Royce can feel his lungs want to give up pretty quickly as he sprints down the dock, running past all the workers, most of them are a little confused by the skinny, pale white man rushing past them, let alone in clothes not from around here. Royce leans on a big rock at the bottom of a hill that the pulley wheels are anchored to, already exhausted, he needs to work on his body, it's pretty obvious he should do some workouts later.
“Thinking about it… Did I almost pull a D’Arby?” Royce says with a huff as he hikes up the hill.
Royce slowly sees the makings of the empire, or at least a city, and Royce can think is, is how flammable it looked, everything was made of wood. The roads, the supports, the houses, their towers. The walls around the great city as well. Except the walls on the coast apparently, still don’t know where they got bark that big to cover it, though.
He sees all the shades of brown and even the textures of the wood from so far away, all the wood was so carefully carved and cut, a city full of master carpenters, who were probably horrible people. Well, he hopes not.
Royce marches down the hill, too many things going through his mind: Do I pay an entrance fee? Immigration control? Laws I have no clue about? Social cues? Social norms? RACISM!?
Royce rubs his face, feeling muggy, his clothes were made for dry and hot desert, but… for some reason, the humid air and temperature reminded him of something, his brain is still hazy and can’t make out what it reminds him of. But right now, he's got two, to roughly three little quests he remembers. Do that thing for Kuroi, possibly obtain lightning magic, and hopefully get more information about his surroundings…
Can I read their language? The people of Oscri at least spoke my language the people of the Boa empire seem to as well… but is it written the same?
It was a question he had to ask, because he was going to see if they had libraries. The literary rates and basic arithmetic is something he also doesn’t know how to ask… politely.
As Royce stumbles downhill, a border wall comes into view, blocking everything but the tallest towers into the city. There wasn't any metal or iron for the gate, it was just solid wood, but the gate was sanded and polished, despite the cuts and dents at the lower half. The guards stopped him, they were huge, nearly seven feet.
They had a mixture of wooden armor and cloth, it was like looking at a walking barrel dressing up as some posh rich person. The only bit of metal was their weapons, but just the sharp parts, it was more like a drill bit. Just a crescent shaped blade on a wooden halberd with metal tongues near the middle to screw into the wooden head.
“State your business, pale one!” The guard says boisterously, his voice echos in the bulbous helmet of his.
“I want it.” Royce says deadpan as he points to the gate.
“Entry fee or papers?” The guard says as he opens his hand.
“How much?” Royce asks as he opens the coin purse.
“Twenty three Varnish.” The guard says as Royce counts out the coins, the coins were much bigger than he was expecting, little bit bigger than his palm, and looked like silver.
The guard waves up to somebody on top of the gate tower and the gate rumbles and kicks up dust as it slowly opens, Royce just slips by them and the gate, they just stare as he causally crawled through the gap in the gate. Before they know it he's already down the street. The guard elbows the other one.
“Hey man, you didn’t say anything! What gives?” The guard says as he adjust his helmet a little akin to loosening one's collar.
“Are you joking? That skinny guy was almost exactly like what everyone says alchemists look like! Pale skin, looked as cold as a witch's tear! Not risking any of that Congealed waters getting on my armor! Besides! You didn't even check out if those coins were real!” The other guard says with an accusatory finger.
“Are YOU joking!? You didn't even look that hard apparently! He was wearing desert clothes! There aren't any deserts in the Mamba ring! How did he get here from some infernal part of the Boa desert!? Besides… the coins feel heavy enough.” The guard sighs in relief, “you didn't even get close to the guy, man, it was scary being that close…”
“Sorry…”
Royce was busy trying to decipher a map on the side of the road. Unlucky for him, he can't read a damn thing. However, he was appreciating the city planning, the entire city was shaped like a hexagon, as well as the other four, any smaller village outside of it, or mapped at all, is also hexagon shaped. So one could just make a village section made out of smaller sections, add six, you get another hexagon, keep adding until you get the size of the other hexagons, boom, space problem, solved, as long as they stay at a reasonable scale.
Royce taps his foot as he looks at the map, trying to decipher as much as he can, he can only really go by the symbols and roads. As far as he’s concerned, he’s on the opposite side of the town where he wants to be, it looks like all the workshops are usually facing north at all the other towns, cities and private places. Typical commercial good shops are south, east has the higher class things, property and the like, and the royal stuff as well. West just some to be a mix of those three and miscellaneous facilities.
He opens the coin purse, looking disappointed enough to start sobbing. The coins were huge, so he’s actually quite excited if the silver is of high quality, he could make good components if he could get a bunch. But he now only has like thirty left. He rolls his eyes as he remembers the guard calling the coin Varnish, of course, everything here is basically made out of wood. Are the coins covered in it as well?
Royce bites a coin, he tastes the metal and something sickly, so probably the resin used with some sap. Well, at least he knows two things: can’t eat the coins, and he’s basically broke. So everything has stayed the same. Royce shakes his head with a sigh as he takes another glance at the map again, squinting again for anything that might catch his interest… Nope, either he’s just blind or there is nothing interesting.
He turns around slowly, head low and grouchy faced as he walks down the street, since he was to walk north coming from the south, he gets to see a bunch of goods being traded and bought; maybe because his eyes aren’t adjusted, he can barely see anything from all the shades of brown. Too much wood. It definitely comes primarily from the same tree, they more than likely have orchids for the tree’s wood rather than any sort of fruit or leaf.
To his surprise and to the delight of his legs, the city is rather walkable. For some reason he had a gut feeling that wouldn’t be the case. But it was. Any time he saw another person, they were jacked, straight muscle, then again, they were all hauling logs, pulling their own carts or hammering away at wood with a chisel in the other hand. They all looked deeply in focus or gritting their teeth with the absurd weight they casually carry. The entire road and sidewalks scream of fire hazard to Royce; saw dust, dry leaves, little crumpled cloth tatters, prime ignition and fuel.
