WoV, Book 1, Chapter 1: Have you heard-!

As he browsed the Internet, Neil ran into an ad.

A very familiar one, because he’d seen its kind again, and again, and again. It seemed like they were always the first through the door when Adblock slept on its filter updates.

Final Fantasy Fourteen, the critically acclaimed MMORPG! With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restriction on playtime!

The ad looked official enough that it probably wouldn’t fast-track him to a thai sexting site with a complimentary starter pack of malware. Besides, the stars had once again aligned to make it so despite having six active projects and just as many on pause, all his coauthors were busy with life. He got a little writing window here or there, but something to kill time with and harvest for inspiration sounded nice.

It was this or Warframe and he wasn’t feeling up to knocking off like two years of rust and catching up with all the new systems there, so he slapped the square of anime special effects and it was off to the races.

The sign up was easy, write personal info here, lie through his fucking teeth about having read the EULAs because who the fuck bothered with that stuff (he’d probably end up selling his soul like that one day but if they wanted the slimy, withered thing that was their problem), set up the account there…

And not five minutes later, he was creating his character in the benchmarker program while the game downloaded. It even had one of those fancy fade-in screens, like a geode had been cracked open in his desktop, crystal shards spalling out from the rim surrounding the black expanse reading "Building the World's Fantasy". Nifty, but not what he was focused on right now.

Cobbling together his character honestly didn’t take much. He made a beeline straight for the Au Ra because the impact of Abyssal Admiral Quest on his psyche was irreversible and so fantasy albino girl with black bits it was. He considered the white scaled ones, the whole being homebodies thing in the blurb spoke to him, but at the end of the day he wanted some monochrome contrast and he couldn’t really get it with them. So these Xaela nomads it was.

He… honestly was a bit bummed out at how sparse the chargen past that was. After Blade&Soul and Black Desert, he was used to absolute slider-fests. Here he got something like four presets for each head bit aside from the hair and told to fuck off. The horn types weren’t even split from the base faces! At least the best looking face came with a good set of curly horns so it wasn’t an issue for him. Oh, hey, he got to add a glowing ring to the rim of the iris to feed his boner for bright and unusual eyes.

Beyond that and the half-a-second it took him to max out the boob and tail length sliders (and be disappointed at no hips/ass/thighs slider), though, most of his time was spent wrestling with the colors and shooting the shit with a friend on discord to hammer out the name.

It was a bit of a pity that he couldn’t really make Melusine’s coloration mesh with this, since it would’ve been a nice shitpost given how fucking tiny female Au Ra were even at maxed out height, but oh well. He still dumped the slider as far as it’d go, which was apparently 146cm/4’9, because pick up and nut and go.

The utterances of the screeching caveman in the back of skull aside, he settled on the old reliable for the coloration. Black, silver and blue were a timeless classic for a reason. He was just looking over the end product and happily noting the little cutouts in the boots to show off the scales when his eyes landed on a little checkbox hidden in the gloom of the default background.

Advanced Options.

…He wanted to kick himself.

It took some fiddling and a fair bit of system assist to get it done, but soon enough he had his best rendition of Reed’s huge fucking tail (and Tomimi’s bakery) on the girl, together with as close to her quartet of horns as he could get. Which if he remembered the Au Ra blurb, meant his avatar had basically four ears. Were Au Ra horns sensitive like elf ears? Probably not, sweeping horns like those were for stopping hits to the head more than anything.

Musings aside, that was him done and dusted. Benchmark wouldn’t let him put down a name on her yet, only save the appearance data for the game proper. On the upside, that should be enough time for the foulsome frog in Catalonia’s hat to get off his pile of unfinished gunpla and give him a tribe name for the lizard. He had decided he didn’t want to know what the tribe was like, since apparently they showed up at some point in the plot and it’d be a chuckle to find out that way.

Assuming he even got there, it’d probably take a couple hundred hours, XIV was known as the One Piece of MMOs for a reason. For now, he just checked on how his overpriced 100Mb per second connection that only worked at a sixth of that was doing. This one wasn’t made by Bungo, so he had hopes it wouldn’t take an eternity and a half.

