The entrance to the subway station matched the Bank of America tower from the outside — a narrow tunnel made of large glass plates — but the station below was quite different. From the sleek and ultramodern building above, the subway was a broad tunnel walled in tile and punctuated with red steel beams. Griffin led them through the halls to the right platform and they were on a train heading Downtown in short order.

Ten minutes later they stepped onto a platform in a station with an older, grittier feel. The tiles on the wall were larger, the floors cement, and, as if to distinguish from the station they’d left at Bryant Park, the steel support beams supporting were blue instead of red.

They emerged from the underground onto Grand Street from an exit lined by a low, green steel fence. The fencing was more recognizable and iconic to the New York subway system than the glass and steel entrance back in Midtown but somewhat less impressive.

Of course, the exits from this station probably weren’t financed by Bank of America, Aaron thought.

Chinatown was a far cry from Midtown — almost like a completely different city — the buildings older and smaller, and many of their fronts marked by hanzi, the ornate characters used in written Chinese. The changes steadily grew more stark as they walked south.

After several blocks on foot, Griffin turned them onto a street running under a huge overpass. Shops lined both sides of the street; in the middle of their side of the road was an arched opening with a recessed glass façade beneath that led further back under the bridge. Several pairs of glass double doors across the width of the building.

Beyond the doors was a large, circular space with low ceilings, perhaps only seven or eight feet high. A wide circular opening took up the center of the room, lined by low glass walls, with escalators connecting to floors above and below. The perimeter of the space was filled with businesses, mostly stores, some so small they were little more than particularly deep stalls.

“What is this place?” Aaron asked.

Griffin placed a large hand on his shoulder. “Didn’t you read the sign out front? It’s the East Broadway Mall.”

They moved around the opening and followed a hallway deeper under the bridge, passing dozens of shop stalls. Clothes, jewelry, and cell phones were the most common items sold, but there was no limit to what was on offer. A not insignificant number of stores offered medical and other professional services. With the exception of the occasional big tax chain, Aaron couldn’t remember seeing those sorts of businesses in a mall since he was very young.

After several minutes of feigned browsing as they strolled through the mall, they took a stairway down to the lower level. The stairway, despite being perfectly clean and well lit, had a seedy vibe to it, giving the impression of being dark and grimy.

It’s probably the way the fluorescents are placed, Aaron thought, though he didn’t entirely believe himself.

The lower level was a labyrinth of narrow hallways and passages, with an even greater variety of businesses and spaces that were less uniform in size than the ground floor.

Although the trio accompanying him maintained a casual veneer as they moved through the mall, even stopping to browse at random shops, Aaron believed his guardians were on high alert and staying as vigilant as he had ever seen them.

Finally, they stopped at a stall nestled in a dead end deep in the underground warren of stores. The shop was distinct from every other space they’d passed so far because of its product — books.

Two old men sat around a small table just outside the front of the shop, playing checkers and drinking tea. The smell of cigarettes was strong in the air and a can of soda on the floor had ashes around the lip. The pair of old men probably had the same disregard for any rule that inconvenienced them as most old men and Aaron assumed they snuck puffs whenever the halls around them were otherwise empty.

The shop was larger than most of the others they’d passed on the lower level, but that extra square footage was so crammed full of shelves brimming with a pell-mell assortment of books it felt smaller. There were shelves along each wall and several more had been placed in the center of the shop, creating a haphazard pillar of secondhand books jammed into the space. The books were in a mix of languages, but Chinese and English were the most common at first glance.

A man much younger than the duo loitering outside sat on a rickety wooden chair in one of the rear corners of the overflowing bookstore. A pile of books teetered on a small table beside his chair. He was reading a Chinese newspaper and looked up at their entrance, gave them a nod, but otherwise paid them no mind.

Griffin and Kiara quickly spread out — as much as that was possible, anyways — examining the shelves on opposite sides of the store. Albert stayed near the entrance, casually browsing piles of books stacked on folding tables around the door. Aaron felt completely out of place, the cramped space of the shop less like a store and more like someone’s private storage, so he stayed near Albert and idly perused books on the central bookshelf facing the door.

There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to how the books were shelved; there were no distinct categories, genres, or any other organizational scheme that Aaron could decipher. After a few moments, Aaron noticed isolated clusters of books suggesting there might have once been a plan of some kind, but it had been overwhelmed long ago and succumbed to chaos.

