Jacob crept along the crystal ground. The valley led out to a long, narrow pass. Green lights shimmered along the walls. Up ahead, the skyscraper crystals loomed. The flying creature circling them had disappeared, but he could hear chirrups and buzzes and insectoid clicks coming from all around.
He'd done it and had followed the rogue mage and it hadn't been so bad and now he was moving and felt better. He almost wanted a confrontation and he couldn't fathom a logical reason why. It would just be like a release. Like jumping into a swimming pool despite the fact it was cold, but at least you had done it.
A rainbow striped ferret the size of a big dog slithered across the pass. Jacob threw himself back into an alcove. The ferret perked up, rubbing its silver-clawed hands together, its bushy, radar-dish ears flicking back and forth.
Jacob held his breath and tried to get a handle on his magic.
The ferret twitched the other direction, then scurried into a crack in the passage walls.
Jacob waited for what seemed like forever, then crept forward. He couldn't just focus on the rogue mage and forget about the dangerous fauna here. It wasn't a zoo, for Chrissakes.
As he crept along, keeping an eye on any nooks and crannies and little cracks in the crystal, he flip-flopped between thinking he'd lost his marbles since being left here and trying to not think about what he was doing. Mom and dad would kill me kept scrolling through his head like the credits at the end of a movie. A couple times he had to stop because he was panicking that he was following this lunatic, but it always died down and he came back to the inevitable conclusion that this was the only thing he could do.
The pass opened into an avenue lined with the enormous crystal skyscrapers he had seen from afar. It was eerily silent here, as if all the life had vanished. Whether it was the rogue mage's presence or the proximity to the centre of the crystal plain he didn't know. What he did know was that there was something in the centre of those skyscrapers. A buzzing along his sensation that grew as he neared. Once he passed a small charred husk of some sort, no doubt the work of the rogue mage, but he gave it a wide berth and hurried on.
Then the cluster of crystal skyscrapers reared up in front of him. He had to crane his neck to gaze up at them. They shone like stars. The four tallest rose together, as tall as he imagined the Burj Khalifa was. At their top swirled a mass of shining light.
A flash of white and tan skin caught Jacob's eye. He threw himself behind the nearest crystal, a sprout as tall as him. He wiped sweat off his brow then forced himself to peek around.
In the centre, at the base of the four spires, was a messily tiered complex, like a bunch of LEGOs stacked haphazardly by a child. The rogue mage sauntered towards it. He disappeared down a slope that led around the side.
Jacob braced himself, then followed.
He crossed to the centre of the spires without incident. Carefully, he crept down the slope after the rogue mage, keeping his attention on his magical sensing. The air vibrated with magic.
The slope curled into a tunnel that led deep into the stacked structure. The ambient light outside faded. The only illumination was that of the colourful lights dancing inside the crystal walls. He felt like he was at the aquarium, except he was the fish.
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The dancing lights slowed and blended together, red and green and violet making white. The magical sensations around him grew similar, then uniform, a single musical note held during a long solo, drowning out everything else.
Corridors branched off from the one he followed. He peered down them. More corridors branched off from them as well. That uniform magical sensation peeled off to the right. He trusted his gut and followed it. The surfaces around him no longer looked like crystal, but white painted walls. He followed them along, his footsteps echoing hollowly, no matter how softly he walked.
More corridors.
A low, thrumming panic nagged at him. Where the hell had the rogue mage gone? What was this place? Some sort of magical labyrinth? Please, please, let there be no Minotaur at the centre, though after whaat he'd been through today he wouldn't be surprised in the slightest.
Narrow doorways marked entrances to branching passages now. Several times he guessed wrong, followed a corridor, felt that magical note dwindle, then scampered back to the right route. Each wrong corridor kept going, branched off into more, which probably branched into more, infinitely going until...
Distant noise reached his ears. A string instrument, maybe a guitar or violin, and a low murmur of conversation.
Jacob turned a corner and there was a plain, simple door in front of him. He hesitated, but this was where the magical sensation had led him. He reached out before he could stop himself and opened the door and stepped through.
The music was suddenly loud. A guitar, for sure, echoing down to him. He could make out individual voices. Snatches of laughter and English. The door shut automatically behind him.
He was at the end of a short, white-walled corridor lined with doors. An industrial garbage bin sat next to one of the doors, and across the hall was a cleaning trolley like the ones used in hotels. At the end of the corridor he could see people walking by.
Jacob turned back to the door he'd come through. Written front and centre was a single word:
Maintenance
Somehow he knew if he opened it there would be a maintenance closet with a mop, a bucket, maybe an electrical panel, and undoubtedly a rank odour. But did he really want to know for sure?
He licked his lips and started down towards where the noise was coming from. By the time he burst out of the corridor into a small indoor plaza he was running. A busker with a green, blue and white Cascadia scarf wrapped around his neck and shoulders stood to one side of the plaza. The busker strummed a guitar, his case open on the floor in front of him. People with shopping bags strutted by, talking into phones or absorbed in conversation.
English. They were all speaking English. And the Cascadia scarf the busker wore meant that at least Jacob was in the Pacific North West somewhere. A broad stairwell led up to sunshine. He sprinted over to it and up, heart pounding.
Jacob stumbled up out of the underground onto a thriving commercial intersection. Cars and buses blazed down two broad streets. People bustled down the sidewalks. Bright signs of fast food restaurants and clothing stores hung out over their heads. Cubic office towers rose into the air, and the sky was bright with morning. He stood and stared, dumbfounded.
He dragged his gaze over to the street signs above the intersection. They read Granville St, and W Georgia St, respectively.
He almost collapsed to the grimy, ABC-gum covered ground with relief. He was in Vancouver City Centre. Somehow. He felt like he'd been walking in that place for hours, but he was only a klick or so away from the Sanctuary.
He stumbled down the street to the public square in front of the antique Vancouver Art Gallery and sank onto one of the low blocks of concrete the city thought passed for public benches. The sun was so bright and warm. The cacophony of people walking, talking, cars honking, was a delightful mess to his ears. The faces of the people near him were so real, so detailed, like they'd been sketched in stencil. It was like his brain was picking up too much information. For a while he just gawked open-mouthed at whatever pulled his attention. A lime-green Bentley. A shock of blonde hair. A man screeching into his phone. The scent of a vendor's sizzling hot dogs.
He could hardly believe he was back.
After a while it soaked in, and the mess of sensory information faded to the back of his mind. He ran his hands through his hair and stared at the rough concrete beneath his shoes.
"What the hell." He started laughing crazily. He was back. He was actually back.
Then his stomach rumbled. He hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday. Luckily, he was surrounded by restaurants.