The Land Beyond The Clouds

The night is still and silent. Moonless, cloudless. The cold light of a billion distant stars reflects from the ocean's mirrored surface as it has every night since time immemorial... but hark!

It begins... with a rumble, like distant thunder...

A faint point of purple light appears high over the waters. There is a fizz, a crackle. The glow grows brighter. A bolt of purple lightning arcs down towards the ocean's surface. It is but the first of many.

Gaining strength and brightness, the nebulous glowing mass of energy increases, casting its lightning in all directions. The sea below begins to roil, reflecting the unnatural purple light, as columns of steam erupt from the strike of every powerful bolt.

A wind arises, the air seemingly fleeing with a tortured howl to all points of the compass from the expanding, blazing cloud.

As the radiant mantle reaches its greatest extent - over a hundred miles across now - a shadow becomes apparent at its heart. Mass begins to take shape within the billowing brilliance.

The purple light fades, revealing an impossible object, vast and circular, suspended in the air. An ethereal yellow lustre shines across its rough underside, like inverted mountains fashioned from molten amber. The final forks of lightning tumble from the rim.

A sound - felt as much as heard, like the clarion call of a million monstrous trumpets - rings out, sending a widening halo of waves racing away across the ocean's surface towards the horizon in all directions.

Every acre of the upper surface is covered with beautiful domed buildings and towering minarets. None stand prouder than the glorious palace at the very centre. The many windows, illuminated with an abundance of scintillating lights of all colours, glitter like the treasures of a god. Merry music echoes from every corner and drifts out across the recovering sea. Like radiant roads of heaven, great beams of white light lance out from multiple buildings, probing the night sky left and right, showing all to be clear. A mighty cheer rises from the jubilant crowds thronging the avenues and alleyways, parks and gardens, open plazas and marketplaces across the island. They have achieved the impossible once again. As with every time before, the voyage has concluded successfully...

Lehpuhrta - the Land Beyond the Clouds - found in the myths of the earliest cultures of innumerable worlds, has arrived!