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A/N: Whoa, it's been so long since I've updated this story, almost had to re-read my own work to see where I left off, lolz. Well walking, busing, and hitchhiking, across several states with a friend for a long while, with only dying cell phones and the occasional internet cafe as your only links to your life, does that to someone. But I don't care, it was fun, and I'd never trade those cold, miserable months for anything else in the world. Well, maybe for a couple million dollars... either way, I still come out as a richer person.
Chapter 47: POV Joseph
I hated shopping, especially shopping for clothes with my sisters, and this case was no exception.
"Come, come! The finest traveling garbs in all of Aruma!" Shouted a man wearing layers of his own merchandise.
We were in a special Bazaar dedicated entirely to what the locals called "Journeyman wares" with Canace and Nahlia helping us shop for things we needed for our little trip to Miento. It was packed with small tents and stores, all tightly clustered within a closed off part of the city. The bazaar was filled with all sorts of things from self heating/cooling clothing, sleeping bags which floated in air, self carting travel bags, hunting and cooking gear which cleaned, and sometimes even operated, themselves, and many other, "self" stuff. Like camping in the future, powered by magic.
Currently, we were working our way down a very extensive list, since Sam, Aaron, Kenny, and I needed everything from packs and clothes to toiletries and food. Everyone had a list of things to get but me. I was stuck on guard duty, watching over everything everyone bought as we just piled it in a giant heap in a designated alley way.
"What's this? What does it to?" Aaron excitedly asked Nahlia as she dumped a bunch of cheap looking silverware and dishes into our growing pile of stuff.
"They're used for eating, what else would they do?" She said, looking at Aaron in a strange way.
"That's it? Really? They don't feed you on their own or anything like that?"
"No of course not," Nahlia laughed, "what kind of ridiculous person would create something like that?"
"Well I don't know!" Aaron tried to defend himself, "we already have these tents that unfold themselves and this refrigerator bag thingy. And me and Sam just bought a pot that kills, forages, cooks, and cleans all by itself. I just assumed the forks were automated too."
"You actually bought this junk?" Kenny asked with a disgusted look as he slightly nudged the innocent looking killing pot with his foot, Nahlia sharing his expression.
"What are you doing! Don't kick the killer pot! You'll make it angry!" Sam gasped as he quickly swooped up the deadly cooking ware and gingerly laid back onto the ground.
Just as quickly, Nahlia picked and singled out everything Sam and Aaron bought, "Oye, I thought I told you to get only Raelim goods."
"Yeah," Kenny added as he threw in an arm-full of blankets, "most of this stuff is completely useless, when are we ever going to use a life-raft that can submerge into the ground like a mole?"
"Emergencies," Aaron flatly answered, "and what makes you think you know any more then I do Mr. Smart guy, huh?"
"Well I know all this magically augmented stuff needs to be recharged, which isn't cheap. And if you were listening to Canace and Nahlia about why we needed non-magical stuff in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess."
"And why would that be?" Aaron challenged him, Sam and I merely sighed and rolled our eyes, trying to not to escalate the situation.
"Because if we just so happen to wander into a Planar which doesn't allow us to use the certain type of magic that was used the enchant the thing, it'll either go haywire and backfire, turn to dust, or if we're lucky, just not work."
"Oh yeah..." Aaron trailed off, all signs of anger and frustration gone with his realization.
"Fine, whatever then..." Sam said sadly, "but I'm keeping that self-cooking pot, the day any one of us tries to cook on our own is the day we all die from food poisoning and explosive diarrhea."
"Fine, keep the damn thing." Kenny shrugged, "But if one night it suddenly decides to slit your throat and turn you into breakfast, don't blame me."
After a moment of thought, Sam unceremoniously dropped it to the floor and kicked it into the pile with the rest of the magical wares. "Get that crap out of here, I never liked the thing anyways."
"So how much more do we need?" I asked, shuffling through the pile of stuff recently deemed as good, "looks like we already have too much, isn't it just a days walk away from here?"
"Two days." Kenny corrected me.
