Another boring day of walking. Courtney figured that this whole adventuring thing would involve some cardio – she'd read some fantasy books as a kid and watched that one trilogy the one time – but holy shit, there is no number of movies or video games that would prepare her for how tedious this would be. Most of the movies skip this part! Play some big orchestral piece while the camera pans over a beautiful New Zealand countryside, ride a horse into a sunset while the credits roll, that sort of thing. Not… turn your brain off and put one foot after the other.
Except Courtney can't even turn her brain off, not after she took a brick-sized rock to the cranium because of three little fuckers. Now she's paranoid on top of bored, and she has to keep herself occupied without a working phone, or even a goddamn crossword! It's just her and Ronister.
Well, at least she can grill him on the specifics of fantasyland. Or, as names go, the world of Septgard.
"So, who decided to split the planet into seven worlds, again?" Courtney asks, her hand hovering over her reapplied head bandage to scratch at it. But then she glares and puts her hand back down, thinking better of doing so.
"Depends whom you ask, milady. It is oft believed – and it is my belief – that the Pantheon molded the leylines that splits the worlds, and thus the eight worlds remain so. A merchant told me of Ixianish scholars who think that the division is a result of some… clockwork reaction, I suppose, betwixt nature and magic." Ronister scrunches his nose. "And there's always the barmy cultist who ascribes these to some primordial hero or goddess…"
"Ixian is the metal world, right? With the robots, er, automatons?" Courtney hazards, trying to recall her fantasy geographical cram session.
"Correct! And the third furthest from our current location."
Right. They're divided based on magic elements or whatever. Light, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood, Fire, and Darkness. In order, they correspond to Grandstart, Corozona, Ixian, Nippon Niban, the Sanguillon colonial coast, Burntes (part of Sanguillon), and actual Sanguillon.
Turns out, the bad guys have had a few decades to keep up the world domination schtick, which means they've already taken over three worlds. Burntes actually allied with the evil demons from the get-go (no surprise there), and they promptly got merged somewhere in the middle. With that in mind, she'll let you guess as to what happened to the world once known as the Verdant Sanctuaries.
All of that isn't surprising to Courtney. What is surprising is Nippon Niban, because that is, historically, the retirement home for a lot of unsuccessful otherworldly heroes. Who all happen to be Japanese, for some reason. Ronister doesn't know much more than that – he basically has a Victorian schoolboy's education at best, so Courtney doesn't blame him.
"Still can't believe Niban exists." Courtney snorts, her mind veered off-topic by the sheer weirdness of having a Japan Two in a different universe entirely. Like, she knows that other people died and got sent here, but why's the demographic so… skewed?
"Perhaps you might find someone you know there? Being from the same world, and all." Ronister ventures hopefully, under the sound of his giant backpack clonking like someone dropped a pots-and-pans combo pack.
"Of the Japanese people I knew, I'm pretty sure none of them got run over." Then again, Courtney's been dead for a few days now, so who's to say? "And you said ninety percent of heroes come from there?"
"At least, that's what it said in my Handbook of Heroes. I only have the fourth and fifth edition, though." Ronister waddles, and Courtney can't help herself.
"Look at this fuckin' nerd." The cheerleader verbally jabs at him, a cruel smirk on her face.
Ronister's hung out with her long enough to know she's shooting the shit, so he just sticks his tongue out and raspberries at her. "Pbbt!"
Before Courtney can reach over and noogie this little dweeb, she feels the vibration of the earth under her boots and freezes in place. Listening intently for any disturbances, the distant sounds of hooves and rickety wheels cause her to perk up and look for the source. Her hand hovers over her new dagger, finger grazing over its handle. Ronister does so as well, looking a bit more excited than her.
A coachman waves a white handkerchief in the distance, and Ronister waves back. He's dressed in the usual peasant garb that she saw back in Smallwood. Relaxing at the sight, Courtney puts her hand on her hip, dagger forgotten.
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At the cost of an introduction and two silver pieces, Courtney finally gets to sit her ass on a chair and ride to Gran Tidel instead of hiking the entire way. Thank God, she really didn't want to walk the entire time.
They're now going by horse-drawn wagon, so the difference is that they'll be getting to the Capital by midday rather than past sunset. It doesn't matter if she walked three-fourths of the way, she still gets a break. Although, thinking about it, Courtney really did just travel to another city by foot, huh? In heavy-ass boots to... boot. She'll pat herself on the back for that.
The coachman's name is Ezekiel of Backfoot, Backfoot being a town a little further away from Gran Tidel, compared to Littlewood. Nice guy, looks kind of Amish. Apparently, he was already ferrying two other folks –Takahashi Whitefang, a wolf-girl, and Johann du Mille – so adding two more people to his rickety bus ride wasn't an issue.
Johann is a standard Civil War-era white dude, with ginger hair, crow's feet, and a bushy beard. Courtney would see his type in the hunting part of a sporting goods store, if he wasn't clad in leather and burlap. In contrast, Whitefang is an honest-to-God anime girl. She's clearly got some Asian blood, if the last name wasn't a giveaway, but she has also impossibly beautiful locks of snow white hair, and a tail, and wolf ears, and a little fang that sticks out and stabs her lower lip when her mouth is closed.
Courtney is now convinced that Michael Worth should've been run over. His nerd ass would be slobbering all over this shit.
