The Azra-El Series Ch. 19

The resplendent tails of the Undine bobbed in and out of the water of the canals, their scales sparkling like precious stones. The adult Undine guided the manatee-driven cargo, while the younger ones zipped around on deliveries. A few played with angel children while some others took care of floating stalls. Everyone was busy.

Blaze spotted an angel from a sidewalk holler out to an Undine tending to one of the floating stalls and the Undine swiftly delivered her a packaged lunch.

The convoy flew towards the center of the city, which even the highest tides never reached. The "Heaven District" housed the rich and the nobility of D'Warka. A magnificent Victorian-like stone castle stood at the center, surrounded, but not quite hidden, by a lush green forest. A beautiful freshwater lake lay to its east.

As the carriages reached the threshold of dry land, the convoy came to a halt.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay with us, Jie Er? The Duchess of D'Warka has graciously provided us with a manor," Anastasia asked Jie Er.

"Thank you, Anastasia," Jie Er replied. "I prefer the anonymity of staying in the lower city. Besides, Blaze's friends shall be arriving tomorrow. I am sure he would prefer to hang out with them," she said, glancing at him.

"Wanna come with us, Ely?" Blaze poked his foot at Ely's.

"I wish. Unlike you, I do not have the luxury of opting out of having to meet and greet the important," Elyssa shook her head with a sigh. "I will come find you when I have the time."

"Well, call me if you get too fed up with the Caledonian nobility. I will abduct you in the middle of the night. How funny would it be to read the headlines 'The Blazing Fury kidnaps Elyssa Marigold'?"

"Please do."

"Do you want me to send someone to escort you, Jie Er?" Anastasia asked.

"No, that will defeat the purpose, but thank you."

Jie Er took Blaze into her arms as they stepped off the carriage. The convoy headed to the east side of the district, while Jie Er dove down towards one of the larger streets with a small wooden wharf reaching out into the water. A couple of gondolas were moored to the quay.

Both Jie Er and Blaze were wearing black wigs. Their faces were also touched up a little, just enough to enable them to blend into the crowd.

An Undine in a loincloth and a scaled fish-skin bikini lay lazing on one of the boats, under the shade of an umbrella. A tight netted skirt was wrapped around her thighs and over her loincloth.

As soon as Jie Er landed on the wharf, she opened her eyes and sat up straight.

"Istera! Welcome to D'Warka," she said, with a cheery smile. "Fifteen plats for a regular tour, twenty for a special."

"Istera" was the Caledonian equivalent of "madame". It was mainly used by those of lower statuses to address those of a higher status, and was unique to the society of Caledonia, though some of the nations influenced by its imperial past used it to a certain degree.

"We just wish to go to Hotel Valanor," Jie Er said, setting Blaze on his feet.

"Oh..."

"You can just give us directions if you don't want to drive us."

"Oh no, istera. It would be my pleasure to bring you there. Three plats."

"Tell you what," Jie Er smiled at her. "Come by the hotel around seven or eight, and you can take us around on a special tour. I hear the city is beautiful at night."

"It's a deal, istera," the Undine perked up, giving Blaze a hand as he got onto her boat. "The city is indeed very pretty at night. When the waters are calm and the traffic disappears, the malachite gleams under the moonlight and the stars sparkle over the water surface like precious gems."

Jie Er and Blaze settled down and the Undine jumped into the water. Pale blue energy wrapped around her legs and quickly formed into a long and beautiful fishtail. Perhaps it was because Blaze had grown accustomed to wings, but he found the mermaid's scales prettier than feathers.

Dragging a rope over her shoulder, the Undine pulled the boat through the channels of the lower city. With over half-a-million inhabitants, D'warka was one of the most populated cities of the Heavenly Union, and the lower city was a tightly-packed place.

However, the architecture of the place was exquisite. Sturdy-looking stone bridges arched over the canal, connecting the floating sidewalks made of wood. A variety of intricate carvings and statues made of alabaster lined the outside of the bridges and the roofs of the buildings. Spiral stone stairways rose from the water and up to the flat terraces. Every terrace had at least one clothesline, with colorful clothes left out to dry.

The gondolier pulled them to their destination in under ten minutes, not giving Blaze enough time to appreciate the city.