Hopes that were immediately dashed when he saw a fat 15% floating in the void, taunting him with its smug aura. He had been at this for over an hour. Was it downloading every last grain of sand in Eorzea or something?

Ugh, he wouldn’t get to play today, that was for sure. It was already 1AM and he’d rather not stay up until five just to get started. Still, he would like to start his Saturday with the weeaboo MMO, so…

“Omnissiah, forgive me the sin of leaving the computer on overnight.” He mumbled, just because he could. Perks of living alone, no judgment for dumb meme shit. Another perk? He had two bedrooms so he could move away from the whining of his machine and sleep sound despite how his hearing was more sensitive than the average twitterina.

[Hr] [/hr]

Neil’s night started well enough. He flew through a glittering nothing, specks of crystalline lights twinkling like gemstones across a vast canvas of midnight blue as the wings of sleep’s embrace pulled him along an unseen path that took him close to some of these gleaming lights. Each one radiated with faint snippets of conversation that flitted out of his mind as rapidly as they entered it.

“ …, what are you doing?!”

                                                                          “....Okay?”

                                                                                                                                                 “...Moons.”

                                                                 “The… …attacking!”

                                                                                                            “...Nadaam…”

                        “Sister?”

“Why… …Silent?”

                                                         “WITNESS… ABYSS!”

                      “...Eorzea.”

                                              “Eorzea…?”

                                “...Eorzea!”

                                                                                                  “Eorzea.”

                          “...Azim…”

One by one, the lights left him. A few, however, began to encircle him. Leaving a trail of pixie dust behind them as they lazily spun around his form, a massive one swooping in from afar. Rather than dust, it shedded flowing symbols, twisting into incomprehensible sentences even as they were taken in by the small sparkles. Making them brighter.

The spectacle, as wonderful and whimsy as it was, wasn’t what caught Neil’s attention. Far, far beyond it, he saw the end of the path. The place that he instinctively knew was the place he was heading towards.

It was a circle of planets, each a reflection of the one at the center of their waltz. There were six, but between some of them sat very conspicuous gaps. Enough room for at least another half dozen.

His trajectory was taking him on a direct collision with the source of them all– only for a void to interpose itself between them. A swirling orb of roiling, bubbling purples and blacks, one singular blood-soaked moon hanging at its side. A lonely thing, mourning the fate of both celestial bodies.

The light in the lead shifted in its trajectory, pulling him away from the dead world. For a moment it looked as if they'd avoid it entirely, but the light began to flicker. Its strength wavering and dimming– before finally winking out completely as they passed between the planet and its moon.

Without its guidance, Neil tumbled towards the void. The cruel grasp of gravity reaching high, past the clouds to drag him into its embrace. He let it, this wouldn’t be the first time he took the plunge in a dream. It was almost soothing, as he cut into the clouds. Then it became anything but, as purple smog flensed away at the lights and his skin.

He was out blessedly quick, but the faraway pain of getting mangled in a dream stayed with him as much as the dimmer lights did. The view, if nothing else, was good. Under him there was no world, no planet. Only the formless seas of darkness, small islands and rocky formations drifting across its expanse. Dropping past one of the highest placed of these little domains, he caught a glimpse of a monster.

Taller than a man, it was no more than a bloodshot eye attached to a slavering maw rowed by innumerous teeth. Two ratty wings burst from its form and it pushed off of its perch with a warbling cry that echoed throughout the entire sea.

Rather than see, Neil felt the attention. Like a light switch flicked on, hundreds, if not thousands of gribbles became aware of him. They each responded with their own scream of famished desperation while he sighed. A few experimental flexes told him that, no, he didn’t have magic for this dream. 

It was like the night itself had decided to come to meet him, a black morass of demonic bodies rising from the flakes of land that sat beneath him. Choking out all light and details as they rushed towards him. He squared up for all the good it’d do him, ease born of practice having him grip the first customer, some anorexic gargoyle thing, ripping its left wing clean off and kicking the idiot back to the ground.