After several minutes, Griffin shot them a meaningful glance and the four drakus converged on the proprietor in the back. Griffin and Kiara had a small pile of books and they handed them over to the young man in his chair.

It was crowded in the little corner with the four of them bunched up around the shopkeeper, but it did give Aaron a good look at the books Griffin and Kiara had selected. None of the three books they’d selected were in English, but Aaron still recognized them from the art on their covers — Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Wizard of Oz. All classics, but wildly different in tone and story. Except… Aaron thought there was something those three books shared, he just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

They’re all fantasy, he thought, but I think there’s something else, something more central.

None of the books were in the best condition, so it was all the more surprising when the shopkeeper asked for fifty bucks for the set. Aaron’s latent cheapskate tendencies howled in outrage, but Griffin agreed immediately — with one caveat.

“Would you be willing to throw in a copy of Moby-Dick?” he asked.

“You want in Chinese?”

“I’d prefer a Bavarian translation,” Griffin replied.

The shopkeeper’s eyes darted to the front of the store briefly as he set the three books down on one of the piles beside him.

“Four for four,” he said quietly, his thick accent vanishing like a fart in the wind.

Griffin pulled out a strange coin and handed it to the shopkeeper. It was ruddy brown and burnished to a fine shine, about twice the size of a quarter and much thicker. The coin seemed plain at first, but when the shopkeeper examined it Aaron saw that several lines had been engraved on one of its faces, forming a simple eight-pointed star.

The shopkeeper shoved the coin into a slotted box buried in the pile of books next to him and returned to his newspaper, paying them no more attention than he had while they browsed. Aaron had no idea what was going on.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

When his companions turned to face the bookshelf pillar behind them, Aaron turned with them. A second later, the shelving swung open away from them. A hidden door! That was pretty rad on its own, however what the door revealed was so much more awesome it caused Aaron’s brain to lock up for a moment.

The pillar of bookshelves couldn’t have been more than five or six feet across in either direction, so Aaron didn’t know what he expected to see when the secret door finished swinging open. The space was so small, a hole in the floor was about the only thing that would have made sense. Maybe a little one- or two-person elevator or a very cramped spiral staircase could have fit back there. Maybe.

Instead, a completely normal staircase lay in front of them, descending to a switchback landing and continuing downwards. It shouldn’t have been possible — there should have been no more than two or three steps before the staircase ran into the wall on the other side. But it didn’t. It just kept going.

Aaron could see the back of the bookshelf across from him, just a few feet away. He could also see the steps leading to a landing ten or more feet away. It was impossible to be seeing both those things at the same time in the same place, yet he was. It was terribly disorienting.

His three companions were completely unperturbed; Albert and Kiara were already making their way to the landing and Griffin was standing beside him, waiting. There was nothing for it but to follow, so Aaron began to descend behind them.

As soon as he tried to take the first step, vertigo washed over him and he stumbled into the side of the bookshelf, pressing a hand flat against the wall and scrambling to get both feet on the floor so he wouldn’t go reeling down the stairs. Griffin’s hand was on his shoulder immediately, helping to both steady him and anchor his perception.

The sensation would best be described as impending motion in several simultaneous directions. Aaron felt like he was about to fall forward (down), and backwards (down), but he was also aware that he was standing (up), and leaning against the wall (up). Each feeling was completely distinct, yet overlapping in a way that was torturously confusing.

“Okay, what the hell?” Aaron breathed to Griffin as quietly as he could through a jaw clenched shut as tightly as his eyes.

Griffin squeezed his arms reassuringly. “Just breathe, bud, it will pass in a second.”

After several deep breaths, the impossible feeling receded and Aaron felt basically back to himself. Cautiously, he opened his eyes. The too-large stairway in the too-small space was still there, a spatial impossibility, but it didn’t grate against Aaron’s senses the same way. He left out a long breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding.

“It’s better now, but that threw me,” he said.

Griffin clapped him firmly on the shoulder. “Head down, I’m right behind you.” When Aaron had taken a few steps down, he heard Griffin at the top of the stairs, likely speaking to the shopkeeper. “His first time coming to the Market.”

“Wài háng,” the shopkeeper said dismissively.

Aaron bristled; he could practically hear the sarcastic eye roll in that phrase and it was clearly at his expense. The light changed as the bookcase swung closed behind him and Griffin came down the stairs, stopping on the step right behind him.

“You okay?” the big man asked.

What can I say? Aaron wondered. Should I even say anything?

