In a city of marble, a trio of students wearing formal clothing traversed through a thick crowd while maintaining their conversation.
"What did Torm say?" Bell asked Jude.
Jude turned back and didn't seem too alarmed by the information gathered, "He said that they're at the mall connected to the train station, so we'll be able to just follow our steps back."
Mona then chimed in after looking at her watch, "My pathfinder says that there's a shortcut through a few districts of the city. It'll save us around thirty minutes."
Jude and Bell raised their eyebrow at Mona's statement.
'Thirty minutes? It took us nearly an entire hour to get to the tarot shop from the station...' Bell computed internally.
"We should take that path," Bell then stated, immediately after, she explained why, "We'll probably be able to stop the situation that the Seer mentioned."
Mona then smiled in reply, "Yeah, that'd be better than whatever happens."
"Sure." Jude stated flatly.
It was then that the trio started to follow the pathfinder on Mona's wristwatch. They had originally taken a direct path northward through the marble district, but Mona's path seemed to go southeast.
Pathfinders were a piece of software that most technology had, and Mona seemed to have found a shortcut using one on her wristwatch. Pathfinders were also known for how quickly they were able to find the quickest route to a destination possible.
So, it was in the trio's best interest to follow the pathfinder.
Over the next thirty minutes, Bell would soon realize that the entirety of Vatican City wasn't made of marble and old architecture. The trio ran through several other "biomes" of the city, or "districts," depends on who wants to call it.
Mona had called them districts, and so would Bell, at least until proven that her terminology was incorrect.
Nearly five minutes after they had left, and after a series of several winding paths, the trio found themselves in a strange section of the city.
It wasn't entirely strange, but felt slightly off, it was raining constantly, despite the sun being high in the sky. The streets were nearly entirely empty, and the tall buildings were lined with rustic neon lights.
The signs on the buildings were illuminated with similar lights, and there seemed to be an entire civilization in the alleyways. In short, Bell didn't feel all that safe traversing through the cyberpunk-esque portion of Vatican City.
With their speed picking up in that section, the trio only took another three or so minutes to reach the next "district."
This district had shorter buildings made of wood, the temperature and humidity mimicked that of the deserts. Bell didn't know how she knew about the feel of a desert's climate, but she definitely knew that this district mimicked it.
The unique part of this district, beyond the fact that it was imitating a nearly seven-hundred-year-old architecture, was that it was entirely filled with a deep fog. Bell couldn't see even seven feet in front of her, and to make the situation worse, the constant tolling of a bell was emanating in the distance.
When they got near the source of the tolling, there were thousands upon thousands of urns piled upon one another. The air became thick and filled with dust soon after, and the trio soon exited the vicinity of the makeshift graveyard.
Thoroughly creeped out, Mona ushered the group to hurry up. Unfortunately, the pathfinder didn't seem to work in this portion of town, which creeped the group out even more.
Luckily, the next portion of the town was much cheerier. The sun shone down through a thin canopy of tall pine trees.
The bark of the trees was red, and there was a dense system of treehouses and makeshift communal areas in the air. Bell and Jude constantly admired the beauty of the area as they passed through.
The Compass of Ages and Mona's pathfinder pointed in the same direction. Due to someone's poor luck, the pathfinder would go out every other district or so, and Bell's compass would inevitably point in a direction that wasn't towards the mall.
The only reason that Bell had that hunch was that she felt a strange calling somewhere deeper into the city, and that calling didn't coincide with the groups need to get to the mall. Bell's instincts were rarely wrong, and over the years, she learned to trust that instinct.
'It's a shame that we can't entirely trust either Mona's pathfinder or the Compass.' Bell lamented as they passed through the small border between the Rainforest district and the next.
The next district was a medieval-style town with a bridge over a synthetic river. Bell was nearly convinced that the river was real and was almost tempted to drink from it.
Luckily, Jude tested the water first with a strange piece of paper and found that the water was nearly toxic for human consumption.
"That's weird, why would they do something like this?" Bell asked the other two, only to get a shrug and feigned ignorance in reply.
After they exited the medieval river town, they quickly entered a constructed valley. It copied the feel of an actual valley, which was one thing that Bell had managed to actually experience.
It was a few years ago during one of her treks through the ground layer. Bell had found out that there was a small clump of hills that the super metropolis had covered over during construction.
Unfortunately for Bell at the time, the valley was inhabited by a bunch of scrappers who would have even sold human limbs for a few dollars. In the moment, Bell just found a route that led around the small hill range, it took her a few extra days to reach her destination, but she made it in one piece.
In fact, Bell found it miraculous that she still had all of her limbs, even if slightly scarred by the air down there.
'I'm just glad that I don't have to live in that hellhole anymore.' She bitterly remembered, quickly evading a few people in a large group.
Soon after, Bell found that the group had stumbled in a wrong direction. The pathfinder seemed to get a path wrong, which seemed wrong, somehow.
"Hey guys, we're going the wrong way," She announced to the surprise of Mona and Jude.
Mona looked at her watch and replied, "My pathfinder says that we're actually going the right way, where's your compass pointing?"