The people were all… somewhat clothed, but they were also all clearly working, they at least had pants on. Royce felt out of place, not only was he basically the most clothed person there, and also might have been overdressed from their perspective. And the fact he basically glowed with how light bounces off his skin. Obviously he gets some stares, the normal workers and the like seem to be the ones politely ignoring him, its the guards and soldiers around the place that seem more interested in him.
They were all huge and bulky, just like the two at the gate. Wearing that wooden and bulbous armor, they looked like talking gourds to Royce. The chestpiece is all round and hollow sounding when they walk, they didn’t look like they were wearing chainmail when he squinted to look at the unarmored parts, it looked more like some sort of rope or dry vine. The glare he gets back makes him stop looking and hurry along. But to his disappointment…
“Oh, no…” he says with a defeated sigh as he sees another gate, having a stronger guard presence this time.
He doesn’t even bother getting close, he knows he’ll have no money when he passes through, but he suspects that it gets more expensive to get further in the city, but he needs to basically be on the other side of the empire completely! He just sits down on the side of the road, giving the gate a mean mug as he ponders how he is supposed to travel onward… Legally.
He’s got his hands in his pocket, somewhat kicking rocks… wood chunks, really. And sawdust, too. He could try and convince them to let him though, but that won’t do him any good if his acting is called into question. Posing as an alchemist again might bring actual trouble this time around. The guard at the city gate mentioned papers, but those papers could probably be made for any sort of reason–CAN THEY READ!?
Royce bolts up. Looking around frantically, in theory, he is basically surrounded by paper! He takes off a layer of his clothing, he has plenty of that and they don’t seem to mind being half naked, so he’ll look less out of place, but his actions clearly draw attention.
He just starts picking up random bits of the most finely chopped wood and some saw dust- works for bread, works for him! He piles it onto the layer of cloth he places on the ground, tying it up to carry it easily. He scouts around looking for some sort of cooking pot. As he’s walking around, he’s desperately trying to make a mesh of dry vines that he finds, or even the thinnest sticks he can afford to use. He doesn’t even notice the murmurs around him, some people just look at him, a complete stranger in a strange land, not familiar with this place, but absolutely in his element.
He stumbles around for a bit, ducking and weaving through big people and small people, all still buff. He runs into a wooden post, seeing the wooden sign of some sort of building, but the building had been constructed out of thick stone and a long chimney, his eyes widen as he bolts around the post and just invites himself in.
Right away he spots a big pot under the chimney, the two or three people inside all looked grumpy but jumped in surprise as this pale man that is Royce basically pushed the door open like a feral animal.
“I can use this right? Not a forever pot?” Royce says quickly as he dumps the dry pulp he had amassed into the pot.
“N-no?” The old man said as he just sits there confused, still having his arms crossed as he watches in shock as Royce just handles his little shop almost effortlessly.
“Is it even for soup? I assumed it was a kitchen because of the chimney and walls.” Royce says as he just grabs the flint and sparks the tinder and logs below the pot. There was water already in the pot.
“W-we cure wood. The cook is across the street.” The old man says as he gets up, he’s obviously a little spooked, but also very curious about whatever he was doing, “A-are… are you an alchemist?” The old man asked timidly. Royce stops for a second, head slowly turning to the old man.
“Yesssss.” Royce lies… again. The old man takes his drawn out word as caution instead of a lie.
“Then what are you doing?” The old man asks quickly, seeing how Royce is zipping around the place, peaking in the many buckets of random oils and powders.
“It’s no fun if I just tell you how the magic works right?” Royce says as he suddenly dumps some of the oil and other powders, stirring occasionally.
The old man's wife and daughter are just standing in the corner, mainly because Royce looks like some raving angry spirit over their pot. Royce jumps over to the little window still, working on his hand made wire mesh. His little hands working so fast, the old man looks like he’s lost in wonder, he knows pure joy when he sees it, especially when one is working in a craft. Royce’s enthusiasm is also noticeable from outside. The old man’s little shop was never open and run down but it was suddenly brought to life. Royce is going back and forth from the pot and the window, stirring the mixture and making the mesh. He didn’t need to make the mesh as large as he did, but he wants to now.
Some people passing by look in see Royce working away, the old man still has his mouth open in surprise. The old man still doesn’t know what he’s doing over there, but he isn’t going to stop Royce. He waves a hand over to his daughter and wife to calm them down a little.
Royce grabs the fire poker and yanks some coals, hooking them and putting them into the pot and breaking them apart with the firepoker, even humming S?kkij?rven to himself as he continues his little experiment. The pulp turns into a thick black as Royce hooks the larger wood chunks and tosses them under the bot for the fire. He shuffles over to the big mesh he made slapping it on the ground, the little spot before the pot was great! It was lower than the rest of the ground and was made of stone. He looks around for a bucket of water, but he can’t find one, so he just pokes the charcoal and lit wood chunks to the back of the chimney. He hooks the pot and slowly pours it over the mesh. The pulp steaming as it flows. He suddenly hands the old man the fire poker.
“Here! Look after this for me, will ya?” Royce then just runs out of the building, leaving the old man still in shock
–The old man just hovers over the steaming pulp as it makes him sweat a little from the ambient heat.
“S-should we call the guards?” His wife says, afraid Royce might just materialize next to her
“N-no! No. It’s fine, it doesn’t look like he means harm, he just looked a little excited is all.” The old man says with a huff, his heart finally calming down.
It had only been a few minutes but Royce jumped through the window. He’s brought back a few things and is breathing heavily but still has a beaming smile on his face. He’s got a big wood block and he just lays it over the pulp, a hollow log about a foot long, it sloshed around with a liquid inside, and pale white flower. Out of all those things, the old man seemed to go pale himself at the sight of the flower.
“W-where did you get that!?” He points at Royce with fear in his voice and eyes.
“Oh! This? I spotted growing in an a little nook and thought it’d be perfect for what I needed!” Royce says as he sits down on a stool next to the open window.
