Waking up to an unfamiliar sound, he could not properly place what was going on until his eyes focused properly and he saw it was just Angela doing the rubbing and spinning wood thing to reignite the campfire.
Flopping back down again he realised that it was getting bright, his eyes did not like this at the moment, just having woken up and meeting it under the tarp.
“You seemed restless.” Angela commented without turning around. “Tossing and turning for quite a lot last night”.
Gilliam groaned in response as he sat himself back up. “I started thinking about ‘what if bandits come’ or if there were some hungry beasts nearby... I guess vivid imagination...”
He didn’t see any good way or reason to not just be honest, though it didn’t sound that mature of him to overthink the scary things in the night it was still the truth.
Angela chuckled as she was blowing on the little ember she had made with the wood, before moving it over into some kindling.
She kept working the little fire, feeding it with strips of bark and thin strips of wood until it was actually burning, it was then transferred to the campfire and used to properly light it up.
“A good imagination is valuable for a mage, but I suppose it can be a problem like this”.
She was clearly enjoying this a little bit but at the same time tried to hide it behind facing away from him. Her chuckle still betrayed her attempt.
Gilliam decided to not draw more attention to it, he knew it was somewhat childish, based on the facts the odds of any of those happening were slim or she would not have gone to bed like that without setting up a guarding rotation. But at the same time, the new world for him and all that stuff, the stories and tropes he’s used to, it was hard to push that aside.
Unpacking himself from the sleeping bag Angela gave him yesterday, he stretched a bit after getting on his feet.
They were sleeping on some bedroll/thick blanket thing, but it was far from the comfort of a modern bed. Nor was that bed he was given in Angela’s house but he felt that he couldn’t complain too much, she was caring for him which still felt odd. The only thing he had contributed so far was to capture the rabbit... Something he was pretty certain she could have done easily as well. He would have to find a way to repay her.
“I’m heating up the rest of the rabbit-” Angela explained as she turned her head just enough to see Gilliam in the corner of her eye. “-I assume you want some?”
The tone of voice was not as much a question as it was a statement that she was doing this for him as well.
Gilliam nodded as he saw her looking in his direction. He was usually not a man for breakfast right after waking up but this was a special situation. Sure he could eat on the go but his body probably needed the energy.
Walking over he sat down near the fire not far from Angela.
“I assume there will be more walking today?” This was also not toned as a question, more as a conversation starter rhetoric question.
“At least we’re on the road now, but it’ll still take a few more days. When I walked there myself it took two days, but.” She eyed Gilliams body up and down a second. “I added a day when I planned for the trip with you”
Her smile was filled with sarcastic humour, though it was hard to avoid the fact that he was absolutely not in as good shape as she was.
“I’m surprised you didn’t add a week.” Gilliam joked in response. If she used two days normally, adding a day or two for his sake was nor a bad idea. But unless jogging the whole way was her plan a whole week was a bit much.
“If it had taken that long it would have been faster if I just dragged you the whole way there.” She mused looking into the fire. With her strength she could probably do this without that much effort.
“I assume a lot of my skin would be missing at that point..” His mental image of the massive scraping several days of being dragged along a dirt road could cause.
“But you have healing magic, you could train that at the same time!” She... had a point, unsure just how effective his healing magic was at the moment, the idea was still not entirely horrible.
“I... Think I choose to walk instead.” Although this whole conversation was in jest Gilliam still had an honest tone to that statement.
He had shown to take any excuse to use magic as a good reason to, but this was not exactly a pleasant thought. As a joke it was fine, but when he mentally imagined the world of pain it still didn’t feel right.
They both shared a chuckle afterwards.
It didn’t take long before the food was heated, eaten and the camp packed down. The fire was doused by the stream of water from Gilliam’s spell, he was glad to see an application for it besides cleaning things and making drinking water.
He did think to himself that he needed to analyse and consider all forms of applications for spells. A stream of water is ‘just’ a stream of water, but like a garden hose it can be used for many different things. Perhaps he could consider some different way to send it flying, make a form of nozzle with his hands, magically or otherwise. Though, based on that he was using a training spell he guessed that most ‘proper spells’ would probably be better at things than this one.
