Chương 230: Act 3, Chapter 79: La Ville d’Ombrelumière

Day in the story: 29th January (Thursday), after midnight Elle Erikson"Ideworld's Paris is called La Ville d'Ombrelumière, which is a play on how it's sometimes called on Earth—the City of Lights." Bastien explained, as we were approaching the tunnel used by the Bohema to enter Ideworld near the Eiffel Tower. It was supposed to be hidden in plain sight.

"While the Catacombs definitely make the city stand out, it's difficult to tell what else is the most well-known. I know that New York has its Mirrored City, Central Park Woods; Warsaw's got the Spirit of Uprising; Tokyo has its Neon Garden and Palaces of Shared Loneliness; Cape Town has the God's Table Mountain and the Phantom Flying Dutchman Fleet, Shanghai has the Tower of Heaven; London has its Metro Maze and the Largest of Bens—but Paris… is more difficult to pinpoint for me. Maybe because I love it so much?"

He started talking as if I knew all those things. I just nodded and listened more closely.

"Of course we will see the tower, but despite its perceived grandeur on Earth, I wouldn't say that it stands out much in Ideworld—it's new by most standards, but on the other hand, all of New York is new and it still sticks out in Ideworld, so what do I know, right?" He laughed.

"How is it different?" I asked, while the others were busy in their own conversations. Lia was the only one who, despite talking with her brother, was paying attention to my conversation with Laurent. It was clear that despite the friendliness she offered on the surface, there was something else swimming right below it. I hoped it wasn't something readying for an attack, but I could not rule that out. Jealousy could show how sharp its teeth were.

"You will see that shortly, so I will leave it as a surprise. Notre Dame is the most interesting to me personally, as it became a cathedral to the memories of the city. It has its looping, endless corridors, prayers given form and wandering its halls, secret passages upon passages. Some even say that one or more of the Angels live there, so maybe it is true."

"I read about them some time ago." In the book I stole from Eveline, that is.

"Yeah. It is unclear if they are beings that existed outside of our understanding and we gave them myths and forms, and those manifest in Ideworld as just that, but the true thing still exists somewhere—and I am inclined to believe just that."

"Like some eldritch beings?" I asked, as we all approached some white façade building near the Seine. It was clear that it was where Bastien led us. It looked just like other buildings around.

"Exactly. I personally think that angels as they are described in holy books across the globe, by many cultures and religions, are some mythical entities from Aether, and those winged men and women—or even djinn that people sometimes encounter, both here and there—are just shadowspawns that are results of the beliefs spawned by contact with the former."

"I see. And you think one of the true angels lives in Notre Dame?"

"That's what some people at Bohema are saying."

"I hope to get there someday. Anything else?"

"Montmartre is a mecca for artists. There are streets that look as if they were painted in different styles—they meld together there and spawn impossible shapes, perspectives, or colors. I'd say that it's dangerous, one of the most dangerous places in the City of Shadowlight, as most artists create because of some trauma, and it shows in the creatures that wander there."

"Is it a splinter?"

"Kind of a splinter, because they are a different kinds. It's one of the things they taught us. Basically, a splinter is any place with a strong enough identity that it has a soul of its own, and it manifests, usually by instilling its own rules or spawning shadowspawn tied to that place."

"So Domains are splinters too?"

"That's unclear. Some people do believe that, yes. Splinters can take over a physical place in Ideworld, like Montmartre I just told you about it. You enter it and it's all splinter; you get out of the district and you are out of it. But there are some that exist outside of physical representation of Earth's space, like your Mirrored City that is above Manhattan, right?" I nodded.

"And there are some that exist in some other form of dimension—you walk through a door and suddenly you can be in a palace so vast there is no way it could have fit in the small house you entered. The mechanics of how they are created and why that way are unclear."

"And the Eiffel Tower? What kind is it?"

"It's a bit of both—a physical splinter that has overtaken the tower, and a portal splinter. When we pass through a certain door, we'll enter a separate dimension where the tower relives a memory or a story of a darker version of itself," he explained as we approached a tall, white wooden door. He knocked three times, paused, then seven more. After a longer pause, he tapped five times in quick succession.

"Thirty-seven bridges in Paris, and five permanent openings into Ideworld."

"That's cool," Patricia said, stepping up to wait beside us. She carried the second biggest backpack, with Kito having an absolute unit of a thing on straps that barely kept holding on. The main door opened to show a corridor way too long to be normal. It stretched so far it was difficult to see the other end of it. Two tables stood inside, with a few chairs that had been hastily abandoned by the guards, who now stood ready for whatever shenanigans we would be able to show.

