บท 9: Sector Jumping
After absorbing a few dozen pieces of chalk, Nathan reluctantly exited the shop. Well, perhaps exited wasn't the right word. Really, he was escorted out by Selene, who was currently holding his right ear in a vice grip.
"Come on, you've had enough," Selene said, sounding rather irritated.
"Easy, easy, easy," Nathan said. He followed closely beside her, slouching down to her level. He happened to like his ear quite a bit and felt a desperate need to preserve it.
"Don't 'easy, easy, easy' me. You blew through two months of my savings on first-order chalk, then you wanted to look through the higher-order sections. What, do you think I'm made of talons or something?"
"Well, no, I just — "
She tugged on his ear, eliciting a hiss from him. "You just what? Just figured you could take advantage of me because I wanted to tag along with you? Well, that ain't happening, pal. Hope you're full, because first-order chalk was the only thing on the menu."
"Yes, very full, very full. Please let go of my ear now."
Selene released his ear and gave him a stern look. "I want answers. Real ones this time. Who are you and why are you going to the Cathedral? And if you tell me one more time that your name is Marty and you're going to clean the windows, I'll punch the chalk out of you, got it?"
"Got it. Don't get mad when I tell you the truth, though."
"We'll see what happens."
"Alright. My name's Nathan. Yeah, that one. This guy named Montel — some bigwig at the Church — told me to go to the Cathedral and find a woman named Ember. We were traveling together, but then those avatars showed up and tried to kill us. He held them off while I ran, turned into that big purple monk and started brawling with them."
Selene grinned. "I knew it. I knew you were Nathan. No way somebody doesn't know how to get to the Cathedral unless they're from another world. And the way you made that glyph and how you're dressed — I just knew it."
"Is that why you wanted to come with me?"
"Life's pretty boring in this place. If I see something interesting, I tend to chase after it. And you happen to be the most interesting thing anyone's seen in the past thousand years. Don't get a big head about it, though."
Nathan searched her face for clues. There was something else hiding behind her goggled eyes — something she was after. And she seemed like the type to do some questionable things to get what she wanted. Morally gray was the right description.
"I'll try not to," he said. "Thanks for the chalk, by the way. I feel like I could make a glyph big enough to cover the Ring right now."
"Don't sweat it. Well, maybe sweat it a little. It did cost a nice bit of coin, after all."
"Montel said the Cathedral was in the center of the Ring, pretty close to the Forge. How far is that from here?"
She pointed a finger. "About eight miles in that direction. If we take the Hop, we could make it there in a few minutes. Since you've got guys like Avery and the Butcher after you, though, we should probably just stick to walking. We can hit the zips when we reach the next sector; I don't trust the ones here."
"Zips. Great." Nathan flung his hand forward. "Lead the way."
Selene led him through the Rums, giving him a rundown of everything she thought was important. The Rums was just another name for Sector B. Every sector had its own nickname — except Sector Z, for reasons she glossed over — that fit its characteristics. The sector they had teleported from, Sector A, was called the Sweeps because lots of sweepers lived in it; they enjoyed its close proximity to the gate.
The Rums was the great tumor that stuck to the Ring — a melting pot of dissolution and debauchery. It earned its nickname through the absurd number of bars, grogshops, speakeasies, pubs, taverns, and cantinas within its confines. Clubs and dance joints were another common sight, as were seedy hotels and large, crowded tenements. It was a fantasy Las Vegas, with petty crime cranked up to the max.
"See that?" Selene asked, pointing to a large, windowless building. "Gianni's hack den — only one the Keepers don't even try to shut down."
"What's — " Nathan stopped himself. "Never mind, I don't want to know."
"Hack is this brown stuff you mix with mutt milk. They call it hack because when you drink it, you start hacking blood up. Big chunks of your esophagus too. Really good lift, though; makes you feel like you're flying."
Nathan sighed. "Thanks, Selene. When I take the pop quiz on illicit substances, I'll pass because of you. Maybe you could tell me something useful next."
"That is useful. But fine, what do you want to know?"
"What's riftset? A sweeper I met mentioned it before. Didn't get the chance to ask him about it, though."
"Well, do you know what rifts are? They're giant portals that let monsters cross over from the Void into our world. They open at riftrise and close at riftset — different times every day. They're the reason we can't live above ground. Guardians keep monsters from filling up the city, but even they can only do so much."
They were walking through a particularly dumpy part of the Rums, where trash covered every inch of the street rather than every other inch. Businesses got seedier, lights got scarcer, and people got weirder. Buildings were little more than ruins, all short because their upper stories had collapsed. The few ones in decent condition were inhabited by pale and emaciated skeletons, too warped in form to be called human. They stared at Nathan and Selene with envious, sunken eyes as they passed.
"So these Guardians go up to the city and kill monsters?" Nathan asked, doing his best to act casual. He may have gotten superpowers, but they weren't exactly fit for fighting crazed addicts, of which there were many in the area.
"Every day. And afterward, sweepers go through and snatch up monster cores and any other goodies they find. Keeps the forge running and the chalkmakers in business."
"Got it. And what about — "
One of the skeletons walked toward them, hobbling on a pair of twisted, bony legs. He looked like the sort of creature that might be sentenced to live in a dungeon for all his life, just so others could be spared from seeing his ghastly form.
