Standing at the edge of a crumbling balcony, they stared out at the sprawling impossibility before them.
“Holy. Shit.” Ava laughed.
The Broken City wasn’t a city. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting. It was fragments—pieces of buildings from different eras, different continents, and hell, probably different worlds—all jumbled together in defiance of physics and logic.
It was a nightmare of a dream of a nightmare of a junk drawer.
Gothic cathedrals leaned against futuristic-looking glass towers. Ancient Roman columns supported the charred remains of what looked like part of a shopping mall with signs hanging off it in a language she couldn’t read. Streets and overpasses began and ended randomly, some tilting at impossible angles, others floating suspended in mid-air.
And interspersed throughout were books. Millions of them. Billions, maybe. Stacked in towers, scattered across plazas, spilling from broken windows and doorways. Books and scrolls and tablets and devices Ava couldn’t even identify.
And all of it was overgrown with trees, vines, and plants of every kind.
“Welcome to the Broken City, where forgotten things go.” Bitty smiled wistfully, her wings twitching. “Everything left behind ends up here eventually.”
“How does that make any sense? This place is a prison.”
“This place is a prison built on top of another thing though, isn’t it?” Bitty tilted her head to the side curiously. “Something older. Something bigger.”
Ava eyed Bitty with narrowed eyes. “How doyouknow that?”
The fae’s eyes went a little wide, and she took a step away from Ava. “Nos said something about it, once. I—I just listen, I swear, I don’t?—”
Ava sighed. It wasn’t worth fighting over. Everybody had secrets, and Bitty wasold.“It’s fine. Yeah. You’re right. The Web used to be—I guess it still is, a big cosmic…thing,that apparently connected worlds?Serrik built the prison on it. Using it. So I guess this makes sense. It’s collecting forgotten refuse.” She looked off into the madness in front of her. “It’s like someone took every library and museum in the world, shattered them, and then reassembled the pieces while blindfolded.”
Bitty nodded. “That’s not a bad description. The Broken City is also where forgotten knowledge comes when it’s lost, no matter what it is, big or small.”
“That explains the books.” She paused, then laughed with a realization. “You must have alotof computer passwords.” Ava adjusted her backpack, checking that Book was secure inside of it. Her arms were getting tired from carrying it. And it didn’t seem to mind being tucked away. “And the second key is somewhere in that mess?”
“Somewhere.” Bitty sounded less than confident. “I’ve only been here twice before, and never to the center. It’s dangerous to stay too long.”
“Why?”
“Um…” The tiny fae’s wings trembled slightly. “Some things are forgotten for a reason.”
“Fun, haven’t had someone say something ‘cryptic and needlessly foreboding’ in a while. Thanks Bit, I was just starting to get worried I was missing out.” Ava started picking her way down a crumbling staircase that seemed to have been ripped from a Parisian apartment building, with Bitty not far behind.
At the bottom, they found themselves on a street paved with cobblestones that gave way to marble tiles, then to electronic panels that lit up beneath their feet.
“So where do we start?” Ava tried to orient herself in the chaos, but she wasn’t sure why she bothered.
Bitty hesitated. “I’m not sure. The city changes. It’s never the same twice.”
“Great. A magical maze with no fixed solution.” And her magical tome had clammed up the past few days. It seemed to be pretty selective on when and how it wanted to help out. Lovely. Nothing like a convenient and selective plot device with a sick sense of humor.
“We could try to follow the books?” Bitty suggested, gesturing to where the stacks seemed particularly dense. “Most of the city is made of forgotten knowledge. Maybe they’ll lead us to what we need.”
“Sure. Maybe those books will be helpful,right, Book?”She shouted over her shoulder. It was as good a plan as any. Namely because she didn’t have any others. They set off, navigating the chaotic landscape carefully.
The first street they followed ended abruptly, the cobblestones simply terminating in a drop of at least fifty feet to another section of city below. They backtracked, finding a narrow alley between what looked like a chunk of a Greek temple and the façade of an Art Deco movie theater.
The alley opened onto a plaza where stone statues with too many limbs stood frozen in poses of supplication. Beyond that, a marketplace where empty stalls still bore the ghostly outlines of wares long since disappeared.
Throughout it all, books. They were everywhere—forming unstable towers that reached toward the strange, sourceless light above, scattered across every surface, sometimes even embedded in the walls and floors themselves.
Bitty stayed close, occasionally fluttering up to get a better view before returning to Ava’s side. Despite her initial reluctance to have a companion, Ava had to admit she was glad for the company.
Through it all, though, Ava had one problem.
