Rolling hills and sparse fields of crops make up most of the landscape on the way to Palastia. It looks like we’re just past harvest season, since people are tending empty fields, and not a single one of them looks up at us as we trek by on the beaten path. Even when I trip over a branch and yelp as I catch myself. Or when Illumisia mauls a small animal that looks like a combination between a squirrel and a chameleon.
Honestly, it’s a little concerning. Almost like they’re purposely not paying attention to us. Illumisia licks the blood from her muzzle, crunches on the last of the creature’s bones, and snorts at a farmhand not fifteen feet from us. They don’t even flinch.
“What’s with them?” I ask with a gesture at the nearest one. “It’s one thing to ignore us, since they’re doing their job and everything, but it’s like they can’t even hear us. Or see us, for that matter.”
Illumisia nods a little, and the blue bits of her fur become tinged with black. “These fields are under a complex spell.” She says directly into my mind. “It prevents the workers from seeing anything outside of them, while also creating an invisible barrier around the fields that only workers can enter.”
I raise an eyebrow and try to push my hand over a waist-high stone and metal fence. It hits a shimmering barrier just where the fence ends that feels as sturdy as anything.
“Huh. I guess that’s one way to make sure your workers are safe and not distracted.” I muse as I shake the sensation of magic off my hand. “So, when did you get the ability to talk directly into my mind?”
“I always had it. There was just no reason to use it, as my range in this form is extremely limited.” Illumisia explains. “Now that I am masquerading as a common painted dane, it will be necessary. Be careful not to reply to anything I say to you unless we are alone.”
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Towering stone walls grow closer and closer until I can’t ignore them any longer. It’s hard to see anything beyond them, even the castle-like town that should be visible over the top. Pearl whispers something about magic into my ear. My awareness latches onto it a moment later, helped by her own to deal with the… holes in mine right now. Not actual holes, I mean, but… like… the opening you get when you stretch putty between your hands.
There’s still the same amount of putty, but the structural integrity’s gone right down the drain.
We walk right up to a gate, flanked to one side by a suit of armor that looks like it’s been sitting there a long time. Moss adorns it around the joints, almost like someone decorated it that way on purpose. I tilt my head to the side and lean in to study it closer.
It leans right back at me.
A guard in a suit of armor the size of a small house leans down and stares at Illumisia and I. The thing I’d previously mistaken as an intimidating decoration raises an arm to rub at the bottom of its helmet, then grumbles tinny frustration and flicks the bottom of its chin. The helmet splits in two vertically and peels apart along a line of moss, revealing a very simian face with a long rust-coloured beard.
“Haven’t seen you around here.” His voice was as tinny as it had been a second ago, but now with a deeper rumbling undertone. “Local or foreigner?”
My surprise clears surprisingly fast, and I plaster on a casual smile without showing my teeth.
“Foreigner. Definitely.” I chuckle and gesture at my face. “I’m one of the Class-bearing humans.”
“Hrm. Your kind always looked more like less angular Khr’Keth to me.” The gatekeeper muses, then taps his fist a few times on the door. “Gotta go through standard protocol here before I can let you in. System gave you a Class Card. I don’t need to know what’s on yours, but I need to see you manifest it and send it away.”
I nod and raise one hand, summon my Class Card to it, let the gatekeeper see the side without my details, then send it away with a flick of my wrist. “Is that all?”
He thinks for a second, then shakes his head. “We’ve got to wait a little while for the captain. He’s the only one who can open the doors to someone who wasn’t summoned inside of city limits. System limitations.”
“Yeah, of course. System limitations.” I quickly agree with real sympathy. “So, do you have a class of your own?”
The gatekeeper snorts out a laugh. “No, no. I’m not brave enough to risk one of the trials, and I haven’t gotten lucky yet in a bestowal festival. The captain does, though, and so does everyone else in the Upperguard. I’m just a lowly Wallguard, but that’ll change at the next festival. I can feel that it’s going to be my year.”
A burst of wind blows my hair into my face, and a moment later there’s another person standing there. He’s wearing a hell of a lot less armor than the gate guard; only a chestplate, armguards, and shin guards, but they all look like they’re carved out of dark green steel. Of course, that’s ignoring the full-face helmet that looks like a combination of a gladiator’s helm and some carved visage of catholic anguish, all of which is carved from white stone and adorned with deep blue angular accents. The gate guard snaps off a salute, but the newcomer waves him off with one hand.