Hotel Valanor was not very large but it looked unfussy and comfortable. It was owned by the Aranyan merchant guild, and Jie Er had coordinated with Tara Maitreya to book a few rooms. Tara, Aahna, Bi, Rachel, and Kida were also set to stay at Hotel Valanor, but they were not due to arrive until the next day, along with Sky and everyone else from his academy.

Jie Er paid their boat driver, and an Undine standing by the door of the hotel politely invited them in.

"Brachel!" Blaze heard a shout as soon as he stepped inside. He quickly spotted Azalea rushing over to him.

A woman who bore some resemblance to Agatha, and Baozhai Rong, Azalea's adoptive mother, sat in the lounge in deep discussion, but when they saw Jie Er and Blaze, they stood up and quickly walked over to greet them.

"Brachel!" Azalea exclaimed again, taking his hands into hers. "Have you seen my new advertisement pamphlets? I never expected to become so famous! Now, even I must go around with my hair dyed. Can you imagine a young Mami Wata who is well-known amongst the angels?!"

Azalea's cyan hair was now dyed a light green, and she wore a simple silken white skirt and top. Her skirt was tightly held around her hips by a netted second layer.

"That's great! But you must know by now that my name is Blaze, Azalea," he sighed, "Not Brachel."

"I know that! But, are you not trying to be discreet?" she said, eyeing his black hair. However, Blaze had an inkling that Azalea just wanted to call him "Brachel" because she found it funny.

So, he rolled his eyes at her and turned to Medina. "Hello, Min Medina. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

Medina Agnes was Agatha's older sister. She was the real brains behind the The Blazing Furies company, while Baozhai Rong was the primary investor. She was shorter and leaner than Agatha but had the same purple hair. Her face was also narrower and shrewder than Agatha's.

"The pleasure is mine, Ms. Blaze. Welcome to D'Warka, Ms. Jie Er. Agatha called us this morning to notify us of your arrival. We have been waiting. Do you wish to have some lunch?"

Agatha was still in Varan, preparing a shipment for the new store they were to open in D'Warka. She was going to arrive in a few days, along with the shipment, while Medina and Baozhai arrived early to work on the advertising side of things.

Blaze and Jie Er had a quick lunch with the three of them, before they were shown to their room. Tara had managed to book four rooms on the same floor. Medina and Baozhai took their leave, while Azalea stayed back to hang out with Blaze.

After three continuous days of travel, Jie Er wished for a comfortable nap, so the two younger angels decided to head out into town on their own.

"Want to go for a swim, Brachel?" Azalea asked, after Blaze freshened up and swapped his clothes for a pair of silken swim trunks and shirt.

"I won't be able to keep up with you in water, Az. How about a boat ride?"

"You can ride on my back. It will be faster, easier, and more fun."

"Is that alright? Seems a bit disrespectful," he wondered.

"It is fine if it is a child or a wingless angel," she said, brushing his concerns aside as she ushered him out of the hotel. As soon as they stepped out, she hopped off the sidewalk and into the water.

It was almost as if she was always itching to be inside the water. Plucking out another vagina clip from under her skirt, she adjusted her skirt and began to manifest her tail. The clip reminded Blaze of the one he had in his space ring, but he did not bring it up. It was his, now.

Azalea's long hair was like a cloak over her back as it hid the cyan scales of her butt that bobbed up and over the surface, as she held onto the edge of the sidewalk with her hands.

Turning around against the wood, she patted her back cheerily, "Get on board, sailor."

"What are you, a boat?" Blaze chuckled. Azalea seemed to possess a child-like sense of humor that was not unlike his own.

"Nope, I am a ship," she responded. "SS. Az. The fastest clipper in the Purple Sea. No, the entire world! Get on before this ship decides to leave you stranded!"

Blaze glanced around to see if anyone was watching, but it seemed like no one cared about their antics.

Most residents of D'Warka wore hats to protect their heads from the hot tropical sun. An Undine selling fruit nearby was wearing a straw hat with a wide rim, and it reminded Blaze of Lynn and the hat he had swiped from her.

"Do you have a hat?" he asked Azalea.

"I think so. Let me check," she said, touching her space ring and sending her energy into it. Space rings were pricey objects, and Azalea had not possessed one when they had met at Puhar. Things seemed to have changed since then.

