15-11. Paris
The warship looked like a crab.
Or at least, that was where first contact sent Elijah’s thoughts. Its fuselage was roughly oblong, with more than a dozen appendages folded against the shiny white surface. A pair of larger arms extended from the front, flanking the translucent cockpit. Behind that glass, Elijah could see a handful of alarmed men and women in matching blue uniforms.
A cannon unfolded from the roof, then fired.
Elijah didn’t even flinch, as much because he knew he had nothing to fear from the weapon as because it was clearly meant as a warning shot. The roar of the cannon echoed through the atmosphere as a ball of roiling ethera skated a few dozen feet to Elijah’s right. It exploded a moment later, and loud enough that it could be heard from miles away.
The strategy was obvious.
They thought Elijah was a powerful beast, and to protect their city, they wanted to scare him away. He decided to play along, and he used Dimensional Leap. He slid through the void, emerging a fraction of a second later more than fifty miles away. Looking back, he saw no evidence of the warship.
So, he landed in the nearby forest and took on the Shape of the Scourge. Once he was clad in Guise of the Stalker, Elijah tore across the rolling, wooded hills in the direction of Paris.
It wasn’t long before the city once again came into view. And this time, it wasn’t marred by a crab-like warship looming before him. However, as he drew closer, he saw a telltale shimmer in the air that told him why he hadn’t detected it sooner. Somehow, they’d managed to create ships that mimicked a stealth ability.
Doubtless, that would come in quite handy.
But if Elijah could see through it, even from a distance, then it must not have been high-level. He had recognized the cannon, though. Seattle had clearly iterated on their design, but their fingerprints were obvious.
When he was certain that he wouldn’t be seen, Elijah resumed his human form and began the three-mile trek to the highway connecting the Spires to the city. As he did, he studied the skyline, and once again, he was surprised to find that it was entirely changed from what he’d seen from its pre-World Tree form.
There were still a few indicators that marked it as the iconic French city, though. The most prominent of those was the continued existence of the Eiffel Tower, which towered over its surroundings. However, Elijah noticed other details – like the overall architectural style or the radial symmetry he’d seen from above – but he also couldn’t ignore that most of it looked new.
The other major difference was that the Seine had split into fifteen other rivers, each one separated by a less than a mile. Together, they formed a series of waterways that hadn’t existed before the world’s transformation. A braided river, Elijah remembered from the coastal geomorphology class he’d taken in college.
As he merged with pedestrian traffic, which was a little lighter than expected, he noticed a couple of other traits. First was that there were quite a few dwarves heading into the city, though they were slightly shorter and stockier on average than the ones Elijah knew. Their shoulders were so wide that they looked ill-proportioned.
Their skin was also grey, which should have been Elijah’s first clue that they were a different brand of dwarves.
The second thing he noticed was that very few of the travelers were on foot. Most piloted various vehicles, many of which sported a multitude of legs instead of wheels.
And finally, Elijah saw that the braided river had forced Paris to adjust its layout into something that resembled a French Venice, with canals cutting between the rivers and multiple bridges spanning each waterway. The years since the world’s transformation had clearly treated Paris well, because each bridge was a masterpiece of engineering.
What surprised Elijah the most was that the city didn’t feature a wall.
Were they unafraid of the local wildlife? Or was there another factor at play? He didn’t know. Whatever the case, there were no guards barring entry into the city, so he did so without causing a fuss.
For a little while, he wandered the city, taking in the sights along the way. As he’d already been told, Paris was the home of quite a few Entertainers, many of whom chose to perform at intersections and street corners. It gave the place a carnival-like atmosphere where he didn’t really know what to expect. Rounding one corner might put him face-to-face with the best singer he’d ever heard, while turning down another street might treat him to the sight of dozens of playhouses.
Most of the people carried themselves with a certain attitude that Elijah couldn’t quite place. It was something like the undeserved smugness of an actor combined with the superiority of an artist, but not quite as off-putting as either.
Or maybe that was just evidence of Elijah’s biases.
After all, he’d dated a few drama students during college, and none of those relationships had turned out well. Probably because the only person more self-centered than a theater kid was Elijah himself – or at least that was the gist of the arguments that generally ended those relationships.
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Either way, Elijah wasn’t terribly comfortable, so he didn’t waste as much time as he normally would have in a new city. Instead, he took a mostly straight path to the local Agora chapter, which he entered to find Sara deep in conversation with a woman he took to be the local proprietor.
“Elijah, tell this woman to listen to me,” Sara demanded. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Uh…no?”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Fine. But if this place starts losing money, don’t come crying to me. I told you how to fix it,” she told the woman.
“This is the third most profitable Agora branch in the world,” the manager stated. “I think we will be fine without a child’s advice.”
“I am not a –”
“Sara.”
“What?”
“Just leave it alone. You can only help people that want to be helped.”
“But –”
“You heard me,” Elijah said. Then, to the manager, he asked, “Where can I find Rakhan Singh? He’s supposed to live here.”
