Chapter 7: Chapter 7 – FLIGHT

My next entry into the Grey City happened as soon as I stopped expecting it.

It was after work, a few days after I’d been to Huang’s apartment. I’d stepped out in the late evening to grab a few things from the convenience store. One second I was thinking about whether we needed more hand soap or not, and the next, silence fell around me like a shroud.

I looked up. It was a little less icy than before, much like the real Toronto, which had managed to wiggle out of the shackles of the ice storm. Narrow streets, circular lamps, and a grey haze of colourless light looked back at me. Welcome back, Camilo.

I made my movements silent and crept towards the nearest wall, keeping low. I knew from skimming Huang’s journal that, before he’d been able to turn into a gargoyle, he’d spend every entry carefully making his way to the Sanctuary. Sometimes he’d make it, other times the City would spit him back out before he got there.

Some ten minutes later, a nagging worry started to rise—where was Huang? Did it take him a while to find me if he entered on the other side of the Grey City? Or for the first time, was I alone in here?

We hadn’t really prepared for that possibility. Instead of panic, I felt a dull acceptance. We were never going to be able to plan for every outcome. At this point I just had to focus on staying alive.

I came to a wide intersection that looked a little different from the roads I’d been walking down. There were a few wide shop windows to my left and to my right, the pavement occasionally gave way to rounded cobblestones.

Huang’s instructions on how to navigate the districts of the Grey City came back to me. That cobblestone looked familiar, like the ones paving the streets near the Sanctuary. But by following glass windows, I’d be able to get to Huang’s Glass District, where the Sentry Tower was.

 I hesitated. Sanctuary was safer, but if I holed up in there, I wouldn’t be able to make any progress. Huang and I needed to go to the Glass District to enact our plan—and if he were here, he might head there too. I bit my lip, then took a right, towards the empty windows and deeper into the Grey City.

It didn’t look much different at first, but I continued to take the streets that had the largest windows. After only a few minutes, I had entered a neighbourhood where the buildings seemed to be made entirely of windows. Soon, the pretence of windows disappeared altogether, the buildings formed completely of thick glass.

The road was also changing into black, bubbled glass. The dim lighting of the place had no visible source, reflecting and refracting through each surface. This area was utterly unusual, more so than the other parts of the City I’d been in so far. At least the Garden District, the Waterfront… they weren’t normal, but they looked like they could be a part of a real place. Walking through a city made of glass was surreal.

A few minutes later, a bright flash of light shot across the building next to me. It darted back, refracting on the path beneath my feet and then vanishing. I backed against the nearest wall and waited to see if it happened again. It did, though this time the source was clear—it was the Gargoyle, flying down a nearby street towards me. I stepped into the open and the huge dragon alighted down in front of me, the wind battering my face.

“So you made it here,” said the dragon, somehow speaking without sound. The voice was almost Huang’s, but there was a quality about it that made it just a bit different. Something about the… depth of it? I plucked at my ear and frowned at him.

“Yeah. So, uh. Where’s the tower?”

“It’s this way.” The shining creature started to trot down the street, pausing partway to peer back at me, arching its long neck. “Coming? You should probably stay close.”

“This is weird,” I muttered, hurrying to try and match its pace. The Gargoyle’s shoulder was just above head-height, but its neck made it loom upwards of twelve feet tall, and its wings took up a lot of space. Its feathers seemed very sharp. Despite its size, the dragon trotted with smooth, deliberate motions, walking on all fours despite its ability to use its front legs as arms. It was very much like walking next to an enormous, spiky, weirdly-shaped cat.

“I just figure it’s easier if I stay in this form,” Huang said conversationally.

“I guess if we run into any demons,” I said. As much as it was kind of freaking me out, it was also a relief to be traversing the streets with something this big at my side. From what I’d seen, the Gargoyle was not quite the size of some of the other monsters, but it was more than a match for them.

We made our way down the bubbled glass streets, the Gargoyle’s glow sending shards of light dancing around us. The streets were slowly widening, the glass boxes around us becoming more detailed. Now they formed flourishes at their edges and had icicles dangling from generous overhangs.

