EA Chapter 31 - Shopping in the Capital

In the days that followed, life returned to relative normalcy around the Citadel. The students resumed their daily lessons and drills, The Hawks were, however, regarded with greater respect than what they had previously been used to.

People wouldn’t say as much aloud, but they were not a joke in the eyes of most.

But Luna could sense something among the faculty a time bore on. A tension that went unspoken among the faculty, not to the students at leat. Luna had used her magic to try and eavesdrop on some of their conversation, but their chatter left her little to go off of.

As best she could figure, something had happened beyond the Bulwark. Some attack or other than had likely gotten the upper command scared out of their wits. It was certainly intriguing, at least. The status quo of hiding behind the walls had been going on long before Luna had been born. She had studied as much history as she could get her hands on, but that was harder than she had expected.

The oldest references in the library implied that the Bulkwark was over four hundred years old, but that seemed a low estimate. And when she had tried to ask the archivists for more information, they told her some calamity or other had destroyed many records from before that point.

A convenient answer, but one she couldn’t consider an outright lie. Regardless, Elthreme had been in a deadlock with the Mire and Ashlands for centuries, and the prospect of that broken certainly had her intrigued.

On the weekends, the cadet were given freedom to explore Vyrham and spend some of the modest money they were given on a monthly allowance. Luna had tried to avoid being dragged on any shopping trips by her team, but eventually they had annoyed her about it so much that she agreed to go along solely for some respite.

And, well, she supposed they had earned some courtesy for doing so well in the tournament.

She followed the others, dressed in a simple white tunic and dark jacket, as they wound their way through the broad cobblestone streets of the city. Outside their uniforms, they passed for normal citizens. And yet, every now and then, someone in the crowd seemed to somehow sense they were from the Citadel, and treated them with due respect.

Sighing, Luna scanned the various market stalls they passed but found little to hold her interest. “Flowers, meat pies, religious trinkets of Zehud... Nothing worth spending your quartz on,” she said in a low voice.

“Speak for yourself.” Kiharu pulled a half-eaten meat pie from her mouth, a dribble of gravy running from the corner of her mouth. “These are damned amazing.” Luna supposed she couldn’t fault Kiharu for being a glutton. Food at the Citadel was far from glamorous, even to a girl who had subsisted on a mostly shellfish diet for much of her youth.

“You’ve had three already,” Syri said, giving her a blank look.

“Yeah, well,” Kiharu shrugged, “my stomach is bigger than a human stomach.”

The twins shared a concerned glance. “Uh, is that true?” Rema asked.

“I... don’t think so,” Romula admitted. “But hers certainly is.”

The central market proved to be a veritable hub of activity, throngs of people bustling too and from around a myriad of stalls and squat stores. Luna examined the city with a clinical eye, paying particular attention to the great tenements just beyond the market, and the various vagrants she spotted in the gutter.

Vyrham, from afar, looked like a great and imposing city. Up close on the streets she could see how many of the buildings had been left in a state of decay, and the amount of homeless filled her with disdain.

Under her empire, she had kept her capital a shining jewel. And nobody had to suffer the indignity of homelessness, not when the Labour Corps always had openings for labourers.

Whenever she got Elthreme under her thumb, there would be no shortage of work to be done. She’d really have to whip this whole nation into shape... what were the rulers even doing?

Syri paused at one stall and carefully examined an amulet on offer. She seemed particularly intrigued by it, but Luna was only passingly familiar with the interlocking diamond symbol dangling on the silvery string.

“A fetish of Zehud?” Luna asked.

Syri smiled awkwardly. “Ah, yes. Well, it is important for a Paladin to maintain their faith. Would... you like one too?”

“Appreciated, but no thank you,” Luna flatly replied. “Doesn’t do it for me.” She looked around while her friends examined the geegaws, until her eyes fell upon a particular shop. Though she was in a different world from her own, it seemed some things were a multiversal constant. Only a bookshop would have mountains of tomes and scrolls displayed in the front window. “I’ll be back in just a moment, I want to see what that shop has.”

“Don’t be too long!” Rema called after her.

“We still need to get food!” said Romula.

“Oh yeah...” Kiharu licked her lips clean. “It’s near lunch time, ain’t it?”

Even having saved up her monthly stipends from the Citadel, Luna did not have much in the way of money. But she could, in theory, buy a few books. And if anything interesting was too expensive... well, a true wizard had ways of navigating such obstacles.

And as she roamed the aisles of the bookshop, drinking in the familiar scents of parchment and leather, Luna felt some of the tension slowly melting from her body. In her youth, her first youth, she had been illiterate in her early years. And yet the bookshop of her home city had been something of a safe haven for her. It was quiet, safe, and the owner had been a kindly old man... who took the time to teach young Viisa how to read.

Luna hesitated, her fingers resting on the dusty spine of a book titled ‘Great Battles of the Bulwark.’ Why was she feeling sentimental about her youth? She’d never spared it much thought in the past.

By the time she started to learn magic and had established herself as a mercenary, her first life had been nonstop momentum to rise to grander and grander heights. The desire to keep moving forward had caused her to never dwell on her childhood, beyond thinking of how much she had despised most of it. And now, the simplest thing brought a slew of memories into her head.

Luna sighed, pulled the book from the shelf, and checked the small price tag attached to the tome. She continued her shopping, eventually finding a rack of scrolls labelled as ‘arcane techniques.’ They, she noticed at a glance, were much more expensive. Still, as she grabbed a few of them and stacked them atop the history book, she knew that that wouldn’t be an obstacle for her.

The old woman at the counter looked up as Luna approached, a smile forming on her wrinkled face. “Ah. You have the look of a Citadel cadet about you. Am I right?”

“That’s correct. Brass rank first year,” she said.

“Ooh, impressive.” She took the offered items, one by one, checking the price tag on each. “Folks like you do such a vital service for our kingdom. Really can’t thank you enough for the risks you take. Now, let’s see... ah, that’s... Oh, 80 quartz in total.”

Luna reached into the pouch on her hip, brushing he fingers along the chips of citrine inside. She didn’t have enough on her, not nearly enough.

She focused intently on the older woman, her qi slowly rising. Her attention fixated on the shopkeeper’s mind, a faint haze that began to take shape around her head. And, gradually, the haze of her own mind reached out with unseen tendrils to encircle the old woman’s own.

Mental magic was something Luna would classify as tricky, rather than difficult. It was easy to overwhelm the consciousness of the weak-willed, but the challenge came in doing so without shredding the target’s mind beyond repair. Minds were surprisingly fragile things, particularly once magic was involved. And Luna hardly wanted to do that to an elderly shopkeeper. What would she gain from that?

Instead using her mental magic as a butcher’s cleaver, like many of her old cohorts were known to do, Luna worked hers with the grace and precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. She dampened the older woman’s rationality, dulled her fears, and tweaked her trust up considerably.

“I believe you may have miscounted. This is only worth twenty quartz.”

The old woman’s eyes briefly clouded over, and it seemed hat she found herself incapable of probing or analysing the truth of that statement.

“Ah!” she said, managing a faint smile. “Of course, how silly of me.” And she thought little of it as Luna handed her chunks of citrine over. And, if she were to ever try and dwell on this encounter, or to scrutinise it, a little subconscious suggestion left over by Luna’s magic would cause her to gloss right over the whole thing.

“My thanks,” Luna replied, taking her rightfully purchased goods and placing them neatly in the satchel she was carrying. “I’ll be sure to come again.”