“That’s a Leech Lily! You need to get rid of it! It’s dangerous!” The old man turned to his wife, “Now we can call the guards! We need to report about a Leech Flora spotting!” He says quickly
Royce watches the old man’s wife run out quickly, looking for some sort of authority to report to. But Royce just crumples the flower as best he could, trying to make as fine of a dust as possible into the log full of resin, mixing it with the silver quill. Royce gets up and walks over to the pulp over the ground, poking it and feeling how it's still warm, he gives it an hour, maybe two at most, before he can do something with it.
“Can you please tell me what it is?” The old man asks with a bit more urgency this time.
“Paper.” Royce says with a bored tone as he’s crouched over the pulp, arms around his knees.
“Paper?” The old man responded, “THAT'S paper?” He doesn't believe it.
“Oh, yeah. Crappy paper. Still paper. I had to use my nose to figure out what you had was an acid, then again, I could have used rags, but there was all this wood around.” Royce says with a sigh, wondering if he just went for the longer route, but no matter, he just needs it to work enough.
Royce pokes it again, obviously its still warm, it hasn’t even been a minute since he last poked it, he perks up for a moment.
“Oh, yeah… isn’t everyone in the Boa empire supposed to be really good at woodworking and the like? Could I ask you to make something?” Royce says as he looks up at the old man, “Pretty please?”
The old man closes his eyes trying not to fall for whatever Royce was pulling, but he peeks with one eye to see Royce giving him the puppy dog eyes with his hands together, he averts his gaze.
“H-hey! Its simple, I promise! It doesn’t need to be good either!” Royce says as he stumbles to his feet, “promise! I just need a backpack or something! You know, just a little box I can have on my back? Pleaaaassseee!?? Royce pleads with hands clasped together.
The old man crosses his arms with a smack of his lips. He felt a bit of the audacity creep up, but he did just kind of let Royce just use his shop and didn’t really stop him, he gives a half-hearted groan as he yanks the stool from behind Royce and grabs his toolbox on the shelf. Just as he sits down, his wife and three guards come back. He throws up a hand in annoyance as he was just about to get ready for a little work.
“Where was the flora spotted!?” One guard shouts quickly, the two behind him seem to have buckets filled with some sort of powder or salt.
“Kid, could you tell them?” The old man says, his daughter looks confused for a second, he gives her a dismissive wave, “The other kid, not you sweetie.”
“Uh… Sure. Near one of the city gates, or an alleyway connecting to it, there was just a whole wall covered in shriveled vines, found a white lily growing off the wall.” Royce says as he casually scratches his face.
“The city gates!? It's probably the one to the west! That’s closest to the Pale Forest!” The other two guards behind him bolt out the door trying to carry the buckets as balanced as possible. He himself was about to run off to join them, but he pointed his finger at Royce, “Don’t cause any trouble, alchemist! I know your type!”
Royce just shrugs, not sure if he should be offended or not, since he's not actually an official alchemist after all. He feels like he should feign annoyance for his amusement. He decides not to, as he feels that would drag too much attention to himself. Like he hasn't done that already.
The old man gets right to it as soon as the guards leave. Chisel in one hand, hammer in the other as he carves up wooden planks, he reaches his hand into the tool box, just grabbing a handful of sharp nails without flinching, each strike perfection, one sharp swing of the hammer and he's already made half of a wooden box. Royce didn't even see him put the nails on the sides. Royce doesn’t even have to raise an eyebrow as the old man spins it around and with another swift swing, its just a box with a top or bottom.
“How'd you do that?” Royce asks as he bolts over. The old man smirks.
“It's no fun if I tell you how the magic works, right?” he says with a small chuckle.
“Booo!” Royce jeers without any real venom behind it.
Royce goes over to fiddles and be impatient by the drying “paper” he suspects it'll be way too thick, and probably crumble due to the poor quality of ingredients and timing. He was hoping to make it look official by rolling it up with a little ribbon. But he could maybe put it in a frame to stop it from falling apart if its too crumbly.
The old man puts the little wooden pack back on the window sill. If hadn't even been a few minutes, and he had done it already.
“Zuneigung, right?” Royce says with a sigh. To have skills like those, he'd be a menace in a workshop.
“Yes. Took years and years.” The old man says with a smile filled with nostalgia.
“Yeah, but like, how many?” Royce says abruptly, making the old drop the smile with a small dismissive grunt. “At least five?” Royce says with a hand on his chin, “ten at most?”
“It took seven years, but that doesn't get rid of its credit!” The old man says as he crosses his arms, looking a tad bit hurt.
“I know, I know, I didn't mean to sound impatient or rude.” Royce says as he scoots over to inspect the crate.
Royce picks it up, he could tell it was going to be a pain on his back, but he's got it now. There weren't any straps, but he just starts twisting some of the leftover mesh into ropes. He gives it a good tug and puts it on. It was very bulky for his thin frame, but he could lift it and that's what mattered to him. Royce sighs, feeling that he's made a step in the right direction. But now he wants to take another.
Royce flips the wooden block over the paper, just as he suspected, it was too thick, about half of his finger's worth of thickness. He could slice it in two, but he doesn’t think the tools are around for such a precise cut, or to be done cleanly. But nonetheless, he drags the big slab of crappy paper over, he takes out the silver pen, formerly a quill, and seemingly with some sort of muscle memory, he cuts a 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper, he does this two more times, the third piece of paper crumbles halfway. He takes the crumbled and ruined sheet and takes the little hollow log that had been on the window sill for a bit and dips the pen into the mixture of Leech Lilly and tree sap or some other liquid the trees around here make, he's not sure. Either way, it white ink, it'll serve its purpose.
He stretches his fingers, rolls his neck and snatches a stool. He tries to look dramatic by giving a little hand wave. If he had a clock or a little bit of extended clothing on it might have looked cool, but he didn’t so he just looked weird.
He hopes his calligraphy will look convincing. The old man hovers over him as he can't read the language that Royce was writing in. He looks a little confused, but was a little convinced that it was legit. But Royce was scratching off the failures and misspelled words, pretty soon he had used up the first side and had to flip it over, practicing again until he ran out of space to write. He takes a deep breath and grabs one of the actual pieces of paper and dips the pen and just starts think of random crap that sounds impressive.
