Wonderer's Wish World 2: Evolutionary Rebirth

Darius Alive

Day 31

Time: 12:49PM

Location: Nightlight City Portal

"Wow... Is that a portal? That's what they look like?"

Darius peered up at the ghost beside him, flickering in and out of sight despite how tightly he hung onto the blue crystal in his head. He'd half to find another way to hold it, and soon; his hand was starting to cramp.

"I-yeah," Darius replied. "You've never seen one before?"

Mira gave him a miffed look. "They aren't common in the basement, as you have seen."

Darius supposed that was fair. He set his sights once again on the glowing portal, swirling on the face of the rock jutting out of the earth like a knife. It stretched high into the air, but not quite as high as Garbage Island. Darius could only see the top of it, though, as the bottom part was obscured by tents and people that crowded around close together, looking almost like a small town or a crowded marketplace, all centered around the portal.

"It looks like a tourist trap," Mira said with no small scorn.

"Or the gift shop at an airport," Darius added, chuckling. "I guess this is a popular place. C'mon."

Darius and Mira moved forward, with Mira floating above, completely unnoticed, and Darius below, threading between the people and the stalls towards the rock face. In this crowd, pressed against every other body like sardines, Darius managed to move virtually unnoticed, just one in a milling crowd mingling among the tables, of which there were quite a few, all selling different things. From the tables Darius could see, it was mostly junk that he recognized from garbage island, all, broken down bags, binoculars, even a bicycle, but some of the tables, the more crowded tables, seemed to have newer, more high-quality things. Things clear from across the portal. Those vendors were surrounded by people, mostly dressed like survivors from the desert, who flocked to them and asked about their wares, despite the higher, exuberant prices.

It didn't even look like anyone could even buy any of that.

Darius rolled his eyes, and tried to pass on, moving closer to rock face, ignoring everything else. But as people moved around him, jostling him, Darius felt himself getting pushed around, further and further from his goal. Not to mention that the further into the crowd Darius got, the less he could see of the rock face, covered up by the people around him.

Great.

Darius paused, starting to look up to find Mira, to see if she could help lead the way, but before he could call out and ask, he was suddenly and violently shoved to the side, knocking over a bunch of other people like dominos as someone shoved by him, nearly tripping over him as they rushed by him.

"H-Hey!" he called out, his voice barely louder than any of the other angry people who had been shoved to the ground alongside him. "Watch where you're going!"

His shout, however, was in vain. The person who had pushed him down was already long gone, having already disappeared into the crowd.

Sighing, Darius rolled his eyes, picking himself back up. As he did, though, he suddenly realized something was wrong.

On his knees, Darius opened both palms, finding each of them void of the little blue crystal. He fell back down to the ground, looking to where he could have dropped it, and found nothing in his near vicinity but a bunch of feet kicking up and disturbing the ground around him. It would be so easy for one of them to have kicked away the crystal...

"No," Darius hissed in a panic. "No!"

"Thief!" Somebody yelled from in front of him, and Darius looked up to find a woman in front of him patting herself down, frantically looking for something seemingly lost. "Thief! There's a thief around us."