"We're not exactly underground. We're in a nexus."
"So we're not really underground?"
Elyssa touched her chin in a thoughtful manner before answering. "Think of this place as being mostly on Earth but partly in another plane."
My eyebrows climbed my forehead. "You just lost me."
"I don't know how it works." She shrugged. "Someone told me this place shares space with another plane of reality which is why you have the sky even if technically we're on Earth. If you walk far enough, you'll hit an invisible wall which keeps you from going any further."
I peered at the sky, looking for any hint of an alien landscape. "You can see more of the other place it shares space with?"
"No, just gray mist."
I nodded and looked for the edges anyway. "Sounds like we're in a bubble."
"That's as good an explanation as any I've heard." She motioned at our surroundings. "It's not like anyone else understands how this place works."
"Wait, so how did it get here? Who made it?"
Elyssa shrugged. "It was here already, just like the Obsidian Arch. A few buildings already existed—those are located in the historical district—but the rest was just empty space and people built up over time. There are others like the Grotto scattered across the planet, but only a few are this large."
"Isn't that kind of spooky? What if bad people or things made them?"
She pressed a lock of hair behind her ear. "Believe me, the Templars and Arcane Council studied these places and concluded whoever made them had an understanding of magic we've long forgotten."
"Like Stonehenge?"
She smiled. "No, that place really is just a collection of rocks."
"That's kind of a disappointment."
We walked down Golden Way and I followed Elyssa through small twisting alleys and along smaller streets lined with what looked like houses, restaurants, and other stores. Though the place wasn't exactly bustling with life, I saw all sorts of supers. A group of vampires were having their teeth whitened at a shop claiming to have the best teeth-cleaning spells in the Overworld. Several young sorcerers emerged from a shop, flourishing velvety new robes, the girls wearing yellow, purple, or pink, and the boys mostly in black. A pack of what Elyssa told me were lycans sat in front of a restaurant, gnawing on huge haunches of meat, their rowdy conversation echoing up and down the street.
Everything about this part of the Grotto had an old world appeal, from the cobblestones, to the carved wooden placards above the quaint shops, to the live music from people playing what looked like lutes, pan flutes, bulbous guitars things, and even a crazy-looking nut job prancing around with bongo drums and an oboe strapped to his chest.
"This place is like Disney World without all the snot-nosed little kids," I said. "I think I like it."
Elyssa grinned. "It's pretty quiet here today but it gets crazy around the full and new moon."
We turned down a street absolutely packed with booths and stores. Every nook and cranny seemed to be filled with merchants of all sorts, yelling and shouting about their wares. One woman was selling exotic purple snakes. A man with a turban sold flutes he claimed would charm any animal. There was even a joke shop. I couldn't help myself and swung inside, staring at the wild array of items.
I found a box of spider marbles, guaranteed to cover anything with illusionary creepy-crawlers when one was broken, and grabbed a few. "How much are these?" I asked the thin-faced proprietor behind the counter.
"Barter or tinsel?" he said.
I had no idea what he meant. "Barter for what?" I asked.
"Anything which might be of use. I always need more ingredients for my products."
"I don't have anything like that on me," I said. "What's tinsel?" All I could think of was the silvery stuff people put on Christmas trees.
"It's Overworld currency," Elyssa said giving the shopkeeper an apologetic smile. "He's kind of new to all this."
"Do you take dollars?" I asked, showing him a twenty and feeling kind of stupid for assuming an international marketplace like this would take normal money.
"Of course!" he said with a big smile. "I just need to figure out the exchange rate." He pulled out a tablet computer—I wondered if any sorcerer worth his salt didn't have one—and pulled up a website named "Moogle" which showed him a tinsel was trading for just under a buck.
I ended up buying a bag of the spider marbles for about twenty bucks and walking out of the shop a very happy man. I couldn't wait to test them out at school.
"You realize we might have to run for our lives in a little while?" Elyssa said, her eyes bright with amusement.
I shrugged. "I gotta live just to try this stuff out."
She laughed. "Maybe we should send it to the exit so we can pick it up later."
"You can do that?"
She nodded and, taking my hand, guided me to what looked like a large black mailbox. She stapled the bag shut and then spoke to it. "Justin is a dork."