“Upon the arrival of the intended alchemist, Royce Harsguard, to the Boa empire, is allowed access to all but private residences and estates for the matter of research, along with free passage between city gates or blockades. The matter of research is up to the discretion of the intended alchemist for which they wish to reveal. Damage to the letter of approval will be seen as a crime, compensation should be granted immediately with haste or the individual, or group shall suffer Mamba law if deemed necessary.”
Royce looks at it, not quite satisfied with it, he looks at the old man who was hovering next to him.
“Does it look good? Actually! Do you know what the Mamba ring or alchemist dude's seal is, by chance.” Royce asks the squinting old man.
“Did you lose your papers and forging new ones? And why don't you know your own seal!? The old man says with a glare of scrutiny
“So it does look convincing and all it needs is the seal? Thanks! What does that look like?” Royce says as he leans on the palm of his hand, elbow propping him up.
“Come on, it's in the name…” the old man takes the pen and draws a Mamba, well, a snake, one with its mouth open.
Royce immediately hands him the remainder of his coins.
“Could you make a little stamp of that drawing?” Royce says with a little smug smile, making the old man flustered.
“You're a little con-man, you know that?” The old man takes the coin purse, he figures that Royce was going to make his own stamp the moment the drawing was finished, so he might as well get something out of this little interaction.
The old man shoos him away, Royce shrugs with a little smile on his face as he goes to inspect the leftover paper. He snaps his fingers with realization and an idea, he did turn the paper black with charcoal, so he’s gonna pack them into little pellets as fuel. He tries to fold the paper as gently as he can, but it cracks just ever so slightly, of course Royce knows this was going to happen but still complains with his face anyway.
Royce turns around and grabs his new wooden container, he puts it on the ground and puts the folded and cracked, and highly flammable, paper into it. They kind of look like really thick scrolls, or tubes of paper, he closes the backpack a few times to squish the paper in more and more repeatedly.
“That’s very annoying.” the old man said as he’s trying to delicately chisel the stamp out of wood.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
“Have to get it down somehow.”
“Your hands?” the old man replied, shaking his head a little.
Royce jumps beside him, glancing over at his progress, the old man just pushes his face back and Royce flails his arms a little.
“Some patience, kid!” the old man says with a sigh, “Go remake your little papers already!”
Royce backs off. He can tell he’s impatient right now, he simply wants to do something and he's already incredibly bored, and anxious. He can feel himself start to panic and overthink if he has nothing to do or starts to comprehend what's going on around him. So he starts writing his final draft to try and fool any common street guard. He picks up the pen and dips it into the slightly syrupy goop he’s made.
Royce scratches his head; it's probably been an hour or two to try and think of something to make sure he doesn’t dig himself into a hole. And the paper is actually much sturdier now that he gave it some time to harden, though the edges have small cracking now.
“Upon the arrival of the intended alchemist, Royce Harsguard, to the Boa empire, is allowed access to all but private residences and estates for the matter of research, along with free passage between city gates or blockades. The matter of research is up to the discretion of the intended alchemist for which they wish to reveal. Damage to the letter of approval will be seen as a crime, compensation should be granted immediately with haste or the individual, or group shall suffer Mamba law if deemed necessary and percentage of travel cost along with funding spent by the alchemist’s branch will also need to be compensated in result of bodily harm by an individual or group, medical and material are acceptable compensation.”
He sighs while rubbing his forehead, he barely added anything to it, but that's all he could think to add, and just as he puts the pen down, the old man hands him the stamp, he doesn’t look too happy about making it. But Royce just smiles and takes it from him gently to stamp his paper. The ink and wood need some convincing to stick, but the paper takes the ink just fine. Royce lets it sit there for a minute or two to let the ink dry, he gathers his things, taking Kuroi's package and putting it in the box, making sure everything is secure before taking the forged papers. Handling them as gently as he can.
The old man looks on as Royce just walks out like he didn’t just enter his shop uninvited. Holding his papers out in front of him with both hands. The old man sighs, he felt a little stressed out, well, better than his daughter, she basically knocked herself out for the whole time. He waddles over to her to make her sit up straight instead of curled up like that on the floor.
Royce stands before the city gate he wants to go to, to get to the west section of the empire. The small squad of guards there were all relaxed and casual, until they see him. They all stiffen up and look as menacing as a bunch of walking gourds could. Royce has a bored look on his face, they could read it instantly as “not in the mood” Royce immediately hands him the black paper, making the guard twitch as he was about to speak.
“Can anyone read this?” The guard says as he looks around to his squad members, they all look over it, they can't read it, but they see the seal and just basically shrug. Letting Royce through the gates.
Royce is trying his hardest to hide his smug smile as he strolls past. He can hear the guards mumbling about him. But Royce looks ahead, clearly in the right spot. There's all these workshops around him, the sounds of clattering wood and tools. Occasionally the sound of someone missing a hammer swing and smack their thumb, the usual. As much as Royce wants to lurk around in the workshops to make things, he's gotta lurk around in the workshops for a specific person’s workshop. So he’s poking his head in, and they all give him the same response.
“You want to go to that guy!?” Every single one basically said in some sort of fashion, old or young.
just from the first thirty Royce visited, he felt a little nagging voice in the back of his head to tell him to give up, they didn’t even bother telling him a single clue as to where “Hummingbird” was, or his shop. Royce is sitting on a rock, he was lucky to find one in an empire made of wood, just looking up as the sun sets, if that's what they call it. He sees to his left down the road is another city gate, but that basically has a small army stationed there. The little voice in his head immediately tells him to be a pest.
Royce skips his way over to the gate, a few of the unaware guards jump back when they do see him seemingly winded and frightened at the same time. Royce walks up behind one guard whos looking out of the big gate, tapping him on the back.
“ARGH! Oh… thank goodness… I thought you were leech fauna.” The guard says with a sigh and a hand on his chest, he was ready to swing his halberd at Royce, but it stopped halfway.