Blunt force did nothing, he had learned over many, many lucid nightmares. You had to tear them limb from limb if you wanted to get anywhere. Idly, he took a bite of his prize, quietly surprised that it tasted like smoky steak rather than any sort of poultry. Good bark and surprisingly meaty, too.

Then the next monster came, and the next three, and the next twenty. Neil’s only saving grace was that this dream wasn’t emotionally charged, so he met the oncoming rush with a braced sort of resignation. Like a cloud of locusts, they swarmed him. Tearing at the motes of lights with claws and teeth. No matter where he turned, he was met by snapping jaws trying to devour him– the world lurched as it was sometimes allowed of him and he was off like a shot. He was inside some sort of ruined renaissance palace, everything torn down and chewed up, but that didn’t matter because indoors he could maybe last long enough for the nightmare to switch tracks.

Especially if he was allowed to phase through walls and ceilings. Which a crash with a door told him wasn’t the case, although he got the consolation prize of being able to bulldoze through some of the more rickety wood.

Something was behind him, loping around the debris and following his scent. It was toying with him, the bastard. Breathing down his proverbial neck but never confronting him. Only letting him catch half a glimpse of its deformed shadow and catch the very edge of the animalistic rumble that sounded more and more like sick laughter.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up you gobshit.” Neil huffed out with a chuckle of his own. He had played this game for two decades now, the moment it was clear it was just the one thing chasing him? It had just become a fun bit of exercise. It was always exhilarating to rip through a nonsensical maze of hallways and rooms. Maybe there would be some food around? That was always a silver lining in his nightmares. Worst came to worst, he could square up with this monster and see if he was allowed to take a bite out of it.

He negligently twisted out of the way of a snapping shark jaw, only to belatedly realize it’d been going for one of the lights. Odd that they were still around, but as he grew up more stable dreams had started popping up every now and then. What was more curious was why it fucking burned when this one got eaten. 

That and his previous musings had clearly been the wrong thing to think, the dream promptly shifting. He was laying across a man-sized silver platter, itself laid down on a massive dinner table. Dozens of demons stood on either side, their forms hazy and deformed in the same manner as though projected through a murky fish’s eye. All he could see clearly was their cutlery, dripping with a black ichor while harsh shadows hid any feature existing above their elbows. Still, some of the big bastards stood out.

A hulking shark, dabbing at its lips even as the mouth on its shoulder ground a lesser demon between its teeth.

A jawless dog, sitting on its hind legs. Its tongue licked a glassy, blind eye while its slobber oozed down to the ground with an acidic hiss.

A horse, tall and regal– until its face split open like a flower, revealing eyes and teeth and tongues that latched onto a light skewered on the end of a two pronged fork.

An empty throne. Lonely and bereft of the soul that once sat upon it.

A flash of steel from above heralded the arrival of a fourth. Falling from the same shadows as the demons draping the formless diners, its blade sliced off the horse’s tongues. The beast neighed in shocked pain as the new fiend stole Neil’s light.

This one, the human could see clearly. It was like someone had merged a knight and a ballerina together. A large metallic helm, its shape thin and crooked like a crow’s beak, his light skewered at its tip. Long, silver coloured feathers cascaded from its neck, forming the beginning of a great shroud made of dozens of spiraling patterns of reds and blacks spinning into nothing. Even as it moved the patterns stayed in place as if what it wore was merely a window.

His observations were interrupted just as fast as they began. Before the first drip of equine ichor could even touch the table on which he was laid down the corvid knight flipped. Lifting one of its blade-like legs behind its back, it tipped over to its front, its cloak shivering and twisting into long feminine arms that it used to hold itself.

Fingers digging into the colorless wood, it twirled, slicing the throne and guests into pieces. The dog melted away into a pool of its own slobber that dried in moments. The shark ate itself until all that remained was a sphere of pure hunger that devoured the wall between it and safety. The horse unfolded itself even more, turning into vines and roots that slipped through the cracks of the floor.

Alone and with no one to question its prize, the monster returned to its feet with unnatural flexibility. Its arms fell apart, reforming its shroud. A thin tongue slipped through the helm’s slit and plucked his light. The metal parted, revealing a slavering maw that closed on the lonely spark.

