The rain burns off into a light mist before it reaches this low in the city, but it brings an insistent damp just the same. The light shatters and fragments from the thick air and slick surfaces, and the streets and alleyways close in on themselves.

Moreso than either above or below, the city is a maze at ground level, and it is easy to spot someone out of place by how often they pause at intersections or gaze upwards looking for some sign of their place in the greater scheme of things. Those who are from here know their place well, and know that, though the city above is built on these foundations, it bears little resemblance to its roots.

In a large, deep, hollow in the lee of the western slope the forest grudgingly gives ground to a lake with a surface like dark glass, ringed on all sides and loomed over above by ancient sprawling trees. Figs and banyans and more besides stretch branches overhead, daring no more trespass than the occasional twig or leaf or fruit dropped to join the litter on the lake’s shore or to disturb briefly its glassy surface. The lake is just large enough to earn the name, but no larger, and the same could be said of the island at its center – the only place in the clearing free of fallen leaves, and the only place in the whole forest where one can stand directly, unobstructedly, beneath the sky.

Architecture holds power. It is not a new theory, of course. One only needs to look to the pyramids, or Stonehenge, to see that. But we have come a long way since then. Monolithic sigils are so ancient-world. We have been scribing entire spells and power-circles for centuries – the canals of Venice, the alleyways of Florence, the streets of London. (That one is of particular note, I feel, as it has been edited and rewritten so many times.) The one that still floors me to this day, however, is the subway and metro lines of Tokyo. Written in half a dozen hands, charm upon ritual scrawled chaotically with a meticulous rigor. I have traced its tracks – ridden circle lines and express trains and rush hour locals – but I am only just beginning to understand its meaning and its purpose.

The city crouched fiercely in the shade of the great mountain, a small but welcome respite from the glaring heat of the desert. Deep in caves below basements and storehouses, cool springs bubbled forth, the lifeblood that had allowed the inhabitants to carve out an oasis here in this hostile environment. They fed ponds and fountains and parks and orchards. Down below, at the source, remnants persisted of a city older still. Older than street and stone, older than hearth or history. Older even than the mountain above. This is the story of the city, and how it sank from memory and rose again. It is the story of the mountain, and how it came to be.

The trail crested one final saddle before plunging back down toward the desert floor, spreading the river valley out below them in the last light of full day. There were a few sighs and low whistles from the folk following – it was the first green they’d seen in near a week that wasn’t some cactus or other. Hell it was more green than some of the youngest had seen their whole lives. Of course, most were here for the gold, not the green. There promised to be a lot of it, too. As he read the strata laid out on hillside and canyon below he was sore tempted to stake a claim himself when they reached the valley floor, but there was something far more valuable to him than gold buried here. And he meant to find it.

For all the crazy excess and excitement in her life, it was the days like this that she lived for. The dusk came down like a curtain, sheathed in rain and all a-glimmer sequined with street lights and lanterns. Out there in the darkness beyond, the old forest hulked and threatened and beckoned. It felt, as always, as though the rain and the dark washed away the semblance of ordinary that the forest had clothed itself in to escape unwanted attention in this magic-bereft age. In there somewhere the old 神 still ruled – she was sure of it. She was counting on it.