by V. M. Sang
Pettic drew in a quick breath. She was beautiful. Quite the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She had long golden hair that almost matched her golden membranes. He could not help but notice her figure, unaccustomed as he was by the nudity with which he was surrounded.
She had small, but perfectly shaped breasts and long slim legs. Her stomach was flat and her narrow waist seemed to emphasise her breasts and hips.
When he finished looking at her figure, Pettic looked at her face. She had large brown eyes with the longest lashes he had ever seen. Her nose was small and upturned and she had a generous mouth that looked as if it liked to smile. Now, however, it was serious.
The Princess walked to the platform where the three people had gone previously. She waved a hand at them and one of them rushed to bring her a chair. She had him place it in the centre of the table that graced the platform. The other judges shuffled up to make room for her. The princess then sat, waving to everyone in the court to do the same.
When everyone was seated and had settled down, the Princess rose.
'I have decided, with my mother's permission, to take control of this trial. I will choose the punishment if the defendant is found guilty, although I think that his innocence will be hard to prove. He is, after all, a groundling. That can't be hidden. Let the trial commence.'
One of the three people on the platform with Princess Eloraine stood and stepped down from the platform and walked over to the cage where Pettic stood. She walked round looking him over.
'Let him be naked as we are,' she said. 'How can we judge if he's truly a groundling if we can't see properly if he has a membrane or not. Sometimes aerials are born with a small membrane. Then they are not considered to be true groundlings.'
Pettic hesitated. The black-membraned guard on his left hissed at him
'Do as the councillor says,' he said. He poked a prod through the bars and as it struck Pettic, he felt an excruciating pain.
He removed his clothes reluctantly in front of so many people.
A gasp rose from the assembled crowd. It seemed they had not seen a groundling before. At least, not one standing naked before them.
Pettic discovered from Gramno that it was customary for groundlings to wear clothes as it was often cool on the surface of the planet. The cities were heated and so the aerials found it acceptable to go naked. Anyway, wearing clothes would be difficult with their membranes. Any that were worn would hamper the use of them in gliding from one building to another, or from one city to another.
The trial continued. Another of the judges, as Pettic had come to think of them, came down and inspected him.
'Raise your arms,' he commanded.
Pettic did so.
'No sign of a membrane. He's definitely a groundling.'
He returned to his seat and the third judge, or councillor, as the guard called him, came to look at Pettic. He took a quick look and declared he too considered the young man to be a groundling. He returned to his seat.
The woman seated at the desk then rose.
'All the judges are in agreement. The prisoner is a groundling who has come to the city illegally. Princess Eloraine will now pronounce sentence.'
Pettic came to the front of the cage and called out to the people in the court.
'This is not justice. I've not been allowed to state my case. I arrived here from another dimension using magic. I didn't choose where I arrived, the magic did. I demand to be allowed to speak.'
A murmur arose from the crowd. The woman at the desk rose.
'Silence,' she shouted, although it was unclear whether she was talking to the crowd or Pettic. 'A groundling does not have the right to speak in this courtroom.'
She spoke to Pettic this time. 'You will listen to Princess Eloraine's sentence.'
She sat down and the princess rose to her feet.
'I know groundlings have no rights,' she said, 'but I'm interested in what this one will say if it has permission. Therefore I grant it the right, in this instance to speak.'
Pettic looked round. The councillors looked angry, as did some of the crowd, but most were interested at this change in protocol.
He began to speak.
'I come from the world of Fusionem. It lies in the centre of the four elemental worlds of Terra, Ignis, Aeris and Aqua and seems to be a fusion of all four elements. This is why it's called Fusionem.' He looked round the assembled people, then at the princess.
'I live in the land of Ponderia. We have a King and Queen and they have several children. The eldest will be King in his turn when the present King dies. The eldest child of King Horaic is Crown Prince Torren.'
At this point, one of the councillors said, 'Get on with it. We don't need to know all of this. You're guilty, and making up fanciful stories won't get you anywhere.'
Princess Eloraine held up her hand.
'Let him continue,' she said. 'I enjoy a good story. He'd make a good writer, I think, if he can tell as good a tale as this one.'
Pettic looked at the princess. 'Thank you, Your Highness,' he said. Then he continued with his tale.
'Torren and I have been good friends since we were thirteen years old. I lived in the palace and was educated with the royal children.
'Suddenly, Prince Torren seemed to be behaving oddly. He was cruel where he had once been kind, he was thoughtless where he had been considerate and he was selfish where he had been generous. His sister, Princess Lucenra, noticed this too and also that Torren was leaving the palace occasionally on his own.'
Pettic coughed.
'I followed him one day and found out he wasn't Torren at all, but another young man. This young man was spelled to look like Torren. I saw a magician enchanting a ring that Torren wore. This ring's magic made the other young man look just like Torren.
'Lucenra and I visited the castle's magician and he told us it was possible Torren had been kidnapped and imprisoned in what he called 'A Bubble of Reality.' That's a mini-dimension created by the wizard.
'The only way to enter that bubble was by finding four gems hidden in the Elemental Worlds. I found the gems belonging to Terra and Ignis, an emerald and a ruby, and I'm here to find the gem of Aeris.'