“Excuse me?” Royce says as he looks past to see a giant overgrown forest of pale whites and greys.
“Leech fauna… or flora. Your pale skin reminded me of it all. Apologies. State your business please.” The guard says after clearing his throat, clearly a little stressed.
Royce points behind him, “Can you open the gate? I’d like to look at the forest and get closer.”
“You want to go out THERE!?” the guard says as he leans over Royce, probably trying to see if he’s serious or not through his helmet.
“Yeah. Here’s my papers.” Royce hands him the black paper and the guard actually seems to be able to read it.
“Ugh… you alchemists and dangerous places.” The guard waves up to the others atop the gate, Royce hears them groan as they start to pull the gate up, “here. The smallest compensation I can award.” The guard hands him a gourd, probably filled with water.
“Why thank you.” Royce says as he takes his papers back and the gourd, the guard puts his hand on Royce’s shoulder.
“Don’t spill your blood on even the grass or dirt.” The guard lets Royce go
Royce doesn’t seem to be half focused on what the guard said, but he at least heard him. The moment Royce was past the gate, they let it fall and slam back down, nearly just a few inches from killing Royce. The gust of sawdust and wind makes his clothes billow as he wishes he still had his turban.
Royce turns his focus to the forest, he swears he saw a few trees twitch or move without the wind. The entire field before him was burnt, even then there were small wire like nets of withered and pale weeds. Each step on them made them crunch loudly and the weeds turn into a powder, Royce doesn’t risk touching it, he can already tell that the forest clearly is built to kill. Royce only seemed to notice how hot the city was when his warmth was robbed from him, he wasn’t near anything large, but the white grass he was walking on made him feel cool, he felt it in his shins and the grass seemed to only be about two inches tall. Just as he gets close to the tree's shadow, he can see his breath. The trees have massive tops, the branches all curve up far and wide, blocking out all sunlight. Things almost look blue now due to the lack of light.
Royce hesitantly holds his palm up in front of him, making a small orb of light so he can actually see in front of him. At the moment, Royce can certainly say he’s ready to be scared, but he hasn’t seen any action yet, so he should be fine. He carefully steps around, trying to spot any and all danger. The bushes were made almost entirely out of thorned vines, some spots darker and more gray rather than pale, but there were obvious streaks of liquid dried into the fibers. Royce sees a shape in the distance, it was large, it seemed to be a hut.
Carefully stepping over and ducking thorns, Royce sees an old hut, covered in weeds and even a tree root had started to wrap around a corner of the supports. The hut was off the ground on stilts, a bunch of perches for birds to land on and a bird cage or two, the cages seemingly look like they had their latches sawed off. A sign hung from the entrance, one of a hummingbird.
Royce quickly jumps in the workshop, finding it empty, and a little derelict. Long enough for the small pile of logs in the corner to start growing branches and sprout some thin weeds, a bunch of tools seem to be missing, only a small handful left on the rack, mainly the chisels and a hammer or two. Royce groans, feeling bad for touching another dude’s tools, but he takes them because he clearly wasn’t going to be home for a while. From what he remembers, this guy is basically old and blind, there's very clearly a higher than 50% chance the guy's dead. Especially from what Royce has only seen so far. Fortunately, he has a suspicion that odds are probably towards the survival of this supposedly almost blind old man.
Royce stumbles out of the hut, tripping on the dry weeds and vines growing all over the place. It’s starting to get cooler, his hands are a little numb. He can’t even see in the heart of the forest, the dim light of the setting sun is the only thing he could see just barely poking in from the forest roof. But now Royce is starting to hear the sounds of animals shifting in bushes and branches. Royce basically cringes every time he steps on a twig or branch, extremely paranoid that something is going to jump at him. His foot taps both out of impatience and growing fear. He takes a deep breath and treads carefully. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t even been in this world for a week and he’s already put his life on the line once or twice.
Gently brushing barbed vines with his hand, just softly enough to move them he’s starting to see half dead trees, their branches started drooping and sagging, the branches now having large thorns barbs, some of them had fruit; they looked like figs, but bigger than a base ball and spiked from all over, having white with gray spots for the skin of the fruit. They smelt alright, kind of like rubber; he hears something above him and he jumps a little as he gazes up to see where it came from. He sees a humming bird flying in place right next to a fig, Royce sees it start using its beak to saw at the stem, he quickly turns around to turn as the large fig hits the ground beneath him, the fig splits in half like a rotten sludge, but the vines and thin roots next to the tree suddenly coil up and lash around, wrapping around his ankle, allowing from his to get more entangled. As he’s struggling to break free, he sees a bunch of those hummingbirds start to gather around him. He would admire the pale white and deep blue of their feathers if he didn’t understand that they were going to use those barbed and sawed beaks to cut into him in a few minutes.
He groans, not really wanting to make too much noise, but his hands are firmly tied to his chest, he opens one palm up as much as he can, wiggling a little to loosen the vines as much as possible, because this was going to hurt him a lot being so close, “Light grenade! Detonate!” Royce shouts, the magic circle quickly forming on his palm, the orb comes out and instantly explodes, blinding him for a few seconds as his ears are ringing, but he feels he’s hit the floor. He scrambles to his feet while blind and just runs in a direction, his hearing comes back first and the feeling he’s definitely bleeding, but he feels his injuries, on his hands and face, he tears up his clothing to soak up the blood. He definitely doesn’t want to find out when blood gets involved. He runs head first into a tree just as his sight comes back, hitting his forehead right in a spike, bleeding profusely now, he’s fine, but the last place he wanted to bleed from was the spot a person bleeds the most, he’s rather glad that he’s still wearing his desert clothing, he has plenty of layers, but he’s starting to feel incredibly itchy, probably a side effect to make him poke at his own injuries if he was an animal or idiot, but he feels his hands involuntarily shiver and twitch, crushed leaves and vines turned into that powder all over his hands, the itching was paired with slight stabbing and cutting feelings, every twitch made it worse. He squints thinking that getting that powder into his eyes is instantly blindness, he really hopes he’s got long eye lashes now so that stuff can’t get into his peep holes. He shakes his hands behind him.
