28
(Guns ‘N Roses- Paradise City)
Brenden
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I woke up, beads of cold sweat on my forehead and a feeling I could only describe as floating and absent in my own body, like my mind was slowly trickling back to itself. I needed a few moments to breathe, to return mentally from whatever I just experienced.
This dream returned every night, the same dream I had before waking in this world for the first time. The scariest part was how real it all felt. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced, but I was both terrified of it and desperate to know more.
I always woke up disoriented and confused, needing a few minutes to recollect and grasp what was going on. I was restless and groggy, like I didn’t sleep at all.
I pondered this dream for hours while silently keeping the corties on the road on our way into Vehfirn. Three more days of travel came and went simply enough. No roadblocks, no bandits, no merchants. We passed one wagon going to Poikla Village, but we only shared a simple nod as we moved along. The corties just kept trotting along, murring louder when they were hungry or tired. Corties were very simple creatures with odd temperaments. They didn’t get aggressive at all, but they got prickly at times. They would simply stop moving and grudgingly jerk on the reins if I didn’t stop when they wanted to eat. They would also frequently try mounting each other at night, so whoever was up had to whip their backs to stop a fight. This stopped being a problem once we separated them. I was initially uneasy about whipping the corties because I didn’t want to hurt them, but corty whips were more like paddles on a string. Like an extended slap. What was odd was how easy they were to manage, because a heavy slap on the back was all it took to get them back to normal. However, when slapped, they’d reflexively kick a leg out in the direction of the slap, explaining why the whip was necessary.
Soon enough, we were passing farmhouse after farmhouse, separated by lush fields of crops and grazing animals. On the farthest outskirts laid pastures of dense shrub fields surrounded with fences constructed out of entire logs of the gigantic trees, easily twenty feet high. Within these sprawling pastures, small herds of those giant mammoths slept in the grass. I noticed that wherever the large ones slept, they kept the end of their satellite shaped trunk on the back of their sleeping young. And one of the herd always had two of its six eyes remaining open, keeping watch over the fields. Compared to the one from the forest, they were fatter, with varying hues of tan to black, long haired bodies. The watcher’s mousy ears followed me while I asked a passing farmer how far from the city we were. The farmer kindly answered that it wasn’t much longer and bode us well.
The quiet and still morning was greeted early by more of these farmers going out to tend to their fields. They obviously didn’t know us but almost every one kindly waved or nodded to our passing wagon. They were all human, or jorlad, as far as I could tell. Most of them had pale to tanned warm skin tones with pale eyes and vibrant blond or brown hair. The height differences shocked me the most, with many ranging from between five and eight feet tall.
Interspersed throughout the grazing fields were rows upon rows of orchards. The trees were mostly needle trees or the ones that had thicker, tubular leaves. Fuzzy purple berries grew off the ends of every needle, easily falling off and clinging to whatever passing animal brushed the needles. Across the road was a field of trees with tube leaves, whose long green fruits grew in the center of tube clusters almost like it was camouflaged by its own leaves. Little eyeless creatures roamed inside these orchards, hopping along on stubby bird legs and flapping up some branches to peel back the bark with their anteater-like mouths, likely searching for insects.
Further off toward the city, a set of hills seemed to sway like waves as the morning sun shimmered off of the pink and green grass. A single, massive willow-esque tree grew out of the top of one hill which was just out of sight from what seemed to be a stone fortress. The stone walls and ramparts rose high above the distant city and farmland. Bright orange banners billowed from the ramparts in the brisk late-summer winds. The design, the crest was stark white, depicting seven hands thrusting a sword upward toward the sun. Behind the walls I spotted a sprawling manor of light walls and dark wooden accents.
Further in, the fields became more compact. Some were densely lined with crops of withering green stalks. There were smaller fields with rows of fence posts where human-sized insectoids of bronze, gold, and brassy colors sat by water wheels in the river which slowly turned, spinning spools of shiny metallic material from their backsides. I asked a farmer as we passed, and he said they were brzzit. They were well-regarded in the countryside because they loved hosting community storytelling banquets and they’d “weave you an outfit just for sap and a story for them to weave to, longer and better stories for lasting and better clothes, and those clothes sure are pretty, like your whole story is in ‘em.” The brzzit casually conversed and worked with jorlad and other brzzit and the occasional yeffen who unrolled the material to dry on the fence posts out in the fields. There were dense pink and green bushes which seemed to have rigid, pyramid shaped hard-shelled fruits or nuts. Every crop I’d seen in Poikla were also grown here, along with the bioluminescent grains which lined the road.