“The Sikh Quarter,” the woman said. “Northeast section of the city. You can’t miss it.”
Elijah nodded, then asked Sara if she wanted to come with him. She definitely did, and she treated the manager to a glare on her way out. Once they were in the street, she said, “That woman doesn’t seem to understand that her entire model is built on shifting sand. In a few years, this entire branch will collapse.”
“Why?”
That was the question Sara had been waiting on, and she responded with an at-length argument against the Agora branch’s insistence on continuing to cater to adventurers and the like. They were important, but the city’s identity was built around the arts. Sara posited that they should be making overtures toward those communities, while the manager’s argument was that those people didn’t have any actual money to spend.
“But that’s going to change, once this little world begins to understand the value of a good Entertainer,” Sara went on, gesturing wildly as she spoke. “Some of the richest people in the empire are Entertainers by archetype.”
“Reminds me of the world before it changed,” Elijah said before going on to describe how actors and singers had once been incredibly well-regarded and compensated enough to live like royalty. “But I guess when monsters are knocking on your door, you tend to forget about that kind of thing.”
“I suppose, but there’s still no excuse for shortsightedness,” Sara maintained. “That’s how you end up with a failing business.”
“Take it to Atticus, then.”
She looked at him like he’d gone insane. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I’m going to create businesses to fill the void,” Sara said. “In time, I will have this city in a stranglehold. When that happens, Atticus will have to come to me.”
“You talk about it like it’s a war.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked. “I may be an Administrator, but I learned economics from my mother.”
“Point taken,” Elijah said. After all, Kirlissa had revealed to him that she’d once strangled an entire solar system’s economy. Doubtless, she’d told that same story to her daughter, who’d taken it less as a warning and more as an ideal to emulate.
That continued conversation took them across countless bridges and through a host of neighborhoods with a wide variety of cultures until they ended up in the northeastern part of the city. It was then that Elijah found something wholly unexpected.
“This is incredible,” he said, looking closer at the surrounding architecture. It looked like it had been built by a mad scientist with an obsession with turning gears. The structures themselves were fairly standard boxes, but the decorations reminded Elijah of the inside of a watch.
And the residents were even more interesting.
The grey-skinned dwarves were everywhere, and most of them sported heavily tinted glasses or goggles.
“Dunadwarves,” Sara said. “I didn’t know you had them here.”
“Neither did I,” Elijah remarked.
Upon closer inspection, there weren’t quite as many as he first thought, but there were enough to suggest that they’d sent a sizable contingent to Earth.
As Elijah and Sara made their way through the area, she explained that dunadwarves were typically subterranean. “I don’t know why they’d choose to live on the surface here, though.”
Elijah had some ideas, and they mostly centered on the illythiri, who tended toward the territorial side of foreign relations. According to Sara, the dunadwarves also had a reputation for being good with machinery, which led Elijah to the belief that they had integrated well with Paris. The evidence was the warship he’d encountered upon arrival and the many-legged vehicles he’d seen on his way into the city.
Soon enough, they passed through that area and into what felt like a different world. Everywhere Elijah looked, there were men wearing blue turbans he recognized as Sikh dastaars. Some of the women wore similar headwear, though most wore brocaded scarves or other coverings.
Most of the people were ethnically Sikh, but there were quite a few other ethnicities there as well. Elijah even saw a few elves and a couple of dunadwarves in similar attire.
That part of the city also featured a temple made of white stone and characterized by onion-shaped domes, arched colonnades, and an open courtyard. Elijah noted a broad reflecting pool out front.
“You smell that?” Elijah asked.
“I smell a lot of things,” Sara said.
“Food. C’mon.”
He dragged her deeper into the quarter, following his nose until he found a large community kitchen. Inside was an intimidatingly huge crowd of people. Some were Sikh. Others were dunadwarves. But many belonged to other races or ethnicities. One thing tied that latter group together, though – they all seemed a bit down on their luck.
To his surprise, everyone sat together on the floor, massive platters of food covering the low tables before them.
Elijah saw a familiar face helping to serve what he assumed to be refugees.
“Rakhan!” Elijah shouted, crossing the space.
“Elijah Hart,” the big Sikh hunter responded with a slight bow of his head. “It has been years.”
“So it has. Need some help?” he asked.
“Always.”
After that, Elijah got to work. He even roped Sara into helping serve the refugees – a task with which she was not familiar. After all, she’d spent her entire life draped in privilege, and on a world where even the poorest person would be rich by Earth’s standards. So, she was ill-prepared for the work.
Thankfully, she was also an empathetic person and a quick study, so it didn’t take long before she caught on to what was expected of her.
For Elijah, it was much easier.
By the time the meal had finished and the crowd had dissipated, night had fallen. So it was that he found himself sitting next to Rakhan and finally eating their own supper.
“You seem happy,” Rakhan said.
Elijah shrugged. “I don’t really get to just focus on helping people that often. It feels nice.”
“So it does,” the hunter agreed. “But I assume you didn’t come here to work in the langar. Why are you here?”
“I need your help finding something that needs to die.”