Chapter Forty-Eight

Hapralee was a city situated on the coast with a wide, curved bay, lined with wooden docks intermingled with ones made of what I assumed was Roman Concrete. I mentally thanked my history teacher for the trivia, and watched the ships coming in and out of the harbor.

They were a mix of wooden and metal with wheel paddles powered by engines beneath the deck. They were similar to the steamboats I remembered from my world, but with one big difference. The smokestacks were missing.

Since this world had magic, it wasn’t hard to conclude that the ships were powered similarly to the mech that Dwarguy used, with ore creating water and heat rather than heating water by burning coal.

As a result, the haze of smoke around the city was greatly diminished and I could see the city far clearer than I would have otherwise.

The city itself was filled with great high spires that shot up from cube bases in a surprisingly efficient grid pattern, and as we drew closer I could see that they’d even divided up the city into obvious ‘districts’. There was an industrial area from which I saw clusters of people emerging, and while I watched, Loysa talked.

“Hapralee was built by Imhoran Shakor, a brilliant mathematician and exceptional sorcerer. He wanted an efficient city and wanted it to have room to grow. I guess he knew the location meant it would expand, so after the old city was burned to ashes during a dragon attack, he built back better. There are parks dividing every sector and public transport is the most common way to get around.” I listened while Loysa explained, but that begged a question.

“Why isn’t everywhere like that?” I asked.

“He was murdered.” Loysa said it casually, “That was hundreds of years ago, I’m not huge on the history there, but from what I remember, he was murdered when he tried to expand his city pattern to other places and rejected some requests for ‘extra consideration’ in land allotment for other cities. So, planned cities are pretty rare.”

It wasn’t hard for me to figure out what she was implying, and it wasn’t pretty. It was, however, familiar. ‘That sort of thing was pretty common on my world too, especially in an era not that different from this one.’ I thought, and began to wonder more about how much trouble I’d gotten myself into.

‘On the other hand, I’m a kitsune… sure I don’t know a lot about how to use my power yet, but kitsunes are very powerful beings, all I need is time, and I should be able to handle anything that comes my way.’ I reassured myself, and it didn’t fail as hard as I might have expected it to.

Taking down those golems seems to have boosted my confidence a little. And maybe that’s why, when looking out over that wide city of parks and factories, hotels, inns, restaurants and homes, dark alleys and brightly lit stages with a towering arena at the outer edge just off a wide road, with a great curved shape like the crescent moon of my home world around a beautiful blue sea that seemed to expand forever…I was feeling more confident than ever.

I forgot my debts for the moment, though maybe in the back of my mind I knew I’d return to thinking about them, but the front of my mind was focused on the task at hand.

“Easy there, foxy. We’re not staying. We’re going straight back to the guild after this, otherwise for all I know you’ll get in debt with a pirate next.” Loysa laughed, but I didn’t think she was really kidding.

I was a mite bit disappointed, but I knew she was right. All good things must come to an end, and this was already the greatest adventure in my entire life.

“I… suppose. Besides, there’s the next quest after this one anyway… I guess it’s not the end of the world.” I agreed.

“Right. Trust me, I’ll recommend that you pass, and then you can build the team you want.” Loysa said, and I barely kept my wince at bay.

“Right.” I echoed her word, but couldn’t get any farther. I’d come to like Dwarguy, and Tess was equal parts charming and chaotic, what’s not to like? And Loysa…standoffish as she was… I thought I’d been growing on her.

In the back of my mind, I just assumed she would stay with me after observing my work. I mean, I hadn’t even finished the quest yet, but she was talking about passing me. Did she not think the same way?

I looked over at Dwarguy and Tess to see if they’d speak up, they were snoring still, their heads leaning against one another, it was about the only way to nap on these ships, but they were even wearier than I expected.

Loysa winked at me, it was like she wanted me to say something, but my voice was gone after that single agreement.

I went back to looking at the city, and the quest I was on, I almost wished I didn’t have to finish it.

I didn’t want the ship to land.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

I didn’t want my party to break apart.

But the ship landed and in her cheery voice Loysa said “Time to put a bow on this quest!” and shook the two sleepy heads awake.

The other passengers were standing up and we made haste to join them. Crowds in this world were like a living thing. This time, however, I knew enough, especially seeing a few barefoot men, to conceal most of my tails and keep the others up to avoid any phony ‘accidents’.

On the way, maybe to distract me from thinking about the pending dissolution of my party, I decided to talk about the coming repair job with the one who built the gate. “So, Tess… do you know what might have caused the break?”