He wasn’t sure. He knew the healthy, mature thing would be to explain that he felt like what Griffin had said up there was disrespectful and unkind. Less like he was talking shit to a friend and more like he was talking shit about a stranger.

If he didn’t have to be around these people so much — and if he didn’t like them — it wouldn’t even be a question; Aaron would be telling Griffin what a dick move it was to commiserate with a complete stranger about what a newbie idiot he was. The truth is, it bothered him more because he actually liked his three protectors and it stung to find out even one of them thought so little of him.

He knew he could take the abuse and, more importantly, he didn’t want to create the impression he couldn’t if these people weren’t going to be his friends. Even the appearance of weakness looked like an invitation to poke at it to a certain kind of person.

Aaron shook his head and shrugged like it was nothing and continued down the stairs. At the bottom, Albert had stationed himself beside a plain steel door and Kiara was waiting by the last step, a small box in her hand. She looked like she was going to say something, but Griffin came down and interrupted.

“Hey, I wanted to clear something,” the big man said. “That line with the shopkeep up there, that was just a part of our cover. Pretty much everybody experiences vertigo and disorientation the first time they encounter a place like this.”

“Like what?” Aaron asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of his tone.

“Dimensionally-warped spaces,” Albert said. “Especially ones where it’s that extreme. What’s going on? What line?”

“I told the guy in the shop it was Aaron’s first time coming to the Market and he, being a real class act, called Aaron something like an idiot or amateur,” Griffin explained. “I’m not sure which; my Mandarin is shit.”

“It’s fine,” Aaron said.

Kiara stepped a bit closer and her tone was serious. “It’s not fine; not if you think one of us was mocking you, especially to an outsider. Maybe we’ll have a relationship where that kind of razzing is okay in the future, but right now we can’t protect you if you don’t trust us and you’re less likely to trust us if you think we don’t respect you.”

“Which means you should probably have an idea of our cover,” Griffin said. “A plausible reason you’re a new drakus in town without arousing suspicion that you’re the new drakus in town for the people looking for you.”

“First things first, put this on,” Kiara said, opening the small box to reveal a fine golden chain necklace. “It’s got a disguise illusion enchanted into it, a pretty good one. It’ll make you look a couple inches shorter, a good bit scrawnier, and some other superficial changes that will make it next to impossible to identify you accurately.”

“Okay,” Aaron said, slipping the necklace over his head and dropping it down his shirt.

“The thing you have to understand about us is that nobody would think we were in town to work security for a V.I.P.,” Griffin said.

Aaron’s brow furrowed at that. “Why not?”

“Because we’re competent and dangerous, but our work takes us out of town a lot and nobody would think of us as a good defensive measure,” Albert said. “You don’t hire assassins to be bodyguards, totally different skill sets.”

“Are you guys assassins?”

Griffin chuckled. “No, but our line of work tends to be more aggressive, proactive rather than reactive.”

“So our cover is that you’re one of our numbers and analysis people,” Kiara said. “And you’re looking to change careers and maybe move into our line of work. That’s why you’re in town, why you’re hanging out with us, and why we’re taking you shopping.”

“What work do you guys do, exactly?”

“We’re like Indiana Jones but without the museums or academic respectability,” Albert said, grinning.

“So… you’re treasure hunters?”

Albert gave him two thumbs up. “Basically.”

There really wasn’t anything Aaron could think to say to that, so they continued on to the plain steel door. When Albert let them know it was clear and they pushed through, Aaron stepped fully into an entirely new world for the first time.

This wasn’t some insane cavern under a national park that no one else had ever set foot in, this was the beating heart of a community of people who were something more than your average human being. It was a world hidden within their world, just as vibrant and active, but alien in so many ways.

The hallways were just as narrow as in the mall above, but the shops were something else entirely. Their façades were made of wood and stone instead of plate glass, plywood, and plasterboard. Some of the stalls had open fronts and were lined with draped silks and other cloths in lieu of walls or doors.

At first glance, many of the goods didn’t seem to differ much from those above, offering fashion, accessories, and a variety of other knick-knacks. There were even little offices providing professional services. However, it quickly became apparent the goods down here were more magical in nature. Glowing gems, wands, rods, and sceptres of innumerable materials in ornate cases, massive tomes with glimmering runes on their covers, and assortments of melee weaponry and armor adorned many of the displays.

The people provided an even greater contrast to the mall upstairs; the halls bustled with activity and many of those wandering the subterranean marketplace were clearly not human.

“Welcome to the Goblin Market of Manhattan,” Griffin said.