"Pshh," Aaron spat out as he grabbed up a good chunk of the reject pile into his arms, "just two days, looks like we're buying enough crap to last us months."
"Well, Krika did say we would be traveling around," Sam added, "almost like a field trip, with homework."
Aaron stifled a laugh. "Homework? Who the hell gave you homework?"
"You mean you didn't get any?" Kenny asked as he helped out clearing the junk pile, "didn't that little dragon girl... person tell you to practice drawing blood?"
Aaron scoffed loudly and obnoxiously. "You mean cut myself? Are you serious? Who the hell in their right mind would do that?"
"Mmm mmm... so closed minded..." Kenny mumbled as he shook his head, "you said the exact same thing with sushi."
"But it's RAW! You can't eat raw food! It's... it's just weird. People get sick from eating stuff raw!"
"It's ok to be afraid," Kenny said, "there's no shame in it. To be honest, all this is kind of getting to my nerves as well."
"Afraid? Who the hell said I was scared? I just don't want to cut myself like a depressed goth."
"And what about checking your shoes every morning for insects and spiders before you wear them because you're afraid of them biting your toes?" Kenny smirked.
"Wow, you still do that?" Sam asked, "I thought you got over that when you were like... twelve."
"Hey! It's normal to be scared of bugs! Those lil' bastards are everywhere! And what the hell does that have to do with me cutting myself?"
Their little argument over Aaron's open mindedness continued to escalate as they delved deeper than what I would have liked, all the while Nahlia was idling by trying not to laugh.
Thinking quickly, I tried to change the subject to something a bit more relevant. "Oh hey, uhh... what did they ask you do to?" I asked Sam.
"Nothing much..." He trailed off dejectedly , "just practice whatever is on these scroll things. I don't even know where to start though, they all look like the stuff Kenny's little sister draws with crayons. How about you?"
"Me? Nothing much either, just go over what I already know..."
"Oh, that's it? how abo-" Sam tried to say, but was cut off by a sickening sound of a gurgled rumble from his stomach. It was loud enough to make all of us look down upon our empty stomachs and rub them.
"Oye, skipped lunch did we?" Nahlia said with a smirk.
"Yeah..." We all grumbled.
"Apparently, the punishment for making excessive noise in the dungeons is a loss of a meal." Kenny pointed out, tilting his head towards Aaron and Sam.
"Anyways, I'm starving," Aaron stated the obvious, "lets return this stuff later and get something to eat." He said as he dropped his armload of magical wares onto the ground.
"Yeah lets go," Sam agreed as he dropped his load and pulled me along, Aaron with Kenny in tow after us.
"Oye. Oye! Where are you going!" Nahlia shouted after us, but it was too late. After we had rounded the corner we made a dead sprint down the street. "Oye! Get back here! Don't leave me here with this junk!" She shouted after us.
As we dashed in between the people of the crowd, Kenny and I began to run under our feet as Nahlia tried to chase us with a murderous look on her face. Sam and Aaron were laughing like two convicts escaping prison. I was the only one who made an attempt to say sorry with a pathetic wave as we lost her in the crowd, her "Oye's" quickly fading into the hustle and bustle of the bazaar.
"Phew... thought she was gonna get us..." Aaron huffed in between breaths.
"Well why did we run?" Kenny asked as he gasped for air, "we only just made things worse."
"Hey, you were running too. And did you see the look on her face? Doesn't matter who she catches, She'll kill us all." Sam said, as he leaned against a wall.
There was a minor pause as we all took a breather. But we all had smirks on our faces as we remembered the look on Nalhia's face as we bolted off. Well, at least that was what I was smirking about, regardless of how messed up it was I had to admit, it was funny.
After catching our breath, we settled for some food from a street fender for lunch. It was a greasy, popcorn-like meat thing which came in a small box. It tasted... interesting... it wasn't something I'd buy again unless I was really hungry.
"Mmm, not bad," Aaron said as he happily munched away, oblivious to his surroundings.