“Stand easy.” A softly pleasant but unmistakably powerful voice cuts through the silence. “The captain is busy with something else, so I decided to come and see for myself. And what do I see here?”
The newcomer takes a few lazy, confident steps until she’s just outside of my personal space. At least I think it was a woman’s voice from under that helmet. I… can’t tell from the body. For some weird reason.
“A human woman with features the likes I’ve never seen before on a newcomer, accompanied by a painted dane, and wearing a shellraiser shell like some mundane accessory. You are very intriguing, miss. Also very clearance three, which I doubted until I saw it with my own three eyes. And continue to doubt even though I’ve confirmed it. Wallguard.”
The wall guard, who had just started to relax, snaps off another salute. “Horizonguard?”
“I give you one-time clearance to open these doors and register this woman into the accepted personnel.” She says easily and without tearing her empty visage of a helmet away from me. “The system seems to have treated her harshly. Make sure Palastia doesn’t.”
“Of course, Horizonguard!” He says without relaxing his salute. “Please tell the others to do the same!”
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“It’s already done.” The ‘Horizonguard’ says with a smirk in her voice. “Welcome to Palastia, human. I can’t wait to see what you do to it.”
With that, the Horizonguard turns on her heel and starts to walk away. She gets a good two dozen feet before the wind picks up again, blowing her away in ribbons that peel her physical form away a little at a time. I watch them be carried on the wind up, up, and all the way to the spires atop the highest part of the castle-city. Where she disappears out of sight, and the blurriness starts anew.
“It’s not everyday you see a Horizonguard come down to the ground.” The guard says with obvious reverence. “You must’ve done something important to catch her eye.”
I don’t know about that. The feeling she gave off… it was like the combination of a bored child and a plotting evil queen. It doesn’t make me particularly comfortable knowing someone like that already knows about me, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. Except be boring enough that she doesn’t ever feel the need to see me again.
“I… guess I’ll open the gate for you now.” The guard says awkwardly and leans over to pull on a massive chain. “Have a pleasant stay in Palastia, Class-bearer. And… I know the Horizonguard said she wanted you to do something to it, but please don’t be too destructive.”
A smirk creeps onto my lips, and I give the guard a mock salute as I slip through the little crack he managed to open in the massive stone gate. I hear him sigh and shake his head, a motion that rattles his entire suit of armor, and then the chain coils noisily back into place. Slamming the gate shut right behind me.
“He couldn’t wait another five seconds for me to get out of the way?” I say with mock outrage as I brush off my shirt. “Now my dirt is dirty, and I’ll have to take an hour long shower instead of a fifty five minute one.”
Illumisia hisses out a strange laugh. “If you think an hour is going to rid you of that grime, you are sorely mistaken.”
“Yeah, you’ll need at least two hours to get clean.” Pearl chimes in eagerly. “Look for a bathhouse. They’re pretty cheap, and you should be able to rent a one-person shower if you want the privacy. Make sure you get a high-flow one, though; low-flow won’t do anything for the caked on grime.”
I roll my eyes and hold my tongue. There’s people around us now, and I refuse to blow my cover on minute one. Unfortunately for me, that means Pearl and Illumisia are free to use my brain as an in-between for their own conversations. Leaving me absolutely no silence to think as I start to walk down the stone streets and take in the admittedly pretty amazing sights.
Everything’s made of red-orange stone flecked with tiny shavings of deep green metal like the stuff from the Horizonguard’s armor. I couldn’t get a good look at the outer wall since it was filled with so much magic that it warped the air around it, but now that I’m inside, Palastia is pretty damn beautiful. The architecture’s more mesoamerican than I expected, but with obvious exceptions for castle-style architecture and a whole lot of touches I’ve only seen in opulent palaces.
But they’re all out in the streets. On the absolute furthest reaches of the city, which are probably the poorest parts if this place is built anything like everything else I’ve seen. And then there are all the castles off in the distance; half medieval europe, half mayan pyramid, and a whole lot more modern than either of those influences would have you believe. I can count seven of the things in total from where I stand, each with their own individual flourishes that make them stand out from the rest. But they all pale in comparison to the massive, towering castle that I saw all the way back from where we got teleported in.
