11. Skyscraper Academy

Here in the fast-moving and rich city of Knight's Ascent, horses were more commonplace than stoneshells, or so Christie thought. Unlike most other hubs of civilization out there, the proper urban planning of the capital made it so there were special paths for carts and carriages in the city that avoided any possible collisions with civilians. That had the byproduct of making driving far more rugged and less agile, but they weren't in much of a haste now that they had made it to the city, so Adrien calmly guided François to the floating island that was the Skyscraper Academy.

There weren't many cities Christie had gone to, so she couldn't help but be fascinated by every little detail that the capital offered her. The raised crosswalks and sidewalks were veritably fascinating through the lens of planning and civil order, but the notion of a whole pavemented city became far more conceivable when one looked at all the buildings that made up the streets.

Rock and stone, all of them.

It wasn't that she hadn't seen houses of stone before, her mansion was mostly stone – and agate, for that fact – but it was the scale that surprised her. All the villages and cities around the Valasela state were made out of timber for the most part. Not only was wood cheap, but it was also plentiful. Plants tended to grow healthier once the ground had been mined dry out of agates, after all. And whilst stone was equally plentiful, it couldn't be said it was cheap. Moving stones was expensive even with convoys of stoneshells, and most masons out there weren't lapiloquists because… well, lapiloquia wasn't innate to people like lithorica was. And the 'cheapest' way to move stones was through that elusive discipline of Agatecraft.

So there was only one answer about how the rather young city of Knight's Ascent was constructed out of stone.

They just had a lot of lapiloquists.

Simple as that.

It made sense and all, the Shining Knight was known to be one of the best lapiloquists out there beyond the best lithorist, so with a cult following like his own, it would have been easy to gather enough lapiloquists to just… rise a city from the very depths of the earth.

Now, Christie didn't know how that would be even possible, but with the scarce knowledge of lapiloquia she had, it seemed plausible. Either way, she was on her way to the place that would teach her that exact same discipline.

No matter how loaded her thoughts were, Christie still kept her head out of the window and deluged herself in the metropolitan beauty of Knight's Ascent. There were just so many people on the streets!

Unlike most cities she had seen, there didn't seem to be any stalls on the streets. She doubted they didn't exist here, only that they should be gathered in a marketplace, but she was aware of the fact that in the capital 'stores' trumped over stalls. When a settlement was as massive as this one and most houses had several stories to them, it made far more sense to organize commerce in that way.

As they reached a far more open avenue, Christie saw something on the horizon, but her current window had quite a limited line of sight, so the redhead girl scuttled to the other side of the carriage to have a clearer view.

Aqueducts!

Oh, what a breathtaking sight! The aqueducts of Knight's Ascent were monolithic megastructures that stood far taller than any tower Christie had seen in her life. Even though they lingered on the horizon a handful of kilometers away, the girl could feel the copious amount of water that descended from the mountains right on her face.

She almost felt embarrassed about being amazed by every other thing that the capital showed her, but everything was just that amazing!

The massive amounts of people, the colorful canopies, the stone edifications, the straight and well-maintained roads…

Alas, her reign of bewilderment soon found itself crownless as the carriage approached the looming shadow on the outskirts of Knight's Ascent.

"Property must be pretty cheap underneath the academy. What a daunting shadow!" Christie exclaimed in a mixture of fear and awe.

It was a powerful shadow that the floating island projected onto the city, after all. The sheer obscurity was terrifying, but so was its colossal size astonishing.

"Sure enough," Adrien chuckled. "Though I would say it's most about the fear of having that mountain fall on top of you!"

Christie's blood froze. "…It can fall?"

"Oh, do not mind my words, Christie," the coachman said that, yet he chuckled again. "Just the ramblings of an old man!"

"Right…" That didn't comfort her in the slightest.

The bustle of the city died down as they approached the massive crater formed by the rupture of the academy from the earth, and completely ceased as they got close to the shadow. City planning hadn't completely failed its citizens here as the crater remained in the south, making it so most of the shadow wasn't actually projected onto anyone's home.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Surprisingly enough, the ground around the crater wasn't barren, but housed several buildings and, most importantly, a wall.

Since Knight's Ascent was built on an incline, it had been easy to peer into the crater, but now the wall completely blocked their sight of the inverted mountain that people with less poetry in their being would call a valley. It was quite the jarring view seeing a hole surrounded by a wall, but one had to take into consideration that it hadn't been a hole not that long ago.

The carriage stopped right before the gates of the walled crater. Instead of wood or metal bars, they were made out of solid stone.

"Reason of entry?" A tall and well-built man wearing a dark blue military uniform inquired.

"I bring a new student to the academy, good sir," Adrien announced calmly, and Christie just thought that she could never do that. That man's arms were as thick as her torso, and he was very intimidating! She hid herself in the carriage.