"I have this," Azalea said, pulling out a brown wide-brimmed hat with a little purple flower stitched into the side.

Blaze grabbed it from her and placed it on his head. "This is mines, now," he snickered.

"Hey! Stop stealing my stuff," she laughed, shaking her head.

"Hehe."

Sitting down on the wharf, Blaze slipped into the water and onto Azalea's back, wrapping his arms around her neck. "How can a ship set sail without its captain?" he asked, jokingly, wondering whether he might find a better grip if he lowered his hands a little.

"SS. Az needs no captain. Captain needs SS. Az."

Azalea's entire body was so smooth that water droplets rolled off her frictionless skin like little balls. Remembering how fast she could swim, Blaze decided he needed to find a good place to hold on to. Her breasts seemed tantalizing, but he decided against it. He wrapped his legs around her hips and held her bony wide shoulders, as he sat against her lower back.

Her upper body was steady over the water, but his butt could feel the powerful strokes of her tail that kept them afloat. "Let's go, shippy," he patted her shoulder.

"It is SS. Az," Azalea said in mock seriousness. "Get it right. Ships take offense to being called "shippy" or "boaty". Anyway, where do you want to go?"

"My apologies, SS. Az. Please enlighten me about all the great places of D'Warka!"

"Well... we could go to the entertainment district. They have museums, the Opera House, art places, and such, if you are into that sort of thing. There are also the water parks, but those can be a little expensive. The commercial district has some nice restaurants... I could also just show you the docks and take you around the port."

Blaze mused over her suggestions, but none of them seemed grand enough for a Mami Wata ride. "How about you take me somewhere only a merangel can go?"

"Ooh, okay. I think I know just the place. But first, do you mind if we meet up with some of my friends? I promised to meet them after lunch," she said with a downward stroke of her tail that propelled them forward.

"Sure."

As Azalea zipped through the canals, she weaved between the transport boats and other Undine in the water. The canals of D'Warka were busy places with a lot of traffic, but Azalea was adept at navigating them, squeezing between the narrower gaps and rushing through the larger ones.

"How do you have friends in D'Warka? I thought you were from Alkebulan?" Blaze asked, trying to get used to riding a mermaid. It was nothing like a Pegasus. The body of a Pegasus was usually stable once they began soaring in the air. Even the occasional flap of a Pegasus' wings caused little disturbance to its rider.

However, water was a lot denser than air, and mermaids used their entire bodies to move through it. Moreover, the lack of a solid surface under them made it hard to get used to the movements. Blaze had to press his thighs against Azalea's hip and tightly hold on to her shoulders to keep himself from being thrown off. However, it was a thrill, though the thought of her scaled butt hitting against his made things a bit more complicated than necessary.

"I was from Alkebulan. I came here with my hatch mother when she came looking to make some money. We lived here for 15 years before she passed away from an accident at the port."

"I am sorry..."

"I was an orphan in the south shanty for five years before mother picked me up. So, I know a lot of Undine from my time in the shanty. We are going there to meet up with them. I must warn you though, the south shanty is not a pretty place."

"What do you mean?

"You will know once we get there."

Azalea swam through the water with the agility of an eel. She curved around the larger boats and avoided the smaller ones with nimble movements that seemed impossible for a normal swimmer. She even used some of the larger boats as leverage to turn around corners, gripping them to push herself and divert her momentum in the direction she required.

Azalea mainly used the side streets to race across the city. The primary canals were deeper and wider, but the secondary ones had less traffic, which allowed her to swim faster. She traveled south-east, giving Blaze glimpses of the dockyard filled with hundreds of fishing boats and merchant ships, the waterproofed elevated warehouses, the colorful merchant quarters housing a diverse group of angels, and the dreary and loud industrial district.

As the water level got higher, the smell of sea salt, fish, and seaweed began to grow heavier. Azalea turned north-east at the beginning of the port block and swam down south-east through the east industrial district. Finally, they burst across a layer of foam and entered the south shanty.

Immediately, the pungent smell of rotting fish and seaweed hit Blaze like a wet rag. Having grown accustomed to the usually pollution-free, pleasant-smelling air of Azra-El, the sudden odor made him feel dizzy and nauseous.

The shanty was a grubby and tightly-packed place. Hundreds of elevated shacks on wooden poles stood over small cordoned-off blocks that served as pens for aquaculture.

