They appeared in a whole new world.
A wide open landscape stretched before them with trees scattered across grassy fields, and a river running through the expanse. In the distance, mountains faded into the horizon with their peaks barely visible through a light haze.
But it was the sky that took their breath away.
Huge planets and stars hung close above, so large they dominated the view and looked near enough to touch.
One massive planet with rings of light encircling it sat just above the mountain range, while another smaller celestial body glowed to the left.
Stars and clouds were scattered throughout the sky, creating this strange blend of deep space and ordinary daylight that shouldn’t have been possible but sohow was.
Laela and Arianna stood frozen, staring upward with their mouths slightly open.
"Is this another one of those dinsions?" Arianna asked, still dazed as her eyes moved from one impossible sight to another.
Aiden nodded.
Laela finally moved her gaze from the sky and looked around at the landscape itself. "It’s beautiful," she said softly. "So vastly different from that weird dinsion we were in before."
Earlier that day, just before the wedding ceremony began, Aiden had dispatched several of his ti variants into different dinsions to search for Lysandra and Cassian.
One of those variants had arrived in this dinsion much earlier and scanned through it using Dragon’s Sight, but found no trace of either target.
Ti variants operated more like independent versions of himself rather than extensions, and they did not share a hive mind with the original Aiden.
However, because Aiden wanted to remain inford of their findings at all tis, he had instructed each variant to create an avatar once they entered any dinsion.
The avatars created by the ti variants shared a hive mind with their respective variant, but because they were still avatars, they also shared a connection with the original Aiden.
Additionally, these avatars did not need to worry about distance limitations anymore since they remained in proximity to a ti variant of Aiden.
This interconnection between his authorities worked perfectly in his favor.
That was how the original Aiden had learned about this place.
Aiden smiled. "This isn’t all I wanted to show you."
He took their hands, and in the next instant they vanished.
—
They reappeared on a hill overlooking an entirely different sight.
Below them stretched a massive city built inside enormous stone arches. The architecture itself defied logic
The arches were so largely imnse they looked like tunnels shaped from stone, with buildings, towers, and small villages constructed along the sides of the rock itself.
Trees sprouted from impossible ledges hundreds of feet above the ground.
Farther below, a wide body of water reflected the light of a sky that looked different from the one they had seen earlier. No planets hovered above this horizon, just regular clouds.
Small boats with colorful sails drifted across its surface, and the shores were dotted with white sand beaches.
But what caught their attention most were the people moving through the streets below.
Laela squinted slightly. "Are those...?"
"Beastfolk, I’d like to call them" Aiden answered.
They were humanoid animals.
A man with the head of a lion walked past and stopped to speak with a woman whose features were that a fox.
Further down the street, children with cat-like ears and tails chased each other between market stalls.
A rchant with the face of an owl called out to passersby, and he spoke in a language that sounded like a mixture of bird calls and human speech.
There were beastkin in their world, but they lived on the continents across the seas. Those ones appeared far more human, possessing only minor animal traits like ears or tails.
These ones here were fully humanoid animals with fur-covered bodies.
Laela was too stunned to speak.
Arianna shook her head slowly. "This makes no sense," she said. "This is the kind of thing you only see in dreams or hear about in children’s stories."
Aiden laughed softly. "It’s real," he said while wrapping an arm around each of their shoulders. "What you’re looking at is the only life on this planet as a whole."
He paused and looked out over the city again.
"And this is the only city here as well ."
A certain laugh echoed inside Aiden’s mind at that mont.
It was Keyles.
[This was one of Thyron’s many failed trials to create a world of humans,] Keyles said with amusent in his voice.
[After hating her first attempts at creating proper civilizations, she abandoned this dinsion and created another one to try again.]
The dragon paused before continuing.
[She kept doing that over and over until she eventually succeeded with making actual humans. This place was probably her third or fourth attempt if I rember correctly]
Aiden smiled. "I see," he replied in his thoughts.
He turned back toward Laela and Arianna, who were still staring down at the city with expressions of wonder written across their faces.
"What we’re going to do for the next day we’re here," Aiden said, "is explore this place together."
Both won turned toward him with wide smiles spreading across their faces before nodding eagerly.
Together they began walking down the hillside toward the city below.
——
Back in their world, within Ravens Grave’s guild building, a hawk ssenger suddenly appeared at the window of the girls’ shared room.
The room belonged to Aeris, Elena, Innis, and occasionally Laela and Arianna when they weren’t sleeping in Aiden’s chambers with him.
The hawk let out a sharp cry that echoed through the room and jolted everyone awake imdiately.
Elena sat up abruptly with her blonde hair falling ssily over her face as she blinked in confusion, trying to orient herself.
Innis groaned loudly and pulled her pillow over her head in frustration. "What in the hells..." she muttered.
Aeris opened her eyes imdiately and turned toward the window where the hawk perched on the wooden sill.
Her expression shifted instantly into a frown as recognition set in.
The hawk was larger than most ssenger birds with sleek black feathers. Gold bands were wrapped around both its legs, and its eyes glowed with this yellow light that marked it as a creature blessed by divine magic.
It was unmistakably from Yul’thera.
Aeris sighed heavily and pushed herself out of bed before walking over to the window.
"I’m sorry," she muttered to the others as she reached for the small leather pouch attached to the hawk’s leg.
Innis waved one hand dismissively without removing the pillow from over her face, before rolling over and trying to go back to sleep.
Aeris carefully untied the letter from the pouch and held it up briefly before noticing that it bore Yul’thera’s official seal pressed into red wax on its surface.
She sighed again without opening it.
Instead she walked over to a small wooden box sitting on a nearby shelf, opened it quietly, and revealed that inside were multiple letters stacked on top of one another, most of them still unopened and bearing the sa seal.
She dropped the new letter inside with all the others and closed the box gently before turning back toward her bed.
The hawk, having completed its delivery, took flight and went away from the window.
Elena lifted her head slightly from where she lay and asked, with this genuine concern in her voice, "Another one from your ho?"
Aeris nodded slowly with sadness clearly visible on her face but said nothing more.
Elena sat up briefly and reached out to place one of her hands lightly on Aeris’s shoulders in a gesture of support.
She didn’t say anything else, and after a mont Elena released her grip and lay back down again.
Aeris stood there for another long mont staring blankly into the darkness of the room, with her hands clenched.
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