The most immediately striking thing about the area around the docks was how loud it was. And not just in an auditory way, either. The street swarmed with a menagerie of monsters bustling to and fro, producing the cacophony of a city, yet distorted and magnified into something alien to the senses of newcomers. A manhole cover slid open and what looked like a starfish with eyes flew out, a faint aura of rainbow light fading as it rose into the light.

And the street itself wasn’t the only part that was alive either, figuratively or otherwise. One monster rapped on a blank, greenish wall of a house with their solitary tentacle, which apparently resulted in the wall growing a mouth and pulling the monster inside with its tongue. Once its mouth was closed up again, the house grew two chicken-like feet, stepped out of its lot, and strode over the thoroughfare of normal-sized monsters. A bird-esque creature with seven heads flew into the house as it walked past and tumbled to the ground, only to immediately pick itself up and retake flight, singing a chorus of mutters to itself as it flew past the visitors.

“You know…” Horan put his hands on his hips. “I really am just asking for it at this point.”

Mark looked up at the castle in the centre of the city. Framed against the grey uniformity of the outside, the building was an almost frightening shadowy monument. “Don’t get distracted. I know it’s a lot, and I know you can’t resist the urge to jinx us again, Horan, but we’ve got a job to do, and we need to do it now. Castle’s that way.”

Waia looked down the clogged avenue of monsters that stretched onward towards their goal. “Yeah, but do we have to walk? Quet, you got anything to get us there in a way that lowers our chances of getting magic-mugged? Or, for the sake of covering our bases, is there a way for us to increase those chances?”

Quet, who had previously been looking around the busy streets nervously and drumming her fingers on her leg, perked up at the sound of her name. “What? Oh, um, sorry, yeah. Yeah, I’ve got something for that.” She pulled a glyph out and squeezed.

Nothing happened. She squeezed it again, harder this time. Still nothing. No glowing, no mysterious green clouds, absolutely nothing magical happened. The glyph may as well have been a rock with some weird writing on it. Which it admittedly was, but it was now a less interesting version of that.

“Okay, that’s- that shouldn’t… uh…” Quet pulled a different glyph out and tightened a fist around it, receiving the same lack of a result. “That’s not… Does my…” She reached further into the bag. She could extend her arm up to her shoulder before the outline of a finger appeared at the bottom of the purse-sized bag’s exterior. “That still works…” She looked up at her companions. “Guys, my glyphs are busted.”

Everyone looked at Quet in confused astonishment. Omet was the first to actually get any words out. “What do you mean, they’re busted?!”

“I mean they’re busted! You saw that! They don’t work!” Quet began rummaging through her other bags, the drumming of her fingers back in full force. “This- I don’t- This shouldn’t even be possible. H-how?!”

A monster chuckled as they went past the scene. “Looks like someone round here’s getting a bit of a culture shock.”

Quet perked up like a meerkat as the monster walked off. “W-what? Is this normal? I don’t… It’s been on the fritz since I got here, the Down Below shouldn’t be any different, why…”

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Omet stepped forward and took Quet’s hand. “Hey, hey, that’s weird, I know. We can probably just ask about that at the castle, you know? Maybe we can figure something out on the way, even.” They looked back at the other three. “For now, let’s go-”

Omet stopped when they felt the ground jut upwards beyond their feet. Looking down, they saw that one of the flat, vaguely hexagonal flagstones covering the road they were on had risen up by a few inches and was now noticeably protruding from the rest of the road. Additionally, they felt a question protruding into their own thoughts, a request for clarification on where exactly they wanted to go. Well, that was easy to answer. Omet was just about to say that they could head to the castle.

As soon as that thought went through their head, the flagstone jerked itself in the direction of the castle, sliding along the road with Omet struggling to maintain balance on top. They failed.

Arms wheeling about, Omet fell off of the flagstone and landed in the middle of the road. The monsters passing by made no effort to help them up or stop their fall, simply walking past and acting like nothing had happened. Meanwhile, the instant Omet fell off, the flagstone that had been carrying them immediately sank back into the ground, the surrounding flagstones shifting around to make room. The monsters nearby simply allowed the moving ground ferry them further down their path, seemingly working with the flagstones off of intuition.

Omet struggled to their feet, pulling a corner of their cardigan out of a crack that had closed during the road’s resettlement. “Okay then. I think that tile was trying to take me to the, uh…” They looked down at the currently unmoving flagstone they were standing on. “To the castle?”

“Yeah, we all saw that.” Mark knelt down and touched the flagstone beneath him. “They don’t have any writing on them, I don’t think they’re magic.”

Quet began hyperventilating. “Okay, I’m proud of you for rem… uh…” She glanced at Omet. “For already knowing things about magic that I never explained to you, but I feel like we still have a considerably bigger problem on our hands!”

Waia groaned. “Okay, I get it, no magic is spooky, but can we please figure that out somewhere besides this random road? People are staring, and we’re burning…” She looked up at the sunless sky. “Burning… uh… We’re burning your house down if you don’t get moving.”

Mark stood up. “Yeah, we can do more than two things at once, and we definitely need to do this as fast as possible. Even without Salamin, we’re still on the clock, so let’s…” He realized something. He looked down. “...Let’s go?”

The instant he finished, the flagstone under him jutted out from the rest of him, and the same question was directly posited into his brain. “Yeah, it’s like I thought. They’re all just like this, I guess.” He shrugged. “Well, you guys get your own, I’m headed to the castle.” He bent his knees to avoid being jostled off as the flagstone glided across the ground like a dangerously fast Roomba, swerving to avoid the foot traffic.

“Eh,” grunted Waia. “Let’s go. Castle.” And just like that, she was off.

“I mean, I can just…” Horan lifted himself a few inches from the ground and easily caught up with Mark and Waia.

Quet didn’t move from where she was standing, looking down at where she was standing. Her fingers tapped against her thighs, her only sign of movement. Omet sighed. “Yeah, okay, this is… kind of a lot, I can tell. But for now, we can just-”

“Can you tell?” Quet looked up at Omet, some genuine anger on her face. “Because I’ve seen how you’re handling all this, you’re just having a blast out here. So maybe you can…” She stopped herself.

“Y- I meant…” Omet stuffed their hands into their cardigan’s pockets. “Okay. But the others are gaining distance, so… Let’s go.” They allowed the flagstones to carry them to their destination.

“...Right, yeah, sorry.” Quet quickly followed suit.