Leftover Apocalypse

The next day Errod and Katrin were helping Mila take a gorgeous statue of a fish to someone in a city called Storm's Anchor via the merchant-run teleportation circle. In theory any city could set one up, but you needed to coordinate between cities and have someone with the right magical skills. The government also required permits, and enforced them by way of runes all throughout the walls of the city that prevented the use of certain magic unless you knew the right runic sequence, like a password.

Yallowsben presumably hadn't had any such protections since its walls were patchwork and shoddy, but Theramas had been built properly and would also have a second layer on the walls around the fort so someone already in the city couldn't teleport right into the fortress and bypass security. They also prevented a number of other things although Katrin hadn't seemed to be confident on what. Passage into other planes, probably, and maybe some types of scrying although when Mila overheard us talking she said that sort of thing was tricky - there were a hundred ways to do it and you couldn't prevent all of them, plus the stronger the connection the more likely they could punch through. So while you could stop someone from just randomly spying on people, if they had some pre-existing magical connection to a specific person the runes didn't do shit.

I helped them get the little cart down Monster's Hill, which was terrifying - I kept imagining the heavy statue barreling down the street, knocking people aside like bowling pins. When we got closer to the merchant's guild and its teleportation circle I said goodbye and wandered along the river that cut through Theramas, trying to distract myself from how jealous I felt. Errod and Katrin had tried to be calm about it, but neither had teleported before or seen the ocean so it was going to be an exciting day for them while I just wandered the long way back to the apartment and immediately got bored.

I found myself reaching for my phone - I'd only done that a few times since arriving - and instead lounged around the apartment for a bit. I could feel my anxiety building. They weren't coming back. They had tricked me, told me we were friends, and now they'd teleported somewhere and I was on my own. I knew why I was having the thoughts - thanks mom - but that didn't make them go away. I remembered all the times I watched her tail lights vanish down the road knowing I'd been left behind, wondering if she would change her mind and come back or if I'd have to try and find my own way home, not sure if someone would call CPS as I trudged down the highway.

I got up and gathered some things, but I deliberately left most of my stuff behind as a reminder to myself that I was not going to run away - that I could trust that my belongings would be there waiting for me and that this was, at least for now, a safe home. Heading to the main market square, I wandered and looked for the right kind of business. I didn't want anything too respectable, but I didn't want to go into a dangerous area either. Mildly shady was the target.

Eventually I found what I wanted, a little side street that immediately made me want to keep a hand on my money pouch but which had enough people that I wasn't worried I would mysteriously vanish. There were no city guards, unlike the main market, and where most of Theramas was clean, bright, and open this was a cramped little maze of worn tents and leaning kiosks, the buildings all just hollow shells made to be cleared out when the merchant wasn't there to supervise. The lack of city guards didn't mean there wasn't protection; many of the shops had someone conspicuously leaning against a pillar sharpening a blade.

I was impressed that even in what was clearly the "bad" part of the merchant district everyone looked healthy and mostly clean. I didn't see anyone that was missing limbs or starving. Some people's clothes were a bit old and had noticeable patches, but there's a hell of a difference between patches and holes. Clearly the city was taking care of its citizens. Most of those citizens had dark hair and almost yellow skin, with very sharp cheekbones that contrasted strangely with their somewhat bulbous noses - as with everyone I'd seen it didn't match any ethnicity on Earth - but Theramas had a wide variety of people and even being obviously foreign I suspected I didn't stick out too badly. I even saw someone walk by with blue skin at one point, though I didn't get a good enough look to guess at whether or not it was natural.

I found what I was looking for and went up to the counter, looking at the cluttered shelves of fascinating junk behind them. I didn't even know what half of it was. The proprietor mumbled a greeting, but didn't look up from her book.

"Hey. You're buying?" I asked. She gestured to the counter, still fully engrossed in her reading, so I dumped my treasure out. Two rings, a fancy belt buckle, an ornate dagger, a Dumine, and a blue crystal on a leather cord. I was keeping the more utilitarian stuff, like the tent and cooking kit and canteens.

