Mithril, God-metal, or Saint’s Silver in the eastern lands, is as precious as a firstborn royal heir and as rare as a dragon’s smile. As strong as adamantium and as light as freshly-spun silk, a master-forged mithril weapon is a thing of both peerless grace and deadly beauty.
- The Fanciful Travels by Beron de Laney 376 AC.
Leading Patches by the reins and navigating through the afternoon traffic, it took a stressful forty minutes until we finally made it near the east gate. Towards the latter half of our trek across the city, Larynda, carrying her heavy bag, had begun to flag. In a show of kindness, Kidu reached down and shouldered her pack along with his own, much to her relief. I found the whole exchange grating for some reason, but it meant that we had no need to slow down.
Elwin’s sudden and off-the-cuff decision, understandable as it was, still stuck in my craw. It would take me a while yet to process the event, for I had other things on my mind.
I tried to ignore most of the exotic sights of the city of tents and focused on my singular goal. However, a few moments later, I grew distracted by everything around me, and just for the sake of doing it, I paused to read the sign of a stall on my right, for practice. Thank heavens the local script was a phonetic one. Due to this, I was slowly but surely beginning to grasp even the written forms of the language. Literacy was, after all, one of the differences between savages and civilized men.
“Haberdashery,” was displayed on a crude wooden sign in front of a stall that was manned by a gaunt woman. In a shrill voice, the old harpy was hawking her bone and horn buttons, as well as some crude iron tools. Satisfied that I understood the sign and was uninterested in her wares, I continued on, putting one foot in front of another, avoiding the dirtier patches of the thoroughfare as I followed our little urchin.
With Elwin’s recent betrayal still fresh in my mind, I needed a distraction. To that end, I decided to use Identify on the small girl, wanting to know exactly how much of a burden the old man had placed upon me. I cast the spell out like a net, and the lines of energy found purchase across the child’s form, to feed my mind’s curiosity.
Larynda - Chaos Mage [Human/Elf lvl.5]
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Health: 32/32
Stamina: 9/21
Mana: 19/19
Looking over the information, I saw that she would fall over in a stiff breeze. However, she had even more Mana than my late friend, Amon Vanes. Was that because of her unique heritage as the spawn of an unnatural coupling? Was I dealing with a precocious little genius? More to the point, what exactly was a Chaos Mage? It sounded suspiciously like a unique and powerful class.
As I looked over the information, I bumped into a man, who fell into the mud. He looked up at me and cursed as he got to his feet. Angry and dirtied, he began to reach for a large belt knife at his waist. But something in my expression, or Kidu’s looming presence, stilled him and he simply gathered himself and moved off, muttering.
Was Elwin a loose end? Again, what on earth was a Chaos Mage anyway? These worries and questions followed me as the little one led us to an area filled with braying beasts and people from many different races going about their business. Quite a few were different from the locals, the hue of their skin and the cast of their eyes telling of their varied origins. Here I could see a muscular man loading up what looked to be a gigantic snub-nosed alligator with heavy leather bags. These he tied to the spines that flowed along its back on each side with complicated knots. Across from me, I saw a woman berating a child who had strayed too close to the cage of some sort of shadowy creature. The mysterious being trapped behind the bars bristled and gave off an aura of raw menace that seemed to absorb the very light surrounding it.
Larynda navigated her way through the organized chaos, pulling us in her wake. Sensing that the Hunter was only a few words from violence, the busy people gave him a wide berth and thus it was easy to follow the girl, even through the press of the crowd.
These sights and many more captivated my senses before we arrived in a section of the caravanserai that was positively bursting with royal color. Purple could be seen everywhere, from the tents to the garments that the members of the caravan wore. Even the guards that were lounging beside a small fire sat on purple cushions. Near them was a six-legged lizard beast, whose closest analog, in my mind, would be the ankylosaur from Earth’s ancient past. It had a purple and gold caparison, trimmed with even more gold, and purple tassels adorned the sharp spikes that ran along its armored hide.
The beast lowed mournfully, shaking slightly as it smashed its heavy mace of a tail onto the hard-packed earth in a show of irritation at its handlers. A bearded man soothed the beast with gentle words as he rubbed under its chin and fed the large animal a red fruit. All around me was a veritable show of purple and it was clear that we had arrived at our objective.