Chapter 117

“No it really is! Mother gave me the bag and it’s really powerful and magicy!”

“It’s a dimensional bag, yes, I come across them often enough. Let me see inside.”

“Well gosh, if it’s really that important to you.”

The shuffle of something moving was heard, then the rattle of coin as the apparent dimensional bag was looked into.

“ ... Miss are you aware you have a dead Kobold in your bag?”

“Oh no, Reddy is just sleeping!”

“ ... Right. In any case this is clearly not the cause.”

“Really? Well I did try to expand it, maybe that makes it more magical!”

There was a moment of pause.

“I’m sorry, you did what now?”

“Yes! I couldn’t fit all my furniture inside so I took this knife-

“Woah! What do you think you’re doing! Where the hell did that come from!?”

“Oh this? It’s just my magic knife, it’s super magic. Anyway, I took my magic knife and I poked it into the stone inside the bag a few times and wiggled it around. It went in really easy!”

“I ... see,” came an increasingly rattled voice. “Do you not know why that is a bad idea?”

“Mmm, well Reddy kept screaming about nightmarish creatures dwelling on the other side trying to claw their way through and eat him but I didn’t believe that, it’s probably fine, he’s just a big Kobold baby. Why is there a reason?”

“Well, I’ve heard things, and- look, I ... highly advise you to take that bag and get it repaired as soon as possible.”

“You think so? I’ve heard it creaking and groaning sometimes like there’s something trying to break through, and there are these cracks in the stone getting bigger and bigger as every hour passes, but that’s just normal right?”

“NO! I- I- look you silly noble, you need to get that thing to an Artificer, as soon as you can and- Just, just follow me okay, quickly now. You move out of the way! Guard on business coming through!”

Rain settled back, not quite sure what was happening. Lyra had clearly tricked the guard into believing that the source of magic she had sensed was emanating from the bag and not her wool space, and the guard seemed decidedly unsettled by that, scared even, and was now giving them a personal escort through the tunnel gatehouse and into the city.

He tried to think why, well, maybe that wasn’t that hard to imagine. A space that caused nightmares when slept inside? That would give birth to endless rumours and creepy stories that would spread and spread and especially spread to a guard’s ears who regularly came into contact with the bags due to the sheer number of people passing into the city.

The guard could have heard some truly disturbing things and ... Lyra had apparently calculated and played into that?

Not bad.

The sound of the crowd echoing in the tunnel slowly softened to his ears and he realised that they had passed into the city proper. He almost looked through then and there in his eagerness to see but managed to restrain himself, at least for a moment.

“Wow, thanks! All that queuing was soooo boring!”

“I didn’t do it for your convenience Miss, you need to get that bag-

“Aww but I wanted to have a spa day!”

He heard the Elf making a sound of agonised frustration.

“No, no spa day. Go immediately to the Artificers district and get that bag fixed!”

There was a long sigh, followed by what sounded like Lyra flipping her hair. “Fiiiine. I’ll go get it checked out or whatever, I am doing this as a favour to you you know, it’s such a bother, you should honestly be grateful.”

Rain wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the Elf’s head explode, as it was he was fairly sure he could hear her actively grinding her teeth together.

“Well, bye bye guard person! Have a nice day doing guard things!”

“Just go!” came a strangled Elven voice in reply.

Rain waited a moment, then unable to stop himself he peeked through the darkness.

Light, and crowds, and tall white stone buildings half a dozen storeys tall rising all around, they were inside of Florens!

“That went well,” he heard a whisper from Lyra. “I’ll go a little deeper where it’s less busy and find an alley, I should be alright to hold the space open until then.”

He blinked in reply.

Then he got back to city watching.

He wasn’t the only one, Opal was staring with her mouth slightly parted, eyes wide, apparently still lost for words.

He followed her gaze and found she was looking at a particularly large building that they were approaching, one that the road from the gatehouse seemed to split around and beneath two huge flat metal arms that arched down from the top of the building to the ground, the official entrance to the city? He couldn’t say, but that was hardly the only thing he didn’t understand, the occasional bronze open bell shaped things attached to the tops of buildings were also a curiosity, the arcing lines of metal that were embedded in the road around the large building too.

The city was filled with strange things and beautiful white stone architecture, that and colorful myriad species of leveler.

He drew back and poked his nose through and then drew in air.

The smell of the city struck, a scent scape larger than anything he had scented before, an intricately complex thing that covered everything from crisp spices to acrid forge smoke to ticklish perfumes to horse manure to tangy smitheries and delicious markets and cookeries to, well, a million other things he had no idea of. It was a lot to take in with his fine sense of smell and he almost wanted to spend forever just scenting the city. He did remain like that for a number of minutes.

But that meant he couldn’t see and more than anything he wanted to take in the city’s sights.

He returned to gazing through Lyra’s wool and found that they had moved deeper into the city and the crowds were becoming ... busy, in fact Lyra was being elbowed and jostled and was forced to keep a hand on Opal’s shoulder to stop her from being swept away as the moving crowd became increasingly packed in.

“Th-there might be a small problem here,” muttered Lyra trying to push past but finding she simply lacked the strength. Levelers who tended to be strong were not pushed aside easily by a sheep girl who wasn’t very strong.

She could do nothing as she was swept through the city and pulled into ever larger streets filled with ever larger crowds. The crowd was more than a crowd now, it seemed to have intent, the people cheering as they walked, colourful petals falling from the sky as those atop the buildings lining the street threw them from baskets.

Rain boggled as a full sized longboat suddenly turned into the street they were on. The wooden thing was being lifted by the crowd, their level gifted strength allowing them to hold it above their heads and pass it on, the thing quite literally sailing the crowd.

The boat itself was fronted with a styled wooden dragon head, and its black sail was marked with a white flower. The deck however was filled end to end with black iron cages, cage after cage after cage stacked and layered, and each of them held a person, a leveler.