On the tables, playing cards lay scattered, along with some portable consoles, a book, and an assortment of snacks and drinks. The guards themselves were all wearing different things—uniform was not something one would say about them—but every single one of them looked battle-ready. Their outlines shone with a shadowlight that slowly evaporated into the air, like a mist of heat on a cold morning.

"That's Laurent and his team," one of the men spoke in perfect French. I recognized him as the one who had been thrown over the railing on the night of the party. He had a nasty purplish bruise on his cheek.

"Stand down," he added and bowed.

"Come, Master Laurent."

"You don't have to call me that, Pierre," Bastien replied, returning the bow.

"I do. This is an official matter. We've set up a trolley for you up to the tower. Did not expect to see you that early into the night, but we are prepared nonetheless. Are you?"

"We will see about that, won't we?"

"We are always ready," said Piotr, who clutched his baseball bat in his right hand. He threw it into the air, where it revolved twice and landed back in his palm.

"Especially to smash the Nazis. Lead the way, good man," he added in pretty good French. The whole time I'd been here, I had never heard him speak it before. Man had his secrets as well.

"Good to know. You have to follow the tunnel until you get to the other side. Vampires there will get you seated and put you on your ride to the Tower station, where the team responsible for managing it will tell you all that you need to know. Is that clear?" This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Like the sun," Laurent replied and bowed. Then, after giving each and every one of us a quick glance, he took the first step deeper into the tunnel that seemed endless. We followed in silence, while the group that let us through returned to their more playful activities—they shouted, laughed, and cursed, as if nothing unusual had happened at all.

"Vamps will take care of us?" Patricia asked, when we made a few good strides already.

"They are the guardians of the city, both on Earth and in the shadow world. You know that."

"Knowing and accepting are two different things for me," she replied.

"It's kind of difficult not to see them as anything but an adversary after what happened in Manchester."

"Those vamps were fuckin' terrorists. Not everyone is the same," Piotr replied, taking a swing with his bat.

"I am out of the loop here," I said.

"There was an attack made by a big group of bloodsuckers when we were studying in London. They massacred almost every known mage family within Manchester before they were driven off by the combined effort of the English Mageocracy," Lia explained to me in a quiet tone.

"My cousins—well, mine and Kito's, of course—were all killed in this attack. A good third of my family perished overnight."

"They were weak and faced the consequences," Kito said with arms crossed over his chest. I'd noticed through my spiders that Lia dug her fingers into the palm of her hand, but her face remained otherwise unbothered.

"The group behind the attack was condoned by the Paris vampires—it's a different clan," Laurent continued explaining.

"We have nothing to be afraid of."

"Fuck right, we don't," Piotr said, shining briefly with red shadowlight.

"Let them try anything funny, and they will have to say goodbye to those hearts of theirs."

"You lost anyone there as well?" I asked, coming closer to him. We continued moving through something that looked eerily like those backrooms I'd seen back in New York—just endless, plain, white walls, ceiling, and floor.

"Me? Nah. My whole family is in Poland."

"I know you are a sourcerer. Are you—""First in my family? No. We are mages through and through, up to the… kurwa… I don't remember, like great, great, great—not so great—grandfather?" I laughed along with him. His laughter was contagious, like a full donkey-sounding giggle.

"Main part of my family is in the Domain of Swordsmanship, though. We traced our roots to Zawisza Czarny, one of the most famous Polish knights."

"But you swapped the sword for the bat?"

"Hell, yeah. Been raised with the fundamentals of fencing and martial order since I could fuckin' sit properly, but unlucky for them I got in love with this stupid ball-hitting game when we played it once in school in physical education." He continued explaining, while my Eyes of the Shattered inside the spider abdomens noticed a veil of illusion ahead of us. Behind it was a station with much more order than the one at the other end. My human eyes still saw the never-ending tunnel.

"No amount of soul core conditioning could overcome my drive. I am single-minded like that."

"It's not a good thing, Peter," Patricia said, listening in. She was the only one that called him by an English version of his name. He didn't seem to mind, though.

"We will see, Pat," he replied, when we all passed through the threshold of the illusion. Vampires were already waiting for us. Three of them, all clad in something that looked like Renaissance armor with cloth embroidery decorated with motifs of shadows and light alike. The tallest one, who was also bald and had a crooked nose but beautiful brown eyes, stepped ahead toward us, extending a sword lightly but keeping it pointed at Laurent's knees.

"Name?" he asked in French.

"Laurent Bastien. We are scheduled to go for a training session in the Tower's splinter."

"I am aware," the vampire answered lazily, and his eyes took a glance at each one of us so quickly that if I blinked, I'd miss it. Not counting unnatural eyes, of course. „Follow me." He added, waving his hand indicating the direction. „That's it?" I asked Piotr in whisper.