Animals the size of cows and pigs roamed in the grassy fields. They seemed to have no fur, just heavy stores of fat that made them appear as walking logs of pale yellow. Like pigs, their body transitioned from body to head with no neck. Their downturned noses and droopy mouths were basically lawn mowers with how quickly they ripped up and ate the grass and excess materials that the farmers were throwing into massive wooden troughs. A bowl-like mound of bone extended from the top of it’s skull, from between the downturned ears to the blubbery snout that was dripping snot. The farmers tending to them referred to them as farns. The noises that came from them were as hideous as they were. As if a chicken bocked with the vocal cords of a pig.
“-pretty sure ‘human’ isn’t how we understand it,” I tuned into Vetia’s explanation. “It’s like an all-encompassing term for the intelligent races that make up ‘humanity’ more as a concept in this world. And each race has its own classification within the general population.”
Desmond frustratedly attempted to crack his knuckles, not getting even a single pop. “You got all that just from talking with Gary?”
“Eh, I can’t think of any other reason for the communication barrier.”
I slapped the side of the wagon a few times. “Yo! We’re getting close to the city. We should pro-”
Vetia leapt up to the front of the wagon and marveled at the farmland, her starry eyes tracing the horizon to the manor on the hill. “Yo, it’s like, actually a medieval city! Holy shit, that fortress is awesome!”
Adam climbed to the other side of me, lurching the wagon with every move he made. “Honestly, it looks more renaissance than anything. But still really cool. They’ve got some pretty organized farmland too. Really thorough crop rotations and irrigation. Even though the homes look poor, they’re still really well made.”
I pushed them both back into the wagon. “Step back now, y’all. The corties can barely pull the wagon right with you up here, Adam. And Vets, watch your wings for once. Guys, we discussed this a little already. Be discreet, don’t show our faces until we know what’s up. The crazy bitch could have alerted guards to keep eyes on us coming in. Not saying the farmers are gonna rat on us, just the less people that see us, the better. At least until we can get supplies and directions or a map to the next place.”
They both returned to their seats until Vetia started leaning her head out the back to try and see around the wagon at every opportunity.
I glanced back. “Did you guys think of rules yet? Desmond? You said you had a few in mind.
Desmond leaned back and sighed. “Yeah, um, rules. This is basically just common sense, but stick together. One other person with you at all times. Nobody goes anywhere alone, especially the bitch who ain’t listening. Ay!” He whistled loudly.
She was still looking out the side. “Yeah, what?”
“Are you?”
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She pulled herself back in the wagon. “I’m fuckin’ listening, just keep talking. I’m not stupid or deaf.” She started climbing back to her spot.
“Exposure, dumbass.” Desmond, grabbed her tail with his glove and yanked her backward.
“Ow! You fucking dick!” Vetia stumbled backward, turning around and whipping her tail back. Once she righted herself, she held her tailbone and whined with a pathetic look. “That fuckin’ hurts!”
“Dipshit. Look at yourself. You got wings and horns and shit. Look at all those other people. They’re all normal humans or bugs and you’ve got dragon wings and red eyes and hair! You’re also way paler. Stay outta sight. Same shit goes for Adam and Brenden, except they didn’t go ahead and piss off a noble. You guys stick out like sore thumbs here. Keep a low profile.”
She crossed her arms and retracted her horns, wings, and tail. “Better?”
“Yeah. A lot better. Now keep your head in or I’ll pull your hair next time.”
“You’ve been itching to.”
“Fuck around and find out. I dare ya.”
Adam sighed. “You were saying?”
“Um, yeah. Second thing. Don’t pipe up with your bullshit. Keep the language clean and don’t do anything stupid. We don’t know what kinda social rules these people got. Simira was pretty chill for a noble, so I’m thinking it won’t be a biggie, but we still gotta feel things out.”
Vetia snickered and rolled her eyes. “Chill. Yeah.”
Desmond put his hand up at her to stop. “She was pretty reasonable up until the end, all things considered. Okay?”
“You didn’t see shit.”
He sighed and bit his tongue. “Fuck it. That’s all I got. Adam, you said you had something in mind.”
Adam sat up like he was giving a presentation and pushed up an imaginary set of glasses. “So, our knowledge of this world is extremely limited. I think it would benefit us to watch what other people do to figure out what is normal. We need to learn what we should eat, how much the money is worth, and what the proper way to conduct ourselves is. Nutritional value isn’t the important thing in eating. We want the simplest things, so whatever this world’s equivalent to bread and cheese is, then the grains, roots, vegetables and fruits, then-”
“Fruits and vegetables,” Tells interrupted him.
“What?”
“Nobody says vegetables and fruits. It’s fruits and vegetables.”
“I was listing them in order of importance.”