At the end of his tale, the audience burst into spontaneous applause.
'The crowd enjoyed your tale, anyway,' said the woman councillor. 'but they're easily pleased.'
'Madam,' replied Eloraine looking down her pretty nose, 'I enjoyed it too. This young man has a brilliant imagination.'
The woman councillor huffed and was silent.
The princess then stood.
'Do any of you councillors now think Pettic is innocent, and has come to the city by accident?'
All the councillors shook their heads, although the younger of the two men seemed to hesitate and look at the others first.
'I would like to spare you, Pettic,' Eloraine said, 'but unfortunately all the councillors have decided you are a groundling and I must abide by that decision. However, I won't condemn you to being cast off the city. We'll take you and your …dog, is it? and put you on the ground in a place where no other groundlings live. It's a dangerous place with many wild beasts that will hunt you.'
She looked at Pettic. He felt embarrassed at his nakedness and blushed. the princess smiled.
'If you survive I will allow you to come back to the city and be my pet groundling.'
There were gasps of horror at this. Although there had been aerials with pet groundlings before, it had not happened for centuries and the current people thought them little more than animals and not fit to live in one on the flying cities.
No one objected, however. Princess Eloraine had passed her verdict. She would be queen when the current queen died. It would not do to upset her.
Gramno took Pettic back to his cell to wait his transport to the surface of Aeris.
Three days later, guards came and led Pettic from his cell, along with Cledo, to the edge of the city. A door opened in the dome and he looked down at th
e ground below. He felt dizzy. He was higher than he had been riding Monarlisk.
As he looked, the ground seemed to be coming nearer and he realised the city was slowly descending.
'How does this work?' he asked one of his guards.
'The court magicians are doing something in that tower.' He pointed to a tower rising above all the other buildings. 'Don't' ask me what. If I knew that. I'd be a magician myself.'
During his time in the cell, Perric had got to know his guards quite well and they liked him. 'Not bad for a groundling,' one of them had said. 'Quite bright for one of them, too, Almost as bright as an aerial, though only a red, of course.'
Pettic had found out the aerials had a strict hierarchy. The groundlings, with no flight membranes, were the lowest of the low and treated as animals They lived on the ground and were the labouring class.
Of those with membranes, the reds were the lowest class and the gold the highest, followed by silver and bronze. The blacks were always guards or soldiers.
A guard handed him a backpack containing a wooden bowl, a flask of water and a spoon. He noticed that at the bottom of the pack was some dried meat and a few dried vegetables. They wouldn't last long though. He'd need to hunt.
'Just a few provisions for you to get you going,' the guard told him.
Suddenly there appeared a glint of gold in the sunlight. Pettic looked and saw three gold-winged figures gliding from a tower to land gracefully near where he was standing.
'Well, Pettic,' said Princess Eloraine, for it was indeed she and two of her siblings, 'are you ready?'
'As ready as I'll ever be,' he grunted.
'Take his sword and give him the dagger and then take them down,' Eloraine told two of the guards who we're waiting nearby with some kind of harness.
The princess smiled at the young man. 'Good luck,' she said and turned away to talk to her brother and sister.
The guards approached Pettic and Cledo and began to strap on the harnesses. The dog objected both to himself being strapped in and to Pettic also. He growled at the guards as they approached.
'Down, Cledo,' Pettic said, and at that word, Cledo allowed himself to be strapped into the harness that was then attached to a guard. Pettic was likewise strapped to another guard.
Suddenly, a man came running from the city.
'Please wait,' he cried. 'My wife has just given birth to a groundling child. Can it go down at this descent?'
The guard took a crying bundle from the man and passed it to Pettic, and at a signal from Eloraine they launched themselves into the air off the side of the city.
Pettic took a deep breath. He heard Cledo whine but then all sound was drowned out by the rushing wind as they descended. The guard had his membranes outstretched and as Pettic was on his back. He could see little. A good thing from his point of view. He did not relish watching the ground rushing up towards them.
It only took a few minutes to reach the ground where the guards unbuckled the harnesses and Pettic and Cledo were free on solid ground.
'How are you going to get back?' Pettic asked the guards.
'Don't worry. They'll haul us up.'
Just then, Pettic became aware of two ropes dangling down from the city above. The guards clipped them to their harnesses and they were unceremoniously hauled up into the sky.
'Well, Cledo, lad, here we are. Our task is to find a village and survive. How will they know? What am I supposed to do with this baby though? I can't leave it here to die, but I have nothing to feed it with.'
As he said this, he noticed a glint as the sun reflected off something.
'Ah, I see. They have telescopes. That's how they'll follow us. But they won't be able to see everything, will they?'
Pettic looked around. They were near the summit of a mountain. A little higher up, snow lay thickly and a little lower down a forest grew. Where they were, between snow and trees, was bare. A few bits of grass struggled to survive in the meagre soil on the mountain, but it was mainly barren rock.
'I suppose any villages will be lower down,' Pettic reasoned, adjusting the baby in his arms.
It had stopped crying for the moment and was asleep.