"What is that thing?" Nathan whispered, inching closer to Selene. "Should I teleport us out of here?"
"No, he's just a duster. Harmless as a cupmouse. Probably just wants to sell us some junk," Selene whispered back.
The duster came up to them with a sinister smile, revealing his three yellow teeth and rotted gums. Up close, he was even more horrific. Bony and hunchbacked, with only moldy rags to hide his bleached skin and just a few thin strands of hair on his red, scabby scalp. His ungoggled eyes were as black as the starless night sky, like those of the husks, and seemed to harbor no life within them. He raised a gnarled hand at Nathan and licked his gray lips.
Nathan prepared himself for some great batch of wisdom to exit the man's mouth. That, or a swarm of locusts.
"He sees you, chosen of the Ancients," he said in his shredded gasp of a voice. "The King knows all who trespass in his kingdom. Soon, you will be his. The world will be his."
Nathan nodded. "Right. That's — that's real nice, thank you. I think I really needed to hear that."
The duster wheezed, and his eyes became human again, desperate, bloodshot and black only in the pupil. "Hurry, Nathan. Hurry before it's too late."
"What do you mean? Too late for what?"
"The rifts will flood the world. Destroy the Aspects before they — " The duster screamed and fell backwards onto the trashed street, thrashing and kicking his legs like he was on fire. A few seconds into his breakdown, he went quiet and limp.
Nathan stepped back and stared. It was his first time witnessing a man have a psychotic episode after delivering a very frightening and cryptic prophecy, so he was understandably a little distressed.
"Well, I'm going to have nightmares tonight," Selene said. "Let's keep moving. Not a good idea to stand around in a place like this."
They saw Sector F after another fifteen minutes or so of walking. Its tall buildings looked to be well-lit and in good condition, especially when compared to the ones in the Rums. The streets became cleaner and more populated as they came nearer to it, and the air lost the stench of decay and garbage.
It was refreshing, to say the least.
"I still don't get it," Nathan said.
Selene groaned. "For the hundredth time, Nathan — it just feels good. It's like eating donuts. You know what donuts are, right?"
"Donuts don't turn me into a monster and put me under the control of a malevolent god."
"It's the same concept, though. Huffing the dust feels so good that dusters disregard the consequences. Just like how we eat donuts even though it makes us fat."
"No, I still don't get it. Ground up monster cores — really? I'd rather do hack." Nathan shook his head. "Well, what about the stuff he said? Was any of it true?"
"How should I know?" Selene kicked a can in the road. "Never heard a duster talk like that, but I don't really hang around them much. Sounded pretty accurate, though. I mean, the prophecy does say that you have to defeat the Aspects."
"Not exactly looking forward to that."
"I wouldn't be either." She stopped and pointed. "See that building right there? It's on a zip network that'll get us to the next sector in just a few minutes."
Nathan frowned. "Well, walking isn't so bad, right?"
"Weren't you in a rush to get to the Cathedral? If we don't take the zips, we'll be walking until riftrise. I mean, unless you want to use up all your magic to teleport us there."
"Zips it is."
They gained access to the building's roof through a rise glyph in the lobby. According to Selene, most of the larger buildings in the Ring had tellies on their first and top floors for easy access to zips and the streets. An expansive elevator system would be too expensive to maintain, so only the fanciest places had more than two. Even fewer had ones for every single floor.
"Would you just go already," Selene said, clearly exasperated with his stalling.
"Yeah, yeah, cool your jets."
Nathan rechecked his harness a seventh time. There was something frightening about being suspended several hundred feet in the air by nothing but a worn cable and a raggedy harness, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. He took a deep breath then began his rapid swoop down the line, shooting through a stretch of the sector like a swerving bullet. His landing didn't result in any bodily injury, but it was objectively unimpressive.
It took dozens of zips for them to make it through the whole of Sector F. The worst were the ones with lines that ran from shorter to taller buildings and required a boost from a glyph to properly scale. Those tended to go just a tad too quickly for Nathan's liking.
"The hero of Aradon, scared of zips." Selene gave him a smile that was anything but genial. "Wait till I tell everyone."
"Less mocking, more telling me what I'm looking at."
They stood on the roof of some fancy hotel, looking down at a sea of buildings. Their designs weren't exactly novel — same cracked stone walls and flat roofs as everywhere else — but they were packed so tightly together that Nathan had to wonder how people got around them. The streets running between them were more like alleyways, forming a cramped labyrinth that seemed impossible to navigate.
"What you're looking at is Sector I — the Crams. Bet you can guess why we call it that. About half of the Ring's population lives in this dump, shoulder to shoulder in tiny rooms, five to a bed and sharing dirty bathrooms. Pretty terrible."
"And I thought the Rums was bad."
"Oh, it is. The Crams might be a little crowded, but you at least you won't get stabbed just walking down the street. Sure, you've got some gangs and criminals here, but they're not as bad as the ones in the Rums. Definitely not as bad as the ones in the Locks."
"The Locks?"
"That's where all the Ring's criminals go. Not the nicest place to be, trust me." She harnessed herself to the zip. "Now let's hurry and get to Sector J before people start getting back from work. The zips are already starting to get a little crowded."
She zipped down toward the Crams.
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