"But why did Zaratul take him to the Forsaken Land of the Gods? And how did he get in?
"At the Hanged Man's request?
"The Zaratul Family were Solomon's subjects, so it would indeed be perfectly normal for them to have some tacit understanding with the Hanged Man."
Amon pressed a finger against his monocle, feeling that there had been more and more things in recent months that he could not "decrypt," which only made them more interesting to him.
After pondering for a moment, he stopped waiting at the inn and vanished from the spot with Klein's Marionette.
Forsaken Land of the Gods, Chernobyl within the rift.
After opening doors again and again, Klein and Abner finally entered the depths of this nuclear accident site, which had been famous even before the Apocalypse, and saw a half-open heavy iron door.
The iron door was not tall, only about two and a half meters high, clearly meant for humans.
Farther ahead lay two pools of pitch-black traces and two firearms that looked more futuristic than any weapon of the current era.
The two firearms resembled some he had seen while flipping through magazines in his previous life, but he was not an enthusiast in this field and could not be certain.
They had been completely corroded. The vibrations caused merely by walking made them collapse instantly into foam... like fading Historical Projections.
Abner and Klein passed between the two pools of black traces and the "foam," arriving behind the iron door.
There was a broad corridor here, with rooms of varying sizes on both sides. Some of the tables, chairs, and objects inside had toppled over, some remained intact, and some were missing half their structure. Black traces covered the walls and floor.
"It looks like a research institute..."