Once they’d gotten into the hotel, it was easy enough to identify themselves and get their keys from the man behind the front desk. Verity requested food be brought up and paid immediately. They were on the fourth floor, as Mizuki had apparently sprung for a suite, one that the five of them were going to share for the night. It seemed a bit extravagant to Alfric, and he hoped that he wouldn’t have to pay out too much, even if they weren’t terribly worried about money at the moment. The stairs were murder on his aching legs, and he collapsed into one of the beds before reluctantly removing his equipment and the pieces of armor he’d still been wearing. Verity was running a bath in one of the suite’s two bathrooms, and Hannah was busy in the other, taking a quick shower.
It had been a good day, if a long one and not quite done. The team was coming together. There was a good chance they’d at least stay together for the next five dungeons, the ones surrounding Pucklechurch, and they just needed to be a bit lucky in what they found for it to be easy to make the case for what came next. Travel time was the biggest barrier, but the wardrobe would help with that, especially if Alfric could find something that would let them transport it.
There was a bit of party chat over the course of all this, reporting of locations and things like that, and Alfric mostly ignored it. You couldn’t turn party chat off, but you could sleep through it, if you trained yourself in it, and Alfric nearly napped while he waited for his turn in one of the bathrooms.
But then Isra and Mizuki returned to the hotel, with their own things to report, and Mizuki had news about what they’d been up to.
Chapter 27 — Too Much Talking
“You’re not in a guild, are you?” asked Mizuki as they walked away from the warp point. “I guess I assumed you weren’t, but I don’t actually know.”
“I am not,” said Isra.
“Well, I am,” said Mizuki. “Sorcerers are notoriously territorial, given there’s a limited amount of magic floating around and limited jobs for us to do, so we tend to guild up in order to make sure we’re not stepping on each other’s toes. It also helps with finding work, if there’s something that needs more than one of us, or a job the other is passing on, or something like that. It’s a small guild, very local, only about twenty, but I’m in it.”
“I see,” said Isra, but Mizuki wasn’t sure she did.
“Anyway, there’s a pair of sisters who are sorcerers out of Liberfell, and we’re in their territory. I sent out a message to the guild, just to let them know I was on my way, and got back an invite for breakfast with them tomorrow,” said Mizuki. “I’d also sent a different message asking about a woods witch, and they said they’d be in touch with her. I didn’t say anything about your situation, since I didn’t know, you know? But if you wanted to come to the breakfast, which’ll be tomorrow morning, maybe you could get some answers, or at least have an introduction made.”
“That would be good,” said Isra. “Thank you.”
“I think there might be a guild for woods witches,” said Mizuki. “And if there is, you could get in that way.”
“I don’t know anything about guilds,” said Isra.
“Yeah, I hear you,” said Mizuki, nodding. “They’re tough, and each one is its own thing.”
Mizuki was taking in Liberfell, which she hadn’t visited in quite some time. The streets of Pucklechurch were mostly packed earth, save for a strip down the main section of town that was cobbled, but in Liberfell, it was proper stonework all the way around, going from storefront to storefront, and only little gaps for patches of grass or shade trees at regular intervals. The number of stores and the height of the buildings was probably the other main thing, along with the small streams of smoke and vapor that came up from various buildings. There was a mage collective in Liberfell, with their own little section of the city, and they had engines running in a number of the shops. The whole place thrummed with aether, and Mizuki could feel the possibilities taking shape in her mind, not that she was actually going to do anything. Mages didn’t like when people messed with their things. There was a valley below Liberfell, which part of the city hugged, but they weren’t close enough to see it.
“So many smells,” said Isra.
Mizuki sniffed the air. Isra was right, there were a lot of smells of the city, from the bakeries, the restaurants, the crafts districts, all layered on top of each other, so that it was hard to pick out any individual one. Did a woods witch have a better nose? Or was that just Isra? Mizuki didn’t know, and when she thought about it, she decided that Isra probably didn’t know either.
“We’ll deal with the eggs first,” said Mizuki. “Which means probably going to the edge of the city, but,” she scanned the shop signs, looking down the street, “we’ll ask in an entad shop.”
She set off, and Isra followed after. Isra carried Mizuki’s bag, which held the three eggs, tucked safely into some bedding at the top. Her hand stayed near them, making sure that they were safe and wouldn’t break. It was possible, especially with three, that they were valuable, something that in twenty years’ time might be the next chicken, but it was equally possible that they were worthless or wouldn’t hatch.
The entad shop was a nice place, filled with all kinds of things, but as Mizuki’s eyes looked across them, she saw that fully a quarter of them weren’t magical at all, either there to make the place look more important than it was or, more generously, henlings. She’d been in the shop once before, hoping to find something that gave off enough magic that she could get some use out of it, but the kinds of effects that were best for a sorcerer didn’t come cheap. Most entads did their work without making many ripples in the aether.
She chatted with the shopkeeper for a bit, a young man with a winsome smile, who, in the course of talking bastles—creatures that came from dungeons—had revealed that it was his father’s shop, which he and his sister planned to take over someday. Mizuki was a bit envious of someone with a family business, especially one as interesting as entad sales, because all she had was a family house and sorcerer’s blood, which had done its irregular skipping of generations. The boy seemed a bit nervous at the mention of sorcery, which wasn’t an uncommon reaction, but she did her best to put him at ease and to talk about what entads she might buy or possibly sell. She told him they were dungeoneers, which was more or less true, and that seemed to interest him, which in turn led to her showing him the three entads they had with them, starting with Isra’s bow and Mizuki’s staff—though it wasn’t technically hers yet, because the dust hadn’t settled on their second dungeon run. She saved the spoon for last, and he seemed suitably impressed by it.
Eventually Isra reminded Mizuki about the eggs and their quest for a bastlekeeper, and the shopkeeper, Rolaj, was happy enough to give them directions and then draw out a map when Mizuki felt a bit confused. Mizuki promised that they would be by with Alfric when he got into town, and with that, they were on their way.
“That seemed to take a long time,” said Isra as they left.
“Did it?” asked Mizuki. “It’s not like we’re in any rush.”
“All we needed were directions,” said Isra.
“I’d say Alfric had rubbed off on you, if I didn’t think you were just like this,” said Mizuki with a sigh. “What do you get from being direct and to the point? Besides, it was nice to meet Rolaj. Don’t you like meeting people?”