At least this one didn’t hurt to have eaten? Must’ve been something about the shark. “Hello there. I don’t suppose you’re friendly?” Neil asked with a winsome grin.

Sometimes talking to monsters did work and he got to vibe with them. He never got to find out with this one, since the moment it started to crouch down a burning light flashed into existence above them. A tornado of glowing paper and floating symbols shrouded him, lifting him off the platter.

The demon fell away from him with an undignified squawk and he only had enough time to shoot her(?) an apologetic smile and a “Sorry about that!” before the nightmare faded altogether. Replaced by the jolts of a carriage bench and an indistinct man’s voice.

Everything was too sharp, even through the fog of his groggy brain and the migraine digging metal fingers into it. Bolting upright definitely didn’t help the latter, but that was biology for you.

“Y’all right, lass?” At least now he could see the owner of the voice. A tanned man, deep lines in his face and dusty hair bleached by the sun. What of it he could see given the turban on his head, white with a blue knot pattern sewn into the cloth. To complete the look, he had a heavy coat dusted with a smattering of filigree and brass bits over a blue shirt. “You were moanin’ somethin’ fierce for a while there.” he told her, not unkindly.

“Don’t– ugh.” He forced through a desert dry throat and a tongue like cotton, his voice was a mess and he was pretty sure he missed part of what the guy said courtesy of a pain spike that he didn’t let show on his face. Fuck, this was as bad as that first month of misery before he’d gotten the first set of meds. He could only string two thoughts together through sheer stubbornness and experience. “Don’t think I’m ‘bout to throw up. Best I can say.”

Neil, if media was to be believed, should be freaking the fuck out right about now. Thankfully, the human brain was uncharacteristically competent about handling waking up somewhere unfamiliar with no memory how you got here. Under the fifty tons of distilled misery, there was only a detached sort of curiosity.

“Aether not agreein’ with you I reckon. Must be the field of corrupted crystal’s we’ve passed, they’re murder on anyone with a weak balance,” The man relaxed as he spoke, leaning against his seat before nodding at him– or rather, at his side, “Looks like your friend there ‘s feelin’ much the same.”

“Эфир, you mean?” Wait, where had that– OW. This time his poker face didn’t hold, face screwing up in pain that only got worse as he tried to hold the side of his head, a second spike of pain leaving him blinking spots out of his eyes. Okay, no pondering on what the fuck ‘efir’ was or where the term had come from and his skull was hands off now. Message received loud and clear, please make the pain stop.

His jolt of pain had the ‘amusing’ side effect of causing his seatmate’s head to slide off his shoulder where it’d been resting, and he now had an honest to god catgirl napping in his lap. Her hair was a rich aubergine with light green highlights, her skin was no less odd. Deep blue, with slightly darker claw-like birth marks on her cheeks and forehead– where black teardrop mark of some sort was also located.

Overall, she was quite cute, especially with the warpaint she seemed to be wearing. The little bandaid on her left cheek added to the gap moe… Unfortunately, said cuteness was thoroughly ruined by the fact she seemed to be suffering the worst sleep of her life.

Brow slick with sweat, she moaned in discomfort, “N-uugh…” She moved her head to and fro as a nightmare and whatever sickness these corrupted crystals caused ran their course, further ruining whatever hairstyle she might have worn.

“Havin’ it worse than ye in fact,” The man sighed with a shake of his head, a forlorn look in his eyes, “You weren’ doin’ great. But t’was a damn sight better than her. In fact, I was tryin’ to wake her up, rather than you. Still, full glad one of ye’s no longer dealin’ with night terrors,” Turning to look behind him with a chuckle, there was nothing but sparse, yellowing vegetation defiantly telling the sun to eat shit. Earning them an angry glare meant to punish them with spontaneous combustion for the temerity, “Or, well. Day terrors as it were.”

“If she knocks out a tooth, you pay my medical bills, deal?” Neil offered with a shaky grin as he just barely managed to scrape his brain back together. The only reason he had been able to string together that sentence was a whole decade of skullsplitting migraines courtesy of his ADHD medication.

