One would think that leaving the only home one had ever known would have been scarier. One would think that there would be doubts and concerns, worries over the future.

In truth if Edna really looked inside herself that might very well have been the case. However She didn’t have enough time to. They had moved pretty much just as soon as they’d made up their minds to do so.

They had no jobs to quit from. No friends or family to say goodbye to. What family they did have they were actually running from, for fear of being caught up in their nonsense.

Thus when the decision was made, she went out and bought a carriage. Billy went out and caught a horse-type demonbeast from...somewhere. Then within a few days time they were on the road. Billy apparently spent those days modifying the carriage and...the horse.

They didn’t even actually do any packing. Well he didn’t. She, Edna started packing, got halfway done and was later informed that all her hard work had been largely unnecessary, which was maybe a bit depressing and very, very annoying.

After a long lecture on the importance of communication, she had Billy explain that they were going to bring the house with them. She’d taken his word on it because he’d had yet to say anything that he couldn’t back up.

On the day that they left, she was treated to the spectacle of watching the entire lodge spin in the whirling black waters of the boy’s shadow.

Like a bath toy in a draining tub. Going round and round before finally being sucked under leaving, an empty lot, and a recess where the basement had been. She couldn’t imagine her Uncle being happy when he found out what they’d done.

The land was pretty much ruined when they tore the house out as they did. The damage made worse when Billy took a good amount of the soil from the yards leaving only a yawning pit. Then again if she were concerned about her Uncle’s happiness she might have said yes all those times he’d not-so-subtly propositioned her.

The actual trip itself only took three days. During the day she sat alongside Billy watching the arid plains and sandy plateaus of the Meallan wastes blur by.

During the night she slept inside the carriage its internal spaces expanded to five-times what they should have been. Large enough that it might as well have been a mobile home, small but comfy, complete with appropriate furnishings.

As well as some kind of spell that it made it hard to be aware of their movement unless one was looking out of the window.

She wasn’t sure that Billy ever slept. She was sure he never actually came inside the carriage but there were times when the carriage sat still and he’d be missing from the driver’s box.

All that was a week ago, barely a week, but still over. Now they’d already moved. Heading as far away from their family in Garland as they could get without actually leaving Meallan.

It was now that Billy slept. Finally resting after settling the issue of finding a decent place for them to stay, that was  also within their price range. An issue that was surprisingly harder to handle than Edna would have thought.

Money was all a matter of worth. In small towns, small cities and small kingdoms, it was enough to just pay with old imperial denarii. In bigger places, paper money was small change, used for small purposes by small people.

The real currency was moon dollars. They weren’t actually dollars, and most of them weren’t actually from the moon. Coming in variations of copper, silver and gold. They were what you got when you took out a demonbeast’s aether stone and refined it for human use. Slicing the resulting stone after its final refinement and categorizing the slices in terms of aether purity.

Poor Purity was copper. Average purity was silver. Good or great Purity was gold. With the dollars being wrapped in appropriately colored foils till they were used.

Even just a single copper dollar would cost nearly a hundred thousand denarii to purchase. Silver was ten times that. Gold a hundred times.

Despite all their wealth House Maddoc could only afford to purchase of few hundred of them.  But purchase them they did, because in a world made for and by practitioners it was moon dollars that made the wheels of the world spin.

Big cities like Gene belonged to their Practitioners, being run and administered by cabals, companies, guilds and gangs led by powerful aether users. In short all the money they’d had was barely able to find them a place.

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They wouldn’t have had anywhere to go if it weren’t for Edna remembering one of her father’s old friends and what he did to get out of a certain party alive and that “kind” old man deciding to help her get in touch with a reputable real estate agent.

Even going out of his way by paying some of the charges that they would have had to pay.

*****

The door to Billy’s room suddenly opened and he suddenly lurched out from the gloom within, emerging with a look that was slightly groggier than his norm.

“Nh...what time is it?”

Edna looked over at him from behind her the latest of her notebooks.

“Um…’way’ past noon, I think.”

“Nh...Okay.”

He stumbled out from his bedroom and into the bathroom. She went back to her reading. Fifteen minutes passed and then he stumbled ‘out’ of the bathroom. He came out half dressed, skin and hair steaming.

His slightly disgruntled expression not making him look any more awake than he’d been before. As always she took a cursory glance. Pretending it was just idle curiosity about a childhood friend.

