Epsilon Twilight

38. Heart

As night came, Aloe left into the mantle of the stars again but now armed with the foresight of knowledge. There were cotton fields around the World Tree a few kilometers away from it as those were the most fertile lands of Ydaz. And people were crazy about Cottonpull. If anything could have it inside, they would put it in. Not only did it make ...

37. Questioning

After she gave up on breaching into the palace of Sadina, they returned to their hotel room, not before having a rather expensive dinner at the hotel's restaurant. The effects of the Radiating Undergrowth that she had fed the boy had finally faded, and she didn't want to give it again to him after she saw how much he enjoyed eating.

Once t...

36. Cracks

As well-behaved of a child as Xochipilli was, he was clearly still a child as he struggled greatly against the cold shower. He even switched to toughness to withstand it, and the water was nowhere near those levels of frigidness, but Aloe didn't make much fuss out of it and just bathed the boy.

Her body had already dried before she could g...

35. Hammam

Aloe smiled at Xochipilli's delighted expression. Yet another person converted to the greatness of the durum. Poor are the souls that spend their lives without trying one.

The child eagerly devoured his, but as she had to be careful not to stain her dress, she was way slower to take on her meal. The durum didn't fill her stomach, ...

34. Hometown

"So, you lived here?" Xochipilli asked completely unbeknownst to the battle occurring in Aloe's head.

There was something awe-inspiring in the sheer height they found themselves at, but above all else, an intimidating pressure. People were never supposed to be this high up, yet as Aloe stood unfazed, a goddess with the sun and the heavens ...

33. Height

There was one key reason why Aloe wanted to rent the room in this hotel for a night: the elevator. That was what they called those rising platforms, and Aloe had to give them to them, those things were elevators. There just wasn't a better name for them.

The hotel had the name of 'Highrise' and it wasn't an exaggeration as it had a total o...

32. Sadina

No matter from what angle Aloe looked at it, the colossal tree covering much of the skyline was the Na'mul Ter'nar, the blue tree that Karaim had evolved whilst he was still alive, with its unnatural spring-shaped and ashen trunk.

Everything was in flames when I left… Aloe reminisced about that fateful night when her Uncle Jafar...

31. Pharmaceutical

Zayn Gerges opened the door to the balcony of his office. The wind was quite potent this high up, but he liked that. Not only was living this high up a symbol of his status and power, but he also enjoyed heights. He would like to climb the World Tree in Sadina for the experience alone, but alas, dryads were a zealous bunch, and they didn't allow...

30. Evergreen

Xochipilli fell asleep after eating, and Aloe didn't have the heart to make him study more, so he left him to rest. She could have explored the train in the meanwhile, but she didn't trust people to leave his disciple alone, nor exploration would have granted her any insight into the train. They had already gone from head to tail and there wasn'...

29. Restaurant

The best answer to the ticket examiner's question was silence. But as she continued walking down the train and the man followed them, she answered him with a noncommittal "It was the first time I saw another person doing such technique," which the man accepted and stopped pestering her and Xochipilli.

Once they were alone on the t...

28. Thousand

"They are legion!" A cultivator shouted with wariness as the dust dissipated and allowed them to see the magnitude of the stampede.

"It's a weird feeling, really," Aloe mused to herself back in the safety of the train.

"What's a weird feeling, Aloe?" Xochipilli asked at her sight, still holding her hand.

"Did I say that aloud?"...

27. Stampede

It was hard to focus on the sounds whilst the rumbling of the railways, the whistle of the train, the thrumming of the engine, and the song of the sands blasted on her ears, but nonetheless, Aloe heard something treading through the dunes before she saw them. It didn't matter if she had heard them or not, she could feel them. Feel their thirst f...

26. Familiar

The train had a restaurant car, but as Xochipilli still was under the influence of the Radiating Undergrowth and had eaten quite a handful of pastries, hunger avoided him. As soon as the sun started to descend on the horizon, they made their way to the bed cars. The child fell asleep soon, but the night wasn't as simple for Aloe.

Not only ...

25. Train

Aloe had completely underestimated the capacity of the train. There had been a lot of people on the platform so she thought the insides of the train would be no different from a jar of beans with everyone pressed against one another. But surprisingly enough, the train was rather empty. She closed her parasol and hung it from her forearm.

A...

24. Station

Xochipilli took a while to wake up, so Aloe bought some pastries from a nearby bakery and asked for some directions. Especially about this 'train'.

Unfortunately for the boy when he finally woke up, the pastries were cold. Not because he took that long to wake up, but because they were from yesterday. Even in this modern era bakeries could...

