Book Five, Chapter 52: Twisted Threads
There was a sporting goods store around the last turn of the U-shaped building.
It had an appropriately punny name: Dead Sprints.
Unfortunately, it was closed down because it contained so many cool objects, and it would be overpowered for us to shop there. After all, sporting implements often made great incognito weapons—even if you weren't an athlete.
The Atlas didn’t say anything about it because trope objects (of which there were tons in there) were new, but the conveniently placed attendant filled us in. They said that the shop’s owner had been murdered the night before so the shop was closed. She gave us details, including a newspaper article. It seemed pretty clear to me that to shop there, you had to run a storyline and save the shop owner the day before you went.
So, as we passed by, we could only window shop, staring past the locked doors and shutters at the hockey sticks, golf clubs, mountain climbing axes, and other interesting items, many of which had tropes attached.
Oh well.
I carried my TV as best I could. We had brought the wheelbarrow in case we found something worth purchasing, but we didn’t bring it inside the outlet mall because of the crowd. Luckily, the TV only had a 13-inch screen, and it really wasn’t that heavy.
Isaac was psyched when I actually bought a TV, and I don’t think he even realized it had a trope attached.
There was a Halloween-esque shop called The Hem and Haunt, and the strange thing about it was that it didn’t appear to have a single omen inside. It had no trope objects, no items of interest at all because it was not a shop in and of itself but rather the setting for an omen that showed up at 3:00 a.m.