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Everything's nice and quiet until Ronister opens his big mouth and starts bragging.
"What brings you two to Gran Tidel?" Ezekiel asks, looking over his shoulder and away from two horse asses.
"Milady here was summoned from another world!" Ronister chirps, and Courtney immediately leans forward and hisses at him.
"Ronnie!"
"We're off to make her a hero – milady, I don't – I'm just trying to explain –" Ronister gets uppity, sending Courtney's blood pressure into the stratosphere.
"You shouldn't just fucking offer that information to everyone, you stupid little –"
"Ma'am?" Someone says, and Courtney snaps out of it. Flexing her jaw into an underbite, Courtney gives Ronister a stink-eye before slinking back into her seat. Ronister shuffles nervously into his own, huddling into his own armor.
"Oh, my step-grandfather was a hero," Whitefang offers, tapping her finger on her chin in what has to be exaggerated cuteness, "that's how he met my grandmother!"
"Really? How'd they meet?" Johann asks casually, pointedly not looking at the easily irate American girl.
"Well, actually, my mother was a white mage at the time, who was working with the hero. At some point, she introduced him to her recently widowed mother." Whitefang explains. "As it turns out, that hero was very much into his friend's mother. One thing led to another, and, well…"
"Hah! Not the mage, but her mother? What a dog!" Ezekiel barks with laughter, before making a sound like he'd just swallowed a lemon. "Er, no offense, ma'am."
"None taken." The half-canine, half-human girl laughs.
"Hey. What's a white mage?" Courtney asks Ronister suddenly, her earlier anger mostly dissipated.
"It's a, er, healing magician, milady." Ronister responds, sounding smaller than he did before. More self-confidence issues. They'll need to talk about this later. Preferably not in a shared wagon ride.
"Should get one of those." Courtney notes offhandedly, before staring out the rear end of the wagon, watching the road pass by.
…Until she feels two sets of eyes looking at her. Then, she turns to face the other two passengers, affronted. "What?"
"Nothing, it's just, well…" Johann tries to find the words. He's beaten to the punch by Whitefang.
"Most – if not nearly all heroes – are familiar with basic vocabulary like that," Whitefang explains, sounding a bit cautious, "I… suppose it could be a stereotype, but from the ones I've met, it's one-hundred percent true."
"What she said." Johann nods. "You… did go to school, right? In your original world?"
"Look, just because I didn't bother with that crap past the age of six – y'know what?" Courtney stops herself from going on a tirade, shoving down her instinctive indignation. "I don't know if I'm a hero, honestly. All I know is I died and came here, and apparently that means I'm gonna get thrown at the Bastion. So."
"Ah…"
"Hm…"
The wagon falls silent. Courtney doesn't care. She's not sure why she cares about any of this, really. The basement dwellers and weeaboos should be here, not her. The locals even said as much. Her forte is kicking pizza-faced creeps in the balls and kicking ass in a dance routine, not leveling up and allocating stats and white mages and all this shit.
Maybe if she jumps in front of the wagon, she'll get reincarnated into a world where she's a trust fund baby and doesn't have to worry about crap like the bad chafing on her feet or cleaning the wound on her dome. Certainly not being a hero, or earning a fucking Soul Weapon from King Charlon – honestly, just saying that shit is a bad joke –
A warm gauntlet rests on Courtney's knee, and she looks up to Ronister. Her attention latches onto the glint of his eyes under the shade of his helmet.
Courtney heaves a sigh.
"…If I'm some sorta stupid, they better give me an easy Soul Weapon." She grumbles, crossing her arms and looking out the wagon's rear again. "If they give me a bow then I'm gonna use it as a stick, I swear to God."
That garners a few laughs, and it doesn't feel like a funeral home anymore. Courtney returns to brooding, but with a little less self-loathing.
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If the Qliphoth Bastion of Sanguillon is marked with the colors of evil – the crimson of a bloodied edge and the darkness of an abyssal ichor – then the castle city of Gran Tidel has doused itself in the hues of heavenly protection. Impossibly white marble walls stand victoriously in the distance, accented with glimmering gold and parapets borne of master masons across generations. Towers branch impossibly from other towers, reaching the sky with endless windows of stained glass. Surrounding the castle is the very picture of greener pastures, rolling verdant hills shining under a perfect blue sky.
Grandstart's proud flag – a white alicorn against a field of azure – stands proudly from every high point of the fortress capital. It waves most brilliantly, most gloriously from the highest point in the city: the central clock tower of Castle Diviner, the seat of government widely regarded as humanity's greatest architectural wonder, and the final stronghold against the Bastion's heinous legions.
The wagon pulls across a beautiful curving bridge, a crystal-clear river rolling peacefully underneath. A mother duck leads its ducklings under its shadow, as a frog leaps from one lily pond to the next. Passerby folk smile and wave amiably to the coachman. As they get closer to the walls, the smell of freshly baked bread and blooming flowers begins to fill the air. A baby's laughter can be heard from within.
"I bet cost of living must be insanely high." Courtney muses.
"Oh, undeniably. The landed lords are utter thieves, I fear." Ronister nods.
"I'm guessing we should stick to the tourist spots unless we want to get mugged?"
"Yes, milady. Although, they set prices far more steeply in those areas, methinks..."
"Is there merchandise that says something along the lines of 'I LOVE GRAN TIDEL'?"
"My mother owns three bowls thusly!"
"Figures."