As we walked about amongst the crowd, my eyes scanned the bazaar for a store to enter. Well, the main reason was to hide from Nahlia, who was surely hunting us down, I just had that odd feeling that we were being watched. No, watched wasn't the right term, it was more like we were being stalked.
"Hey look, horses." I announced as I pointed to big red building with the picture of a horse silhouette.
Sam took a good look, then glanced back at me with a raised eye brow. "So?"
"What do you mean so? They're horses, want to check them out?"
"Well, I guess," he shrugged. Kenny silently agreed with a head nod, giving his left-over mystery meat to Aaron.
Errreeeeeh!
To be perfectly honest, I was disappointed. I was half expecting to see unicorns trotting about and pegasuses flying in the air, creatures which I could only see in movies and books. However, these were just normal, run of the mill horses and mules. The only thing special about them was that the smell of the place was actually quite decent, a lot nicer than what a normal stable would smell like. Inside the big red building was a large, hanger-like space. But instead of planes, there were several large pens filled with horses just hanging about in packs. There were also smaller pens which potential customers used to test ride horses.
"I'm going to ride one," Aaron suddenly said, crumpling his empty popcorn meat boxes in one hand with gusto, "that one right there, the black one."
"Which black one? There's a lot of them. There's a whole pen full of black ones right there." Sam pointed out.
"It doesn't matter, any black one will do."
"What? Why?" I asked him confused, "The closest you've been to riding a horse was on th-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know, the damn merry-go-round. But this is different, I've gotta ride a black horse... and I'm going to need a black hat too..."
Sam suddenly snapped his fingers in realization, "Zorro!" He cried out like he was answering a game-show host.
"Yes!" Aaron shouted back, "That one right there! That's the one!"
As Aaron and Sam ran off to find a salesman or a worker of some kind, Kenny and I just shrugged to ourselves as we walked after them.
"Idiots travel in packs," Kenny said in a philosophical like fashion.
I just chuckled and smiled, "Then call me an idiot, cause I this gotta see."
"Alright man, you ready?" Sam said from the safe side of the fence as Aaron mounted his chosen steed, dawning a black hat which he burrowed from one of the workers here.
I didn't know much about horses, but if I had to say anything about the one Aaron was riding, I'd say it was a bit out of his league. Not only did it look a lot bigger than the other horses in the same pen, its muscles twitched every now and then out of anticipation, especially when Aaron shakily climbed on top of it with the help of an assistant.
"Her name is Et-eet, she's a fun loving lil thing. Now, the thing is with Et-eet is that she loves to run and jump so you've got to control her. Are you sure that you know what you're doing son?" Aaron's assistant asked he carefully double checked all of Et-eet's strappings.
Not listening to a word he said, Aaron took off his hat and whooped and yelped like the cowboys did in those black and white movies our parents used to watch. In response, Et-eet lurched back on her hind legs and gave a howling of her own. The assistant was lucky enough to have gotten away, and he showed it as he scrambled to the fence where we were.
"High Ho Silver!" He cried out as loud as he could as the black steed launched into a sprint.
"Wrong movie!" Kenny shouted, his hands over his mouth for a cone effect.
But Aaron didn't seem like he heard, or cared.
Him and Et-eet started off running in wide circles, hugging the fence of the pen they were in. but after a few laps they began to use the mini obstacle course that was provided.
"Whoa, damn, When did you learn to ride like that?" Sam shouted.
"I don't know, but it sure feels pretty damned good. You guys got to try this! Woooo!" Aaron answered as he and Et-eet jumped a small hurtle.
"Must be the seal..." Kenny said to me as he scratched his arm, "I wonder what else these things are teaching us to do. I mean, it's like they're injecting knowledge directly into our brains while we're sleeping. We don't even know that we know, does that make any sense?"
"Sort of..." I said off handedly. Really thinking about it now, I slowly realized that the seal did in fact teach me some things that I didn't know how to do before, like knitting. Before, all I knew about knitting was that it made clicky clacky sounds as someone worked two needles. Now however, I knew all sorts of tricks and techniques, like the difference between weft and warp knitting, or flat knitting and how to incorporate an elastic thread into a circular knit. I could've made my own socks and shirts if only I had the materials.