The woman continued to ignore me for a moment, and then sighed and tucked a bookmark into place and finally deigned to examine what I was offering. She frowned when she saw the Dumine, and got an ornate silver rod out from under the counter. "Hold this," she said, and I hesitated. "I have to ask if you killed the person this is from, and once I'm doing that I should probably ask if you did anything illegal to get the rest of this stuff while I'm at it. Now that I've seen it I can't let you go without at least asking that first part."

Of course. What had I been thinking? I took hold of the rod. Presumably it was a lie detector thing, but I knew for important things they used an actual person which implied a device would be easier to trick. Even so, I wanted to keep it simple and as truthful as I could. "I heard his death was an accident, as far as I know that's correct. He wasn't a citizen of the Empire, and he didn't die in the Empire. I didn't get any of this stuff from within the Empire, in fact, and to the best of my knowledge I didn't break any laws." After all, out between cities were there even laws? And it seemed like they just left bodies laying out in the wilderness, plus they were technically invaders since we had been in Free States territory. Hoping my ignorance would be enough, I let go of the rod as soon as I finished talking.

The proprietor narrowed her eyes at me, then shrugged and put the rod away. "Okay. Let's see what you've brought me, foreign girl." She pulled out a tray covered in tools, and laid them all out on the counter. She then slotted a thumb-sized metal stick into the side of the tray, and dumped the rings, belt buckle, and dagger on there. A faint glow appeared around one of the rings and the dagger, and she set them aside. For the other ring and the belt buckle, she took a jeweler's loupe and examined them closely.

"Okay. These two aren't magic, and they're not alchemical metals either. I can check the purity of the gold but from how soft the ring is I'd say it's almost certainly completely pure and the stones appear to be diamond. I can still give you something for it, but there's not a big market for cheap costume jewelry. The buckle is electrum with a little more than average copper, so that's worth a bit more." She fished out two of the little triangular coins, an orange and a lime green. "The Dumine and the stabilized mana crystal have set prices around here in case you didn't already know, so obviously I'll give you that rate." She put the crystal in what looked like a scale and squinted at a number, then slid it and the Dumine closer to her and tossed down a yellow coin followed - reluctantly - by a red.

I was a little thrown off by the idea that pure gold and diamonds weren't valuable, but it was clear that they wanted alchemical metals and magic stuff. For all I knew people could just make gold with magic, and maybe the alloy was more valuable because they were harder to make? I considered trying to haggle, acting like I would take them elsewhere, but I wanted to see what she said about the magic items first. The coins she'd already set on the counter were worth about a thousand 'pins', which was fifty-six bowls of Fantasyland Panda Express in Yallowsben or almost three months rent - though I got the impression our rent was cheap for what we were getting. She used a few of the other devices to examine the dagger and other ring, in a few cases taking that same thumb-sized metal stick and slotting it into them. I started to suspect it was a kind of battery. Finally she put everything down and looked at me with one eyebrow raised.

"Listen. I don't know who you got these from but if it was the same person that had the Dumine I'm glad he's dead. I can't sell either of these as-is. The ring is fully illegal in Theramas, if I'm reading it right it's for helping someone with thought magic to push past mental resistances. You don't need that on a willing target. The dagger is just made to cause more pain than it should, which isn't illegal but it's not something I'm likely to be able to sell easily. The good news is neither are made from volatile materials, so I can melt them down without having to pay someone to deal with the slag. Let's say... two red and a yellow."

That would be two hundred thirty-four pins. I was still trying to figure out the economy, but that felt disappointing for magic items. Then again, maybe magic stuff just wasn't a big deal. I'd have to shop around more before deciding, get a better handle on pricing and see what materials are valuable - I couldn't keep thinking of everything in terms of bowls of food. I shook my head, reaching out to grab my stuff, but the woman stopped me. She sighed, picked up the rod she'd made me hold, and said "The Clockmaker is my uncle."

The end glowed red.

"This book I'm reading is absolute trash," she said, and the glow vanished. "I live on the moon," and the light was back. "This is a fair price all things considered, and if you go shopping around with a Dumine and a torture knife and an illegal mind-reading ring you're probably going to end up getting hauled in to the city guards' holding cells for questioning."