'That's where we'll head for. Come on. Cledo. This doesn't seem too hard a task after all.'
Pettic spoke too soon, though. Just as they passed a group of loose rocks, something flew out and attacked them. Cledo leaped up and caught the creature just behind its head. His jaws crunched down and it was dead.
Pettic patted the dog. 'Thanks, Cledo. A good job we played all those games of catch on Fusionem.'
The young man then turned to look at what had attacked him.
It appeared to be a snake at first glance but it had wings and what appeared to be feathers, or feather-like scales. The feathers were brightly coloured like some birds, but its head, which was rather large, looked more snake-like, or even dragon-like. Around the head was a ruff that had been spread as the creature attacked.
'What on earth is it?' Pettic asked Cledo, but of course got no reply. He prised open its mouth and saw two large fangs that he had no doubt contained poison.
'Let's cut this head off and see if we can get at the poison sacs,' said Pettic, glad for the companionship of his dog. He thought he would have felt silly talking to himself, but talking aloud definitely made him feel better.
The head was difficult to cut off, but the dagger that Eloraine gave him was sharp and he eventually managed it. Then, with the point of the weapon he probed until he found what he thought were the poison sacs. He carefully cut them out and put them into his pack.
'They might just be useful,' he told the wolfhound. 'Now let's get going.'
Chapter 11
Eloraine and her siblings arrived in the tower in the city. As they entered the room at the top of the structure the chief magician turned to them.
'Did you give him the gem so we can follow his progress?'
'Yes. It's in the dagger I gave him. I had it sent down to the blacksmith in the village near here. He's mounted it in the hilt. Looks quite pretty, actually.'
The magician then turned to the others in the tower with him.
'Right, let's get the resonance going so we can track what he's doing.'
The other three magicians began to chant, and gradually a dot appeared on a map of the land below.
The chief magician picked up four telescopes. He handed one to each of the Royal children and kept one for himself. All four put them to their eyes and looked at Pettic.
Suddenly there was movement behind the young man on the ground and as he span round, his animal—dog he called it—leaped at the attacking creature and caught it behind its head. They could not hear the crunch of bones as the dog's jaws crunched down, but they saw the flying snake flop as it died.
They watched Pettic cut out the poison sacs and put them in his backpack.
Sixteen year old Prince Bramnor looked at his elder sister.
'That's clever. I'd not have thought a groundling would have thought of that.'
His younger sister, thirteen year old Princess Sprinkla, huffed.
'They aren't very clever, Bram, you know that. That's why they're down there working for us instead of enjoying their lives and having fun, like we do.'
'Perhaps this one's different,' mused Eloraine. 'Perhaps he is clever. Maybe he's not like the others.'
Sprinkla looked in amazement at her sister.
'You know groundlings aren't clever. Those born without a membrane can't fly, nor can they reason. That's a known fact. That's why any aerial who has a baby born without a membrane has to send it to the ground. For goodness sake. We've two brothers and a sister down there.'
Bramnor looked at her in disdain.
'We have no brothers and sisters who are groundlings. That's just not possible. Those born to mother were groundlings and not our siblings. We cannot have groundling siblings.'
'Will you two be quiet and watch what the groundling does. That's why we came up here,
not to argue,' snapped Eloraine as she turned away and back to her telescope
They watched as Pettic and Cledo began to go down towards the forest, then halt and turn back towards the top of the mountain.
Pettic had indeed decided to go up the mountain. It may be there was a village on the other side. He scanned the land on this side of the mountain and could see no sign of a village, or even any huts to show a possibility of people living there.
They entered the snow-covered part of the mountain. Here the going became difficult. Cledo, especially, found it tough as some of the drifts were almost to the top of his legs. After a time of this, Pettic paused.
'This is no good, Cledo. It'll take us too long to get over this snow. I'm also getting breathless. I think there isn't as much air here. The baby's getting cold too. We'd better go back down to where the snow finishes.'
Matching his actions to his words, Pettic turned and began the trek back downwards, but as he did so he moved diagonally so as to make some progress round the mountain.
A cliff barred his way and he had to move along it. Fortunately he could still continue his downward direction, but then the ground fell suddenly away and he had to turn towards the place where the aerials had left them. Still, the progress was steadily the mountain, so Pettic didn't worry too much about minor obstacles.
Once clear of the snow, Pettic began to move more quickly and soon arrived in the forest. It was beginning to get dark. Pettic had no idea what the season was here on this part of Aeris so had no idea whether it was early or late in the day. He decided they should rest for the night, however long or short it was.
Searching the forest, Pettic found some twigs, dead leaves and larger branches. He had to make a fire, but he had not been given anything to strike a spark with. He remembered that once, when he and Torren had gone off on an expedition, the other boy had made a kind of bow, which he used to start a fire.
Could he make a firebow from what he found in the forest?
Looking around, he spotted a yew tree. He remembered that yew was good for hunting bows. If he used that, he could make himself a bow and some arrows from other trees.
That would be useful. If he had to fight off other creatures, his dagger would not be too useful. He would have to get in too close. Even with Cledo's help it might not be enough. Still, first a firebow.