Whoa... creepy... I thought to myself as I took a good look at my hands, just wondering what else could just suddenly pop in my head.
Well, at least Aaron was having fun. He seemed to have lost himself in horseback riding as he had the assistant raise the level of the bars of the obstacle course. As he jumped the last of the shorter bars, he finally set his eyes on the tallest one of them all, the one which had the bar so high that it looked like I could comfortably stand under without have to bend over or tilt my head. It didn't even look like it was meant to jumped in the first place, and I was pretty sure that it was a tool for measuring the height of the rider.
"Hey, I don't think that's a good idea!" I shouted, but my words fell on deaf ears.
"Whoohoo! Yeah! Watch me jump that thing! YeeHa - Aargh..." He whooped then yelped in pain. After sliding off Et-eet and rolling himself into a ball, he groaned in agony and held on to his crotch. We instinctively did the same out of consideration and winced in thought of how painful it must be.
"Ouch... should we go help him?" I asked as I cringed at Aaron wriggling on the ground in a fetal position.
"Eh, I think he's ok," Sam said, the groans of Aaron in pain seeming even louder than his whooping, "he just needs to walk it off. Maybe take a little breather too..."
When Aaron finally recovered from his... injury enough to hobble, we couldn't help snickering as we all tried not to laugh. It was a lot harder to do than to say.
"S-so... H-how are the goods?" Sam barely got out before bursting into laughter.
"Shut up man, at least I had the balls to ride a horse." Aaron seethed as he walked slightly crooked.
"Had being the key word here." Kenny quickly added as he stepped to the side avoid being hit by Aaron.
"Shut up Kenny, I don't see you riding anything." Aaron said as he went back to his hobbling.
Aaron was about to add more onto that, but he was suddenly cut off as two men dressed alike abruptly stopped us from leaving the horse hanger.
Both men looked like they had been on the road for days, battered by the elements. Their faces were well bronzed, if not burnt, by the sun and dirt smeared onto their skin, and their hair and clothes were very unkempt. They wore rugged looking leather armor with dulled metal plates stitched or glued here and there. One of the men had belts which criss crossed his chest and arms like belts of ammo. The belts were lined with dozens of vials filled with some sort of clear liquid with a small chunk of something floating within it, almost like he was preserving bits and chunks of clay The other guy that was with him carried nothing but a pack on his back and an opened newspaper in his hands. As he stood in front of us, he quickly glanced back and forth from us to the paper.
"Eh-Hem," the one with the newspaper coughed as he stepped a bit closer toward us, "did you just say that his name was Kenny?"
There were explosions everywhere as that psycho blasted at everything he saw. I don't even think he was really aiming, it was more like he was just blowing everything up and hoping that he'd get us eventually.
When traveling about in Somnios's numerous planars, a Journeyman must be wary of the rules of each planar he or she travels into. The rules of each planar vary widely, and the differences between them can be both vast and small. For example, navigation is tricky due to the fact that there are no star formations which stay true throughout all planars, though there are a few dependable one which appear in multiple planars. These restrictions are brought about by the subtle changes in the magical currents which vary in size and form in all planars.
These rules however, mostly effect those which practice in the arts of magic and yore. As one should know, magic exists with many forms and outlets, and they are all effected by which planar one is in. There are some which work in almost any planar, such as Rune and Shadow magic, but there are also those which only work in a few specific Planars, such as Clairvoyance and future reading. Technology is also slightly effected by these rules, but not nearly as much as magic. Which is why it is important, especially in times of war, for one planning a trip to be well rounded and prepare for anything.
These rules were not really created or established in the way a government creates laws to provide order, but were merely side effects from the ancient times when the world of Somnios was created. No one truly knows why the gods instilled these rules into the planars, or whether they were just lazy and allowed them to be as they went on creating. But the fact of matter is that they do exist, and one must adapt to each set as they come across them.