The entire forest floor seems to be slowly coiling, the thin roots and vines started to react to any stimuli, and that one little action seemed to start a chain reaction. He even hears another swarm of buzzing and flapping. All the tree movement as clearly disturb hundreds of what he’s guessing is a bunch of unnecessarily overgrown hornets, gotta be hornets in a place like this; the birds can probably guess where he is, since there flapping just out of his sight; right on cue, a bunch of black and white hornets are flying around him, they haven’t really noticed him. He didn’t seem too freaked out by the arm long hornets, not as much as he first thought. Their stingers were thankfully much smaller than he thought they were going to be, but it was still bigger than his fist. As one got close he got an idea.
He stops on the spot, putting his hands together and shooting them straight into the air, trying to steady his breathing and doing it as softly as he could with minimal movement, he thought to himself, “Everything here is super white! And I am too! Wait…” he stops thinking as he feels it casually climbing up his legs, he close his eyes as to not let the sparkling pink of his iris be seen. He can feel it seemingly try to “smell” him, but the wooden backpack seems to be throwing it off, and just like that, he climbs off of him and buzzes off, but royce grabs it by the head and slams it on the ground, bashing it with the box, he opens the box quickly to pull out a chisel, the largest one and with the widest blade he could find and puts it back on. Doing the same strategy again.
He cracks one eye open very slowly, seeing a hummingbird poking at the corpse of the hornet, Royce stabs the bird swiftly with the chisel, he needs to smother the thing as he only stabbed it wing, the blood dripping everywhere as his hands start getting covered in it too, he can feel and heat the forest around him cracking and wobbling, he sees the vines trying to creep up around him, but he does the same thing again. The vines pass between his legs and take the hornet and bird, the vines coil up and start fighting each other, or the vines attached to each tree are. Parasitism is obviously the evolutionary extreme in this forest, probably why everything has the “leech” suffix.
He feels a hummingbird land on him, right on his wrist, its little talons just sharp enough for him to feel, but he grabs it and keeps it’s beach shut so it can’t call for any of its friends, he grimaces as he stabs it right in the throat, using way more force than he thought he needed to kill the small thing, but it felt gamey, its little muscles powerful. Royce could feel his skin disagreeing with the blood of the bird, the itching and maybe a rash forming on the back of his hand. He quickly tosses the dead bird aside, flicking off the blood, before realizing he just spread all that blood around, “oh, you gotta be kidding me! I was doing great as a tree!” He says as he starts sprinting again, he can’t feel his legs due to the cold, and his hands and arms feel really itchy and cut up.
He can actually see the vines trying to trip him now. Jumping and hoping over them now that his eyes are adjusted to the darkness, a hornet comes from around a tree, mandibles open and stinger out front but Royce just stops it right in the middle and flings it off the chisel with a little disgust as he has to wave the chisel around, “man this thing is sharp!” he says before quickly tripping, almost stabbing himself in the throat as he falls on his face, he sighs in relief as he just missed his neck. He gets up as he hears more buzzing, he doesn’t bother looking back, he already knows he’s getting chased by a bunch of bugs he really hates.
He almost thinks of this situation as nostalgic, well, the bugs chasing him feels nostalgic, feels like summer again, hiding from hornets and wasps out in the hot and humid streets of… home? He can’t remember where home was, but it was home. In his daze, he trips again, tumbling over a few roots, holding the chisel close so he doesn’t flail around wildly and cut himself badly. He rolls into a stone. Or he thinks it is. His eyes open on impact, the wind in his lungs leaving as he sees the starry night sky. He gets up, hands out and ready to stab someone, he probably looks like some deranged caveman right now, he sees the small squadron of hornets just looking at him, some on the ground, some buzzing above them. Royce probably failed a staring contest with them, but they leave.
Royce still has his guard up, but he wobbles around himself with almost a sob to see what they just left him to face. But it's just a statue, well, given that it's of a harefolk and wearing a robe with beads around its wrists and neck, it was probably a statue of god. But behind the statue, to Royce’s left, he sees an old man stuck to a tree. Vines wrapped around him– stabbing into him even, clearly leeching off of his blood as he looks weakened and out of breath.
“I-is someone there? There was a big commotion…” He says breathlessly, he would look like a jovial old man if he wasn’t being drained to death right now.
Royce jumps in front of him, looking at him up and down: old? Check. His eyes are glazed over, so probably blind. Check. He’s a little stout, but he’s got big arms for an old man and some scars to show it. So definitely a sculptor with those hands. Check.
“Excuse me. Are you Hummingbird?” Royce said softly as he looked at the old man’s situation.
“A-ah, yes. I’m surprised someone remembered my sculptor name. Could you help me, young man?” He says as he twitches weakly.
Royce nods, though he’s pretty sure this guy can’t even see a foot in front of him. He starts stabbing away at the vines holding him close to the tree, he slowly gets peeled off. He wheezes as he hits the forest floor, Royce quickly helps him up. When the old man gets up, the chisel is in his hands, Royce checks his hand to see that the old man really just swiped it from him, he’s looking at the chisel with a gaze of scrutiny.
“Did it help you?” he says with a small, almost defeated voice.
“I’m sorry, sir. It was the only thing I could use as a weapon.” Royce says with a gulp, but the old man shakes his head.
“It’s quite alright, I can always just get another one.” The old man rolls his shoulders, his whole body feeling incredibly tense.
“Sorry to be a little impatient right after you just got saved, but could I ask for you to make something?” Royce says with a small awkward laugh, hands together in front of him.
The old man gives a small grunt, “If you can get me back to my hut, I'll do what I can do.” The old man crosses his arms, he understands he’d have to give some sort of favor. Not that he minds, he’s incredibly grateful.
The old man goes around the tree he was just tied to, yanking out his saw and grabbing his bag of tools and strapping it on with a few grunts. He strokes his overgrown mustache as he scratches his bulbous nose with a free finger.