He went back into his bedroom and came out, dressed a few seconds later. Wearing his coat and a pair of running shoes that she bought him when he wore the old ones out.

“Are you headed somewhere?” asked Edna, more bored than curious.

“Work.”

That was new. She knew he kept busy but she didn’t think he had an actual job. At least not yet.

“Work?”

“We’re almost out of money. Or rather I think its safe to say we can’t rely on the family to support us any more...For a lot of reasons.” said Billy.

Edna nodded and then she got up, put her book down on the coffee table and headed into her own room. Appearing again seconds later.

“Nh?” said Billy.

“I want to come with you .I think I should probably work too.” said Edna.

“Nh….Okay.” said Billy.

Before they left the house Billy put on his nine-eyed mask. The sight so shocking that Edna could only just stand there mildly bewildered.

“Aw...you get a mask and I don’t get one? No fair.” she said, nervously joking.

Before the words had even completely left her mouth Billy was holding something out to her. A thick domino mask made of some kind of silvered black material. Elegantly cut and pleasing to the eye.

“I can make you a better one later...if you want.” said Billy.

“Um...n-, no. This is fine.” said Edna.

There were no straps but when she put it to her face just for laughs, ready to explain that she had just been teasing him,  it stuck to her skin, as if it was meant to be there. There was a hum in her aether as she felt a complex of spells and wardings spread their influence over her person.

She was surprised but only marginally. She imagined the mask was made with the same mixture of alchemy, enchantment and thaumaturgy that Billy had used to take their lodge’s space and inner mass and remold it to expand what should have been a mildly squalid townhouse into an expansive palace.

One bigger than the one that he’d set up in the lodge.

Outside with the sun having already gone its own way leaving only a dark cloudless sky, the world had chilled, becoming positively wintery. In Garland though there was a night life the evening were definitely much quieter than during the day. In Gene the opposite was true.

If Gene during the daytime was congested with vehicles, than Gene during the night was owned by the pedestrians. Their numbers spilling from the sidewalks into the streets.

The shops sent out criers and scantily clad female staff members to drum up business. Each street growing progressively louder the closer you got to the main market districts.

What’s more, they weren’t the only ones wearing masks. It was a bit like halloween, a  festival of hidden faces, sharp gazes and eccentric characters. It was leers, glares and unsettling scrutinizing stares for as far as the eye could see.

By the time the two of them got to their destination Edna found herself keeping more closely in step with Billy, glad she was wearing the mask because it seemed to be only thing between her and the dissecting glances that frequently swept towards their direction.

*****

Your Modern KOG HQ was roughly the same in feel and atmosphere as the dmv offices of old. Of course this appreciation would be lost on most but there were a few old timers around who knew.

Naturally of them were super practitioners who existed at the upper echelons of the KOG. Having designed the headquarters that way on purpose.

Similarly all the EITC Main Branches were designed like banks. Filled with ornate statues and comfortable waiting rooms and people who looked like they were there to help regardless of whether they would really help you or hurt you.

If one was looking for the usual raucous, rough and tumble tavern like atmosphere that one would usually envision when one thought of an Adventurer’s guild, that could found in the countless KOG depots that lay everywhere on the Argus continent and most of Monde.

However the first thing a future Adventurer would see would be the order and rigid machinery that lay beneath the laissez-faire wanderer lifestyle of its agents.

Edna stood in the hall slightly awed as she stared up at one of the two KOG headquarters that had been built in the city. Sharing half of its spaces with the EITC.

Above her head was a massive dome of crystal, beneath her feet were tiles of marble. There were benches and lines and beeping machines that fed their input back to the KOG and EITC mainframes that lay beneath the building. Hidden deep underground in a well protected vault, pulsing like a heart or a brain.

“Nh...Let’s go.” said Billy.

She stood staring for a bit, a little shocked because this one building blew away all the Maddoc properties that she’d ever seen.

Both in size and magnificence. She fell in love with the architecture and the frescos that had been painted up on the wall. She fell in love with the statues and sculptures and the fierce looking carvings that had been placed pretty much everywhere that she could turn her head.

“Monde to Edna-Rae. Edna-Rae do you read me?” said Billy.

“Huh…?” said Edna, slightly breathless.

Billy chuckled.

“Come on.” he said, slipping his hand into hers as he’d used to do when they were kids. Leading her around like they were kids again.