40. Vesper
VESPER
I’m still firmly a Tier One, with my XP at only five hundred and sixty-two.
I have no idea how Locke gained so much XP all at once, but I can only assume that the fight with the abominable yeti gave him so much because of how much more he fought and how many hits he took.
There’s no way I could have won that battle, and even with Stevie’s buff we didn’t even know about, it was hard.
We won only because Locke had received that loot crate.
A loot crate that Cipher had arranged. Cipher has a penchant for not giving Locke much of anything beneficial and now here he is, already a Tier Two.
I’m not jealous.
Okay. Maybe I am.
Of course, Locke didn’t read anything about what being a Tier Two Bone Breaker means.
That worries me. I can’t see anything about the next Tier of my class until I have enough XP to fulfill it, which means all I know is how much it costs to level up.
I don’t know what the Second Tier is called.
I don’t know what new abilities or limitations I might have.
All I know is that for me, it will cost one thousand XP, five shards, fifty Harrow Coins, and five animal byproducts.
I’m one short on the shards and I only have the macaw feathers and the beetle chiton currently for the animal byproduct.
I’ll need to work on that, but first, I need my XP to move or else I’ll be stuck as a Tier One forever.
For the first hour of Locke running, he carries me as if I weigh nothing.
On the second hour, he finally starts to slow and I convince him to put me down and let me walk.
His strength has clearly increased, along with maybe his vitality.
I can’t see his stats and I don’t want to particularly ask right now.
Not when we’re still stuck in this frozen wasteland.
There’s literally nothing here. No buildings. No animals. No people.
But after another few minutes of walking, we start to see something on the horizon.
It’s small at first, dark shapes that we can’t make out.
The closer we get to them, the more they rise from the ground into the sky.
They cast their long shadows across the snow as the sun starts to descend around us and we hasten our steps.
Neither one of us wants to be caught in the Shatterlands at night again.
There may be no animals now, but there are things that wander on the night ice we’ve yet to run into.
Things that only fear fire according to Cipher.
As we draw near, I realize that the sprawling shapes are buildings, tall, but not nearly as tall as the ones in Dross. They have similar shapes to them, but they’re more decorative looking, not the smooth look of our decaying buildings back home. These buildings have some huge differences, though.
First, they’re not decaying. None of the buildings look like they’re falling apart. They’re clean and whole and as towering as the day they were built.
Two, where Dross is lit up with candles and lanterns cobbled together from stolen or collected resources that give it an eerie glow, this city features bright lights in the windows, lights everywhere.
The closer we get to the city, the more the lights drown out the stars until all we can really make out is the brightest ones and the moon.
It isn’t until the air starts to warm and the snow begins to slowly melt, that I realize just what I’m looking at.
NEW REGION UNLOCKED: Welcome to New Babel
NEW ZONE UNLOCKED: Welcome to the Speakeasy Sprawl
The two notifications are loud in my ears, but somehow still not as loud as the sounds of the city that suddenly slam into us once we walk out of the Shatterlands fully.
There’s some sort of invisible wall between zones that make it so sounds and the creatures can’t pass through.
There’s still some crossover, such as the snow that melts and reaches across the barrier or the sight of the buildings from far away, but we’ve never heard the sounds of the other side until the notifications come through.
And fuck if this place isn’t loud.
It’s nighttime, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
The sounds of people, of strange honks echoing between the buildings, of music, all filter into my mind until it’s almost overwhelming.
There’s the mechanical whir of some machinery I can’t see, the hiss of what looks like steam trailing up from metal plates in the ground, people shouting at each other as they walk up and down the street.
The walkways are crowded with people, all clamoring to go somewhere that I can’t even pretend to guess at.
It’s overwhelming, and when I glance over at Locke, I realize I’m not the only one overwhelmed.
I watch as he stares up at the buildings with wide eyes and then quickly takes a step back into the snow, silencing the onslaught of sound.
Dross is loud. So many people concentrated in one place means that it can get loud when they all go about their business, but there are no sounds of machinery. No honking.
