Waking up and getting dressed with Grace was only marginally less awkward than getting undressed had been last night. Only because she wasn’t over with me taking my damn bra off for me. I really wish I wasn’t such a… a damn klutz. Gosh I felt my cheeks heating every time I thought about that, uh, incident.

Thankfully we made it down to the inn’s common room in time for breakfast, and then we were heading out the door. Troy decided that we’d be heading out of the city as soon as we had directions to travel in. All that needed to happen was for me to approach random strangers with five armoured people at my back and get a reasonable response from them. Nothing wrong with this plan at all.

“Right, this isn’t working,” Troy sighed as the fourth person gave me odd directions.

It wasn’t that they weren’t giving us the wrong directions per se, it’s that none of them agreed on where a good center for magical artificing would be, and on top of that, none of them seemed particularly interested in clarifying the matter.

“What’s going wrong?” Adam asked, fiddling with the strap of his helmet.

I waited for someone to come up with the obvious answer, but none of them did. I guess they weren’t aware of the stares we were getting? Or maybe they were and they just weren’t connecting the dots.

“I think it’s the armour, it’s scaring people,” I sighed, then took a chance and began to take off my disguise. “Would you all mind if I went and spoke to some people without… you know, five heavily armoured people at my back?”

Troy gave a chuckle and nodded, “Yeah, okay. I should have figured that out. The locals weren’t exactly keen to talk to us back in the middle east either. Can’t entirely blame them either. I guess you can act as the interpreters did for us.”

“I don’t like the idea of Ryn off on her own,” Grace said quietly. “I just, you know… she’s kinda hot property right now. Someone might try and grab her.”

“Emphasis on the hot,” Kit muttered so low I was almost unsure he’d said it.

“Well, you could always change out of the armour Grace,” Troy said matter of factly.

“But, where?” she asked, gesturing around us at the bustling market.

“Just find an alleyway or something, fuck,” James groaned.

I frowned at James, then tentatively took Grace’s hand. “Come on, we’ll find somewhere.”

“Meet us back here in two hours, you two,” Troy called as I led an angry Grace away.

That James guy was asking to have his balls popped like grapes if he wasn’t careful. Half the shit that came out of his mouth was infuriating to Grace and awkward to me.

We wove through the market crowds as fast as we were able, until we found a side street that we could duck down. Finding an alleyway wasn’t hard after that, they were always just so reliably available. The first stretch was rather disgusting, but we found a quiet nook where she could change.

“Dunno why it has to be me who gets changed,” Grace grumbled as she began to take her armour off. I knew she had basic clothing on underneath now, so I wasn’t too concerned about her undressing, but I still turned my back regardless. “Could have been one of the guys who helped.”

“Because people are more willing to talk to a pretty face,” I replied absently as I kept lookout. “And you did kinda volunteer yourself by pointing it out.”

Grace was silent for a moment, the sounds of her undressing coming to a halt for a moment. “You think I’m pretty?”

“Huh?” I asked, turning around to look at her. “Yeah, of course. Anyone can see it.”

“A lot of people don’t,” she said quietly, her expression… distant.

“Well, they’re wrong,” I frowned. “I thought you were pretty back when I first met you too. In between admiring the way you could wrestle an umbrella and a door at the same time.”

Her expression changed quickly to one of amusement at my words. “Yeah, I’m not going to lie, that was tough. The wind was nuts!”

“Yeah,” I smiled, then playfully bopped her on the shoulder with my wimpy little fist, “Strong girls are cute too.”

Her smile was happily bashful as she murmured, “Thanks Ryn.”

“No problem, now let’s go woo some magical materials merchants,” I said, lowering my voice into what I thought was probably a sultry tone, all while fluttering my eyelashes. Was I being girly? This is girly right?

Grace gave me an amused smile. “Alright there little lady, careful where you point those eyes.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Hey, I’m not little. You’re just bigger than me,” I grumbled as I turned my back again to let her continue.

“Yup, sure,” came her sarcastic response.

I didn't reply, instead I stood there and pouted, waiting for her to finish. Once she had her more normal clothing on, we left the alleyway and returned to the market. From there we made our way through the crowds towards the small section of the market that sold things that a magical artificer might be interested in buying. Almost immediately I wondered why it was a small section. Barely a dozen vendors sat in the shade of their tents.

Approaching the nearest one with Grace in tow, I asked, “Hello! How are you?”

The older man behind the desk looked up and squinted. If he could even see past his huge eyebrows. “What can I do for you? You don’t look like the type to be needing anything from my stall.”

“Oh, I um… I’m asking for my friend here!” I said, motioning to Grace. “She’s interested in learning about um, this kind of stuff.”

“Can she not speak for herself?” he asked disinterestedly.

“She doesn’t speak Anve,” I told him, shaking my head.

Damn, why was this guy so damn grumpy? Should I just cut my losses and move to the next guy?

“Hmph, alright,” he huffed. “What do you want to know?”

“We were just wondering if there’s any city that’s well known for this type of, um, magic,” I said, pointing to the various ores, metals and powders he had on his table.