He elected to take the snort as a yes, although any thoughts of remuneration fell away as his hand shot out to a gnarled old staff propped on the side not full of catgirl and something cold flowing from his heart to his right hand. The taste of peppermint filled his mouth as a rough hunk of ice a bit bigger than his fist bloomed from his palm, snapping off without any discomfort. Which earned him a raised eyebrow from the man.

Neil quietly pretended to know what had just happened there aside from ‘magic’ and just pressed the plus sized ice cube to the woman’s neck.

The result was… immediate, sudden and rather painful, “MYAAAAAAA–OW!?” As in, the poor girl’s troubled sleep ended as soon as the ice touched her skin, and she shot up in a daze.

Promptly slamming the top of her head into Neil’s chin, ringing his bell something sweet. At least the universe gave him a consolation prize in how the catgirl tumbled onto the small footpath between the wagon’s two rows of seats, “OY!” An angry voice came from the front of their transport, beyond a weighty wooden partition, “What’s you all doing back there!?”

“Bad wakeup from ‘ethir sickness!” He hollered back, wincing singly at how he tripped over the pronunciation of ‘aether’ there. Then once again when his chin reminded him it was angry.

“Bah! Keep it quiet then! There’s beastmen in these hills!” The driver shouted… louder than either of them.

“Menphina’s piss!” The nameless cat swore with vitriol, clutching the back of her head as she writhed on the floor.

“I believe,” One of the other two people on the ride– elven twins of some sort? They both looked identical and had particularly long and pointy ears. No, wait, the one on the right was a girl and the one who spoke up a boy. Had to look at the lips and eyebrows but it was there, “The pronunciation is Ee-thuh.”

“Who cares about that!?” The woman hissed as she slowly got back up, “My head feels like someone spiked it through a wooden door an–an–aaah–!” Her rant was interrupted by a sudden sneeze that missed the other occupants only on account of her being quick enough to whip her head to the side, “‘m sensitive to cold…”

“Would you rather I have used lightning?” Neil asked with an arched eyebrow, feeling pressure points squirming in the inside of his skull as the migraine graduated to cluster. Wait, he knew how to use lightning? Going by the taste of blue powerade on his mouth as a few sparks tumbled out, apparently.

“Lightning? Wha–” “I,” The cat groused, glaring at him while interrupting the elven anvil, “Would have rather not been woken up at all!”

“You were all but screaming and thrashing in your sleep from aether,” He put a bit of work on getting his tongue to stop betraying him with that word, if only so Link’s albino cousin wouldn’t feel the need to correct him, “sickness, come on now. At least those Nhaama-damned crystals didn’t smack you with five icepicks to the skull on the way out.”

Six now, but who was counting? Also, who the fuck was– nope, not prodding that. He’d learned his lesson with ‘efir’, not going to question the foreign words.

Before the grey woman could complain again, the bearded man coughed to get the cat’s attention, “Aye, that you were lass. Turnin’ and moanin’ in yer sleep. Bad enough that ye ended up in her lap,” Hearing that, her blue skin darkened around her cheeks, “But, I’d say I’m a mite responsible too. Was tryin’ to wake ye up, but dragged her out of her own troubled sleep. Figured it’d be okay to wake ye up since I woke her up, I’m sure… didn’t think she’d do it by makin’ bloody ice though. Would’ve told her not to if I knew.”

“If faceplanting in my lap didn’t wake her up, shaking her wasn’t going to do anything.” Neil retorted, a flareup of pain making him miss a few words there. Whatever, he was good at piecing things from context. “It wasn’t like I dumped a bucket of water on her, either.”

That always sucked smegma encrusted donkey dick. 

…Wait, but he’d never been woken up like–

“Might’ve been better with how thirsty I am.” The cat grumbled as she sat back down on her part of the bench, making sure to keep some distance between her and Neil.

“Alas, even if I had a bowl on hand, I don’t exactly have the finesse to make you a granizado. Er.” He furrowed his brow, snapping his fingers a couple of times as he tried to drag out the translation from his bruised brainmeats. “Slushie, I think the word is?”