Shortly after double checking that everything was packed or ready, they set off again, first out of the forest to the road and then towards Che’or.
The walk was uneventful, which was a good thing in one way of thinking. Using the time to practise casting magic while walking, talking and otherwise, Gilliam got a few new ideas of the different spells, like the hunting last night hinted that just making pits could be very good in combat. He might not even have to make it large enough for a whole person to fall into, enough to step into could have you fall over or even break your leg. Though it required some special timing or preparation.
All the spells were limited, the one that had the most versatility was the Telekinesis spell but even that was limited in control and finesse. Sure, he could pick up heavy things and send things flying, but if he wanted to hit something particular or if he wanted to slap someone with a stick this was surprisingly hard.
For now he assumed this was due to the training-simplicity of the spells and kept on training, not like he had much else to do besides this and small talk.
The next night followed the same pattern, the only difference was that it rained a little so the tarp actually had a proper use, they found a small cave that aided them in keeping the fire dry but that was the main problem. The hunting this evening ended up landing one of those fat pigeon-like birds. Though it did take him four shots to hit one with the sharpened sticks he used as projectiles. Using a sharpened stick meant that there was less damage done to the bird so there was a higher chance that there was something edible remaining.
Angela showed him how to prepare the bird, which after plucking was surprisingly straightforward.
This night was calmer for him than the last, the sound of rain aided a bit in making a static and familiar noise. Like last night he woke to the sound of Angela waking up the campfire.
The morning and following day was just as uneventful, Gilliam trained a bit more and managed to get a telekinesis spell to mess with a flying bird, though it wrestled itself free fast enough and flew off without a problem. Defeating Gilliam’s ego a bit to Angela’s amusement.
The third night was just cloudy, and though they put up the tarp again it didn’t seem like it rained that time either. There was no luck hunting this round so they had to eat some of their brought rations instead, not as tasty but filling.
Gilliam again woke to the sound of a campfire being resurrected and stoked, going through the same ordeal for the third time before they were back to moving.
Traffic had increased a bit, there were some carts moving now that they were on the wider roads, Gilliam got plenty of weird looks, most likely due to his clothing. Angela got her own collection of looks, which was more likely due to her being an Albino, hard to miss and quite rare.
“There we go!” Angela suddenly exclaimed, startling Gilliam a little. “That’s Che’or.” she pointed along the road.
Looking in the distance it was absolutely not hard to see. A pretty large city, stone walls and a bunch of buildings inside, there seemed to be a fortress, castle, keep.. Whatever it was called, there was one in a sort of corner of the outer wall. Even from this distance it was easy to see that it had its own walls around, probably for some class segregation and protection of the important people.
They weren’t high enough that he could make out any more details than that, but he was getting kind of excited. As they got closer in the following hour the walls grew larger and larger, everything grew more detailed. There were a lot of people going in and out, many carts of various sizes and shapes. Entering the city they weren’t stopped, the two of them got plenty of looks but they weren’t stopped. This was also the first time that Gilliam got a better look at different races. Sure, there was Geof but he was one man and he was pretty human, save his large size and horns. Here the collection was a bit different.
First, there was quite the collection of animal-human hybrid people, all kinds of animals from dogs, to wolves, to tigers, to cats and... It was a large collection. Though he knew these people existed, what surprised him the most was the varied nature of them, it was not just the different animals but also how much Human there was in them. You had people like Geof that were almost pure humans with just a small trait or two, to people who walked on all fours and looked like animals with slight human traits.
It was to the point that Gilliam almost didn't notice other races like Orcs, Dwarves and even goblins. He found the latter interesting in its own right since modern media almost always put them down as sub-intelligent ‘level 1 monsters’.
Angela had to poke Gilliam to get him back to reality, she gave him a bad look hinting that he might have been staring more than he expected.
The excited feeling of all this new info was easily overshadowing his embarrassment for acting like an idiot. And on top of this he got a new wave of stimuli as they came through the gates. There were things happening everywhere.Most buildings along this road had some form of shop on the first floor, there were Inns and places to eat, the spaces between buildings had a popup stand if there was room, if not there were people carrying things in bags trying to sell or buy.