"Name?" The soldier shared the same calmness as he fidgeted the papers on a clipboard he carried.

"Valasela, Christina," Christie frowned as Adrie told her house name first, but the soldier didn't seem to mind.

"Huh?" The man in uniform mused.

"Something wrong, sir?" Adrien maintained his cool even through the very worrying verbal slip.

"Not at all," the soldier straightened his posture. "Just curious if we will see a new miner, Valasela is a known name here. You can pass now."

The moment the man stopped talking, the stone walls grunted and slowly opened. Lapiloquia, Christie realized as she failed to see any agates incrusted into the structure.

"I do not know about a miner, but I do not think our fair lady will disappoint you," Adrien told the soldier as he commanded François to march again.

Christie couldn't help but blush and hide herself even more aggressively after hearing those words. As the carriage passed next to the soldier, she hid behind the curtains so the soldier couldn't see her embarrassment.

"I would appreciate it if you did not say such things," the dressed girl whispered through the coachman's window.

"'Twas not a lie, Christie," Adrien chuckled as he always did, and now François seemed to join in the mock as he let out a soft grunt.

"What's happening now?" The carriage stopped a minute later, which made Christie take her head out of the carriage. "Wait, how are we even going to make it to the academy?"

"Now you ask about that?" The coachman frowned at her and sighed. "Wait a minute and you will see."

After that exchange, Adrien turned his face away and exchanged words with another soldier. Between the fact that they weren't talking precisely loudly and that she found herself rather far away from the conversation, Christie didn't manage to catch anything except the last part.

"Cleared!" The new soldier announced moments before the ground started shaking.

"Quakes and faults!" Christie cursed as the carriage shook with her inside.

"Language, girl!" Adrien lectured her, though it was a more amicable tone than Miss Diorite's strict one.

"Sorry…" She added softly with her hands clasped. "Wait, no!" Christie jumped out of her seat in denial, a gesture that proved to be quite moronic as she tumbled to the ground with all the shaking. "What is happening?" The girl said with ever-growing distress whilst on the carriage's floor.

"Oh, do not be that dramatic, even François is handling it well, and he has more excuses to hate it."

"I just want to know what is happening, Adrien!"

"You want to…?" The coachman looked at her through the driver's window. "Just take your head out and you will know it."

"I… okay…" She told, mostly to herself. With a fist pressed against her heart and with the other hand raising the long skirt of her dress, Christie stood up and looked out of the window.

She instantly regretted it.

The line of the horizon kept moving up and up, and her head turned dizzy. Before she realized, she was back on the ground.

"Oh depths, oh depths…" Christie muttered to herself between whimpers. "This was a bad idea, this was a bad idea."

"I did not know you were scared of heights," Adrien commented amusedly. Perhaps too amusedly for a servant.

"Neither did I!" The girl shouted with all her might, completely unable to keep her composure as she grabbed onto the carriage's bench and the curtains with her dear life.

"Oh, well. Now you do," he chuckled, and François seemed to join with one of his mocking grunts, but truth be told, Christie wasn't able to hear it over her own grunts. "Better to learn it now than at a worse time."

"H-how are we flying?" Christie asked, if just to not… think of the shifting environment.

"Agates," the coachman stated as a matter of fact.

"I know that, Adrien!" She felt her vocal cords about to rupture. "I w-want the how!"

"Uhhh…" He grunted deep in thought. "If I were to say something, it would be that the platform we are in has a vein engraved with the Control command, but I am not fully sure about that. Seems the easiest way to do it, though."

"I see, I see, then what about…" The shaking stopped.

For a long and tense moment, Christie thought that it was it. The platform had failed and they were falling to their deaths. Then, in the next second, she realized that the journey was actually over.

"François!" Christie shouted with all of her might, making all the previous screams seem like whispers. "Make it out of this accursed platform at once!"

Whether her order had been received or it was Adrien's doing, the carriage started moving again. And thankfully, it was in the normal rocking way and not those horrible shakings.

"Oh, my heart…" The girl murmured to herself as she clutched her body. "I am getting dizzy…"

The carriage continued to move for another solid minute before stopping again, yet this time Christie heard the clinking of Adrien's boots as he jumped out of the driver's seat and opened the door of the carriage.

"Here we are, my lady. Skyscraper Academy!" The coachman dramatically signaled the academy building with his open palm.

The castle-turned-academy was quite a gorgeous structure that overflowed with history and charm, yet as the door opened and she was caressed by a cold breeze, Christie ignored Adrien's hand to escort her outside and rushed out on her own, only to trip on the skirt of her dress and fall to the ground. The fall wasn't bad at all and, in a way, she was thankful for it.

Oh, ground, how much I love you! She nearly kissed the grass before something else kissed her lips.

Namely, vomit.