Three out of the four other travelers looked at Neil with confusion on their faces, while the eyes of the man that had woken her up gained a certain sharpness. Not that he saw because he was rooting around in what his gut said were his bags. Blessedly, there were some waterskins. Probably water skins, he popped the cork and, “Phew, the kumis hasn’t gone bad.”

“Are you offering?” The catgirl asked, her ears perking up at the sight of the sloshing container, “Because I wouldn’t say no to a nice drink right now.”

“Aye. I do have a heart, somewhere in there. It’s just–” He started to say, only to have the leather pouch snatched from his hand before he could finish. He tried to stop her, but–

“Mh–?” The cat gave him a side eye just as she tipped the drink back, a handful of cloudy, white-ish drops of one of the precious things connecting him to his home (what?) fell on her tongue, “PFFAUGH–!”

“...Fermented milk.” He sighed with a slump of his shoulders, his outstretched hand falling limp at the cat’s immediate spitting and sputtering. What a waste.

“Is this spoiled milk!?” She asked, trying to rub the taste off of her tongue with the back of her hand, “I know I bumped your chin but–!”

At least he managed to snag the waterskin before the catgirl threw it… away…

She hadn’t. “You take that back in the next five seconds or you end up with an explosion afro.”

“Excuse you!? It’s spoiled milk!” The philistine dared to repeat. It was only by the grace of him not wanting to make public transport worse that she wasn’t on fire yet, “Why would I take–!”

“Kumis you say?” The tanned man inserted himself in the discourse, such that it was, before it could devolve even more, “Now that’s a treat I’ve not had in years,” Leaning forward, his eyes shone with a peculiar hunger– or was it thirst? “Not since I’ve had the luck to find myself in Othrad! Never did reach the mainland, on account of the tensions brewin’ at the time. But a merchant from Azim crossed my path, never had the chance to taste it again after I returned to Eorzea.”

“Wait,” The female twin asked, “She’s not merely trying to play off a prank? Milk can be fermented?”

“That it can lass!” Chuckling, the man bent down and pulled out three waterskins from his own pack, “Tell ye what lass. I’ll trade ye for it. Between the current business with the Garleans and my age, I doubt I’ll get another chance to have another taste– and better to let an old man that can appreciate yer delicacy than,” Sniffing loudly, her nodded in the cat’s direction, “A girly that can’t stomach the finer things, eh?” “Hey!”

“...So long as I keep enough to ferment more, I’m listening.” He replied warily because even with a cluster migraine and unfamiliar knowledge like how to ferment a drink he’d never heard of, he recognized that fucking look. Arabian Nights car salesman lookin’ ass.

“Of course! I’d be a Thal blasted fool to stop ye from makin’ more. Two skins of wine,” He said, shaking the ones in his left hand, “I’m returnin’ from from a round of travels that took me by La Noscea, one of pure water– All safe enough for drinkin’ I assure ye,” bending down a second time, he pulled out a well made glass bottle corked with a stopper of the same make, “And this here glassware. It’s meant for alchemical concoctions, so I’m certain it’ll work just fine for keeping yer leftover safe ‘til you find a way to source milk so ye can make more of the stuff.”

“Right, first up.” Neil said, straightening up into something, y’know. Not indicative of being two seconds away from slinging a fifty pounder of elemental wroth, “Muur’Zagas Himaa. You?”

…That wasn’t his name. Fuck.

“Ah, my apologies. My name’s Brendt,” He introduced himself as, tipping his head into a respectful nod, “As you might’ve guessed, peddlin’s my life. I travel the lands, makin’ deals with those that’ll share a word with me… And sometimes those that won’t too.” He added with a chuckle.

Kumis could be made from mare milk with just a bit of the stuff as a starter. Donkey milk, too, which he knew from… practice… fucking whatever, moving on. “I know what your angle is but I’m not about to say no to there being more kumis to go around. Trade a sip for a sip?”

“Certainly,” Grabbing one of the wine skins, he offered it to Neil, a ring of yellow wax sealing the rim, “Here’s some of the wine.”