“Well, what about meat?”
He straightened his mouth and took a breath. “As I was going to say, meat is probably more of a luxury, maybe even inaccessible to people with as little money as us, as was the case in many places in our history, especially in pre-industrialized cities. Eggs, we can probably find if there are domesticated animals that produce them readily, however, we have yet to see many avian, so-”
Vetia piped up. “Wait, Adam, who's to say the birds are the ones with eggs here. It’s more surprising that so many of these creatures are mammalian at all. Vertebrates are expected to a degree, but I’d bet large arthropods are more prevalent here than on Earth, cause there’s some pretty big ones out there. Not to mention reptiles and amphibians within the vertebrates. There could be entirely different sources of protein from different domesticated classes of animals in general.”
“That’s a good point, I’ve seen a couple-”
I was getting tired of it. “Guys, we don’t need to hypotheticalize about everything. We’ll see what they got when we get there. So get to the point.”
“Erm… yeah, this is true. Money. We’ll buy food, so we can learn that then, and maybe some customs. We should introduce ourselves as nearby foreigners from an independent unnamed homestead past Poikla, which has been largely disconnected from society. That wouldn’t be improbable for a place as technologically lacking as here.”
Tells raised her hand. “Teacher! Mr. Brenden Fitzgerald Jace sir?”
“What the fuck are you-” I sighed. “Yes, Tells?”
“Should the rest of the class be using their magical powers in public.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s dumb that I don’t have any.”
“Have you tried?”
“It’s probably dangerous if you’re not born a wizard like the two of you were.”
“Actually,” I thought for a moment. “Should we see if we can find a library or something? Somewhere we can learn some history or just general information about this country or empire or whatever?”
Desmond shook his head and winced. “I don’t think that’s gonna be easy or doable. Sims made it sound like education and books are pretty expensive and or tough to come by unless you’re high status.”
“And we have no verification for our educations,” Vetia added, “which aren’t even fully applicable here. Tells computer sciences? Probably worthless. My archeology and the little bit of biology is gonna be really limited because it’s all Earth related. Desmond’s probably got the best bet with his engineering, but even that may be limited depending on how implemented jzanmah is into the technology here. People skills and common sense are probably gonna be our biggest assets here.”
“Yeah…” Desmond trailed off in thought for a moment. “Maybe I’ll follow up on that lead from Gary with one of you, probably Brenden. We wanna keep you and Adam in the wagon, then Tells can hang out just to be the ‘normal’ one in case questions are asked. At least until we can find a place to stay.”
Tells squinted at Desmond. “Why the knife ear?”
“Simira seemed to regard him in the same way as you and me, unlike Adam and Vetia. And between you and him, he can hold a conversation with a stranger.” Desmond jumped up with a thought. “Oh! Also, we don’t split up until we have a meeting point. If we get lost and can’t find each other, we’re gonna be shit out of luck. I haven’t been in a city yet, but your scents probably won’t be easy to pick up. Actually, fuck it. Each of you give me something with your scent on it. I’ll put it in my backpack in case I need to track you down.”
Bags rustled as everyone, myself included, rifled through our belongings. Tells’ voice was first. “Here’s a sweat rag from a week ago. It’s been sitting in my bag because there’s nowhere to wash anything.”
Regret immediately washed over Desmond’s face. “I’m gonna get a different pouch for all of this if it’s going to be nothing but nasty old clothes and shit.”
Vetia spoke next. “I have a piece of cloth that my wings ripped from my shirt. Do you want me to rub it on my neck? That might make it more potent.”
“Honestly, it reeks without you even doing that.”
Adam’s deep voice matched the rugged tone of the wagon wheels on dirt. “I’ve got the shirt I was wearing when I went out lifting all those trees. Is that stinky enough for you?”
“You didn’t have to say it like that.” Desmond covered his nose and dropped everything into different pockets of a bag that looked like a fanny pack. “Alright Brenden, whatchu got?”
I honestly didn’t know. I hadn’t changed clothes, as gross as that was. But then again, hygiene wasn’t something we exactly had the luxury of worrying about. “Here you go.” I untied my hair and pulled the twine I had been using to keep it up, dropping it in his hand. “Can one of you cut me off a little piece of string again.”
Desmond bagged the tie and a pair of hands started combing through my hair.
“Ponytail, bun, or braid?” Tells’ bored and monotone voice popped in right behind my head. She chuckled. “Unless you wanna be the first elf with cornrows.”
“Definitely not that. I don’t know. Just pull the front stuff back so it doesn’t get in my eyes.” Her hands wove through my hair gently, but pulled different parts and tightly intertwined them until all of the hair was off my face. She quickly made a tight top-braid. “Since when the hell can you braid hair?”
