Keeper of the Lost Cities: Rebuild [COMPLETED]

Chapter Fifteen - MARELLA

"The next time we're riding in a carriage pulled by a worm almost as ugly as Tam, I'd like a proper warning, please," Marella quipped, fingers wrapped around the golden ropes hanging above her head in a death grip. She wasn't necessarily scared of Twinkle—more like the idea of being underground.

Trapped.

With the dark.

In a carriage that suddenly felt much too small.

"We could've light leaped, I think," Sophie said, eyes looking distant as she scanned the carriage. "I'm not entirely sure, since I've only been to Gildingham once, but I do know this carriage is reserved for special cases. It's an honor Queen Hylda let us ride in it."

"Wow, do I get a medal now? Maybe I can have a last meal before the titanaboa feasts on my flesh."

"Didn't think a Pryokinetic would be so scared of a little snake," Tam rasped.

Marella's grip somehow tightened on the rope, and she refused to look at the shadowed figure in her periphery. Pyrokinetic. He'd said it like a bad word.

The golden carriage of honor (or whatever) lurched to a stop, sending Marella flying into said shadowed figure. Immediately she pressed her hands against his chest to shove herself away, coughing up vapor. Tam slammed back into the wall as the door slid open, shining bright sunlight into the space and making the shadows hiss. At least, Marella was pretty sure they were hissing.

Freaky.

"What's your problem?" Tam grumbled, but she ignored him, stepping into the goblin's capital and breathing not-stale, not-tastes-like-Tam's-shadows air.

Then the city hit her like her nose smashing into Tam's shirt—golden lights illuminating a gilded metropolis, a lake in the center of it all. Gray, muscled bodies crowded the streets. Two-thirds were women and children, conversing in goblinese—or whatever it was goblins spoke—or carrying golden bags that looked far too fragile in their large hands. The scene, so far, looked pretty... average.

But then the flash of silver and black disrupted the peace, flashes belonging to sharp swords held by the warriors. Metal breastplates, stretchy pants—it was like Sandor and Grizel had multiplied by the hundreds.

Surely goblins couldn't have kids that fast, right?

"I didn't realize there were so many of them," she said, glancing at Sophie. Her mouth immediately dropped open. How in the flareadon enclosures had she missed the massive palace behind her?

Sophie answered, but Marella was too busy taking in the impressive building, which was as large as twelve of her house combined. That could have been because everything was bigger—the doorways, the windows, and, by extension, the architecture. It was all also golden, which would surely give Biana a heart attack ("How could an intelligent species design the mark of their power in one shade?!").

A golden moat, connected to the lake in the center of the city, wrapped around the palace; a golden bridge—she was starting to get sick of this color already—separated the Black Swan members from the doors. Marella couldn't help but notice the design of the bridge—delicate and intricate and basically all the -ates. Clearly the goblins wanted to differentiate their capital from the ogres'; while Marella hadn't been with Sophie and the crew during that whole catastrophe, she'd seen images of Ravagog, and... yeah, it was way different from Gildingham.

How are we going to convince the goblins to get rid of their prejudice when they clearly won't give up their feud with the ogres? she thought, suddenly feeling the weight of this mission like an anchor on her shoulders. If they failed, the Lost Cities would go to war... again.