No loud, echoing music.
I take a hesitant step forward, off the concrete dip, and scream when two, large and bright, lights come right for me. I leap back just in the nick of time as a large metal box rolls by, honking. A man hangs out the side of it, his fist shaking at me.
“Stay out of the street, fustilugs!” he shouts, and then continues on his way in the metal box.
I stare after him with wide eyes as more of the machines go screaming past, uncertain how to proceed.
My head starts to hurt immediately from the influx of light and sound.
I’d thought the screaming wind of the Howling Wind Plains was bad.
Harrow, I’d thought the Verdant Nexus was loud. That was nothing compared to this.
I’m so caught up on the sight of this functioning and thriving city, that it takes me a little longer to realize there’s another difference.
The people.
There are humans everywhere, dressed in a variety of clothing.
Some of them I can tell are players because of their mishmash of items. It’s easy to tell us apart because of the various armor and weapons hanging off of us.
Other humans, I assume predominately NPCs, are wearing clothing in a style I’ve never seen before.
Men are dressed in loose trousers and white shirts, strange ropes holding their trousers up over their shoulders.
Other men are dressed in fancy looking outfits that look better fitted for sleeping than surviving the Harrow.
Many of the men wear hats. The women range from short sparkly knee-length dresses that Dox would gush over, dressed like the men, or simple loose dresses that feel more modest. Some of them wear strands of white polished rocks and feathers in their hair.
Some of them have their own hats, different from the ones the men wear.
And then there are the other people.
While many of the people look wholly human, many of them .
. . don’t. I can’t explain it, because I don’t have words for what they are, but their features vary from my own.
Some of them have different shades of skin I never thought possible.
Green, blue, purple, and strange patterns like an animal echoing on their flesh.
Some of their ears are misshapen and pointed.
Some of them have teeth that hang up over their lips. Some of them have wings!
They’re mixed in with the people, going about their daily life as if this is all normal.
I guess it is normal when you live here.
“This is better,” Svetlana says as she finally emerges from my cloak. “I thought we were never going to leave the frigid asshole of that region.”
“You and me both,” I say, dragging off my cloak and storing it into my inventory. Warmth presses against my skin and I sigh at the distinct lack of cold.
I reach across the border and drag Locke back across the boundary. “Look!”
“I see,” Locke grunts, squinting his eyes at the bright lights.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” I ask, staring at it all in wonder. This is what Dross was once supposed to be, what it can never be now. This is what humanity has always yearned for.
“Beautiful isn’t the word I’d use,” Locke admits. “Noisy. Loud.” He looks up at the buildings. “Too bright.”
I laugh. “Look at the moving machines on the street! There are people in them, controlling them . . . I think!” I grin. “One of them almost ran into me!”
“Seems a strange thing to be excited about,” he says.
It’s the first time I realize that his voice is just a little different from before. I keep waiting for the excited lilt that he’d had before he leveled up, the tick up in his tone, but it never comes. My smile falls as I study him, as I try to find the difference.
We haven’t had time to revel in his upgrade. He hadn’t read the description and I could hardly ask him if he feels much different while he’d been carrying me and we’d been trying to leave the Shatterlands. But now, here, with all this new beauty around us, I notice a difference.
His voice is just a little bit deeper, just a little less smooth.
“Are you okay?” I ask, staring at him.
“I’m fine. Why?” he asks, watching me back. He doesn’t seem to realize I’m sizing him up, looking for variations from the man I once knew. Luckily, the only real difference seems to just be the pitch of his voice and his muscled shoulders. Everything else is exactly the same.
“Just asking,” I murmur, worry dancing in the back of my mind.
Cipher had been adamant that I shouldn’t linger around a Bone Breaker. Locke and I have formed a pretty solid bond over the last . . . however long it’s been. But now that he’s leveling up, do I need to worry?
“Yes,” Cipher whispers in my mind. “Pay close attention, Vespera.”
Not going to warn me away from him again? I ask mentally.
“You would not listen if I did,” he replies. “This is a lesson you will have to learn on your own.”