from behind the unit. It made a ‘murr’ and wound around his ankles. Hello, mister. I’m Nikola. That’s Tesla. Is it true that you can hear us?
Mathieu pondered the cat. Pushing out painfully with his mind, he felt slight warmth wrap around his consciousness, pulling him in. Hello? His voice echoed in his head oddly, reverberating into another space.
Hello. The feminine voice replied. So you can hear us. This is
progress.
Hush, Nikola. We don’t talk to humans.
Well I don’t talk to you. With a ‘humph’ Mathieu knocked the ball of light off his shoulder.
The purple ball changed halfway through the fall, landing beside the other catlike thing. It was a bit taller and slightly bulkier, a jet black in opposition to the other’s dark reddish color. Rude.
“Bite me.” A sharp pain shot up his leg from where the black cat bit him on the ankle. “Ow!” Growling, he picked the thing up by the scruff of its neck, staring into its eyes. “Don’t do that again.” He dropped the cat back to the floor.
Avian was watching him intently, one hand covering her mouth to contain her giggles. “You’re just so nice, Mathieu.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He said, mimicking her.
Grandpa wound past the pair of them and deeper into the shop, going into the back room, “You two coming?”
Following Avian, Mathieu peeked into the room, the cats hot on his heels. The room was cramped like the rest of the store and had a warm feeling of a home. An old wooden table sat in the center of the room, covered with old fashioned books and scraps of paper. Some of the books where thick and leather bound like the ones back at the orphanage, clearly holding many secrets.
Mathieu picked one up, flicking through it. A faint scent of candles filtered into his nose, the pages were crisp beneath his fingers.
Grandpa made tea while Avian cleared the table, humming as she worked. “So tell me, Avian, what brings you here? You never come without a request.” The wizen man said.
Mathieu somewhat tuned them out, looking around. The closer he looked the more he saw. The floor and the walls had symbols carved into them, twining their way around the room; the ceiling held small cages that sat perfectly still, but Mathieu could tell things lived in them; the counter was stained with dark spots he didn’t wish to examine too closely.
Grinning, Avian sat at the now cleared table. “You’re right. I want to know about the Western District of Korinth.”
“The Western District?” He paused as he poured the drinks, adding mint. “Why would you possibly want to know about that? And why would you assume I know?”
“Simple. You came from Korinth. And I want to know who runs the joint.” She said, elbows resting on the table.
He passed out the tea before sitting. “Hm…” Grandpa blew the steam off the top of his cup. “The Western District…when I was a child, my parents and I lived in the Eastern District as farmers. No one went to the neighboring area for at the time it was a lawless area. No one controlled or ran it.”
“But now?” Avian encouraged.
They sat in silence while he stared into his cup.
“Grandpa…”
He sighed and fixed her with a look. “You don’t go telling people what I’m about to tell you, okay?” She nodded. “Good. The people of Korinth are saying that they have a god on their side. If the rumors are true, they’d have put it in the Western District. Do you know what the Spire of the Dead is?”
“No.”
“Yes.” Mathieu sat petting Nikola, who was curled up in his lap. “The Stairway to the Clouds, the Sky Pillar, the Everlasting Tower. It’s said that a long time ago when Unith was still one with Korinth, the western sea boarder was a desolate area, non-cultivatable.” Nikola shifted in his lap. “But then a few years before the split, a great tower of ice started to form, climbing to the sky. It reaches above the clouds and is said to be nearly a full mile around. The area around it also changed. Mountains and ice spread out from it and the land down the rest of the coast became habitable.”
Avian’s mouth was slightly agape. “Wow, Mathieu. Where did you learn that? I doubt that even Professor knows that.”
He just shrugged, not wanting to talk about it.
Grandpa nodded. “Yes, yes. So if I were going to hide away a god and protect it, that would be where I’d put it: a