Tsallin was a city built at the mouth of a river. At Tsallin, it was called the Tsa; Serenity knew the river had other names as you traveled upstream. They wouldn’t matter, because the trip from Tsallin was a sea voyage from Tsallin to Kvellin. In Kvellin, they’d be able to find a portal to the next city along their route. If Serenity was lucky, they wouldn’t spend too much time in either port city’s market.
He didn’t expect to be lucky.
For all that Serenity knew the basic geography of the portal connections, that was because he’d asked around and checked the information the Voice could provide. He didn’t know that much about the city itself other than that it was predominantly human but not part of the Empire. As it turned out, that was mostly true; there was a human plurality instead of a human majority.
To Serenity, it was both familiar and exceedingly strange. It matched some of Vengeance’s memories but none of his recent experience as either the Final Reaper or Serenity. For whatever reason, the trip from Lyka to Takinat on Asihanya and then from Asihanya to Tzintkra were through areas with one population or another dominant; sure, they weren’t always human, but walking through a city inhabited by talking deer people was somehow less strange than this complete mixture.
It was like walking through a fantasy city, or perhaps something out of Star Wars. There were people less than half his height and people more than twice his height. Most were within a foot or two in either direction, but even those were often strange colors or covered in fur, feathers, or scales.
Serenity had been walking through the crowd for quite a while before he remembered that to everyone here, he was the weird alien and his group was no more normal than what he saw around him. Six humans, one of whom was a baby, two green people, a man with silver horns, a draykin, and a chitin-covered kangaroo was an assortment almost as varied as what he saw around him. Well, at least they fit in.
After that, it was easier to look past the people and see the city. What he saw was just as unusual as the people. This was no city built from stone, boards, or even mud-brick. Instead, it was a city that had a style all its own. Doorways were large, probably because of the larger people, but many of the “buildings” barely even had doorways; instead, they were more like a circus tent, with a small number of tall poles supporting cloth, leather, or even vines that provided shade yet allowed the breeze to flow through the space. The standard construction seemed to favor a tall central spire with supporting lower poles as needed in a ring to support the fabric as it extended downwards. Bunched sections of the tent walls tied up to the lowest ring near the outermost poles told Serenity that they were made to be dropped to keep warmth in or perhaps simply provide privacy or security.
Where there were permanent buildings, they looked like they’d been constructed from some kind of branch or maybe a flexible bamboo that was bent along a curved frame, but there were far fewer of those buildings than the tents. By the time they reached the market itself, Serenity had only seen five of the more permanent-looking buildings. Everything else was a tent with the lowest tier of cloth pulled up and out of the way.
No one in their group had been to Tsallin before, but it still wasn’t hard to find the market; it was situated near the portal they’d entered from and there were signs advertising things that clearly could be found in that direction.
As it turned out, if they’d known what to look for, they could have found the market entirely without directions. It was a group of tents that were even taller than all of the other tents. There were only six of them clustered together, which still made them cover an enormous amount of space. It was all single story and probably not quite Mall of America in scale but it was still an extremely impressive covered but still open-air bazaar.
Most of the shops in the first tent they came to were more like what Serenity would have called a “booth” than a “store” on Earth; they were sized to be handled by a single person at a time, or at most, three people. The walkways seemed extremely wide until Serenity considered that that was simply because the place was nearly empty now; it would be full later. This tent reminded Serenity of something somewhere between a farmer’s market and a food court; it wasn’t what they were looking for at all. Fortunately, even Rissa didn’t seem inclined to linger, though Serenity was certain they’d be back when it was closer to lunchtime.
The second tent actually grabbed Serenity’s attention rather than Rissa’s. In spite of his preference to avoid shopping, there were some things Serenity liked, and magical supplies was one of them. This tent seemed to be all sorts of raw materials and it included some things he hadn’t seen in centuries!
Or, rather, things he hadn’t yet seen in this lifetime. It made him nostalgic, but it also made him buy. He had a lot of stuff from the places they’d stopped during their travels, but there were some things here that he didn’t have. There were also some that Aide had to remind him he’d already bought, but that was normal.
Most of the locals took Etherium, but after the first couple of purchases, Serenity hunted down a money changer. It was far more convenient to pay in the local currency, which seemed to be based around a small enchanted gold ball; change came in smaller balls and in balls made of other metals. The important thing wasn’t the metal, apparently, but the enchantment that assured you that it was what it said it was; that made it more valuable than the metal it was made of.