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The buildings seemed to be mostly stone, either oddly square rock on top of another like bricks, or just a large slab of stone. Gilliam assumed some magic could be involved in the latter.
Most of them had wooden studs and some were fully wooden, though there was an odd lack of painted or colored buildings. Most seemed to be covered in something, the wooden ones might be some tar or other black oil-looking thing but most of them were left naturally colored. All in all this was incredibly similar to what Gilliam felt a fantasy medieval city would be like. He didn’t even realise the large happy dumb smile on his face as he followed his very easy to notice friend.
This lasted for a while, the input and new interesting things to see kept flooding over him, as soon as he always got over the shock of seeing something neat, something new entered his view.
But his smile instantly soured in a split second, his more serious face taking over instantly as he nudged Angela.
“Is... this what I think it is?” he asked as he motioned to a corner of the square that had people of different races, although without a shred of a doubt more beastfolk than any other race. They were either chained to a pole, in cages, or walking about but with unmistakable collars hinting to a leather pet-collar just a bit more fancy. Though most of them looked to be in acceptable shape and form there were a few that were absolutely not.
Angela looked to Gilliam, noticed his expression and what he referred to.
“I... Guess you don’t have slaves in your world...” she stated more than asked. “Here in V’ida its legal and rather normal.”
She said this in a tone of voice hinting that she’s so used to them that she didn’t even consider mentioning it. Her expression didn’t really change much but she explained a bit more.
“Half-beasts are second-class citizens, depending on their background and other happenings they are commonly seen as slaves. They are treated well, it’s illegal to mistreat your slaves but... It’s not exactly easy to know what happens behind closed doors...”
Gilliam had conflicted feelings about this. Slavery was all around illegal back home, as it should be.
“There are different kind of slaves-” Angela added, in a tone hinting that she wanted to cheer him up. “-There are the slaves, but then there are the forced servitude cases. Where they are only temporarily slaves to pay some debt or something. In that case they are more like servants without pay... Oh-” like she remembered something good she continued in a better tone of voice. “-You remember how I said that mages are automatically nobles and have a lot of social power? It has been found earlier that a slave manifested magical gifts, suddenly outranking their master and by default was freed... Now.. With that possibility people tend to in general be careful about treatment of their slaves.” she nodded sagely.
This did improve Gilliams mood a little, if nothing else it’s illegal to mistreat them and extra motivation to treat them properly is that they might have the gift and legally being able to turn on their masters. Though he was not fond of the slavery thing still, if they are treated well then, fine, he could live with it but... Knowing the messed up people existing back home he didn’t assume the lack of them in this world.
This culture shock hit him hard.
Angela did her best to change the topic and focus on different things, often magical in nature. This actually did help Gilliam think about other things a little, letting him process all of this a little calmer. Though they were here with a goal in mind this was still something he didn’t expect.
A short while after following the main street a bit more, they came to a different plaza. This area had several perfectly cubical buildings, they all had different words or names on them, and some of them had a short line in front.
To the side was a much larger building with a much larger line going into it. Based on the signs, text explaining and cries pointing and explaining this was the teleportation area.
It seemed you could rent a teleportation mage’s services for different prices and times, but the main thing here seemed to be the cubical buildings, they housed teleportation circles. Based on the names on them and how things seemed to work you got a ticket of sorts and then went to the building to where you wanted to go and poof, you left.
This was further strengthened as Angela led them to one of them with the text ‘Helvan Shores’ on the front of it. There was a short line of only a few people, not even enough time for some smalltalk and it was their turn.
Angela handed the token to the man outside and entered the cubical building like she had done this many times before.
Gilliam followed after and found himself in a cubical room covered in magical circles engraved into the stone directly. It seemed that the stone walls, ceiling and floor were completely flat plates of stone, making up completely smooth surfaces where the engravings had been made. Half of them were dimly glowing and the others were just grooves in rock.