“There, see it?” Huang asked. I followed the Gargoyle’s gaze upward. Past the shifting fog, I could occasionally catch glimpses of something tall and glittering, reaching far above the other buildings.

“Kind of,” I said. “Is it… also made of glass? Or ice? That doesn’t seem structurally sound.”

“Oh, now you’re concerned about physics?” Huang asked. The gargoyle seemingly attempted to roll its eyes, but ended up rolling its entire head.

“I did not come here to be sassed by a giant bird,” I grumbled. The giant bird looked down at me, its softly glowing eyes revealing very little expression. “Look, let’s just get this over with.”

A few streets later, the fog started to dissipate and the sky opened up, revealing an enormous, silvery spike of a tower. My eyes were drawn to the wicked spikes that reached outward from the structure’s base and middle. Huang’s drawing had been accurate, but seeing it in real life was very different. Each glass quill was probably the length and width of a city street, flat on top and tapering to a point. The closer we got, the more imposing the tower became.

Finally, we were close enough so that one of the spikes stood above our heads like a ceiling. We’d reached the tower’s base, and something was missing.

“There’s no door,” I observed, turning to the Gargoyle.

“Nope,” Huang said. “We’re going to have to fly up.”

I stared. He stared back expectantly. “No. No way.”

“Relax. I’m not going to drop you,” Huang insisted, shifting his weight. I flinched back.

“Don’t you dare grab me and carry me all the way up there. Don’t even move!”

He hesitantly settled back down.

“Yeah, that’s right.” I let out a sharp huff of air. “There’s got to be another way.”

“There just isn’t. Did you think there was going to be an elevator?”

“It’s the CN Tower, isn’t it?” I grumbled, crossing my arms. “Look, there’s… there’s no way I’m doing this.”

“Are you afraid of heights?” the Gargoyle curled its tail around its legs.

“No. I’m afraid of giant, sharp dragon birds carrying me thousands of feet in the air. Jeez!” I stuffed my hands in my pockets and started to pace in a tight circle. “Come on, think. Another way.”

The Gargoyle inspected its claws. “Er… listen. I know I’m a bit sharp looking, but I promise I’ll be very careful.”

“No, no,” I groaned. “This is so dumb. What if you drop me?”

“I’m not going to drop you.”

 “You say that now. What if a demon shows up or something? What if you knock into one of those giant spikes?”

“Just how bad a flier do you think I am?” Huang griped.

“You’re not any kind of flier, you’re a goddamned psychology student!” I exclaimed. I took several deep breaths very quickly. “Okay. Okay. I know this is the only way. Okay. Let’s do it.”

He reared on his back legs.

“Wait—” I started but he had already closed his talons around my upper arms and was leaping into the air. We lifted and dipped violently as he beat his wings, and then we were off, wind streaming past us.

It was like being on the worst drop tower ride ever, because it was in reverse and there was no seatbelt. I would have screamed, but the most I could muster was gritting my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut as my stomach dropped like a stone. The first few dips and rises were utterly terrifying, and then our flight path evened out as the Gargoyle began a slow spiral up the tower.

I hissed a few breaths between my teeth and opened my eyes. Nope, oh God, I should close them again, but the sight was incredible. The ground was already far, far below us and growing farther. The roofs of the glass buildings below looked like an uneven grid of square crystals. Mist was starting to close in between us and them.

And I was dangling by my armpits from a giant, shiny dragon. His grip was painfully tight, but that did not make me feel much better.

I squeezed my eyes back shut and waited for it to be over, but all of a sudden—the shift again.

Oh, good. Great. Fantastic. My other sense opened up with a vengeance and the sense of vertigo was awful. I could sense the way the gargoyle’s wings were catching the air, feel exactly how fast we were flying, and sense with unnecessary clarity the empty space around us. My stomach lurched and I did my best to hold it together.

“Whoah, I just sensed something weird off you,” Huang said.

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I didn’t feel like yelling at him, so I just didn’t respond, focusing on trying to withdraw the sense back into me and make it stop.