"Hey, I'm no dorkier than you are."
A giggle escaped her lips. "That's the passcode to unlock the bag when we leave." She dropped the bag into the mail bin and closed it.
"Someone picks it up and takes it to the exit?"
She nodded.
"I love this place," I said. "We're definitely coming back." And I absolutely had to go over that joke shop from top to bottom. It was a gold mine.
Her hand tightened on mine. "I'm glad. I'll have to show you a couple of my favorite restaurants."
"We can finally have a real first date," I said. "I saw a playhouse earlier. Maybe dinner and a play?"
"That would be so nice," she said, her eyes growing soft. "Oh, and next month is Unification Day."
"What's that?"
"Every year they celebrate the founding of the Overworld Conclave and the Obsidian Arch is free to use. People come from all over the world, they have fireworks, a big festival, everything. We should definitely go."
"Heck yeah!" My body tingled and for a moment, I forgot all about my dangerous mission, about my dad, my missing mom, and the sister I'd never met. Just when I thought the supernatural gig couldn't get any cooler, I found something else to surprise the heck out of me.
Elyssa's eyes glowed with amusement and in that moment, I loved her more than ever.
"You're getting a really far-off look, Justin," she said with a big smile.
"Yeah, just fantasizing."
She looked up and down the alley we'd just entered, then pressed me against a wall and smothered me with a passionate kiss. "Fantasizing about that?"
I nodded dumbly then pulled her in for another kiss, spinning us around and pressing her against the wall. Our breathing grew heavier and I felt the clawing of my inner demon as it sensed the building excitement.
"Blasted kids these days," muttered a young-looking guy as he walked past.
"That dude couldn't be more than a few years older than we are," I said, laughing.
"Never can tell with supers," Elyssa replied. She grabbed my hand and led me out of the mouth of the alley and into a huge square. Nightliss was already sitting there staring at an amazing sight.
At each corner and side of the square stood gargantuan marble statues facing the center where the likeness of two planets dwarfed everything else. The faces on the statues were intricately detailed. In the corner nearest us stood the statue of an old man wearing a flowing robe and clutching a staff in one hand. Inscribed upon its large square base was a golden crescent moon cradling a silver star beneath which were words written in a language I didn't understand.
The next statue was of a beautiful woman, her marble hair carved with such minute care it truly seemed to flow across her shoulders and down to her waist. Upon her head rested a jeweled crown and rings decorated each finger on her detailed hands. A drop of red liquid falling into a crimson ocean had been carved into the pedestal, standing out in sharp relief to the otherwise pale marble of the statue.
Each of the other statues was much the same—white marble with a colored symbol carved into the large square base. The next one I noticed sent a shiver of apprehension through my body. Across the way and to the left of a large arch stood the statue of a man with lips so full and hair so long it made him look more beautiful than handsome. Aside from a fig leaf to preserve his modesty, he was nude, his body lean and well-muscled. Two large horns curved up from his forehead, jutting above narrowed eyes that seemed to bore into my very soul. He held his arms out, fingers splayed and palms facing each other, as though he wanted to grip the massive planets in the center of the square. A carving of a blue snake curled around a skeletal tree adorned the pedestal.
"I assume these statues are representative of the supers in the Overworld," I said, repressing another violent shudder as I turned away from what had to be the statue of a spawn.
"This is Founders Square." She brushed the scene with a stroke of her hand. "And these are the founders."
We walked around the towering globe in the center. It looked like Earth sheathed in a delicate shell of crystal. Etched into the surface of the crystal were more symbols I didn't recognize, each one casting a bluish glow.
"Amazing," I said, staring up at it.
"The symbol of the Overworld," Elyssa said, arching her neck. "Ezzek Moore, the dude with the staff," she said pointing at the robed statue, "said the Overworld Conclave is the delicate harmony protecting the world from anarchy and chaos. Or something like that. I didn't pay as much attention in History as I should have."
As we walked around the Overworld statue, I realized it eclipsed another effigy standing on the opposite side of the huge arch from the devil-horned spawn. I felt my eyes bulge. An angel with furled wings looked heavenward, hands splayed palms-up in supplication. The face was every bit as beautiful as the spawn's, though I couldn't tell if the angel was male or female.