“Wait. Give me a moment.” The old man says as he hobbles in front of the statue of god, “better not tell anyone what I’m about to do ‘ither!" He says with a grouchy finger point.
“Fine. but could I use that saw? Looks more handy than this chisel.” Royce asks as he looks around.
“An’ let ya ruin another tool? Keep the chisel, it's yours now!” The old man then slowly gets to his knees in front of the statue, slowly putting his hands together. Clearly making a prayer.
“Doesn’t god hate being prayed to?” Royce says as he tries to inconspicuously grab the rest of the chisels out before the old man realizes he took them as well, and slips them into his big cylindrical tool bag.
“Well he can get over himself! He keeps makin’ statues so I’ll tell ‘em shove it up his rear!” Just as the old man finished his prayer, a big crack appeared on the statue's face, “aw, crap. I guess he didn’t like that one, I tried saying something nice for a change. I thought it was a good joke.” The old man said with a shrug, Royce grabs him by the wrist and drags him along.
“Look, it's like midnight and the forest wants to kill and eat us, let's go, please?” Royce said with an annoyed huff, the old man seems to whine a little as he’s dragged like a little kid.
“Can you at least take a chip at the base of the statue? God doesn’t mind them being destroyed. He actually might give out a blessing if you do.” The old man stands up and gets out of Royce's grip. Who looks like he’s ready to collapse from exhaustion and being fed up.
“For an old man who looked like he was being a tree's juice pack, you are full of energy.” Royce begrudgingly agrees, stomping over to the base of the statue with his new chisel in hand.
“Yeah! Get ‘em right in the toes!” The old man encourages as Royce has his other hand out open.
“Hammer.” he asks calmly, the old man supplies him with one.
Royce starts to chip away at the statue, right at its foot. Up close, the statue seemed to have all sorts of damage and weathering on it. He wonders if the old man is serious or not, but he's got plenty of words if this goes horribly wrong. Royce chips away at it, a few questions come to mind: Does god actually like it when people destroy his statues? Does he like people hating him? Does this hurt? If those two are right, then god probably doesn’t have high self-esteem.
“Hey…” Royce asks as he takes his eyes off the statue for a moment, “Two things– what's your name and uh, does god like, actually reward people for doing this? I kind of feel bad…” Royce says with a small amount of pity in his eyes, that or its exhaustion.
“It’s Charlie, and yeah, he gives me a nice boost once in a while if I knock a piece off! I’d say he’s pretty generous, though the Church of Fire might hang me for thinking that, let alone say it out loud.” the old man says with a small cough, “Now hurry and tip that man over! I don’t wanna deal with any boars at this hour…”
“There’s boars!?” Royce said before going back to chipping away at the statue's feet.
“Oh, yeah! Mean things, too! Their tusks are barbed all over and they are ravenous! Almost lost a few fingers when I had to wrestle one a year ago. Fun stuff!” Charlie says as he stretches, his old body making all sorts of popping sounds.
“I would say you’re strange, but I’ve only been to the desert, the city and this forest, I have a feeling your not too bad.”
“The desert?” Charlie says as he’s suddenly up close, “Have you meet one of those harefolk whose got super bright and pale fur? Kind of like you’re skin?” Charlie says as he shakes Royce’s shoulder.
“You mean Kuroi? Yeah, he kind of sent me here, it overlapped with my goal, so I didn’t mind doing a little sidequest.” Royce says as he shakes the old man off of him.
“H-how is he!? He’s doing alright, right!?” The old man asks, getting right in Royce’s face, Royce shoves his face back.
“Yes! He’s doing alright! He’s clearly the cornerstone of the city at this point… thinking about it, I hope he gets days off or something.” Royce sighs as he gets his personal space back.
“That’s all I needed to hear! Let’s go! I got my boost now, damnnit!” Charlie says with clearly renewed vigor, running in place as he looks down at Royce.
“Eh?” Royce is confused, but Charlie takes the hammer out of his hands.
“Forget the statue! He can suffer another bad joke later!” Charlie then bounces towards the tree line. Royce just looks as he watches the old man sprint off.
“Hey! Wait– and he’s gone…” Royce pats himself off as he gets up, looking at the bloody chisel in his hands, the blood dried, he then cringes at the fact he had to stab some murderous bird with it.
Royce bolts up, quickly remembering something about ravenous boars and he would NOT like to tango with. He gathers himself, holding onto the chisel as a weapon, since he doesn’t think he’s going to use it properly for a long time, and because it was super sharp, a good stabby stick.
Trying his best to follow the old man back to his hut, he sneaks past the litter he left behind, seeing how the forest was fighting itself for even the smallest drop of blood. He can see the path the old man took, his foot prints in the ground were solid and heavy, and barefoot to boot. Following the old man’s footsteps, he realizes just how inefficient of a path he took, but he was in an unknown land, for the third time, in a row… Royce sighs heavily, he needs a nap.
It only took about twenty minutes of walking to get back to the hut. He sees the old man sitting on a stool, arms crossed, one stout leg tapping impatiently, he’s already got all of his tools laid out on the table, a cleaned up log and a serious look on his chubby face.
“Well, what do you need, kid?” He says, Royce can tell he’s trying to look cool in front of him.
Royce takes off his backpack and sets it down with a dull thud, pulling out the wrapped package and walks over to hand it to him.
‘From Kuroi, I haven’t peeked into it.” Charlie snatches it from his hands and gently puts it down on his worktable
“Well, good! You shouldn’t peek anyway!” The old man huffed as he gently opens the package.
The package contained both a letter and a replica of a hand, made in clay and backed. Royce is surprised it didn’t shatter while he was being ragdolled around on the ship or in his backpack. The old man is readying the letter, having both a face of confusion and happiness. Royce slumps over, exhaustion finally catching up to him, Charlie doesn’t even notice as he’s already started to work. Royce can hear the chipping of wood and tools moving around.
Royce wakes up looking at the ceiling, a rough spun blanket over him as he holds his head, he’s got a headache. He sees the old man over his workbench, carefully sanding away. Royce gets up off the floor with a yawn.