Huang drifted slightly closer to the tower and I flinched when an electric, fuzzy aura pushed at my sense. The tower was crackling with energy like a lightning rod, powerful volts of electricity running through it. And we were planning to land on that?

“This seems dangerous!” I shouted up at Huang. My stomach lurched as he drifted to the right, avoiding one of the glass quills.

“Relax, already. I’ve got it,” Huang muttered, his words carrying effortlessly despite the wind roaring in my ears.

We drifted a little closer to the tower and the energy arcing through it was so strong that it actually stung, buzzing at the base of my spine.

“No, listen! Can’t you feel that!?” I demanded. “There’s something wrong, there’s electricity! In the tower!”

To my relief, he backed away from the tower. “Is it only the tower or the spikes, too?” he asked.

We were rising past one of the quills, and though I could sense a very slight residual energy, it was far less extreme than whatever was happening in the tower.  “Just the tower,” I reported, though I had no idea why he was asking—

Oh. Oh, no. Huang banked, flapping his wings to halt momentum, then swooped down toward the quill we had just passed by. I squeezed my eyes shut again, but my spatial sense provided me with a vivid mental image of the quill rising up to meet us.

The Gargoyle’s back feet struck the glass structure. It jostled me around and my teeth clacked, but it then managed to place me gently on the quill in front of it and fall back to its four legs, delicately folding its wings.

“You’re crazy!” I cried out as soon as I managed to catch my breath.

The gargoyle tilted its head at me. Looking at it straight on down its beak gave it kind of a goofy face, but that didn’t make me feel any better. “I don’t get it, what’s the problem?”

I resisted the urge to give him an annotated list of my many, many problems with this situation. “Look, the, uh, the tower? There’s this crazy energy coming off of it. It feels electrocuted, like it hurts to get too close.”

The gargoyle scratched its head feathers with a clawed hand. “Are you sure? I didn’t feel anything.”

“Yes, very sure,” I said, though now I was starting to get confused. If the energy I was sensing was as powerful as it seemed, surely he should be able to feel something, too? “We shouldn’t land on it.”

The Gargoyle settled in and I heard it let out a sigh. “I mean… we don’t really have another option, Camilo. The last time I was here it was fine. Can we at least give it a shot, and we’ll back off if you still sense it?”

“Just… give me a second,” I said, then closed my eyes and stretched out my sense as far as it would go. Even at a distance, the amount of energy I could sense in the tower was disturbing. It seemed like the glass around it was a shell, containing a concentrated column of electricity. The spikes, which I had assumed to be some kind of defense, were in fact vitally connected to this energy somehow, siphoning off faint amounts and dispersing it.

As I stood there feeling it out, the energy began to change—growing stronger. That stinging buzz in the base of my spine started to build as the energy of the tower doubled.

“Crap. Grab me, grab me, we gotta get off of this thing!” I shouted, backing as close to the edge of the spike as I dared. The Gargoyle looked at me for a second, perplexed, then shrugged and opened its wings.

He reached his talons down toward me a second too late. The energy building in the tower suddenly dispersed, in a hundred separate currents running through the quills. The glass under my feet lit up; the strength of the coursing energy sent a jolt of pain through my body and blinded my sense completely. I shouted and my knees buckled—but I was caught by the Gargoyle and swiftly lifted up and off the spike.

“What happened? Are you okay?”

I snapped my head up into the rushing wind, realizing that I’d fainted for a few seconds. The gargoyle was still carrying me, and I could see the quill we’d just been standing on dropping out of sight below. My sense was still working, but crabbily extending only a short distance out from me, a painful twinge remaining in my spine.

The hell had just… happened? “I’m okay!” I yelled to Huang, and was surprised to find that it was true. Despite the apparent damage the energy had done to my sense, the rest of me felt… fine. It hadn’t even hurt that badly, it was more the surprise of it and the subsequent flight into the air that had knocked me out.

“Whatever that was didn’t affect me at all,” Huang said. “Maybe it’s because I’m in my other form, I don’t know. Are you seriously okay?”