No glow.

She put the rod down, and shrugged. "Take it elsewhere if you want though, nothing here is getting my nipples hard. It just seemed like you could use the warning - call it my good deed for the day."

"That's really the best you can do?"

"Of course not," the woman said as she picked up her book, "But it's the best I'm going to do, and if you can find anyone that will do better by more than a couple blues I'll be shocked." She started reading again as she waited for me to decide.

"You could ask about trade," a voice said, and I almost jumped out of my skin. A man was standing just a few feet from me, hands held behind his back, a look of oblivious innocence on his face that would give even Errod a run for his money. "She'll probably make you a deal on some of the items she's had for a while, assuming there's anything you want."

"Thanks for the unsolicited advice, random stranger. I think I can handle this." Except, god damn it, checking out what she would trade was a thing I had been considering. And now if I said anything it would look like it was his idea, and I hated that for some reason.

"Sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to imply otherwise. But I'll bet you lunch that I could pick out something you'd like."

"Are you asking me out? Like no matter who wins one of us owes the other lunch now?"

"I only said lunch, you could demand I get you takeaway. The deal wouldn't specify we sit down somewhere and make eyes at each other."

He was attractive, and not much older than me, but I generally wasn't interested in dating anyone at the best of times and certainly not while I was in such a strange situation. Still. A free lunch was good, since really I should be using the money I was getting here to buy food anyway. The money from selling the moskar would only last so long, and I didn't want to try and get a job yet. "Fine. You get one attempt."

He walked around the shop, looking over the counter at the overloaded shelves and occasionally asking the proprietor questions. The place reminded me of the pawn shop I used to get food money from - I had some fond memories of dragging stolen office equipment down there when I was living at Universal Servicing Systems. Lunch-bet guy, who hadn't bothered introducing himself, finally saw something that excited him and spent a moment whispering back and forth with the woman behind the counter.

She took away a red, put down a yellow and an orange, and slapped down a pair of shoes on the counter. They looked like black leather moccasins, although oddly there was a dark metal cap on them - steel toe moccasins were a ridiculous concept. I thought about the change in coins for a moment, trying to get a rough idea of value in my mind, and then finally asked what the shoes were.

"You have to try them on," the man said with a grin, and the woman roller her eyes but nodded. I yanked off my boots and slid the shoes on, and then after some excited gestures from lunch bet I walked around the shop. Something was wrong. I walked a little more, stepping heavily. I didn't hear anything. The sole was soft leather so that was to be expected to some extent, but the floors in the shop were wood and there had been hollow thumping and creaking before. I stomped as hard as I could, and heard a very faint footstep. Huh.

"Oh mother fucker," I said, realizing that I had lost, "they're perfect."

I let Lunch Bet, as I was thinking of him, follow me back out into the twisting marketplace. I didn't love that he knew I had a decent amount of cash on me, and had no intention of giving him an opportunity to steal it. Still, a bet was a bet and I really liked the shoes. "What's with the metal toes?" I muttered, and he somehow heard me over the general din of people shopping.

"Leather is a terrible material for magic items. That's some kind of alchemical metal, something cheap probably, given the deal you got. Still, it looks like the leather is treated properly so it should last basically forever if you don't do something stupid to it. No capacitor I'm sure, but I doubt the mana draw is bad."

Hmm. Well, he was helpful anyway. I still wanted to ditch him, just on principle. I looked around for somewhere cheap and easy I could buy him lunch, and started walking towards the odd smells. "So what's your name? Unless you want me to just keep calling you Lunch Bet."

"That's not bad as far as nicknames go," he said, "but I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours. Where're you from?"

The smell of cooking meat was mixed with another less pleasant smell, but I continued to follow it anyway. "Zoey," I said, for some reason picking the name of a bully from high school, "I'm from... all over, really. Most recently Storm Anchor. I brought a bunch of materials to an old friend in Ulthus and rather than paying me with money he dumped that garbage on me. Never doing business with that asshole again, that's for sure. What about you?"

"Is Ulthus nice? I've never been there, even though it's fairly close."