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Serenity wasn’t alone in his spending. Blaze seemed just as interested as he was, though the others wanted to move faster and, in fact, ended up checking out the other tents while Serenity was still in the second tent. Serenity wasn’t even the only person from Earth; the local clothing styles varied significantly, but jeans and a silkscreened T-shirt was a pretty good indicator that some people weren’t local, even without the feeling he got from them.
In the end, it was Serenity’s shopping, rather than Rissa’s, that kept them busy until lunchtime. Serenity knew he’d never hear the end of that.
There were several small eating areas inside the food tent, but the biggest one was outside. Their group was big enough to take up an entire table, and when Serenity finally got there after picking out his food, he found that one of Legion’s bodies had already picked a table. She was actually sitting on the table and hopped off when he approached.
“Find anything good?” Rissa grinned at Serenity as she approached. “I did, but most of it’s gifts for my parents. Ita found some talismans that should help both of us in case of emergencies, but we didn’t pick up much in the way of enchanted stuff. I can’t reliably pick the good from the bad in terms of enchantments yet.”
That was always a concern. Serenity mostly could, based on the spellforms the items created, and he could usually tell properly-made gear from stuff that tried to fake it, but he wasn’t as good at it as a true craftsman. “Is that what the other tents have?”
Rissa shook her head. “The next one to the left is mundane finished goods. Nothing magical or at least nothing large. The one past that is all of the magical stuff, then the far tent is entertainment. It has some food, but mostly it seems to be games. There are some areas in that tent that are cleared out every night to become performance venues; they even have stages in some of them. The last tent seems to be … well, everything else. Everything except animals, anyway; they’re apparently not allowed in this market. There’s a place for them elsewhere; I saw some directions but I didn’t worry about it too much.”
It was a bit more strict of a layout than most markets Serenity had been to, but it made some sort of sense. At least you’d know where to go if you were looking for something specific.
Someone bumped into Serenity from behind as he was thinking that. He’d seen her coming, but he hadn’t expected her to actually hit him. “Oh, ah, I didn’t mean to bump you, sorry,” the woman said before she continued onwards to the next table.
Serenity took a good long look at her. She was human or close enough that it didn’t show, with partial armor that covered only her vitals; it probably wasn’t as much as she wore when she was expecting a fight, but it was enough to not feel almost naked from the lack of armor.
Or perhaps he was just projecting how he felt when he didn’t wear some sort of armor. He was wearing his armor-self shifted into a version with less coverage that could be completely hidden by his clothing, after all.
In any case, she was dressed in armor with a long knife strapped to her side. Serenity could guess what she did for a living, especially when he saw the others at the table she was clearly headed for; she was the only one in actual armor, but they all had a weapon of some sort, even the one with a wand strapped where it would be quickly accessible.
The mage met Serenity’s gaze and nodded at him. “She’s used to more space than this.” Serenity couldn’t read the man’s expression, but if he had to guess, the mage was used to apologizing for the woman. “Any time we get somewhere tight, she runs into things.”
“Hey! Whose butt did I pull out of that spider’s trap yesterday?” The armored woman stopped before she sat down and set her hands on her hips. “I wasn’t clumsy there or you wouldn’t be here!”
The mage dramatically closed his eyes and looked down while shaking his head slightly. “Yes, you got me out of the web-filled spider hole … by tearing the webs apart with your knife. You didn’t hit me, but you definitely hit everything else. I was able to climb out of the hole on the dirt you knocked inside.”
Serenity hoped that was an exaggeration. He doubted he’d ever know for sure, since he wasn’t likely to want to delve with them. Still, both their presence and the fact that they talked about delving the day before indicated that there was at least one dungeon nearby. That was usually the case for cities, but not all port cities had dungeons; some made it simply on the trade that came from their location. “What can you tell me about the dungeon?”
“You delve?” The woman sounded incredulous. “You look like a fancypants, not a working merc.”
Serenity was certain that the mage would have facepalmed if that were part of the local gesture language. As it was, even Serenity could see that he had to stop himself from saying something again.
Serenity didn’t take offense. It was true, after all; he’d deliberately dressed as someone with money rather than a working delver. He’d wanted to see if that made a difference; so far, it seemed to. People were more willing to answer questions about their products.
Well, either the clothing or the fact that he had Etherium to burn had made a difference from what he remembered as Vengeance. Now that he thought about it, it could well be the Etherium. It could also be his approach; Serenity didn’t remember being Vengeance all that well, but he did remember that he’d been rather abrupt and direct.
“I’m in the Guild,” Serenity admitted. He didn’t have to say which guild in this context. “Though I do probably need to update my card; it’s been a while since I’ve been in Guild territory. I take it the dungeon here is Guild-run?”