“Yeah,” I repeated. If I’d had to find an equivalent feeling… it was like being blinded by a painfully bright light; a flash grenade or something. Something had completely overwhelmed that sense to a painful degree, and like someone who’d just been blinded by a flash grenade, my “vision” was now completely screwy.

“I don’t know what to suggest,” Huang admitted, continuing to circle the tower. “If you can’t use the tower—”

“Keep going up!” I told him reluctantly. “Just don’t land if I tell you not to!”

“Okay,” Huang agreed. The Gargoyle flapped its wings again, gaining altitude.

The tower was clearly dangerous, but it was possible that whatever awaited us at the top was protected from the crazy energy at the bottom. Besides that, there was no way I was about to go back to the waterfront and face all those demons, so Huang was right about one thing—we needed to at least check it out.

The Gargoyle rose above the last of the quills, which only extended from the bottom third of the tower. After a few minutes, my spatial sense started to recover: I could still sense the energy, but the further up the tower we went, the less intense it became. Finally, we soared up to a broad, enclosed landing at the top. It was vaguely teardrop shaped, with the ceiling being the point. It was huge, easily the width of a city square at its widest point.

“Well?” Huang prompted me, circling above it.

It was hard to concentrate as I dangled about a million feet off the ground, but I tried to focus as I gently reached out my sense. It wasn’t back to its full capacity and I still had a painful twinge in my spine, but the platform seemed to be completely free of harmful energy.

“Go for it!” I called, then felt my stomach drop out of me again as the Gargoyle swooped in for a landing. We entered the giant teardrop through its open side, the gargoyle’s light dancing all around it and reflecting through the floor. Huang plunked me down and I tried not to fall to my knees with relief.

Huang returned to his human form, the Gargoyle’s glow briefly intensifying and then fading as he turned back into a normal person… wearing an astoundingly ugly Christmas sweater. It had a giant reindeer nose stitched on the front. I gestured to it in astonishment.

Huang winced. “I was at an ugly sweater Christmas party, okay?”

“That’s literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said, suddenly unable to stop giddy laughter as the adrenaline rush of the flight wore off. “Oh man, you were technically wearing that monstrosity this whole time?”

Huang scowled. “I guess so, technically.”

By this point I was laughing hysterically. “Does this mean… oh my God, you’ve been in your dragon form this whole time because… you didn’t want me to…”

He crossed his arms. “Look, can we please focus on the matter at hand without going into hysterics? Ugly sweater parties are a dumb trend, I know.”

 I wiped tears from my eyes. “Yeah… yeah, okay. Ugh, now I feel sick.” It was going to be impossible to focus with Rudolph hanging out over there, but Huang was right—we had a job to do, and it sadly did not include disparaging his fashion.

He cleared his throat and started to move in toward the centre of the landing, so I followed suit. The glass below us was flat and smooth, and my spatial sense confirmed it was completely solid.

As we continued toward the center, a strange pattern of cracks appeared on the floor. They were only about half an inch deep, not dangerous at all to the structural integrity of the tower, but seeing them still made me a little nervous. The cracks moved out in a circular radius from the platform’s centre.

Huang strode to where the cracks met and stood there. I approached more slowly, sensing out everything around me. I still didn’t sense any of that blinding energy from the bottom of the tower, but something must have caused those cracks.

Huang looked back at me. “Okay. I’m going to try it first, just so you can see how it works.”

“Uh, okay,” I said, backing off. “Listen, if this thing lights up with that energy again…”

“If something happens and we need to leave quickly, I’ll transform and grab you,” Huang assured me. “Still… are you sure you want us to do this?”

I hesitated for a second, but nodded. “Like you said before, this is kind of our only option. I just hope it works.”

Huang nodded and looked up, his hands at his sides. “Okay. All I’m going to do is stretch out my sense while standing right here, and the tower will do the rest. I’m just—”

I lost track of Huang. I lost track of myself. All the energy of the tower suddenly concentrated in an incredibly strong beam, shooting directly down from the upper point of the teardrop to the centre where Huang was standing.

Every sense I had went blank.

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