Wandering Fortunes

Chapter 7: The Obsidian City

New Zhopolis! City of wealth. City of power. City of Zhop!

All an accurate description of The City by the Half-Frozen Bay; The Arctic Fog City; Zho'lis; The City that Knows More than You Would Like to Know; N.Z.

Duth_Olec: Wait, that last one could be confused with New Zealand.

Wally_Plotch: Where?

Duth_Olec: Earth place. Just call it New Zhopolis.

Wally_Plotch: Okay.

With "Zhop" in its name, it was easily the first city to come to mind when thinking of Zhop. Founded centuries ago, it had been built as the center of wealth and power for Zhop and was the hub for the Zhopian Guard, the peacekeepers and arbitrators of the planet. At least, in theory. At least, in spoken theory.

With "-opolis" in its name, its appearance was as expected: sprawling, high-rise buildings, cleeple of all species and backgrounds walking about like insects. It was so far north that the sky was gray almost all day. A freezing ocean buffered it to the west, ice floes commonly floating nearby.

Alden and his friends had stopped to camp the night before when a fog rolled in, and that morning—the first day of the month of Nutarkle, actually—when they awoke the fog had dispersed, and Alden's first sight of New Zhopolis was like a punch: towers and buildings that made the forest of his home look like patches of shrubbery. The city seemed like it was reaching into space, or as if it had sprung up like a mountain from shifting tectonic plates.

They were just an hour from the city. As much as Alden had read about New Zhopolis, it hadn't prepared him for the sheer imposing vastness of it.

They'd almost arrived, but the city was huge. How would they ever find anything? What would they do when they got there? They had limited funds. Alden felt doubts, but he wouldn't voice them for Top's and Ropak's sake. They would need to find jobs, and they would need to find a place to stay.

At least they had the entire day ahead of them to find those things.

I was right. New Zhopolis is huge.

The city limits sharply broke the low-lying shrubs with buildings and streets and pipes and cars. Concrete, metal, and stone towered over everything. Nature was removed and replaced with clerpson-made structure. If a tree started to grow near the city, the buildings would loom over it so high that the tree would probably cower back underground.

The city seemed to meld into a hazy mass of towering gray blocks. There was some color but only really in the cars. Alden had expected the vehicles to zip by, but he supposed there would have to be room for them to zip by. They moved at a steady pace but were packed so tight that not even a bicycle could swerve between them. Most streets had four lanes, and the sidewalks were so thin that two scalagos could hardly walk side-by-side. Roads ruled the ground, and buildings ruled the sky.

He was glad he wore thick shoes. The ground in the forest hadn't exactly been soft, but he could feel the hard, flat stone street as if he stood barefoot.

The musty smell of metal was everywhere, dirty metal, nothing like the fresher scent of trees in the forest. Alden could practically taste the metal. He could hardly stand it. He doubted Ropak could either. He wasn't sure if Top would be bothered by it.

Before they'd even entered the city proper Alden's ears were ringing. Horns, chatter, screeches, shouts, sirens, slams—New Zhopolis was a cacophony, never a silent moment, the entire city like a falling tree that released every sound ever made near it at once. Alden could hardly imagine how Ropak took it, and Top... well, Alden wasn't sure if Top was used to a cacophony within their head anyway.