Samari woke up with her whole body aching like she had made love to a blister of anti-ibuprofen last night. That was impossible, because her mom had taught her to not behave like lowly jailbait, and because anti-ibuprofen hadn’t been invented yet.
She wandered out of the liquid-Rottweiler tent and into the orchard, stars and nebulas sparkling high above. She found Kalon and Jagger sitting over the soft grass that grew among the shadows form the trees, standing guard to secure her sleep.
“Precocious Morning. “she greeted them and sat by Jagger’s side, placing a hand on his back.
“Samari, you remember that word! Your brain is okay, then. Thank the Gods, I thought I would be stuck with two Kalons,” Jagger said, wagging his tail.
“I am sorry.” Kalon said, not looking at her, and instead keeping his eyes stuck to the road. “I need to control my strength better. For the sake of the people I care about.”
“Aww, the braindead moron considers me a person,” Samari teased, punching Kalon’s shoulder, knowing that no matter how hard she hit, he would not be hurt.
“And you consider me a person too, right?” Kalon’s eyes were illuminated by hope, and they filled Samari with uneasiness. “Right?”
“You are more of a person than Jagger,” she finally mumbled.
Jagger scowled, which wasn’t a very menacing gesture when donned by a teenaged Rottweiler. “I feel impersonally offended.”
Kalon let his back fall over the grass, and it seemed the blades wanted to caress him. The blades. The blades!
He stood with unwarranted hurry and then crouched to begin diligently deblading the grass around him.
“Well, if you have time for that, Kalon, we also have time to get back on the road. Ilure city must be but a few hours away. Once we arrive, we can get a room into an hotel and rest. And take a bath.” She sniffed under her armpit and her face crunched up. “In sulfuric acid.”
Kalon spun his finger, making flowing tendrils of liquid puppy from his dress to gather over the tip, into a sphere. Then he lunged that little sphere forward, making it land on the middle of the road and, consuming the vital energy it had been infused with, grow into a wagon without solid Rottweilers to pull from it. “Hop in, then. Jagger pointed out I can use my spirit to spin the wheels without need of a set of driving Rottweilers. It’s more efficient, he says.”
And before Kalon could finish his train of thought (That was a 1:130 scale model) Samari had already hopped onto the wagon, ready to return to civilization once again, as she had no trouble with being a child of the wild, but a warm shower was a warm shower.
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Ilure city, cradled among white walls of bricks bigger than a man and battlements sharper than an Arcagnostic, stood proud before them as they stepped down from the cart. The titanic ivory gates wide open, the guards in their white and purple, long coated uniforms coming to greet the travelers.
“Papers, if you would be so kind,” a man built like a top-heavy population pyramid requested in a flat tone, extending his hand in front of Kalon.
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“We don’t have none, sir. But look!” Samari flared her inner control incunabula, making sure to remove any insulting imagery from it.
“Well, you are a child and have an Incunathingy, so let me fetch my superior to see what can be done. Is the guy dressed in… edge with you?”
“He’s a cultivator and sort of my bodyguard and working partner, yes. Also the dog talks.”
“No way,” the guard said, flatly once again. HE didn’t seem to have a way to change his tone.
“Yes, I do” Jagger said.
“Some way,” the man corrected himself. “So a Talking dog, a ccultivator and An arcagnostic, all of you without papers?”
Samari confirmed with an effusive gesture. “And all of us minors.”
“Mind if I interrogate the other one?”
“Yes: I don’t want you to torture yourself. He’s from Valelike Vale.” Samari whispered, and the guard took a long look at Kalon.
“Yeah, no, I am not paid enough for that. Park there, next to the gates, and wait until a man with a well-trimmed beard comes to speak to you. Cause any trouble, and you will be arrested, beaten, or worse. We usually don’t jail children, but for an Arcagnostic and a cultivator… we may as well make an exception.”
Kalon recalled the liquid puppies used for the wagon, incorporated them back into his dress, and the group sans Brunhilda —who was still stashed with their luggage— sat under the shadow of one of the gates.
Kalon Juggled balls of liquid pups for the group’s amusement, Jagger licked his paws in anticipation, and Samari practiced extricating different regions of her spirit. And as he clowned around, he thought on how far they ahd come. On how this girl he had met while undertaking an insultingly-low-paid mission that would have dissuaded most hunters ended up becoming his best friend. Best human friend, not to discredit Jagger’s loyalty.
Eventually, the captain on duty approached them sizing them up from a prudent distance. “Ambulant circus?”
The three of them shook their heads at the same time.
“What’s your Business in Ilure, youngsters?” He spat like the words tasted sour in his mouth, his hands joined behind his back.
“I am the daughter of a powerful, but sadly gone, Arcagnostic, and I have come to access my mother’s archives. My associate, the boy, not the dog, seeks to join a sect to advance his cultivation.” Kalon waved a friendly hand. “And the dog is just the dude’s sword.”
“Show me the incunabula.”
Samari obliged eagerly, making her spirit dance and rearrange upon the palm of her hand, flaring like a wildfire.
The man paced form side to side and then stoped, staring at Samari dead in the eye. “Did your mother never tell you that the archives can only be accessed by the person they belong to? Your friend may succeed at joining a sect, but you will never get past the Archives security protocols.”
“I will. I am built different,” she said with all the smugness and entitlement one expects of a nine-year-old.
This elicited a hearty laughter from the captain. “Many say that. You cannot get past their security checks; you are just setting yourself for disappointment. But as long as you are not breaking the laws, you are welcome to try.” He turned and pointed to thei guard post with a firm arm. “follow me, you two, I am giving you children some provisory papers so you can stay in the city and there won’t be any… meddlers saying we leave minors to fend from themselves at the city gates.
“That said, where’s your luggage?”
Kalon stepped forward. “She ate herself.”
“Huh?” The captain was confused: the boy didn’t seem intelligent enough to lie. “Arcagnostic, explain.”
Samari considered Kalon’s answer was perfectly self-explanatory, and went with it. “She ate herself.”
The man’s patience was running thinner than an anorexic girl in a house of mirrors. “Talking dog, explain it adequately or I won’t let them in!”
“Our luggage, sir, is a dog. And she ate herself. Began swallowing her tail and continued up to the head. Listen. Brun!”
The air around them burred.
“She’s nowhere and she’s everywhere.”
The man turned and began striding towards the outpost. “I won’t ask further about it, because I value my sanity. Come, we have a rulebook that the girl needs to read, and for the cultivator, a picture book illustrating what not to do in the city.”
Kalon squealed in joy. “Yes! Pictures!
And so, the adventure of the group in Ilure had begun.