It was another day, another struggle to not lash out at the voices speaking all around him. Now, there were actually five of them instead of one voice, and three of them were having a debate about slavery! The man sighed inwardly as he was trying and failing to tune them out.
"All I'm saying is, everybody did slavery! The Chinese, the Natives, the Romans, and even the Egyptians! But when it's a single race that is enslaved by the millions, it's suddenly a problem to humans?" Spoke a blonde-haired being in a black suit, whose presence alone messed with the man's perception.
"Exactly!" Agreed, a deity in a feathered headdress, the air seeming heavier around him. "My people not only enslaved their neighboring tribes, they even sacrificed and ate them, but they didn't receive as much hate. I tell you, it's that damn double standard of theirs that's the problem."
A deity with a golden headdress and a staff spoke next, with a grumpy tone: "My worshippers enslaved tens of thousands, yet the humans only cared about those Israelites that escaped with that human Moses and went to your damned Father, Morningstar!" Said the deity in the golden headdress, pointing at the blonde-haired being in the black suit. The glare of the sun felt worse on the man's skin the more the deity's tone rose.
"And look where it took them…" Said the being identified as Morningstar, in a tired voice, covering his eyes with his hand. "Not a day passed, and they already sold themselves out to that damn Bull and the fucking Owl."
A brilliant entity in a golden mold of an angel, with the face of one to match, spoke up with a bit of a happy tone. "You still owe me for the bet we made at the time, Lucy."
The man sighed. He was tired of hearing them bicker and converse over hundreds of topics. He wondered if God, or the Savior, was testing his patience, because if they were, he failed long ago. Two minutes ago, to be precise. It hadn't even been two hours since he left the most recent dungeon, and the voices kept talking as if he couldn't hear them. Or they knew he heard them and simply didn't care.
Whichever one it was, he was going to keep trying to ignore them until he at least made it to the Piers, and then voice his annoyance. But if you asked him, slavery was slavery, not that the voices gave a damn.
He sighed again, looking up at the moon as it slowly made its descent west. It had been nearly a day and a half since the first dungeon, and his experience wasn't too bad. Paired with his natural ability to form constructs, he was able to defend himself and attack all those monsters.
"Weird that I haven't seen anyone yet. I've been walking for a couple of hours now…" He spoke out loud, not caring if anyone heard him. Huh, maybe this is why those voices didn't care that he heard them. It's not like someone or something was going to do anything about it, right?
He walked for a few minutes, already at 96th on the west side, when he heard a sound he thought was impossible. A low rumble under him passed quickly, one he was extremely familiar with. It was a train; a downtown train, to be exact. His eyes widened in shock as he ran to the nearest station, hopped over the turnstiles, and ran down the stairs to hear the announcement.
"This is a South Ferry-bound 1-Train, please stand away from the platform edge. The next stop is 86th Street. Stand clear of the closing doors, please." Announced the intercom, as if it were another normal day in New York City.
"Holy fucking shit! Let's go!" He exclaimed in joy.
Sure, he was very well used to walking, and sure, he liked it. But it came to a point when it became annoying, and he had already started to hate it. If this train stop worked, did that mean the entire train system was fully operational, even during this hell?
However, in his joy, he missed the train and was forced to wait seven minutes for the next train to arrive, a 2-Train, thankfully. Once it arrived, he sat down in the middle of the train car in a corner seat and sighed, happy that at least something worked in this ghosttown of a city. Once arriving at Fulton, he left the station and took a walk underground to the World Trade Center mini mall.
Personally, he called the building the Spine, because it was very reminiscent of an actual stegosaurus' back plates and spinal cord. It was a very quiet walk, but thankfully, he was introverted, and it was blissful to him. Walking on the main floor of the mini mall, he went up the still-working escalators to the ground level of the mini mall.
After leaving the Spine, he took a short walk to the 9/11 memorial and looked at all the flowers planted. There was blood on the floor, granted, but at least there were no bodies. Weirdly enough, he didn't see many cars on the road either, even though the memorial was next to a busy driving lane that hundreds of cars would pass through daily.
'Welp, guess I'm spending my morning here.' He thought. Sure, the silence was eerie, and there could be monsters nearby, but he was in an open area. Paired with the easy path back to the World Trade Center's minimall, he could make a quick escape if necessary.
'What the fuck? What is that?' He asked in his mind, hearing the jet engine of a plane.
He looked up, only to see a large plane heading straight for him. To be precise, it was as if he were its target, phasing straight through the buildings. He quickly conjured up the thickest and strongest barrier around himself and the ground under him that he could manage. With nothing else around him to protect himself from the blast, the man had a single, simple thought.
'Ah fuck, I'm so cooked.' With that single thought formed, the plane collided against his barrier.