>>760206>>760201>>760202>>760203>>760205Xu considers Firmgold's suggestion for a moment, then with great displeasure, retrieves an empty energy drink can from her suit's storage unit. She crushes it around the middle, making flat grooves, and then leaves it in the middle of the Exit doorway. When those doors close again, they catch the can, remaining slightly open with the can serving as a conspicuous eye-catcher.
Xu clicks her tongue with annoyance, but rejoins you.
Cautaa raises his eyebrow.
"I don't like littering!" Xu explains.
"An admirable standpoint," Cautaa agrees. "Let's just say the circumstances grant us a rare exemption. Better yet: think of it as unconventional recycling."
With a hint left behind for those who may follow you, you proceed beyond the next set of automatic doors.
Beyond them–
People. Lots and lots of people.
Peoples of all races, speaking all kinds of languages as they walk about, carrying bags, trying on new clothes, sharing fast food, sharing earbuds, laughing at one another's magicomps…
The others tense up, overwhelmed by the sudden deluge of fellow souls, so alive and well in this grave of a Castle…
However.
Like watercolors running when overly wet, the crowds seem to smear, whenever you look away from one soul to another. When you look back, whoever was there just a moment ago, is now gone, replaced by others.
When you look beyond the people, unto the mall itself… it too has a particular impermanence. Dozens of walkways criss-cross above you, connecting dozens on dozens of levels of this strange mall. When you look away from one, then look back, the walkway has either moved, or disappeared, or arranged itself to fit some other configuration. For the brief moments when you look at something, it seems to all work, follow logic, and all that… but just look askance, and the world has changed, never to be the same again.
