Just like Alshifa and the Sharaji Oasis Towns, there were no walls or border gates to stop people from just walking into the City of Feasts.
Alice held the reins and simply marched Emparatoria through the outer edges of the city, where sunlight gleamed off the sparse few buildings—they were all scrap metal roofs patched together with mismatched cloths, stones, and whatever else could be scavenged from the desert. Small oases broke up the sandy sprawl here and there, and narrow rivers with palm trees cut deeper into the city like spider webs. The streets next to those rivers and buildings weren’t normal-sized either. The lanes were broad, allowing three giant bugs to walk side-by-side without bumping wings and legs, and there were tons of other people riding giant bugs.
As they rode in, Dahlia fidgeted with her claws and sat closely behind Alice on Emparatoria’s head. The noise was already deafening. There were hundreds upon thousands of people here, all as diverse as the bugs they were riding: merchants clad in loose, flowing robes with arms clad in beetle chitin steered three-metre-class scarab beetles through the crowd, calling out to passersby as they haggled their wares. Men with long, jagged praying mantis arms marched in lines, their scythe-arms locked together as they chanted loud along the street. Winged couriers and children zipped between rooftops everywhere, letters and scrolls tucked in their arms as streetside vendors with ant mandibles clicked irritably at them to stop dropping stuff onto the stalls.
And she’d just barely entered the city.
The deeper they rode in, the thicker the air with the smell of sweat, incense, and the tang of rustic metal. When she looked behind her, she could only see a long line of a dozen giant bugs meandering behind them. When she looked around, the scrap buildings became taller and wider and reflected hotter sunlight. When she looked below, the crowd had swelled to an insane amount, and she’d no idea how people were just casually walking and weaving between the giant bug legs in order to cross the street. Locust-legged traders pulled their carts through without any trouble. Groups of vagrants with blank dragonfly eyes would stand on one side of the street without moving for a good second, and then in the next, they’d have vanished and reappeared on the other side of the street like they had super speed.
Closer and closer to the heart of the city, the caravaneers riding the giant bugs in front of and behind Emparatoria started standing and dancing and singing to hawk their wares. The woman riding the moth with vibrant wings in front of Alice peddled vials of glowing potions to the crowd under her, delivering her vials and fishing up baskets of coins with a long stick. Riding the giant scorpion behind Alice, a group of miners with thick, burrowing beetle claws for arms tossed boxes of ore down to the crowd, and everyone only had a few seconds to shout what they wanted and pay their fees before they’d inevitably be swept away by the flow of the crowd.
Unsurprisingly, people started gathering under Emparatoria, too, so Dahlia tugged her scarf up to cover her mouth as more and more people stared at her.
“... Not to worry about the giant bugs,” Alice said, waving off the crowd as she smirked back at Dahlia. “Most travellers on the continent ride or use giant bugs as caravan-pulling beasts, and by Hasharana Law, only giant bugs tamed and certified by the Tamera can be used—you can tell if a giant bug is tamed or not if they have the Tamera’s signature blank, swirly eyes. You also get certification documents and stamps and stuff when you buy a giant bug, so most cities and boroughs don’t actually shoot giant bugs on sight. Some rides can be very expensive to reimburse.”
Dahlia chewed her lips as she looked back at the giant scorpion; she couldn’t help but remember the one she’d seen back in Alshifa, though she’d not seen it alive even back then.
“Emparatoria is pretty… big, isn’t it?” she mumbled. “The other giant bugs are all… um, about three metres tall, ten metres long. But yours is ten metres tall and thirty metres long. Massive. We’re kinda… jamming the traffic–”
“Special Arcana Hasharana privileges. You can’t buy a ten-metre-class giant bug unless you have a good reason for it, so I reckon Emparatoria’s actually one of the bigger rides in this entire city right now!” Alice said, grinning as she patted the giant cicada’s head. “Who cares about jamming the traffic, anyways? We’re helping out the caravaneers behind us! We move slower, so they move slower, so they get more time to sell their stuff to the crowd—they should be paying me for helping them empty their wares!”
