s sun emitted massive amounts of light and heat. Sweat began to bead on my skin. I hated the summer. My workshop-pale flesh didn’t appreciate the exposure to outside environments. I’m an inside dweller at heart. Give me a dusty workshop and greasy gears and I’m a happy man.
“Strange that they have a different season than ours,” Justin said.
I had to agree. I would’ve thought it easier to simply copy the weather up above. That they didn’t, showed a higher level of magic than I had ever heard of before. I made a mental note to ask Buster about who created the weather here. Was it mechanically based, or purely magical? Had Torren done that or some other being we hadn’t heard of yet.
The city designers might be long dead, but they had left behind an amazing creation. I couldn’t think of a single person alive who could perform this feat. If I didn’t know we were underground, I would have sworn we were in the countryside. Green, green grass and brilliant flowers dotted the landscape. Rows of houses with garden beds between them revealed an abundance of fresh food my inner starving child longed to greedily grab. I wished we had access to this much greenery above Keys was mostly stone and iron. Little greenery not grown in a pot could exist on those unforgiving surfaces. My eyes were bewitched by the fat vine-ripe tomatoes and the juicy red strawberries. I had eaten a strawberry once. One perfect berry had fallen from a fruit cart a few years back. It was one of my rare perfect food moments.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Oss scanned the area for threats as he laid out the map on a stone bench.
“Yes.” Amazing worked as well as any other word I could come up with. “How can you not live here permanently?” I took another deep breath of clean air. Smoke didn’t spout out of coal-powered trains and blacken the sky. If there were fireplaces, they somehow didn’t emit lung-clogging pollution.
Paradise.
“I told you I don’t want to leave Thorne,” Oss hissed.
“We can discuss that later, love,” Thorne said, in quiet tones. “Buster said there was housing. It would be an easy commute for me, from one tower to another.”
“True.” Oss turned his focus to the map, rotating it left then right before flipping it completely around. “Here we are.”
I smothered my laugh at Oss’s behavior. A map reader he was not.
Justin remained silent. I could feel his gaze on me, but as he didn’t ask me about my plans, I didn’t have to share. I had no one to leave behind if I abandoned Keys even if my foolish heart said otherwise. This place appeared to be the perfect solution to my current troubles. I could avoid everyone’s pitying gaze as my lover had a baby with another, and work out of the Gear Master’s workshop.
“This is where we are.” Oss pointed to the middle of the map. “And that is where we need to go.” He jabbed a finger off to the side where a weird octagonal shape resided.
Thorne crouched down to get a better look. “It’s not that far to the workshop, at least it doesn’t look like it.”
“I’m not confident of the map’s scale.” I compared the street markings nearby to the ones on paper.
“They’re close enough we can figure things out from here,” Oss proclaimed. He took one more look before folding it back up, then stuffing it in his bag.
Before I could mention to leave it out for reference, Oss pulled Amalia out of his backpack and placed her on the grass. “We need to find the Gear Master’s workshop,” Oss announced.
Amalia’s little pink nose gave a definite twitch. The bunny hopped forward, a tentative motion to begin, then started moving faster.
“You think your rabbit is going to find the workshop?” Justin asked, his eyebrows rising.
“She’s very smart,” Oss proclaimed.
“Then why did we need a map at all?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“Well, there’s no guarantee she’ll find the place. If she gets lost, I thought we should have a backup.”
I wanted to argue over the wisdom in following a mechanical rabbit, but I didn’t. All four of us dutifully trailed behind the hopping bunny, like the idiots we were.
Things went about as well as I expected. A loud roar shattered the air, four steps into our walk. I jumped at the frightening sound.
“Please tell me that was Amalia,” Justin muttered.
At mention of the bunny, Oss rushed to snatch her up and stuff her in his satchel. “I’m not going to use her as bait again,” he growled.
My acerbic friend didn’t connect with many people. To have him so taken with Amalia made me proud of my creation. It also made me wary that he might choose to save the bunny over any of us.
A second roar sent shivers down my spine and my stomach into a nauseous swirl. Damn, I’d hoped to sneak in and out without rousing the beast. As usual, Lady Fate didn’t take my plans into consideration, or if so, only to wreck them. I have never been good with the ladies.
Before I could voice my concerns over Oss’s priorities, the dragon found us.
My first thought was amazement over its flawless design. I longed to sketch out its parts to determine if I could copy its clever structure. My second, more proper thought, washoly fuck, that’s a big dragon.My belief in Gear Master Torren’s sanity wobbled. Why would he want to make something that could breathe fire in an underground city? There was no excuse for that kind of negligence.
