Welcome to Harbek

The first thing Trick noticed about Harbek Valley was that, although it had a small footprint, it was a very vertical town. It just so happened that the streets and buildings sank down into the earth instead of rising up over it. No structure in the town rose over the low walls that surrounded it. Yet when he looked down into the streets within those walls he couldn’t see how far down they went.

That wasn’t because the streets were dark. Far from it. Most of Harbek Gulley was lit with a soothing green light that seemed to seep from the paving stones and brick walls that lined the streets. It was almost impossible to identify a source for most of the light. There were a few fountains or gateways that had large reservoir crystals mounted in them that gleamed with an obvious lumi reserve. But for the most part the verdant light just seemed to permeate the streets.

The buildings of Harbek nearly disappeared beneath layers of plant life. Vines grew over most of them in a rustling canopy and broad leafed bushes grew in the open ground that would be occupied with grass in the typical yard back home. A few courtyards he spotted played host to the very first trees Trick had seen since coming to the seventh sphere. They were much like the ones at home, except their leaves were layers of thin fronds instead of broad, flat surfaces or sharp, evergreen needles.

For a few moments, as Sari led him through the streets, all Trick could do was gawk at things. Harbek was incredibly pleasing to the eyes. Yet at the same time it truly felt like nothing he had ever seen on Earth.

Driving that even further home was the statuary. Harbek had a lot of it, mostly taking the form of people, but every so often he’d see something wildly unfamiliar. One statue was of a man carrying a spear or staff, posed like a heroic warrior on horseback preparing to skewer a target to the ground. Except he wasn’t on a horse. He rode on the back of a strange, almost serpentine creature with eight legs, woolly fur and a triangular head a bit like a preying mantis.

Another statue showed a woman fleeing from a humanoid creature with antennae on its forehead and compound eyes. There was a third statue of a creature that looked a bit like a disembodied mouth with six multijointed legs that lay dead behind a trio of very proud looking warriors. They all felt very surreal, especially lit by the unnatural mix of green and purple lights.

The purple light came from the illuminated barrier overhead. The reason Harbek was built into a gully was plainly obvious now. The walls formed the perimeter of a flat violet shield that protected the people and buildings below from the starsight’s strafing attacks. There were still one or two of the things left overhead, it seemed. Now that they were under the protection of the town’s barrier neither Sari nor Gemma seemed particularly worried about the insectoid creatures’ ongoing barrage.

Once they’d made it through the portcullis in the walls Bertran had left them to help with the defense of the town. It was a sensible decision for a member of the harvest guards, Trick supposed. He only realized after they parted ways that the other man hadn’t returned his ochre lumi crystals.

Trick was a little miffed that he hadn’t been invited to help defend the town. Now that he had a handle on how the crystal sword worked he was pretty sure it made him the best suited to deal with the starsight. However Bertran had started looking at the thing with a lot of suspicion now that he knew what it could do. Flaunting it too much might not be a good idea.

Besides, he still had no idea how much longer he could use the thing. There had to be some kind of limit to it. Power that impressive didn’t come for free and there was no telling if he’d like what he had to do to get another charge of it.

More than anything, Trick wasn’t sure he wanted to keep dancing to the tune of the forces that had sent him to the seventh sphere. He wasn’t sure who had connected the strange world to the hatch in the Escape House but he doubted they were benevolent. At the very least it was worth finding out what happened if he ignored them for a bit.

They’d told him to fight the starsight, so for the moment he decided not to. At least, so long as not fighting them didn’t put him in any added danger. If one of the bugs tried to fry him with their scorching eyes then all bets were off.

“In the meantime,” he muttered to himself, “at least the scenery here is pretty. This place must look wild during the daytime…”

The two ladies gave him odd looks. Or rather, Gemma gave him an odd look and Sari pointed her veil at him in a way that was ripe with implications. Gemma said, “What was that?”

“I said this place must look very different during the day. I presume you don’t light it with lumi when the sun is up, do you?”

“We light it with lumi all the time,” she replied. “Without the verdant illumination how would the plants grow?”

Trick chuckled. “Well back home they do it by sun…”

He trailed off as the details started to add up. Sari told him the stars in the distance supposedly occupied their own sphere and beyond that was the dark. Odd that they’d made no mention of the sun. Stranger still that they’d gone out to harvest in the middle of the night. That was the kind of thing you usually saved for daylight.

Unless the seventh sphere didn’t see daylight.

Sari touched him on the shoulder. “Things out here are well in hand at this point. I think, before anything else, you should go and see the chief armillamancer. He’s the best qualified to answer any questions you might have. But more importantly, I think he will be the best judge for you.”

Trick shifted uncomfortably. “Judge of what?”

“Whether you’re a danger to us or not.”