It’s like the entire city is a waterfall of architecture and life, spewing forth from the castle far above and pooling down into the place I am now. We’re in the proverbial spring a few miles down from the waterfall, but it doesn’t make the waters any less majestic.
I shake my head and force myself to focus. I’m not here to gawk at architecture; I’m here to sell stuff, get cleaned up, and maybe get some more info from the locals. Uh, not necessarily in that order. Getting clean definitely needs to come first. But when every building is opulent, and even the streets look high-class, all I have to go on are all the different signs. Most of which are mercifully decorated with logos that at least slightly depict the things they serve, but more than a few are just stylized text in a language I know nothing about.
So I guess I’ll have to talk to someone. Probably not a human… which there really aren’t that many of, now that I look a little closer. The place is a real melting pot of different species, but most of them are one of two things–big gorilla-like people like the gatekeeper, and slender people with short-cropped glossy hair, flawless brown skin with patches of scales coloured in all shades of red and the colours close to it, and narrow eyes with two side-by-side vertical slit pupils. All of them look like they’re walking in spiked high-heeled shoes, except the ‘heel’ seems to be a part of their foot, not a fashion choice.
“Can I get a quick explanation about the people here?” I whisper.
“Sure.” Pearl answers before Illumisia can. “The bigger ones–like the gatekeeper–are Ogean. They used to live in the Sunscraper Stalks, but the system made their continent too dangerous for… pretty much anyone without a high-level class to live in. So they came here as refugees, and we took them in.”
Illumisia loudly licks her lips to get my attention. “Do not let their size fool you–they are surprisingly nimble, and have a natural penchant for heat and light magic. Though the system could have done away with that by now.”
It probably did, if that guard’s waiting on the system instead of going and getting magic on his own. Or he already has some magic, but the system can make it better somehow? I guess I don’t know anything about how the system would work on someone who could already use magic.
“They are really strong fighters, and even better healers.” Pearl says proudly. “If you’re looking for a bathhouse, look for one run by an old Ogean. They’ll make sure the waters are perfect and help heal all your fatigue.”
I nod slightly and shift my perspective just a little. I’d assumed the gorilla people would be a little more like… well… gorillas back on Earth. But I need to get rid of those kinds of preconceptions. This isn’t Earth. Things don’t work the exact same. And it could go really badly if I see someone and assume their powerset just because they look like something from back home.
“And the scaly ones?” I ask with a very small gesture at one that walks by. “Did they get displaced by the system too?”
“No, they did not.” Illumisia chuckles. “They were native to a mountain range not far from here, and it would seem that they are assuming a far more compact form to actually mingle with the people. Very unlike the Ytocwa I know.”
“Plus, this place looks like it’s one-hundred percent their architecture. They really staked their claim here.” Pearl tugs on my awareness to get me to look at a castle-temple-pyramid. “The important people usually live and work in those places. The physically higher up they are compared to the rest, the more important the person is. Even if the building itself is smaller or less impressive.”
That explains why the Horizonguard went off to the tallest spire of the highest castle, then. But… she didn’t look like a Ytocwa. Or an Ogean, or one of whatever Akris E’Rillo was. She doesn’t even look like any of the other people I see as I look around, none of which have the general body shape that she did.
“So what species was the Horizonguard?”
Silence from Pearl and Illumisia. Neither of them offer anything at all–which doesn’t necessarily mean the Horizonguard is an unknown species, just that she’s a species that Illumisia and Pearl don’t know about. Maybe something the system uplifted a while ago, or even another species the system called to this world just like Humanity.
“Uh… look for a bathhouse. And maybe a library. There’s obviously a lot of history that’s happened since we were locked away, and I think I should know more about it.” Pearl chuckles and tugs my awareness over the cityscape. “Is there anything else you want to do before you go sell the scrap robots?”
“Mmhm. Whitestone Porch in the Castlefoot District.” I say to myself. “Gotta do that first just in case the system pulls me out of here the second I hit a thousand Worth. But I can’t do that until I’m clean.”