They switched them without any preamble. The wineskin’s contents smelled fine, if potent. A sip told him that it was quality stuff and also that his palate actually agreed with the burn of alcohol now. He let that thought drop before his skull pain could get any worse. 

Brendt for his part took a greedy drag of kumis, “Phhaaa~. Just as tasty as I remembered. So, do we have a deal, Miss Himaa?”

“I have half a mind to ask for a cut of whatever profits you make selling stock made from that, but damned if I can figure out how to make the payments work between two nomads.” Neil huffed, powering through the pain that kept making him miss words. “Not getting as much as I could, but I’m not losing anything in the long run, so eh.”

“It’s easier than you’d believe,” The peddler said with a chuckle, “The church of Nald’tal’s quite helpful in these matters– alas, I doubt you’d see much money at all. I plan to keep this find all to myself, after all.”

“...Right, barely any horses and donkeys around here. The birds are cute but can’t exactly get any milk from them.” He had no fucking idea where this information was coming from and couldn’t rake his brain without excruciating pain, so he just rolled with the punches. “Fair ‘nuff, we have a deal.”

Trading the skins and bottle (and taking a moment to transfer in some kumis), Brendt smiled happily, “Much appreciated. You… ah. May want to check the skin with a small dot on the cork first.” He added before taking another drink of kumis as Neil prepared to look at his prize(?).

“Alright, you dried out halgai, let’s see what trick you played.” The mage sighed, popping the marked cork and taking a whiff. “Well, this certainly used to be wine.”

“That it did,” The man said with a smile after pulling away from his kumis, “Part of a bad batch. The seals failed on the cask after a storm, ruined the whole thing. Or so I’ve been told. Yer not nearly as green as the shroud’s grass, half expected ye to take the trade at face value.”

“Cluster migraine or not, I know the look of a salesman licking his chops.” Neil sighed, moving a hand to loosen up his neck before thinking better of it. Didn’t want to see if that’d cause godawful pain too or not. “Helps that we all got a visual lesson on not rushing ahead like a pissed off Yol barely five minutes ago, I’ll admit.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” The merchant replied neutrally.

“Really?” Lifting her head from her hands, the catgirl stopped being part of the peanut gallery, “What happened?”

“I wager ye’ll do well enough in Ul'dah as ye are, but care to hear an old man’s wisdom?” Brendt asked… after giving the cat the look.

“Always.” Neil replied without a second thought. Listening to one’s elders was important, how else could a tribe– ah, fer fuck’s sake. Untangling his brain after this would be a cast iron bitch, he could already tell.

“First, the things ye did right– well. Right enough. Ye checked the contents of the skins, which was a smart thing to do. I’d have told you to if ye hadn’t started to,” Looking in the distance, towards the place the wagon was headed to, he sighed, “Sad to say, but Ul’dah’s full of swindlers and half baked crooks that won't fear selling ye defective goods for no other reason than fattening their pockets at the expense of an easy mark.”

“Nothing worse than looking like a tourist. Like flies to horseshit, I swear.” The mage grunted, only not spitting out the words because they were in a cramped carriage.

“Unless ye find yerself a trusted purveyor, ye might want to ask to check the goods first. As a rule of thumb, if they start bein’ all offended like, or try to dodge ye, by that simple a request something’s rotten goin’ on. Even if the good’s are proper, they might not have been sourced properly, if ye catch my meanin’.” Brendt said with a wry grin, before moving on. 

“Ye also made sure to ask for something to keep makin’ yer kumis, which is good. On that note, land’s not felt the hooves of any horse in a long time, plenty of buffaloes and goats however– but beyond that, you buggered it!” He all but laughed at Neil, although there was no real mockery in his tone or eyes, so he let it pass. “On its face, t’was a fine deal. One waterskin of kumis, for three’s well above its ‘regular’ price. Issue here, is that kumis’ anythin’ but regular in these lands. Based on our Miqo’te friend here, you should have gathered that it’s a rare treat. Seven hells, she’s convinced that it’s spoiled milk!”

“Because it IS!” All but yowled the cat with indignation. She got jabbed on the side by Neil’s burnt staff for that.

