Shortcuts in the world without Curtain
When The Curtain fell, and the material and the spiritual world became one, the Earth's landscape started to constantly shift, becoming an unrecognizable mess. And although human thoughts can somehow bring some order to that chaos, most of the places became inhospitable or even hostile. Be it Dominia of the Lords, Spirit hunting grounds or places that became dangerous due to the strong concepts that warped them, it's no wonder that remainders of humanity found a few safe places and they stay there. Still, once in a while some of them have to leave their safe havens. And that's when the shortcuts can help them avoid some of the dangers of the world that changed.
Human-based
Thought
Even before the Curtain fell, human thoughts and memories affected the spiritual world and the spiritual world affected humans. As such, memories of the person traveling through the world affect its geography. Depending on how well one remembers the landscape between two points and how they always felt towards traversing that distance, a thought shortcut can show up. Remembering the travel as relatively short actually shortens the time needed to reach one's goal. But on the other hand, if one remembers the travel as prolonged and grueling, it would be better if they traveled in groups or hired a Stabilizer to help them. Although one might think that if they don't remember the travel between two points, their current journey will be instantaneous, in reality, it happens very rarely. Such a significant difference between reality and their thoughts will try to correct itself, and they might discover that to reach their goal they now need to traverse through alien, spiritual landscapes.Spirit-based
Living tunnels
Some spirits, thanks to the strong concepts that create them, reach gargantuan sizes and become impossible to perceive by the human eye. They tend to manifest only in the places related to the concept that created them. For example, a spirit related to medicine could be big enough to cover an entire city but manifest only in all of the hospitals in said city. This can create living tunnels, a network of shortcuts between various places related to the same concept. They aren't easy to find and using them is a gamble. sometimes it is an additional pair of doors, a hallway that isn't supposed to be there, a vent shaft, and sometimes it is the literal living tunnel, a corridor made out of moving, pulsing flesh. It is because traversing them is traversing through the guts of giant beasts. They can be inhabited by lesser spirits, an equivalent of gut microflora, that will attack anything that enters their territory. Or even worse, the giant spirit might decide to consume some or all of the prey that came to it, absorbing them completely.Spirits of the journey
Both humans and animals travel a lot. One could say that the concept of travel itself existed from the first picoseconds of the existence of the universe. Because of that, spirits related to the journey are one of the oldest beings in the spiritual world. And because the humans were beings full of curiosity that tried to always travel beyond the horizon, the spirits of the journey always looked at them favorably. As such, if one enters the area influenced by one of them a few things can happen. Either the spirit's aura could shorten their journey or change its course into a safer one. But counting on the presence of the spirits of the journey is a very bad idea. Those beings are constantly on the move, never stopping in one place for more than a while. Even when traveling "under the wings" of one of them, one can quickly discover that they were left behind and the area they are in right now isn't as safe anymore.Spirit Guides
Similar to the spirits of the journey, the spirits serving as guides tend to like humanity, either being born of the concepts related to them or to the concepts of beings that like humanity (a lot of spirit guides are spirits born from the concepts related to dogs). For a small fee, usually the right to feed on some of human's concepts (which is harmless in the case of most of the spirit guides), they can (more or less) safely lead someone to any place they want to visit. The hardest thing is to find one of them. Spirit guides can't enter any ideas protected by talismans and sigils and as such visiting any human settlement protected like this is impossible for them. Additionally, just like humans, they need to watch out for other, bigger spirits that would like to eat them. As such, they need to move a lot to not draw attention of their predators.Others
Anomalies
Because The Curtain varied in its thickness, when it fell and broke, some parts disappeared faster than others. Those that lingered longer invisible created tunnels connecting many places at the same time. Entering one of those invisible tunnels can launch someone into one of the hundreds of various exit points. This could bring them closer to their goal or leave them stranded in an unknown place. What's interesting, a group of people that enter the anomaly while being connected in some way (even holding hands works), will be sent to the same place in the end. Still, using one of those anomalies is usually a last resort decision, something one would do in a desperate attempt to save their life. The presence of the Stabilizer doesn't help much in this case, as those places, for some reason, consider the exit point for Stabilizers differently than for other beings. Even when being connected by a rope or holding each other, the Stabilizer will be sent to a different place than his friends.Bus stops
One of the weirdest existing shortcuts, that came to be for an unknown reason, are bus stops. If one falls asleep at a normal, still recognizable human bus stop, they will wake up at one of the other bus stops that were once connected to this one by one of the bus lines. Which one they will wake up at depends on the time they slept. The distance traveled will correspond to the average speed of the buses in the area. Although this way of traveling could be considered to be most efficient, it is also extremely dangerous and unreliable. For first, one needs to be able to fall asleep whenever they want to use this method of transportation. However, this will leave them completely defenseless against the beings that might want to eat them. And a lot of the beings learned that they could find easy to hunt prey at one of the stops every so often.
Shortcuts are anomalies of the world that change the distance between two spots, shortening the time of travel. Depending on what caused the shortcut to show up, they are divided into three categories: the ones caused by the human psyche, both the memories and the state of mind of the one traveling through the world, the influence of spirits or other means, be it a mix of the previous two or the laws of the conceptual world merging with the material one.
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