Bell pointed directly behind her.
"That's northeast, we're still going southeast for a while..." Mona explained.
Jude then joined the conversation, "I don't think we'll be able to use your compass anymore, Bell."
Bell then thought for a moment, 'The compass points in the direction of something I need most. Do I not need to get to the mall right now?'
She shook her head, coming to her own conclusion, "Let's just follow your pathfinder and keep going southeast when it goes out of order."
Mona nodded and turned on her heel, continuing in the direction that followed her pathfinder most.
The group found themselves in a district where nature was attempting to take over an older-styled city from the early third millennium. There were thousands of vines and trees pouring from the cracks of the cityscape.
'This seems dangerous to live in, why would people actually live here?'
The streets in this district were equally as empty as the one from the beginning of their half-hour journey. For some reason, Bell didn't feel that their journey was going exactly to plan.
Sometimes, their only source of direction wouldn't actually work, and this district was one such area where their pathfinder didn't work.
"Why did they let this happen? In what world would districts disabling pathfinders be good?" Mona let her woes known to both her friends and the world.
Jude and Bell didn't exactly have the most technology related childhood, so they didn't exactly understand Mona's laments. It was as if a hunter was attempting to understand a gatherers pains, and vice versa.
As they found their way through the perilous concrete jungle, Mona let a question be known to the other two, "What do you think they'll need us for... well, what would they have needed us for?"
Bell shrugged and Jude replied, "I don't know... but I'll trust that the Seer was right."
Mona nodded and agreed, "Yeah, Seer's are rare, but very trustworthy."
"How do you know if a Seer is the real deal?" Bell asked.
Jude looked at Bell with a slightly shocked expression, "I'm surprised you didn't know, but oh well. Seer's have a specific marking on their fingernails that naturally forms with their Shards."
Bell hadn't noticed the fingernail thing, but found the idea of an Akashic Shard physically changing a person strange.
"But anyway, I think they probably would have gotten into a fight or get caught shoplifting." Bell then said in response to Mona's question.
Jude nodded and Mona simply stated, "That'd be a really sticky situation."
"Yeah, Teacher Brutus would chew them out for that," Jude agreed, "He did say that we're representing the Terrarium."
Bell winced at the thought of the astronomical talking to that they would get, they hadn't even arrived at the Terrarium yet. Who knows what Teacher Brutus would say? What if they all got kicked out?
The trio then found themselves in a district extremely similar to the one they had just been in, but without the vines and nature taking over the concrete. There were at least thousands of people in the streets, and all were of different creed, some were tall while others were short, some were skinny while others were fat.
Bell even saw a person who was at least eight feet tall and looked like he was made of pure muscle. He looked like a giant from the stories that she would often hear in her time in the orphanage.
Bell then returned to the questions in her mind, how would they even kick five students out? They hadn't even reach the school yet!
She continued to rationalize reasons as to why the Terrarium wouldn't kick her friends out as the trio continued down this concrete forest. She then bumped into a tall person and quickly mumbled an apology before continuing to follow Mona.
The past twenty or so minutes really felt like several hours simply due to the tens of different districts that they entered. They would go up and down stairs and elevators, go across several moving walkways as they passed through the districts.
Of course, the design and architecture of these varied greatly, and it felt like they were going through the ages of humanity's past and future. Going from desert towns that were reminiscent of times before true civilization started.
And wandering through the remains of some sort of apocalypse where nature had redeemed what it had long held the rights to.
The sun, sky, and otherwise climate of each district was unique to one another, and that slowly threw Bell off. She felt as if she had been travelling for hours, no, days on end without break.
The sheer amount of completely different environments seemed to get to Bell's internal compass as well as their clock. Bell started to feel drained of energy, as if she had stayed up for several hours too long.
"Are you guys tired, too?" Bell asked the other two.
Jude yawned and explained in two words, "Jet lag."
'Oh...' Bell thought as her eyes started to grow slightly heavy, and her willpower weak.
Mona then summoned her suitcase and opened it, pulling out two cans of juice, or something, from the suitcase.
"Here." She commented as she tossed them to the two. Mona actually looked entirely unaffected by the group's travels. "You all need to travel more, this is nothing in comparison to some real jet lag. Not even those would save you."
Bell looked at the can that Mona had tossed her, there were three neon streaks going down the can. Green text along the top of the can read:
[Creature]
Smaller text underneath read:
[Gives you arms.]
Bell was utterly confused by it, but didn't mind getting a free energy drink.
'I owe you one,' Bell swore as she opened and chugged the contents of the can.
She almost immediately spit it out, the intensity of the carbonation catching her off-guard. However, she wasn't weak, and continued to chug the can, despite her throats extremely insistent complaining.
After finishing it, Bell looked around for a trash can, and found that there were none.
'Oh my lady...' Bell prayed as she continued to follow the other two with her empty can in hand.
She had been used to throwing trash around at the ground layer, but now that she was in public, a clean public, she couldn't litter anymore.
'A shame.' Bell lamented
"We're close, in the same district as the mall." Mona announced to the other two.