Rolling his eyes, Brendt grumbled in an attempt to ignore her, “Next ye’ll tell me wine is spoiled grape juice.”

“...” Gears visibly turned in the girl’s mind, “Yes.” She eventually said. Flat footing everyone, possibly even the driver, “What? It’s true! You’re taking something fresh, and then you’re leaving it out to the elements. Just because it turns into something that doesn’t taste like poison doesn’t change the fact that that’s just the same as something spoiling!”

“I really should’ve woken her up with an electric jolt, swear to Nhaama.” The mage muttered venomously, not quite able to keep a few garlands of lightning from lighting up his mouth and giving his words an unnatural buzz. At least sparks didn’t tumble out this time, didn’t want to set the carriage on fire.

“Moving on,” Brendt said with a cough, “Where was I? Ah, right. Regular folks might not have been willin’ to pay much fer yer kumis. But I went and talked about me love fer the stuff. I wasn’t desperate fer it, but I was mournin’ the fact I’d not get another taste. I was probably rich too, if my first offer was anythin’ to go by. I’m not exaggeratin’ in sayin’ I’d have been willin’ to spend… Let’s say two waterskins of wine more? Or, mayhap three or four of water instead.”

“Ugh, I got sidetracked with how you could’ve turned into a side business and forgot to actually haggle.” Neil groaned, he could practically feel his ancestors shaking their heads at him.

“Truly?” The boy that had played pronunciation national socialist asked, surprise written clear on his face, “You would have good sir? Forgive me for saying this, but… It seems like a poor trade.”

“Aye, lad. I would have,’ The peddler said with a sigh, “And aye, yer quite right. It’d have been a poor deal– for me so we are clear. Can ye think of why?”

“You can’t get any more of that wine without a huge trip or expense, since it’s an import. Water is obviously valuable because desert. And all of this is to pay maybe half a waterskin of kumis that you’d be hard pressed to make more of.” The mage obligingly listed with a sigh, before chuckling softly, “Still, you got money to burn and market prices are second to personal value.”

“That’s part of it, aye,” Brendt acquiesced, “A bad deal’s often better than none at all when products like this one are concerned. As a seller, you’d have found a buyer, plenty of people in the city would’ve given it a try– or just drank the stuff yerself. But as a buyer? The rarity of this stuff meant that I’d never see it again if I wasn’t willin’ to put up with a poor trade.”

“Needs are what drives trades. I was no man dyin’ of thirst in the desert yonder,” He waved at the land scrolling by the open topped wagon, only wincing a tiny bit when his hand left the cooling (for a value of the word) shade, “and willin’ to trade his arm fer a drop of water. But I was rather in a mood of ‘I need to buy this, or I’ll regret it for the longest time’.”

“And to finish this small lesson,” Leaning down, he rooted through his pack and pulled a new waterskin with a grin, “Here’s the wine yer due. It’s what I said I’d pay ye after all. As I said, I reckon ye’ll be fine in Ul’dah. Just keep in mind that you’ll get singled out as an easy mark by most of the leeches playin’ at bein’ merchants.”

Neil sighed out a small plume of smoke, taking the wineskin and pointedly keeping the vinegar. The stuff kept well and he loved it on potatoes, so why not? Her trade partner only snorted in amusement, but didn’t say a thing.

“Anything else to be worried about in the city?” The cat ended up asking, “Merchants’re one thing, but I doubt it’s the only thing people should be wary of.”

“Yer unfortunately right lass… Fer the first time since I’ve met ye. But yer right.” If looks could kill… Brendt didn’t care as he kept going though, “Hmm. I reckon that the biggest thing to be look out fer is–”

Just as he was about to start launching into a new explanation. Two of the yellow horse-birds Neil had begun seeing ever since reaching Eorzea (fuck’s sake, not again) thundered past, a pair of men in full armor riding on their backs, “Speak of the devils.”

The merchant’s swear was lost under the authoritative shout of “HEY! YOU THERE! HALT! BRASS BLADE INSPECTION!”

Don’t set them on fire. Don’t set them on fire. They’d only scream more and make your migraine even worse. Don’t set them on fire.