The sunrise simmered into being with everything gaining a hue caught in a golden pinch of its sunlight. White clouds held their boundaries against the sky painted in gold, chrome of dirt below Naph and Lady Izne glimmered time to time.
Assumed to be a carriage by Anaphol, the very same vehicle came back. Popping in next to them.
"Lady Izne, we have come as requested," the driver said. While the servant inside opened the door as he descended out of the four wheeler vehicle, bowing and indicating with his left arm stretched into the carriage to invite both in.
Lady Izne's gaze wandered off into the distance. Before it came back, Naph had his mouth open about to incite her again.
"Silence, child."
The fog surrounding her that had dissipated flowed over to her right hand. Bubbles rose and fell from it. Some collected above it. And some more.
Despite it all, a certain light gleamed out of the cluster. That light morphed and reformed into a rectangular shape. Details marking the edges came next. Then the fog as well as the cluster vanished.
Lady Izne held a letter in hand.
"Enter." She told Anaphol.
Standing steadfast on the gravel of a floating island of Aergylden, he looked at her. However, Izne did not even register his tantrum. She tore open the letter and read it. Next half an hour went by, Izne merely spent reading the same long letter. Neither had moved whereas the servant stopped bowing around the ten minute mark yet kept his gaze down.
As she was about to begin folding the letter, she told something particular to Anaphol. "It's a good thing you did not move. You would have collapsed immediately because of time catching up to you." Her gaze rose from the folded letter and onto him.
No pressure bellowed down on him neither some unknown cata effect grabbed him nor did the servant move him into the vehicle. Anaphol could have moved, he should have. Rather than waiting for him, Lady Izne brought out a page with handwritten note on it.
"Your suitcase as packed by Duchess Inri Plora contains your clothes your wore, a realmic storage with your pedaling vehicle, and every other accessory found on you. It also contains the detailed list of the lesios you could learn given your first category cata mind." Extending the note to him, she further added. "This note too has a shorter detail as a list I suggest you learn, and it has a few phrases you could speak in emergency that you will need to imbue with your cata. Someone will come to your rescue then."
Naph grabbed on the paper but Izne did not let it through. "Get in." Her head bobbing to the side. Sighing Naph accepted.
Rage on being treated like an object was still within him. At the same space within him, existed the rage and demand to avenge the war started on Sevenren and repay Don Extea for helping him out.
Anaphol could not currently feel it. He was not there yet. And still, his cata mind capacity had truly become Dreamed cata mind capacity.
A truth he will realise about the first category that the person cannot sense when their cata increased to be of the next stage.
Entering into the carriage with Lady Izne following after him with the servant closing the door and stepping into the front with the driver, Anaphol looked at the list once again. It had over twenty lesios he was considered as possibly eligible with a simple note on top.
Needs to be at Thought cata mind.
'Great! Another barrier.'
Side-eyeing Lady Izne, he remarked the newly formed retort. "Since I am still the guest of the royal family, why do you not address me with respect? Are you not afraid of being ratted out and killed, servant of the Emperor?"
The servant and the driver in front so wanted to facepalm themselves.
"Thanks," Lady Izne slightly tilted her face towards him at her right, "for considering me as the Servant of the Emperor. I am glad you think so highly of me, the emperor's sister-in-law, to be of help to him." Her smirk a stark contrast to the open mouth Anaphol had.
'Crap.'
Gently closing his mouth, she suggested. "Now, as your host, I'll treat you as per the age difference if you will allow me so, Guest of Keyriftrian."
The gentle, loud and fast mmm escaping his closed mouth was happening in parallel to him gazing out the window of the carriage. The islands of many different sizes zipped past.
Each held their own fauna and flora. Some had the leaves reaching towards the blood dripped in gold hue, the others had the normal green with dew shinning under the morning light.
It wasn't even more than five minutes when the carriage began flying over a massive floating island. One whose true size couldn't be seen from looking out both the windows. The island went past and many more came and went. Still, the four of them ascended up in a spiral into the skies above. Kilometres and kilometres of travel completed in minutes.
'The speed is slower than Ovier's.' Naph had time to indulge in the terrific views of floating islands and rivers. The landmasses now were massive enough that the blue canvases that went past. He believed himself they could be lakes quite easily if not just under being a sea.
Below him he did spot a few more carriages same as the one he was in, flying in different directions. Smoke puffing out as a trail after them. Green trees that seemed to merged into one another all due to the speed of this carriage.
The driver said, "Lady Izne and Guest Anaphol, we are about to reach the Sanctuary aspiring Proficiency and Wisdom." He swerved the carriage to a left first then to right. "If you look to the left, you'll see the stairs that Rian no Tera was made to take as he was led on to be sacrificed when he was just 19 years."
Anaphol looked left. The first thing he saw was not the giant flat stairs that seemed to be like scales, or the trees that bordered them. What he noticed first was the close gap between Lady Izne and him. The second thing he noticed were her covered breasts under the drapes of her regal red gown.
"You have next twelve seconds to save yourself by looking out of the window," Lady Izne stated, "Even as a guest a certain decorum is expected out of you."
The driver choose to drown her voice at the same time as the servant was about to start reading aloud the newspaper. Both had the intent.
"As you see, the stairs are quite wide. Enough so that a small village could be made there. That is because that indeed is the scale of an ancient caestre that Rian no Tera came back to kill after escaping his first sacrificial offering."
Naph whispered only to Lady Izne, "I did not stare. And I don't need twelve seconds."
His gaze was already on the stairs far out. The scales of an ancient caestre that were now nothing more than being stairs in an academy. The driver and the servant both held quite the perspiration on their forehead, and Lady Izne did not comment more. She too, had her gaze out of the carriage.