Not a single thing attacked them on the way to Moridunum.
Elias wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. It had been years since he’d traveled anywhere without something tripping the perimeter wards around his camps. He’d been looking forward to taking his frustration out on something other than the flasks in his travel kit. Mostly because the stuff in them was cheaper than sand in a desert.
Then again, Edwin had given him a choice. And he’d chosen to take Mika instead of letting him do it, because she was right. He didn’t trust himself to look out for the people who’d gone after Ben for her gold eyes.
But he would protect Mika with his life. He owed Rebecca far more than that, but it was hard to pay back the dead.
The bridge over the Hudson was wider than it was when he and Elias crossed it on their way off the raised city. Newly painted, too. When they left it’d been red, but now it was the aging copper green of the wrecked statue whose torch-bearing hand still jutted from the water in the bay.
“Guess they decided not to dredge it up.”
Mika’s gaze followed the direction he pointed. “Lady Liberty? Wouldn’t that be kind of like digging up a grave?”
Elias laughed through his nose. “Not the first time it’d’ve been done.”
She made a face at him and picked up her pace towards the crossing, an upscaled recreation of the George Washington Bridge. Its predecessor was still a few miles upriver, split in two by the neck of a leviathan towards the start of the war. The people that used to live in the area called it a “kaiju” for the longest time, but a decade into the fight, most of the coastal cities along the Atlantic were abandoned in favor of areas that didn’t flood quite so easily, and everyone was using the name their controller did.
That was why Moridunon loomed over the wreckage of New York atop hundred-foot-tall concrete-and-steel stilts the size of entire city blocks. Each pillar was twice the size as the largest leviathan ever sighted, and the things could only get themselves so far out of the water to wreak havoc. Everyone picked themselves up off the ground and rebuilt on the giant steel plates that were vaguely shaped like their old boroughs.
The descendants of New Yorkers were cantankerous and stubborn, and that was before the world found out magic was real. What was surprising was that, for the most part, the ruling class in Bismark let them be.
He used to like Moridunon. At one point he thought he could make it his home.
But Edwin was too nosy, and they both shared the unfortunate trait of being unable to let things go.
“You need to buy me a bagel.”
Elias shook his head and forced himself to pay attention to where he was putting his feet. “They’re overrated.”
Mika kept herself several paces ahead as they hiked up the pockmarked concrete trail towards the bridge. “Then what’s good? We don’t have to be at the academy for another two days.”
He blinked. They’d made better time than expected. Which meant he was going to be spending more time in the city than he wanted.
“You should probably find somewhere to practice. Mither isn’t like that outfit they run in Bismark. The Headmaster’s a bastard, but his standards are really high.”
“He let you in.”
He stopped mid-stride, nose itching. “Smell that?”
Mika paused and turned her nose up to sniff at the breeze. “Burning… tires?”
He cinched the backpack tight against his chest and waist, then pointed towards the fortified gate that kept people from swarming across the bridge into Moridunum. “Arm up and run.”
With a nervous grin, Mika unsheathed the silver blade from her back and turned for the gate, breaking into a dead sprint that left him in the dust in short order.