23. Freedom

"Oh, great heavens!" Aloe groaned and twirled in desperation. "How awful! I've never felt this soiled before! And I have worked the earth for centuries!" She gagged. "Ugh, I feel the bile coming up again."

The vegetable human did her best to keep her insides… inside.

"I haven't touched anything, but I feel so… dirty. Also, I shou...

22. Emerald

Beholden and trapped, Jawad had never felt more alive in his life. A whimper left his mouth as the incarnation of beauty sat on his lap. He wanted to struggle, to feel such a divine body, but the ebony goddess had him locked. Her thighs, so powerful yet malleable, had him in the greatest of yokes.

"Answers first, pleasure later," she sang ...

21. Infiltration

Xochipilli proved quite a capable druid. He had no problem evolving Cure Grass, but at the same time, neither had she when she had originally evolved them. The evolved grass didn't require much vitality, so it made for better practice than Flourishing Springs. Aloe was still ashamed of having committed that mistake. She was so used to vitality b...

20. Druid

It was a bit embarrassing to admit how much time they dedicated to thinking of names for their current status. Not that they had much to do as they had to wait for Xochipilli to recover his vitality. Aloe wanted to offer him some vitality pills, or rather her vitality pills as now such things did exist, but the ones that she had stored ...

19. Evolution

Aloe wasn't a good teacher. She was well aware of that, and it didn't bother her. She had never taught anything, after all. To put her ideas into perspective, she essentially paraphrased Karaim's old teachings from his cultivation technique. It wasn't difficult reciting the booklet word for word even after so many years as she had read it many, ...

18. Practice

It would be a lie if she didn't state how outrageous the prices of the café were, but at the same time, they had also eaten enough pastries to fill a sultanzade's chamber and were also of the quality of imperial cuisine, so Aloe wasn't that mad.

A good exchange, one could say.

Xochipilli ended up falling asleep by the ...

17. Café

The streets of Selen were lovely, and even if the early marvel of her first impression had already worn off, Aloe was still enchanted by the sights. Even though she had experienced years on the chasm, the outside world had changed far faster than her.

Instead of finding that oppressive, she was ecstatic.

The old world had been a sour...

16. Haya

A pregnant silence overtook the room as Xochipilli's words lingered. The boy himself looked around as if he had been wrong, that his eyes had betrayed him. But sure enough, with the dilation of his pupils, she was able to guess he was seeing the clerk's vitality and also the pill's; but when he went back to looking at Aloe, he saw nothing at all...

15. Pills

With nothing more left to do in the bank, Aloe and Xochipilli followed the newspaper boy's directions to the shop selling pills. The shop ended up being in one of the poorer neighborhoods of the city center, that was to say: not really poor, but not quite extravagant either.

As Aloe pushed the door to the shop open, a bell greeted them. Sh...

14. Bank

Aloe felt as if she was swimming in clouds as she waltzed across the streets. Parasol in one hand, Xochipilli in the other. The child was pouting since she had talked with the newspaper-selling boy, but the boy himself failed to realize that, and that greatly amused her.

Cottonpull clothes were genuinely fantastic; not only did they weigh ...

13. Casual

Xochipilli woke up as the sunlight filtering through the windows hit him right on the face. The young boy grunted and covered his eyes with his arm as he struggled against the sheets. It took him a solid minute before he managed to get out of bed.

"You are finally awake, huh?" The goddess inquired over from the sofa, her voice but the swee...

12. Urban

By the time they left the tailor's shop, it was already dark. The sight of the city at night was quite mystical, for it almost didn't feel like it was night. The ever-present lamplights littered across the streets illuminated everything already, but somehow, every window from every building was also emitting light.

Aloe could understand th...

11. Beautiful

Aloe waited patiently in the dressing room, which was almost as big but certainly more decorated than the slaver's room-house. How weird it must be living in rooms instead of houses with all these tall buildings. She was forming an idea of how buildings had become this tall, but she wanted someone to answer her doubts about it rather th...

10. Tailor

As much as she hated asking for directions from what proved to be a human trafficker, Aloe was in dire need of clothing. And only the truest epitome of garbage would give a lady the wrong direction to a tailor.

Even if the top hat man's directions were quite clear, it took her and Xochipilli a bit of help from the locals as Selen had becom...

9. Pawn

"T-two… centuries…" Aloe started hyperventilating. Her hands trembled, her vision became blurry, her throat hurt, her heart burned.

You should have known, she blamed herself. Of course, society can't advance this fast in only a couple of decades. But a couple of centuries…

Her jaws hung down, her mout...