“I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made so far,” Bee said, unable to keep her pride from forming into a big smile. To illustrate her point, she leapt high to catch the nearest oak branch, swung off of it, and landed with her feet firmly planted.
“You’re making good progress,” Will agreed, and gave her a pat on the head as he passed her. “I think you’ll enjoy the second part of your training.”
“I’m excited for it.” She caught up to Will at a jog and fell into step with him, slipping her hand into his. “I used to be held back a lot by being a woman. At a certain point it doesn’t really matter how much you train, there’s just genetic differences you can’t overcome. I lost almost every fight I ever had with a man ‘cause of the difference in strength and weight and reach. But here… I really do feel like there are no limits. Like I could beat anyone if I work hard enough.”
“You’re not wrong,” Will said. “In that way, Nifala is an equalizer for a lot of people. While we’re on the topic, though, I do want to ask you to be careful while we’re in town.”
“How so?”
“Well, women only make up a quarter of the population here. That scarcity, coupled with the general depravity of the population, means that you have to be on guard. Your level is still low enough that you’re at risk of being targeted by slavers or opportunistic bottom-feeders.”
“Oof, all right. A quarter of the population, though—why?”
“Well, if you remember, it’s criminals and other lowlifes that get sent here. I guess men do more fucked-up shit than women on average, so more of them end up here. Era must not have believed in gender quotas.”
“Every night,” Mongrel said, “I pray that when I die again, I’ll end up in a world with the opposite distribution.” He gave a wicked little grin, as though he was particularly proud of himself for that statement.
They walked another little while before Bee asked: “So, are you going to give me an allowance or anything?” She hit Will with her most innocent smile. “A girl’s gotta shop, you know.”
Will gave a snorting laugh. “What are you, my sugar baby?”
She shrugged, smile widening. “I wouldn’t hate that.”
“But no, I’m not giving you any spending money. I know you, and I won’t give you any incentive to run off on your own. If you see something you want, just ask me. If it’s something reasonable, I’ll get it for you.”
“Boo. Tyrant.”
“Tyrant!” Mongrel chimed in. “Will the Tyrant!”
Will shook his head and refused to engage with them further.
*****
After what had to be over an hour of walking, maybe even approaching two, they left the forest behind and came to a soggy flatland. In the distance stood a great palisade of standing logs that ran far off to their right and ended sharply on their left as the land dropped away. A hundred pillars of smoke rose above the palisade, giving a vague sense of the settlement housed within.
“Well, here we are,” Will announced without much enthusiasm. “Sheerhome. The Glory That Never Dies—or at least that’s what some optimistic bastard wanted to call it. To most people, though, it’s just ‘The Heap’—a much more fitting name, if you ask me.”
They took north and spent some time walking alongside the palisade until they finally came to a muddy road and a set of crude gates standing open to admit visitors. A pair of guards stood at the front, the left sleeves on their gambesons pinned up to show off five AP crystals each. They leaned heavily on halberds taller than themselves, and watched with bored expressions as the group wandered through the gates.
The first thing that struck Bee when they entered the city was the smell—like rotten fish and spoiled milk and plain old piss. The road they walked down was muddy and filled with people who would just walk right into you if you weren’t careful. The houses were slapdash and packed closely together, most of them seemingly built with no real plan in mind and just added onto as they went, with mismatched materials and leaning walls and rot creeping through untreated wood.
“Real charming place,” Bee observed, resisting the urge to cover her mouth and nose. The stench was so overpowering that she could taste it.
Zero was unsettled by the commotion and kept throwing her head about. Mongrel held her firm and murmured sweet words as he coaxed her into continuing forward.
A stray dog started sniffing around them, mangy and emaciated, with an eye that was gummed shut with pus. Number One wasted no time in chasing it off with a scream and a smack to the side of the animal’s head that sent it scampering away.
“You’ll see a lot of them here,” Will said with a glance in Bee’s direction, already guessing what she was feeling. “Don’t make the mistake of feeling bad for them. Compassion will get you killed in a place like this. You put a hand out to one of these dogs, and you’ll come back a few fingers light.”
“Fumble!” Mongrel announced all of a sudden through the overlapping din of background voices.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“What are you babbling about now?” Will asked.
“Fumble. Her bastard name. You know, as in bumble. As in Bee.”
Will looked up at the sky while he thought it through. Then he glanced over at Bee with a shrug. “Whaddya think? Fumble. Fumble Bee. It might work.”
“It’s better than Cancer at least. I’ll take it.”
“Good. It’s settled, then.”
There were multiple inns and roadside bars around the gates that catered to visitors, but once they got into the meat of the city they started to see other attractions. There were many buildings with half-dressed girls out front, many of them looking somewhat dazed as they ran their hands over their bodies and extolled their talents to men that passed by.
Bee had to stop and stare at a woman with a dainty frame who had breasts bigger than her head, barely restrained by a top stretched to near-bursting.
“That doesn’t look natural,” she guessed.