"No documents? No nothing?"

"Shush. Be glad and keep going." He answered, and we moved after the guard that departed away from his brothers-in-arms. Those two that stayed observed us in unnatural calmness. Not a single muscle of theirs moved during the whole thing. When the one up front opened the door outside, the first thing that welcomed us was the light. Different forms of it were everywhere.

The sky was the most obvious—an endless firmament strewn with billions of stars, each one a pinprick of quiet radiance, a whisper of distant brilliance. Between them drifted ten faces of the moon, scattered across the heavens in varying phases, yet each one unmistakably luminous, resplendent silver, returning the sun's grace in softened, sacred glow upon the dominion of night. And that nocturnal kingdom was nothing to scoff at.

The city below shimmered with layered illumination—houses aglow from within, their windows breathing warm candlelight and the steady hum of electric brilliance. Yet the light did not conquer everything. Between buildings lingered deep wells of shadow where entire alleyways vanished into velvety black, and beneath bridges the darkness pooled thick as still water. Every street, every corner seemed kissed by some form of gentle incandescence, but each glow only sharpened the silhouettes around it.

Cars moved with their frontal yellows and rear reds like twin currents through rivers of gloom, their reflections briefly catching in rain-dark stone before dissolving again. Shadows of people moved in smaller and bigger groups beneath the trees decorated with hanging lamps—sometimes passing through the radiance, sometimes disappearing entirely beyond it, their laughter and songs drifting out of places the eye could no longer follow.

Above the rooftops, pale wisps flickered and danced—phantasmal threads of light weaving in and out of a ghostly reflection of the Seine, suspended several meters above its quite earthly counterpart. That spectral river was not water, but living luminosity—liquid glow flowing endlessly, refracting the world in trembling reflections while darkness gathered beneath it like the underside of a storm cloud. Far ahead stood the Eiffel Tower, both familiar and transformed.

Its shape remained unchanged, yet it gleamed with something more, like a monument steeped in decades of light, every beam infused with lingering brilliance. Its steel veins glowed with hues of gold, azure, and pale violet, but the spaces between those radiant lines sank into cavernous blackness, making the tower seem impossibly vast, as though it contained a night sky within its frame.

Every flash of brilliance carved the latticework sharper against the dark, and the long shadow of the tower stretched over the city like the hand of a colossal sundial. From across the city, radiant rails curved through the air, serpentine paths of gleaming energy converging at the tower's base, where its lowest platform served as a station suspended between earth and sky. The tracks lit the undersides of nearby rooftops in shifting silver bands, but beneath them hung curtains of darkness untouched by their glow.

A train had just departed, gliding along those luminous paths while its locomotive exhaled soft plumes of white vapor that shimmered like breath made visible in starlight. Behind it, the shadows closed again, swallowing the empty rails until only faint traces of light remained. Big roosters flew through the sky, their feathers extended behind them like ribbons of color that changed and burned as if it was fire and not tissue.

I counted three of those, though each vanished at times against the vast black between the clouds, leaving only streaks of molten color to mark their passing. I focused on one that swooped its wings time and time again until it landed softly on one of the rooftops, covering it entirely with its iridescent and bioluminescent orange, green, and yellow wings. The glow spilled over the roof tiles and cascaded down the walls below.

It looked upon one of the moon's faces and raised its beak to sing its song, but either we were too far, or the sound was never meant to be. Still, the light that escaped its open mouth reached us—a narrow beam of gold piercing upward through the night like a crack in the heavens. I moved my attention toward the tower again, where at its peak a vast golden disc had formed—a halo of polished metal reflecting the entire city upon its surface.

From its edges extended delicate bridges of light, tethering zeppelins that hovered like lilies cast over the surface of a sky lake. Their searchlights swept slowly across the cityscape, beams of wandering illumination tracing rooftops and rivers alike, only to reveal how much remained hidden beyond them. Entire districts emerged for an instant under those pale cones before slipping back into obscurity the moment the light moved on. And far above it all, untethered and sovereign, hung a perfect sphere.

Pearlescent and luminous beyond reason. It turned slowly upon a vertical axis, casting down a steady, sacred glow. Yet even its radiance could not banish the darkness entirely. The shadows it created stretched long and blue across the city, softening the streets into dreamlike shapes and swallowing the spaces between buildings. It was like a celestial lantern, a grand and mystical lighthouse, bathing the world beneath in a quiet, endless benediction of light.

"Ja pierdole," Piotr whispered a curse next to me.

"I should have packed sunglasses."