Young Undine kids played around while keeping an eye on their fish, crustaceans, and mollusks, protecting them from the annoying seagulls. Seagulls, it seemed, were the same in any world. The diet of merangels was heavily comprised of crustaceans and mollusks, but they did not eat fish. Angels ate fish.

White-bellied sea eagles soared the skies above the shanty, and above them flew a couple of pelagorns —gigantic albatrosses of Azra-El— whose bodies were almost the size of an adult angel.

"Like the smell?" Az teased him, as she swam through the narrow gaps between the shacks. The shanties did not have streets, just awkward gaps that the inhabitants learned to navigate.

"Nothing I can't get used to," he replied, noticing the slightly apologetic tone in her voice. He looked around and found that the only sentient beings in the shanty were the Undine.

Realization slowly struck him. The Undine were labor! They weren't exactly living in harmony with the angels of D'warka, as he had presumed.

"Are the Undine enslaved?" he asked, in trepidation. Though he realized that not all angels were nice, slavery was not something he could accept.

"Of course not! Don't be silly. Where do you think we are? The Hela Empire?!" she said, sounding a little offended.

"Then, why do they choose to live here? They are mermaids! Isn't there a vast sea out there? They could live anywhere they wanted!"

The shanty wasn't as bad as the slums of Earth, but Blaze couldn't imagine anyone willingly living in it.

"Huh?" she said, taking a moment to answer. "Are you really so naïve? Do you not go to one of the best academies of Azra-El?"

Blaze was irked at being called naïve, but he couldn't deny his ignorance. "I-I don't really understand this..."

Azalea sighed. "It's alright. I guess you have lived a sheltered life. I do not know how to explain it either. There are so many reasons.

"For some, this is their home. Others are simply here to make money like my mother did. The wage of a laborer is meagre, but it can be saved up. I am not saying their life is great, but it is a civilized life. It is better than living out in the wild sea like a beast. Besides, most of the Undine I know do not plan on living here forever. They are here to make some quick money and go back to their hometowns. The only problem is that the quest for more is never-ending..."

"Hmm...," he mused over her words. "Do all the Undine live here?"

"Most of them. Some of the higher paid ones move into the north shanty. There are a few even in District C, but I don't think there is a single merangel in D'Warka who can afford to live in the higher districts. I don't count, as my wealth is my mother's, and she is an angel."

"Are the Undine paid the same as the angels?"

"No... but it makes sense because the angels can fly."

"But the mermaids are stronger, aren't they?"

"So is a manatee," she shrugged, before muttering something inaudible under her breath.

Blaze tried to make sense of it all. The hardship of the Undine made some sense in a purely economic perspective. Food for example was not easy to obtain-- angels needed special food. It was one of the reasons why the sentient population of Azra-El was so small compared to the size of the land.

Just like not all vegetation was edible for angels, not all creatures were edible, either. It was one of the first things he had learned in Tir's biology classes. The vegetables, fruits, and even meat that he was eating was not normal. For example, a regular chicken was as edible to an Angel as grass was to humans.

He hadn't thought much of it before since everything about Azra-El was fantastical in his mind, but now he realized that everything had real ramifications. Life was never easy. The more power one had, the more one needed to sustain it - time and effort.

However, the inequality between the angels and the merangels was hard to digest, especially as he did not wish to let go of his utopian view of the angels, despite having been exposed to the darker side of things.

"Azalea!" a yell brought Blaze out of his contemplation.

An Undine with cyan hair like Azalea's original hair was sitting along the edge of a deck, her long Undine legs dangling off the deck while she waved her arm at them. Three Undine and a pelagorn sat by her side. The pelagorn was huddled up beside her like a duck, lazily dozing in the sun. Its body was white like the clouds, but its wings were a deep blackish-purple.

All four Undine were around Azalea's age.

Azalea quickly swam over to the shack.

"Hiya, Bayou, guys," she said to the Undine. "This is Brachel. I am planning to take her to the Mid-Way Reef. Want to come?"

"Of course. We took the day off to spend time with you," the cyan-haired angel responded, jumping into the water along with the other three. The water splashed all over Blaze and his hair. He didn't mind it too much as he couldn't possibly get any wetter than he already was.