A robed man stood in a corner surrounded by a weird dedicated magical circle that Gilliam could not find replicated elsewhere in the room. “Please enter the circle” he gestured towards the center of the floor-circle that had an inner circle with nothing inside of it, hinting that all the magic happens outside of it... or something, Gilliam didn’t know magic circles but it felt logical.
Gilliam followed Angela into it and the man just nodded, as they both stopped inside the inner circle the dull engravings started glowing as they seemed to build up energy.
“You should close your eyes.” Angela warned.
Gilliam looked in her direction and as he saw her with her own eyes closed he immediately followed her warning. It only took a few seconds before he felt a weird pulse around his body, like warm water splashing across you before instantly drying up. He heard a few steps and opened his eyes to see Angela moving towards a door.
Looking around him he saw what felt like the same room, just that the man in the corner was no longer there. Feeling a bit confused he guessed that the teleport worked as intended, and followed her to the door.
She opened it and stepped out like she had done this as well many times. Gilliam was more taken back at the place they were in now. Straight in front of him was a row of buildings like the one he was coming out of, it seemed that the cubical rooms were connected to make a long rectangle instead. To his right the large green field they were in seemed to end at a wall, but to his left was a very large field with many people, some were idly relaxing in the open field in the sun, others were training on some spells much more powerful than what Gilliam could produce. It seemed that there was a wall around this place that made a triangle pizza shape, he was along one wall near the tip and to his left, the large area, the main part ending up with the crust as the outer wall.
Suddenly he noticed that there were people in front of him. A young beastfolk boy with what seemed like some lizard features and a familiar looking collar, simple clothing and a messenger bag seemed to be there, waiting for them.
He took one glance at Angela and just stepped out of her way, but he came over to Gilliam.
“Is this your first time here?” he asked, seeming happy and enjoying himself.
Gilliam was just uncertain about the situation, he didn’t like the slavery thing but this kid looked happy, in good healt and, the only thing out of place was the collar.
“Y... yes..” Gilliam managed to mutter out.
“Oh, good, then you should have this!” the boy explained happily as he fumbled in his bag, taking out two pieces of paper before handing it to him.
“Have a nice day” he smiled before he ran to a sun-filled spot and laid down, seeming to soak in the sunlight.
Gilliam took a glance over the papers given, one seemed to be a penned map, the other seemed to be an information pamphlet of sorts. A quick glance over the map showed that the whole school had a 7-point shape wall around the whole complex, with long walls going from the points to a smaller 7-point shape around the central tower.This created some triangles between the diagonal walls, it seems he was in one of those.
There were also some names and numbers, it seemed that the diagonal walls were numbered as wings clockwise and the large fields were named based on the elements.
As he looked over the pamphlets he followed Angela, who seemed to know where to go. Taking in the sights of the place they were in he didn’t get a chance to properly read the pamphlet, something about a badge, the school’s importance and general info. He decided to read it later.
She led him through the tip of the triangle where a door leads into the center shape with the tower. First now did he get a proper look at the walls, it seems that the walls almost looked like a mountain chipped away into this shape, though there were the patterns you can find inside other stones or mountainsides they were still one single piece. The walls for the Wings and outer walls seemed to at least be their own units, but this still meant that each wall or ‘unit’ looked like it was a single stone.
Entering through the sturdy wooden door he came into a large lobby-like room. It spanned the full width of the center area and was two levels tall. There were doors that went into the Wings as well as some stairs leading up to the second-level of the wings. A spiral staircase in the middle seemed to lead into the tower.
The furnishings were very nice, antique but maintained, polished stone floors and nice walls, it seems that though the construction was in stone there was a considerable amount of wooden structures, like the stairs, desks, benches and more.
Angela walked over to the receptionist and started talking to her, Gilliam being a bit further behind overheard the receptionist let out a mocking laughter as she looked at Gilliam, she stopped herself quickly but the damage was done. He was wondering if he looked that out of place that it was worth mockery, he did look kind of peasant like with his dirty clothing even though it was perhaps a bit out of place.
“That seems unlikely, please leave.” the receptionist ordered as he got within conversation distance. “We don’t cater to liars.” She eyed the both of them with contempt.