“Because most of my stuff is broken in some way?” She asked, a wry smile on her face, I opened my mouth to object, but her hand went up to stop me, “No, don’t say it, I know.” She shrugged, “Honestly, no. It definitely shouldn’t have, and I don’t mean that in the usual way. I even had some help, and it worked just fine beforehand. It was able to link up to other gates, and they even ‘tried’ to sabotage it and couldn’t. Of course I had to have somebody else do the modifications because mine wouldn’t work, otherwise I might think I made a mistake. But?” She huffed, annoyance was clear in her voice when she went on.

“Now it’s broken anyway? Half the reason I agreed to come on this quest was because I want to know how in the nine thousand hells somebody managed to break this piece of equipment.” Her fists were clenched, and that was the first indication I really had that her difficulties with magic and invention actually got to her in any way.

She seemed to take it all in stride, that her spells never worked as intended, that her inventions always had a downside or an element of unpredictability. ‘Of course she doesn’t like it, idiot. Being used to something doesn’t mean you’re okay with it! You of all people should know that!’ I cursed my own stupidity in that moment, or at least, it felt like stupidity, since it should be obvious that nobody would like their work to always be wrong in some way.

I wondered what it was like to know your magic would never do quite what you wanted, to go into an idea knowing it was bound to ‘fail successfully’ doing sort of what you wanted but not quite. It had to be like trying to draw a straight line with jittery fingers, the closer you looked the worse it got, and the more you tried the more crooked it would seem to become.

Bringing up the question to distract myself now seemed to be just plain… I don’t know? Mean? So I did the best I could, I offered some reassurance. “Don’t worry, with my Insightful Inventor skill, I’m sure we can figure it out. It might be out of sync mana, or who knows, it might be something even easier?”

I had to hope I hadn’t just jinxed it, but whether I had or not, I said what I said and all I could do was hope for the best. It cheered Tes’alay up at least. She got a spring back into her step and the four of us went with Loysa to one of those little flying rowboat ferry things that… still looked like something out of a dream. “Capital Diplomatic Corps Headquarters.” Loysa said, and a gnome with the two sides of his head shaved save for a strip in the middle shouted over his shoulder.

“You got it!”

We floated along guided by a driver or…pilot, of the curious craft until we came to a building with a high stone wall and a multitude of towers rising up not from the inside of the building, but just ‘outside’ of it. “Gate invasion prevention.” Loysa said quietly, and I remember my questions before about using the gates for attacking other countries.

“This place doesn’t take chances.” I mumbled.

“Lass, chances that win ye nothin and can lose ye everythin, are the worst chances in the world to take.” Dwarguy chided me a little, rather like an uncle advising a reckless child.

“I suppose.” I had to agree, and I lingered long enough to hold out my slate and pay the one who brought us here.

I didn’t get a chance to ask any other questions after I caught up to my party, Loysa was marching us straight up to the door, forcing me to almost run to stay with her. “Present the quest identification.” She said to me as soon as we reached a tall orcish guard holding a magirifle across his body that held a wicked looking long bayonet at the end. He was clad in plate armor that was well polished and had deep set green eyes and green skin. He didn’t ask anything, he only glared at us, waiting for us to act.

“Right! Right!” I said with haste, her tone kind of stung me a little, like we’d just met and I was still the annoying novice. ‘Alright I am still a novice… but even so! I’ve picked up some things!’ I held out my slate and brought up the quest log showing that I’d taken the repair job.

I pointed a trembling finger down at the information on my slate and words tumbled out of my mouth, “We’re the party ‘Wandering Time’ and I’m here to handle the repair, like it says right…there…” I drew my finger gradually back as he looked down at it. I wasn’t sure if he was reading it or not, for all I knew, he was illiterate.

He brought a fist sharply out and smashed against the stone door panel, I waited for the door to rise like the others, but it did not. “Party to repair Gate. Send Escort. Guild log acknowledged.” No more words than needed, no less, and then his fist returned and he held the magirifle the exact same way as before.

The orc said nothing more to us, nor did he even really seem to see us. He looked over our heads and out over the wide grass area and straight to the far wall.

“So lifelike…” I mumbled the feeble joke and the orc’s deep set eyes glared at me in a death stare until the door rose up and a pair of additional orcish guards with similar rifles appeared.

“This way!” They snapped, then wheeled about in perfect sync, spinning on their heels and marching in step down a long wide hall just ‘expecting’ us to go with them.

“Go on. Go.” Loysa whispered roughly, and I snapped out of my brief daze to follow behind, again having to rush to catch up.

All that remained was getting there.

And I couldn’t help but feel sad enough about that, that I had to blink my eyes a lot for… well, you know.