“Depends, do you want a gathering of three practitioners, or a gathering of hundreds?” he asked. “I know of Din, far to the east. They have a well known guild of Constructors. Then there is Huerdan of Davenken up in Abernesia, who is known to have hundreds of Constructors under his employ. Finally, if you are willing to venture into Obrec lands, you have Millowhall down in Clan Mossbed territory.”

“What is… Obrec lands?” I asked tentatively, knowing he was going to be angry for the question.

“Oh come now girl! I will not be fooled by such ridiculous, base questions as this! Go, I will not speak to you,” he exclaimed angrily, making shooing motions. “Damn young un’s and their pranks!”

“Fuck, alright,” I frowned, backing off and taking Grace with me.

Before either of us could try to talk strategy, I heard a voice call out from a few stalls over. “Hey, miss? Old Eurig being his typical old helpful self?”

We both turned to see a much younger merchant at a similar stall, and he was all smiles. Confident, cocky smiles… ugh, whatever. I had joked about using our looks to our advantage after all, like he was probably going to try and do.

“Yeah, uh… I was just asking what Obrec lands are?” I said, repeating the question to the guy.

“What? You mean you don’t know what an Obrec is?” he asked, almost moving into a full on laugh before he realised we were serious. “You really don’t?”

“We’re not from around here,” I said as a way of explanation.

“Right, well… an Obrec, they ain’t human. Sure, they looks sort of like us, they got the face and the body like us. Hands just like us, but their legs, they go backwards! They got hooves on the end of them too and fur across they backs and the like. Horns on their head too and big pointed fluffy ears, sorta like a goat’s ears.”

“That… wow, okay,” I blinked, trying to figure out if this guy was messing with me in turn.

Was he really talking about like, an alien race here? No, they sounded more like a fantasy race than anything else… this was nuts!

“Yeah,” he nodded. “What about them were you asking?”

“We were asking about cities known for their um, Constructing? He mentioned a place called Millowhall,” I said uncertainly.

“Oh, aye! Millowhall is known for its practical shapers of the arcane, that’s for sure. Almost the whole city is dedicated to the craft!” he nodded enthusiastically. “I trained there, I did! Almost didn’t survive living with the Obrec though, they’re… a rowdy lot. They love their drinking, their fighting and… their loving,” he told us, lowering his tone at the last into what he probably thought was an attractive baritone.

Sorry dude, these two girls aren’t interested. Of course, the mere thought of the fact that I now counted under that “girl” term had my heart doing a happy little jig.

“Right… uh, how do we get to this place? We’re looking to travel there and see it!” I asked, feigning more enthusiasm than I felt.

“Oh, you’ll want to follow the river south as far as Infigwaun. Then you’ll want to cut south east. The roads through the Mosteghunoksia plains are a little… rough, so I’d be careful there if I were you,” he warned gravely. “After that, you’ll find the Obrec mountains. Love their mountains they do, but they aren’t like normal mountains. Bloody great pillars of rock, thousands of feet tall, with the densest forest you’ll ever find in the valleys between. Those mountains are bad news if you stray off the paths. They ain’t hunted their monsters down into the ground like we Anves have.”

I hoped the Mosteghunoksia plains weren’t as rough as their name was to say, because… damn. The Obrec mountains sounded pretty already too, I was excited to see them, and their people. Even if he made it sound super dangerous.

“Right, okay… thank you, that’s actually really helpful!” I said, genuinely happy that we had a place to go. Gosh, we’d be seeing an entirely new sentient species for the first time too!

“No problem ladies, if you see old Brenin Boughbreaker, say hi for me, and tell him he owes me a shipment of Tassupine already,” the stall keeper told us good naturedly.

“I will, thank you!” I nodded, giving him what I hoped was a winning smile.

“Safe journeys!” he nodded in return as we wandered off.

Moving back towards where we were meant to meet the others, I felt Grace’s arm slip through mine. The contact had my whole body buzzing and loose limbed, and almost immediately I was forced to lean on her for fear I'd fall over.

I peeked up at her in surprise, and she shrugged, “You can’t get lost again if I’m holding on tight. At worst I’ll end up on some wild fucking adventure along with you this time.”

My smile was involuntarily and wide in reply, and I looked down again before she saw my heating cheeks. Gosh damn, she was really making this whole thing hard on me.

Rather than waiting almost two hours to find the others, we tracked them down instead. It wasn’t hard, they... stood out. Although one of them was missing at the moment, and I couldn’t tell who, because four guys in armour looked the same.

“Hey, which one of you is Troy?” I asked, glancing between them all.

One of the helmets rang with his distinctive, dry chuckle, and I turned to him, relaying what I’d found out.

“Wait, there’s really other sentient races on this ring?” Grace asked, and I realised she wouldn’t have been able to follow the conversation with the vendor.

“Yup,” I nodded. “Apparently so.”

“Well then, that definitely falls under our mandate. Let’s get down to this… Millowhall,” Troy said, butchering the pronunciation. “Right after I figure out where the fuck James has gotten to...”