In the city that doesn't exist

Defying a principle that doesn't apply

Sorry about the delay, I had a hard time finding internet, but here is Chapter 3!  It's been posted on Tumblr for a while but I forgot to post it here.  Chapter 4 should be out soon, as well.

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Living in the cloud sector back at home had prepared me to navigate in areas where buildings and streets shifted occasionally. Clouds are changeable after all, but it turns out half-reality is even more so. Seriously. Last 'night,' the ladder to the cloud sector had anchored at a towering ridge with a view of pretty much everywhere in the Hub and very close to the ocean sector, but now it was anchored on a wide arch of rock connecting the massive spire the Keep was carved from to a nearby peak. (And I say 'spire' because it's usually freestanding) with the ocean sector nowhere in sight.

It took me a while to get to the ocean sector, but I managed, and once I found it, Morgan's bar was easy to find. At the counter, Megan was talking to a young man about his sister, and I realized this was the man whose sister had disappeared. Megan say me and said, "Hey, Fern!" then turned back to the man. "Hey, why don't you tell Fern what you told me?"

"About what Ammy found?"

"Yeah, she's doing a project, and it this might be useful for her."

"Oh, cool." He turned to me. "So my sister, Ammy, went missing yesterday, but apparently she was just exploring the city and lost track of time. We found her, thankfully, and she said she found this weird place on the very edge of the city. The whole area was weird, she said. She told me it was like what she thought a junkyard-- like in some of the worlds-- looks like, but the stuff in it was really odd, and looked kind of valuable. And she told me there was a weird feeling about the place, that it seemed... I think she meant it felt less real than the rest of the Hub, but it was hard to figure out what she meant, and I'm not quite knew what she was trying to explain." He looked around, focusing on the pool game going on across the room. "Now, I don't know if that's useful to you, so..." he trailed off.

"Sounds like it could be, and I'd like to check out this place. Where exactly is it?"

"Um, it's in the cave sector, near where Jason's Smithy used to be. That's all the detail I got." He got up to leave. "So, I have to go to work now. Good luck on your project!"

"Well--" I turned to Megan "--there's a few problems with those directions," I started. "One: I don't know much about the cave sector even in Arel, 'cause I'm storm fae and obviously try to avoid being underground; and two: I couldn't find where Jason's Smithy used to be even if the Hub didn't keep shifting, and it does." I paused. "Seriously, how do you find your way around? Even though the clouds move in Arel, there's reality to make how they move makes some sort of sense, but here everything moves with no rhyme or reason."

Megan chuckled. "If you live here, you don't even notice the shifts, we just keep going as if the city never changed at all. I can give you a map, but once you get underground, you may have trouble telling what level you're on."

"Well, a map is better than nothing," I said. "I learned how to read the different levels written on a map, I can try to find them here."

"Alright," Megan said. "Just remember, should the city shift while you're on the way, the map'll change to match, but you may end up in a totally different area away from your route, and anything I write on the map will probably not change with it."

"I'll take my chances."

Naturally, the city shifted. "Fuck." The route Megan had indicated now led through walls, mountains, and into nothingness. I was warned, I thought. Still a pain in the ass. I went to a nearby man to ask: "Could you show me where Jason's Smithy used to be?"