Jaden nodded and then looked around him. It was dusk, and he was on the side of a black rocky mountain, its tip illuminated in white light. The runway he had expected to be standing on was actually a landing pad that had been carved into the mountain’s jagged surface, high above the city. All around him he could see the many ring sections of Waikor. The city was one of the most renowned in the entire continent. Between each ring was a canal that glistened with blue lights, and the city’s structures increased gradually in height from the outer reaches to the centre, so that the entire city seemed part of the mountain in all directions. The buildings were white like those in Ceahlin in the outer layers, but slowly became black and dark gray closer toward the mountain’s base.
Behind him, there were four polished gray marble columns, rising thirty feet up into the mountain and marking the entrance to a great hall. Inside, a black carpet laced with golden thread stretched from one end of the hall to the other, and was lined on either side by the same gray marble columns as from outside. Hundreds of people moved about the various rooms behind the columns, and although they shared many similar features, they seemed almost entirely different to the people of Ceahlin. The Waikorian clothing was gray and perfectly fitted, on both men and women, and the way in which they carried themselves seemed to reveal a sense of greatness about them. They were an accomplished people, with technology that both awed and confused Jaden. He didn’t even begin to guess what use the black devices they carried with them had.
Regustus led Jaden to the end of the hall where he found the strangest technology yet. Along the wall were half-cylinders made of black metal that rose higher than even the ceiling. The bottom of the cylinders was lit with blue and strange dials and lights were placed all the way up. Regustus motioned for Jaden to continue following him down a flight of stairs to reach the platform below. They then approached one of the half-cylinders and stood on another platform, which was shaped to fit perfectly into the half-cylinder and hovered just above the ground below. There was a railing at the back of the platform that Regustus told Jaden to hold onto, and after he had keyed in the right code on the wall, the platform rose up almost as if by magic high into the air. Jaden held on tightly as he was sent up into the mountain.
‘What is this?’ he asked.
‘Electromagnetic elevator,’ answered Regustus, who walked off the platform as soon as it had stopped. ‘This way.’ He led Jaden down another hall.
This hall was a lot smaller than the great hall out front, but still possessed a ceiling twelve feet above and columns to mark its doorways. At the end were two silver doors guarded by a man on either side.
‘The sentinel wishes to see Multias Waidusk,’ said Regustus, and the men on either side opened the doors for them.
Inside were seven men, most twice Jaden’s size in shoulder width, seated comfortably around a black oval table, pointed toward the door. As Jaden entered, he saw that the walls had been left intact and were of the actual mountain’s rock still, rather than the polished marble he had seen in the other rooms, and the lights were similar to those he had seen in the Daijuarn Monastery. He quickly scanned all of the faces staring at him, looking to find if any of them were Daijuarn. Nearest to him was a dark-haired man dressed in maroon garb. The next was a man with short sun-bleached hair wearing brown. Neither seemed to possess any Daijuarn-like features, and the same was true for those on the opposite side of the table.
The two that caught his attention most were the only ones dressed in white. Jaden thought he had seen the markings of the endobraces on one, but both kept their hands hidden. The one on the left had short dark hair in what seemed to be the typical Waikorian fashion, and the other in the centre had long black hair that was now heavily streaked with gray. Despite his hair, he seemed sixty to seventy years old, but with very few wrinkles and he held himself upright as if he were no older than thirty. He was the first to speak, but Jaden was now looking at the one man that had refused to acknowledge his arrival. The man sat on the right-hand side next to the man in the centre and had black hair hanging in front of his eyes. His clothing was dark gray and his eyes were sunken from what appeared to be poor health. His posture was slumped and he continually fidgeted with a small black rectangle in his hands.
‘Allow me to introduce my associates,’ said the man in the middle, and he pointed with an open hand to each, moving up to himself and starting with the man in maroon garb on Jaden’s left. ‘This is Anthon, caretaker of the west.’ He then pointed to the man across from Anthon. ‘Tony, caretaker of the south.’ His hand wandered back to the other side of the table to the man sitting next to Anthon. ‘Hayden, caretaker of the north.’ He then pointed to the man opposite Hayden, the smallest and thinnest of the group. ‘Yahtai, caretaker of the east. They look after the major districts of our great city. This is Owen, our leading technology master and overseer,’ he said, pointing to the man who allowed his black hair to hang loosely in front of his eyes. ‘And finally, this is my right hand man, Quian, and I am Multias. What brings you here, Sentinel?’