"It's fine," I said as I tried to remember anything Hugh had mentioned. I'd only seen it from a distance. "The tower is neat. So you want me to stick with Lunch Bet?"

He laughed. "You can call me Bet for short. I see we're heading to the exotic animals section. Planning on eating some monster meat, hoping it will increase your mana or something?"

From his tone I could tell it was teasing, and I remembered Katrin sounding skeptical when she talked about the things people would try to either increase their mana or train up their Dumine faster. Presumably eating monster meat wasn't a method people took seriously. I remembered sitting in the Long Haul Hotel and watching infomercials all day, some of which were so ridiculously implausible that even as a nine year old I called bullshit.

We arrived at a cul-de-sac where cages lined the walls, and I miserably failed at my attempts to not stare at the various creatures. A lot of them looked plausibly like Earth animals, albeit not ones I recognized specifically. But then there was the winged snake, and the thing that looked like a tiny three-headed deer, and the bipedal bright green porcupine guy. There were a few related businesses all clumped together, one clearly buying and selling the animals and one just offering mounted trophies, while another appeared to be dealing in random body parts that I assumed had some - real or imagined - medical or magical value.

There was also a little cantina place, the pale green stone stained with grease and smoke residue. It looked like an absolute dive, but in my experience those places often had the best food. Well. The best or the worst, really, with little in-between. Still, I was willing to take the risk.

The food on offer looked a lot like taquitos and were filled with more fat than meat, but they tasted amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed eating them while half-listening to Bet. He was telling me a joke about someone trying to cook some animal I'd never heard of and having trouble at every step, and I was increasingly convinced it was one of those jokes where the whole point was to drag it out for as long as possible and then have a really dumb punchline. I used the time instead to people watch.

There was one interesting guy in particular that was arguing with someone at one of the shops right next to the doorway we were seated by. I had a clear shot to watch him, though I couldn't make out what he was saying - he was gesturing to whatever he'd put on the counter and shaking his head, and it was causing the huge tangle of trophies or charms or whatever they were on his belt to shake around. There were strange horns or teeth, some tiny skulls, a glass vial with an eyeball in it. Honestly it looked super badass, but also a bit like a Halloween costume that was trying a little too hard.

Finally the man seemed satisfied and stepped away from the counter, then slid some glasses on - it had earpieces but only one lens, and that was thick green glass. He carefully examined some of the critters in cages, sighed, and then turned to leave - and stopped, staring at me. Slowly, he reached down into a doctor's bag and fished around before pulling out a large dagger made of some dull gray metal - it could have just been cheap steel, or iron, but I found myself wondering if it was instead some alchemical metal that didn't exist on Earth - was it a magic knife? What would it do if it cut me? He began walking closer, very slowly - as if I couldn't see him if he didn't go too fast.

I stood, almost knocking the table over, and grabbed a few of the taquito things as I moved towards the far exit - the cantina was at the edge of the cul-de-sac by an alley, meaning I could duck out that way and get a head start. Bet jumped up, looking at me quizzically and then almost immediately clocking the guy with the knife. "Hello friend!" he said cheerfully, stepping into the man's path - and then sliding sideways to stay there as the stranger tried to go around. "I believe it's illegal to wield a weapon in public like that, so -"

"I know where you're from!" the man yelled, pointing at me with the dagger. Bet grabbed the outstretched arm and deftly twisted, and I heard the clatter of a dagger hitting the ground as I bolted down the alley and found the fastest way back to a main street. I didn't stop running, taking multiple turns and going in a circuitous route to make sure nobody could possibly be following me. After some time, as I got to a spot where I could easily head back to Monster's Hill, I paused in a shop where I could watch the square I'd just passed through. Five minutes later, the man hadn't appeared. I'd lost him.

I walked out of the shop, turned towards Monster's Hill, and there waiting for me was Bet. He smiled and waved like nothing was wrong, like it wasn't at all strange that he was there after I spent twenty minutes weaving through the city. I slowly took a step backwards. He held up his hands in an "I surrender" gesture.

"Listen, Calliope - "

I ran, and this time I didn't go back to Monster's Hill until it was dark.