Will followed her gaze, then nodded when he saw what she was looking at. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s pretty popular with working girls to take a passive called Ideal Self. It changes your body to, well, an ideal version of yourself. Of course, the drawback is that you don’t actually get to choose what you look like—it’s based on your own personal ideal, whether conventionally attractive or not. So some girls might take it hoping to bring in more clients, only to end up worse off than before.”
Bee shook her head. “This place is so weird.”
I wonder what my ideal self would be.
I think I’d want a fat ass.
She counted the number of brothels they saw as they made their way through the city. The tally ended at 14.
They reached a steep cliff with buildings clinging to it in layers, connected by narrow switchback stairs hewn from the rock. Over on their right, the cliffside split into a deep canyon that divided the whole city in two, with a thin river at the bottom that ran straight out into the gray ocean.
They began descending down a switchback towards a ramshackle dock that lay at the mouth of the canyon below. By the time they made it down to the small strip of flat ground, both Will and Mongrel were out of breath and complaining of sore legs.
Many ships and smaller fishing boats lay moored to jetties running out across the water. On the left and right, cliffs rose up past the dock like arms fashioned from the earth, creating a protected cove where the vessels could rest on calm waters.
Sailors and merchants and dock workers crowded the space, and there was loud negotiating going on with shouting and wild gesturing. There, in the distance, a group of people in chains were being led aboard a ship.
Will approached a large building set up against the cliff that turned out to be a trading post. A man smoking a pipe outside perked up when he saw the group, and stood up off the barrel he was using as a stool.
The man was squat and broad, with a strong, stubbly jaw and a receding hairline. He thumped Will on the arm in greeting, slapped Mongrel’s ass, then looked questioningly at Bee.
“Picked up a stray, eh?” the man said, his voice gravelly and deep. He glanced down, then back up again. “You hooked a Laborer, too. Nice. Must’ve gotten tired of your freshies dyin’ on ya.”
Bee got a decent look at the man’s left arm. His Profession symbol was not familiar, depicting a pair of scales, and he had seven AP crystals.
“Yeah, this is our newest, Fumble,” Will said, motioning in her direction. “Fumble, this is Crooked Dick. But, uh, I prefer to call him Richard.”
“Either one’s fine,” Richard said, smiling. “Nice to meet you, Fumble. I wish I could say you’re in good hands with these two, but the goddess would rise from her grave to smite my lying ass down.”
They shook hands, and she found that he had a good, honest grip.
“Richard is a business associate of mine,” Will explained. “Maybe distributor is a more accurate term. He’s an Artisan.”
“Got a batch for me?” Richard asked. “You weren’t here last week. I was starting to feel lonely.”
“Sure do. I’ve had some stuff to take care of, but I’ll be back to weekly deliveries from now on.”
The chimps unloaded the saddle bags and carried them inside, then came back for the bags Bee and Will had on. Everyone followed as Number One and Number Three laid out all the goods along a great big table for Richard to inspect. There was a lot of it, too, all being placed into neat rows.
Richard walked along the table, hands behind his back, and mouthed numbers to himself. Occasionally he’d pick up a potion or a cigarette pack and turn it over in his hand, then put it back down.
While the business was being done, Mongrel took himself off to a corner of the warehouse space and sat down on a large box with his two boys. He beckoned for Bee to join him, and—seeing as she had nothing better to do—she took a seat as well.
“The useless ones should stay out of the way while the adults are talking, right?” he said with a wink.
The process took a few minutes. Once finished, Richard approached Will and clapped his hands together. “All right, good batch! I would have liked maybe a dozen more PCD-Ms considering my stock has been running low while you’ve been gone, but I’ll make do. I don’t need the PHRs, but I’ll take everything else.”
Will took back four potions and stuck them in his satchel, and a price was negotiated for the rest. Will received a thick stack of paper currency that he swiftly counted through, and Richard called in a pair of dock workers to begin taking the goods away.
“While we’re at it, did you put aside anything interesting for me?” Will asked.
“I did actually, yeah. You’ll get a kick outta this. Majestrix blood and a timberbeast hair follicle. Them’s Class 2, you know.”
“Great. Bring ‘em out, please.”
Richard disappeared into a back room and came out a minute later with a glass vial in his hand and a large cloth bundle tucked under his arm. He handed Will the vial for inspection and placed the bundle on the table to unwrap it. Inside was a large yellowish mass about the shape and size of a man’s head.
“Wait… that’s a hair follicle?” Bee asked.
Mongrel nodded, sucking on his mustache. “Eyup. Timberbeasts are just about the biggest living thing you’ll find on Nifala. They roam about the interior and eat trees like a cow eats grass. They’re not exactly monsters, but… I don’t know what they are, actually. I just know they’re damn big. They’re not aggressive, but they’ll destroy a town if they happen to step on one.”
“And Will is buying this as something for his alchemy? Is that right?”
“That’s right. I don’t know much about it, but basically, if you wanna make fancier potions and things, you gotta use rarer ingredients. He’s pretty obsessed with finding this stuff, and I guess I can’t blame him. At this point, making the fancy stuff is the only way he can keep leveling up.”
Will ended up buying both of the items, stowing them away in his satchel, and handed back over half the money he had just been given.