“Well, what is it?” Royce says as he nearly falls onto the old man, his body still heavy with exhaustion
“A prosthetic. For some reason. I’ve tried to make to Kuroi’s wants. But without the patient, it's rather difficult to get any prosthetic right, so this is probably a stand-in until whoever needs it gets a better one. Besides, it's a left hand, Kuroi still has his, and it attaches above the elbow, so this guy lost some if not all of his forearm.” Charlie says in thought as he strokes his chin, “Ah, whatever, the kid knows what he’s doing, here, take it.” The old man just shoves it into Royce’s arms, making him fumble a little.
“Can’t I get like a nice little box to put it in? I’ve probably gotta take a ship to get back to the desert and that takes a while, I’m here to do a few other things out of my own interests.” Royce gently puts the wooden arm down on the table, “Say…” The way Royce said all long and sly like that makes the old man look at him with an eyebrow raised.
“It’ll cost you.” The old man says in a reactionary way.
“AH! HOLD! Hold on, ok? Let me finish. I just want some probably insanely basic information, and I think you can do me a small favor, since you helped out Kuroi, after all.” Royce has his hands up, he’s ready to put on a little tantrum if he needs to.
“I’ll hear you out, but it’ll still cost you!” The old man crosses his arms with a little snarl. He can tell Royce is a little conman, it's almost in his blood.
“One! At least tell me how to use this chisel, before I use it as a weapon instead of a tool. Two! Can you tell me more about this forest? I think it can be used in a rather particular way… I can feel it… Three! Do you know anything about lightning magic?” Royce says with three fingers held up, he can probably come up with more questions to ask, but the rule of three he thinks is fine.
“Hmmm…” The old man scratches his head a little, one of those slightly sunken eyes pops open, “You know magic?” his voice is a little more serious as he gets up.
“Yes, light magic.” Royce says as he opens the palm of his hand, a dim light comes out, he can feel the magic ring flicker. The old man gives a grunt of both surprise and approval.
“Alright, listen… I don’t think you’ve realized it yet, but having light magic is more damaging reputation wise.” The old man circles around Royce, still scratching his chin and sometimes his head, seeming lost for words.
“Racial tension?” Royce guesses, honestly, it's the one thing he thinks would be the reason at this point.
“Spot on. Most human nations don’t like other races, let alone other races. Just over to the next ring, they all hate the humans there because they're either really short or really tall. I can’t make heads or tails of it. And light magic tends to always be associated with the eternal pharaoh, a harefolk.” the old man rubs his hand over his balding head as he sits down, “Alright, listen, you look like a guy who does unnecessarily dangerous things for something important or for a goof, right?” The old man stretches his back with a small sigh of exertion
“Honestly, yeah, I guess. I just don’t want it to be a part of my weekly routine.” Royce crosses his arms, remembering he’s been in a few near death experiences already.
“Ok, well, this one is pretty close to brushing on death’s canvas. And it involves getting arrested, but if you’ll do it, you’ll get plenty of favors from me, free of charge!” The old man says with a small cackle, but Royce looks unfazed.
“Ok, what’s first?” Royce says as he just scratches his butt. He just needs this old to stop trying to scare him off.
“Ok, we need to get you arrested in a very particular way, because quite frankly, I’m not limber enough to be bustin’ out of prison cells anymore.”
“Anymore?”
“First things first, you gotta insult a few guards, I can use some bits of my reputation to make people hate us, don’t worry, making people angry is super easy! You could maybe cause a scene with that light magic to make them be all special little snowflakes about their stupid racial hierarchy. WAIT! No! You can NOT use magic, at ALL! My fault. You see, the special prison cell is made entirely out of manifestation diamonds and laced with the orange fiber too! You see, if you can use magic, or even some good Hingabe, they won’t throw you in there. So maybe you can pose as some sort of manic alchemist? Think you whip up any sort of concoction real quick? Oh, man! I haven’t been this excited in a while!” The old man says as he bounces up and down on his stool. Clearly all giddy and shaking around on his stool.
“Oh… that’s it?” Royce thinks that's really easy, “Ok, I’ll need some wood dust, a bit of those vines crushed up real nice, a little bit of those fruits, especially the juices. Think you get that for me? I can practice making little vessels out of woods and stuff with some tools, if you would be so kind?” Royce says with a little clap of his hands.
“Ho? That's it?” Charlie thinks that’s really easy, and he didn’t expect Royce to just agree like that. The old man gets up, stretching his arms, “I’ll be back in a hurry! Don’t you mess up my tools now!”
The moment Royce sees the old man leave; he starts messing with his tools. Really just inspecting them, but the old man would yell at him either way, so he just gets a quick look at them, seeing how they feel in his hands. It feels like forever since he’s had some good quality tools in his hands, but the tools all have small amounts of that powder and dust on them, making his hands really itchy. Note to self, get gloves after getting a big book.
Royce immediately sets the tools back down as he hears noise outside of the hut. The old man has the things he requested huddled in his arms, seemingly unbothered by the irritants. The old man looks Royce in the eye, he could already tell he fiddled with his tools by how he was scratching at his hands, but ignores the urge to yell at him, he’s far too excited now.
“Can you set them on the table? I’ll get to work right away.” Royce says as he tries to shake off the white powder as much as he can.
Charlie sets the vines, branches, fruits and one or two dead birds… Royce reaches into his backpack to pull out the leftover paper, he had just really smushed into the box, but now it's all compact. Royce wants to scratch his chin in thought, but he stops himself as he realizes that would be a terrible idea.
“Mind if you give me an hour or two?” Royce sits down on the stool, wishing it were made a little taller.
“Sure. I need to get some food anyway. Tinker well!” Charlie says as he hops outside again, making quick pattering on the forest floor.
Royce lets his face fall on the workbench, he’s exhausted again, and he doesn’t know why. And it's not connected to all the moving around he’s done, because he feels fine physically, for the most part, his head aches and hands feel numb, like something in his veins is making his blood go the opposite way. He rests for a while; he’ll get to this dumb idea when he’s ready in an hour.
