Hellsborough Exposed — the-hex

For sixty-six million years nothing noticed the split, because the Loxley ran straight through both worlds the way rivers do, and the murk drifted across the border as if there wasn't one. Then somebody bridged the river, the bridges grew roads, the roads met, and without anyone meaning it the most powerful source of liminality in existence had formed: the junction. Milting saw it coming. They took the semagrams of the junction and used them to conceive The Hinge, a lock one Planck length wide, and made it so it should never be opened. It leaks anyway, and I know better than most that I haven't helped.

Van maintains that every denizen of the Hex has a function — the Cryptobites are the garbage trucks, the Hexikids the street sweepers, the Syncarids the data infrastructure — right down the list, nothing wasted. I find this comforting in exactly the way that discovering your home city has a functioning waste management system would be comforting, if the city was also trying to eat you.

The Hex at murkneet is lit by murk-lamps spaced at intervals that appear to have been optimised for atmosphere rather than visibility. Exacids work the corners — not patrolling, stationed, which is the more troubling posture. Parallel grooves run deep through the cobblestones, too regular for feet and too deep for any wheel: something large was dragged here recently, and the Hex has offered no explanation.