Her hands kept weaving, but I could feel her looking at me like I was stupid. “My parents were constantly working? I had to take care of my brothers and sisters, so I ended up learning to do their hair, cause good luck getting Bianca to do a fuckin’ thing for anyone.”
She finished braiding and tied it off after a few minutes of silence. It was an oddly relaxing experience that I never would have had before. A finger tapped my shoulder. “Brenden, turn around.” It was Vetia.
“Yeah, what?” I turned my head around and saw Tells, Adam and Vetia staring directly at me, looking hard. “What the fuck are you looking at?”
Vetia was nodding, pointing toward me. “See, he looks like Legolas, but… browner, and if Legolas had a kid with a gray alien.”
Adam was looking toward me like he was investigating something. “Like your hair is still black, but why is it so shiny?”
Vetia reached up and pointed right at it. “Yeah, no, look at that. It’s kind of, hmm, silvery. Like metallic shiny but in a good way, not gross or oily.”
“And in came Tells with a steel chair!” Tells slammed me with her shoulder, knocking me off the seat, then doubled down and aggressively grabbed at my chest, shocks of pain shooting through my contorted nipples.
Adam yelled out, “Yeah! Beat his ass, Tells!”
“Get your hands off me, woman!” I batted her conniving fingers away and slipped out from under, quickly crawling back up to my spot at the head of the wagon.
Upon seeing that, Desmond smiled and raised his hands. “Hey, Ve-”
She didn’t even need him to finish that sentence. “I will fucking kill you.”
Desmond cackled mischievously.
I groaned, a little frustrated. “I get it, we’re hot now. But Desmond even if they were the boys before, there’s new lines that even you should respect.”
Desmond loudly groaned. “Oh my God it was a joke, you white knight. She’s not gonna fuck you.”
Vetia raised a finger, sounding a little genuinely offended. “Are you saying Tells and I aren’t part of the boys anymore?”
I didn’t know how to respond. “I mean, it’s not like you aren’t… but-”
“Erm.. it’s not like you aren’t but-” she mocked in a nerdy voice. “Nah, once one of the boys, always one of the boys. Simple as.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.”
The farms became spaced-out cottages, then two-to-three floor rather nice townhouses as we approached the city. With the cottages, began streetlights, gentle orange crystals atop bronze posts which were probably beautiful at night. On a branch of every post was a light orange banner, just like the ones on the massive fortress. Just on the edge of the city proper, the road diverged and a post divided the roads. To the left was the Amien Quarter and to the right was the Hallax Quarter.
We were already entering through the Amien Quarter, whose spacious buildings of dark wood and streets lined with trees, shrubs, and flowers made the city feel less… city-like. They were old and unmaintained, but had simply pretty natural designs on the corners and roof edges. In the rickety glass pane windows were wooden planters with vibrant arrangements of herbs and flowers which we passed too quickly for me to see clearly. The whole place felt like a synergized fusion of dark wooden urban construction and colorful, natural splendor. The people seemed to be in high spirits, though, carrying baskets to and from the market in a lush square far up the road where spirited voices carried all the way down to us.
The guards, clad in brass half plate with light orange underclothes, carried mostly simple curved scimitars. A crest on their shoulders and chest depicting seven arms holding a sword piercing the sun. The plates themselves were leaflike and curled up slightly at the tips. Higher ranking guards had tassels with different colored gems adorning the sides of their helmets, hanging from hooks by their ear slots. The higher the rank, the more tassels there were. Everyone, even the poorest people, were carrying some kind of weapon. Even the ones who weren’t obviously carrying had subtle dents or bulges along their waistlines. The guards’ disdainful stares were met with equal eyes from the people.
I pulled the corties right, and gazed up the road at buildings of copper, then bronze, then brass, then a gate to a segregated subdistrict that glistened with bright gold. The people walking the streets ahead were all decked out in similarly colored shiny clothes according to where they lived. Robes and jewelry galore. Everyone eyed our wagon and noticed me, quickly turning their eyes away. The place had a similar feeling of attempted natural inclusion, but the buildings were tightly packed, so it seemed more cluttered and the plant life didn’t have anywhere to grow from. There were still plenty of trees, but the copper and bronze buildings which were brighter and shinier were more tightly packed with people who seemed like they were all avoiding eye contact with each other. They were busy eying the ground to avoid the waste which was forming puddles over the clogged sewer grates.
Fuck, the Amien Quarter looks way nicer. Why’d we have to get on Simira’s bad side? Well, there’s sure to be other nice places past this city.
“New rule,” I yelled back, “we don’t go anywhere near the Amien Quarter.”