Somehow, Dahlia didn’t get the feeling that the caravaneers behind them were all too grateful about how slow they were moving along the main street. This scrappy, ramshackle part of the city probably wasn’t where they wanted to do their business—the district with the taller and slightly more elegant buildings in the distance was probably where the richer men lived. She knew from experience that selling her trinkets in Alshifa’s Bazaar was far more profitable than just setting up a stall and selling them anywhere; provided her goods were actually desirable, the profits could be the difference between a bowl of unsalted salat and plates of warm rice with vegetables for dinner.
So, she was a bit relieved for the caravaneers behind them when Alice suddenly swerved Emparatoria off the main street, letting the traffic behind them catch up as they marched down a lonelier, shadier avenue.
They were still very much in the outer edges of the city—nowhere near the denser city centre—but the side avenues between the main streets gave her a few shivers. Obviously, there were less people doing business here, but the stalls and stores that did line the narrower street sold stranger things: street cook stirred boiling pots filled with live, writhing bugs, and other stalls offered bloody and butchered insect parts laid out on rough cloths, glistening with oils and fluids. Further down the street, hooded ladies with dazzling, bulbous moth eyes brewed perfumes with even more live insects, tossing spiders and beetles into bubbling cauldrons as they hummed entrancing melodies, none in sync. Even further down the street, men with cricket arms sharpened blades made of jagged chitin, dousing swords in buckets of acid and selling tools for less than savoury purposes.
More than a few of those men gave Alice and Dahlia quiet glares as they marched Emparatoria along, but then, as suddenly as Alice had swerved the giant cicada down the street, she swerved Emparatoria again into a thirty-metre-long gap between two buildings—and with a single clap, the giant cicada sat down.
By the second clap, it'd dug its legs halfway into the ground, burying itself in the sand.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
By the third clap, Enparatoria had nestled itself between two scrap buildings, and old Safi walked out the front door with two signs in hand. One of those he stabbed into the ground right outside the door, and the other one was massive, ten metres long and made out of thick scrap metal; he tossed it up at Alice, who flicked a handful of threads around it before sticking it onto the side of Enparatoria, letting it dangle over the front door.
With that, Alice shoved Dahlia off the top of the giant cicada, making her flail and barely stick the landing as the Hasharana jumped off as well.
“Tavern Emparatoria is back and open for business!” Alice bellowed mid-air, throwing her voice down the street left and right before landing next to Dahlia, kicking up a puff of sand. “First twenty-two orders are free-of-charge, and the next hundred orders after that are twenty percent off! Meals are first come, first serve! Come get your filling of uncle's signature grilled dishes again!”
And before Dahlia could even ask what they were doing here, Safi trudged back into the tavern while Alice pulled out two large stacks of hand-written posters from her cloak.
Dahlia blinked.
To this day, she had no idea just how, exactly, Alice was capable of hiding so much peculiar miscellanea inside her cloak–
“You take this one, and I'll take this one!” Alice chirped, shoving one of the stacks into her arms as she was shooed to face the other side of the street. “Hand these out to anyone who seems even remotely interested, yeah? Just force them onto people! Nobody’s gonna resist gifts from cute girls like us!”
Dahlia's lips were half-parted when her antennae tingled, and she turned to see dozens of muscled, battle-scarred, scorpion-armed men strutting towards her. More men followed closely behind them: some were human-faced and carrying giant saifs sheathed on their belts, while others had half their faces consumed by ant heads, mantis heads, or some variety of insect that made them look terrifying as all hell—and Dahlia couldn’t help but shiver again, clutching her stack of posters with all four hands as the first men stopped in front of her.
She wasn’t blocking the street or anything; they were looking down on her specifically, and for her part, she had no idea what they wanted from her.
Kari, Kari, Kari–
[–just calm down–]
–are they going to drag me off to some back alley and rip me to shreds and put me in one of those bubbling pots–
The man standing right in front of her bent down suddenly, scorpion pincers on his hips as he scowled at her.
“... Oy, Safi!” he snapped in Alshifa Tongue, standing up straight and glaring into the tavern as he patted Dahlia’s head. “What’s with this, huh? You fuck off for an entire year and now you’ve brought another stray home, and it’s a young, pretty one at that? You aren’t helping yourself with the crimp accusations, you know?”
The men behind him laughed as they walked past Dahlia, most of them shooting toothy grins at her while they filed into the tavern one-by-one.
Dahlia blinked again as more and more people stopped in front of her to take a few posters off her hands.
“Oh, Safi really has brought another stray back,” said one of the street cooks as she walked past, winking at Dahlia. “You really are a cute one. Don’t stray too far away from Eighth Mantid Street, you hear? I know men who’d just gobble you up the moment you step into their gland-marked territory.”
“At least she looks older than when little Alice was first brought here,” muttered one of the weapon merchants with cricket arms as he plucked a poster from her, laughing under his breath. “Me and the boys were about ready to give Safi a thrashing when he said he was going to take a stray eight-year-old girl under his wing back then. At least she looks… how old are you, lass? Twelve? Thirteen? You look thirteen.”
“Hush, stone grinder. Even a ladybug hides her spots when asked to count them. How could you just ask the little lady for her age?” chastised one of the hooded perfumers as she slapped the merchant on the back of his head, shoving him into the tavern. “Pay these brutes no mind, little lady. You’re doing wonderful.”
“Just don’t let old Safi work you to the bone!”
“Ask him for a salary! If you don’t, he won’t spare even a single silver for you!”
“Hey, Safi! I’m here for our rematch! You said you’d be back four months ago, you piece of shit–”
“What about me?” Alice complained aloud, flinging rolled-up posters at the crowd forming around the tavern as she pouted at Dahlia. “I’m back too, you know? I’m here! It’s me! I’ve grown, too!”
The perfumers immediately slid past Dahlia to wrap Alice in a massive group hug, offering their apologies for not slathering her with attention earlier, and Alice started chuckling creepily—Dahlia could feel the Hasharana’s ‘I’m more popular than you’ gaze on her back even as she whirled away, facing the crowd once again with as confident a smile as she could muster.
“I’m… Dahlia Sina of the Alshifa Undertown!” she said aloud, bowing slightly as she held out her stack of posters. “I’m here to take the… uh, the Hasharana Entrance Exam! In one month! So I think I’ll be staying… in this tavern… with you all?”
The crowd responded with a cheer as they continued shuffling into the tavern, and between her and Alice, there must be at least fifty people inside—ignoring the logistics of whether or not Safi could feed all of them by himself, she’d no idea how so many people could even fit inside without overflowing out the front door.
…
Dahlia backed up against Alice and mumbled under her breath. “What are we doing here, exactly?”
Alice glanced back with a mischievous grin, slapping another man’s face with a poster as she did. “Running Tavern Emparatoria, of course. This spot here in Eighth Mantid Street is Emparatoria’s dedicated caravan bay, so whenever we stop by here between bug-slaying missions, we just settle down and run the tavern for extra income. Uncle’s wallet has holes in them from buying fresh and exotic ingredients for our daily meals all the time, you know? We need the silvers!”
“So… you two have been here before? And why are they all speaking… the Alshifa–”
“It’s uncle’s hometown, dummy. Of course we’ve been here before. And he sent word to everyone here telling them to speak in the undertown tongue while you’re here!” Alice flicked her forehead, taking her stack of posters before shooing her away. “Until the Hasharana Entrance Exam starts, we’ll be working as waitresses for Tavern Emparatoria, so better get used to smiling and dragging customers into a seat! Between you and me, we should be able to turn a massive profit like we’ve never turned before!”
A kitchen knife flew out one of the windows, and Dahlia caught it by the tip before it could stab through her head. There was a pouch of silvers and a handwritten note wrapped around the handle, but before she could even read its contents, Alice started shooing her further away from the tavern.
“That’s uncle’s shopping list for ingredients! Go mess around the city and buy everything in one go,” Alice said, weaving posts and ropes out of glowing silk to create a queue for further customers. “We should still have enough ingredients for lunch service, but at this rate, the pantry will be all cleared out before dinner. Don’t come back too late, alright? And don’t get kidnapped and stuff, too! It’ll be troublesome if I have to drop my waitressing and go fetch you!”
Dahlia gulped nervously, clutching the shopping list in her hands. “But… what about training? Or preparing for the exam? With only a month left and… a ninety percent death rate for the first stage… I thought maybe you’d help me–”
“An Arcana Hasharana training someone who already has an Altered Swarmsteel System?” Alice laughed, shaking her head profusely. “Nah! You’re on your own for the exam! Now hurry before the main streets get so crowded you can barely find your way back!”