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🕑 Added 2024-12-27 15:00:00 +0000 UTCWelp, I thought I was counting wrong somehow, and it turns out I was!
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The guards who were patrolling the line that was obviously for special rich people to skip ahead of the regular folk didn't like the look of the open top carriage that matched all the requirements to be a for hire means of transportation and a pair of them stormed angrily over to confront whatever fool thought they could just waltz past the proper rules and procedures of who used which line when. The bluster and the unshakable confidence that they were backed by law and procedure almost instantly melted away into deference and obedience after one of them demanded to see Ewan's identification and was met with a lazy brandishing of his red card. They started being obsequious at an almost startling speed, but quickly ran off when Ewan told them "Leave me be." In a bored tone.
"Is it like your coin?" Dryth asked as he watched the guards scamper off.
"My coin? What coi- Oh! The medallion I showed those guards at the Association. Of a sorts, yes. The medallion tells the guards at the teleportation points that I don't have to be on their little lists and I can still use them. Basically it shows my status as a person on the master list for the whole kingdom. This, well..." He held the card up to his eye and shrugged, before putting it away again. "It tells people I'm important. It truly has no other function."
He turned to start talking to the driver about different kinds of magical beasts again, figuratively and literally showing Dryth his back as a means of ending the conversation. Dryth rolled his eyes at his teacher's instance that Dryth and Sindri needed to be surprised, not that Sindri would even know who Ewan was if he happened to be some notable figure, not unless Ewan drip-fed Sindri the information so he could be surprised later. Dryth's eyes narrowed. That sounded exactly like something Ewan would do. He elected to pay close attention and see if Ewan brought up the exploits of any well-known people while Sindri was paying attention.
With nothing much to do and the surrounding buildings looking more and more like the ones in the village Dryth had been born in, closer together and with more people than those but visually the same, he decided to get some practice in. He plucked a strand of mana from his core and pushed it along his finger until it reached his fingertip, where he molded it into shape and a small light appeared on his finger. Ewan turned around to see what he was doing. When he saw Dryth pure casting Produce Light he smiled and gave him an approving nod before turning back to the driver.
Dryth made the light bigger, smaller, brighter, and dimmer. He tried changing the color, which didn't pan out, and tried making it into different shapes which also didn't work. He tried everything he could think of to stretch and improve his ability with the simple little spell as he sat there and they all waited for the vehicles in front of them to move forward. To Dryth, the existence of pure casting as a possibility opened up an entirely new world to him. He'd believed that cards meant magic, but the truth was that magic meant magic and cards were just one way to use them. He wondered if he used the card he had to cast Sparkle Dart over and over, would he get a better feel of it so that he could work on his pure casting of it? He drew the Produce Light card over the open palm of his other hand, practicing both doing so without having to touch the card and making it come out in the orientation he wanted. He activated it and closed his eyes as he did, trying to feel what it was like as the spell was cast so he could compare it to when he pure cast the spell.
With his eyes closed he didn't see Ewan turn around again to give him a measuring look, nor did he see the small genuine smile that graced his teacher's face.
Sindri remained asleep as Dryth continued to practice Produce Light, with both the card and pure casting, over and over. Each time he felt like he'd made an improvement he activated the card version to try and see if he really had improved or if he was imagining it, but the tiny little glow created by the spell didn't seem any different each time he checked. Dryth wondered if the spell was just too simple for him to see any real differences that would mark him improving at casting the spell himself or if he just hadn't gotten any better yet.
The next time Dryth looked up from his own hands they were next in line and the carriage in front of them was rolling through the doors and outside the wall. Their driver calmly directed his companion forward and stopped when indicated. A man in a fancier version of the armor and uniform the two guards who had approached them were wearing stepped forward and nodded at Ewan. Ewan produced the red card, the man nodded again and waved them through. Compared to the amount of time the carriages in front of them had had to wait as they were inspected and processed they'd gotten through in record time and compared to the regular citizens waiting in the much longer line they'd gone through scandalously quickly.
"That card o' yours must be a nice thing to have." The driver muttered.
"It is, of course, but they make you suffer to get it." Ewan draped his arm over his face as he leaned against the backstop. "Among other things I have to have regular inspections and interrogations to make sure that I deserve to keep it and aren't misusing it."
"They ask you questions once a year and go through your stuff and you can get through the capital's walls in less than a minute? Sounds worth it to me."
"Once a year!? Goodness no, regular as in heavily scheduled, not regular as in often. Those interrogations take weeks!" He sat up and brushed himself off as if warding away evil. "And I can only get through that quickly when I'm leaving. Coming back in is still going to take a bit longer."
"Why are they checking everyone who's leaving?" Dryth asked, setting aside his spell practice for later. "Is there something that get's smuggled out of the capital they're trying to stop?"
"I suppose the occasional criminal might try and escape the guard by slipping out of the city if they're being hunted hard enough, but generally no. I'm sure you've noticed by now but our kingdom likes to be in the know and simultaneously control everything it can. The guards checking people who leave are for just that, so the government knows who's leaving."
"That sounds..."
"Controlling? It is." Ewan let out a melancholy sigh. "But... Well, I love my homeland and I'm not going to give up on it, so I suppose the only thing I can do is deal with it and do my best."
"Just keep rolling with the punches." Dryth muttered.
"Oh, that's a good turn of phrase, I don't know if I've heard of that one. You're a good source of new phrases, Dryth." Ewan complimented him cheerfully.
Dryth did his best to remember where he'd heard that saying before to repeat it now for a few minutes, but the carriage rolled to a final stop before he could.
"Here ya' are folks." The driver spun around and nodded at them. "Outside east side bounty station. Thanks for the easy ride through the wall. If you see me again feel free to come one by, repeat customers are always welcome. Now about the second half of my pay..."
Dryth climbed to the ground as he physically and mentally prodded Sindri awake and Ewan paid the driver. Sindri was blearily blinking the sleep from his eyes when Ewan strolled over with a cheery jaunt. "Well, my good fellows, welcome to the bounty station you'll be departing for your excursion from."
Dryth stared back at him blankly.
"What?" Ewan cocked his head to the side. "Do I have something on my face?"
"It's nothing."
"... Well, alright. Follow me inside gentlemen, lets have a quick tour while we can. I'll show you some of the basics you'll need to know if you're going to be doing any bounty hunting."
"Why are you looking at Ewan weird?" Sindri asked while he yawned.
"I think he was flirting with our carriage driver and arranged himself a date."
"... Good for him?"
"Sure, I just don't know how to react. Do I congratulate him? Do I ignore it? I've never really been in a position where one of my teachers successfully hit on someone in front of me."
"Well you definitely shouldn't give him weird looks that he notices, that's not helpful."
Ewan led them to a pair of double doors set into a long wooden building that took up the same space as three of it's neighbors. There were a series of small windows cut into the walls near the top that looked like they were propped open and there was a small sign over the doors that read "Capital East Side Bounty Station". On the bare wood above the sign the word "Outer" had been carved in neat letters with a blade, with a line leading from the new word in between "Capital" and "East" on the sign.
Ewan pulled open one of the doors and gesture for the pair to lead the way. Dryth stepped inside with Sindri wrapped around his neck and his head hidden slightly behind Dryth's ear. They could feel each other's tension as they stepped into this new environment. There was as much wood inside the building as there was outside, with half the room being taken up by wooden kiosks with little desks and small barriers that separated each side of the desk from each other. There were wooden stanchions denoting different lines that led to groups of kiosks, and above each of them was a sign telling people which line for which service they were in. The other half of the room was divided into two more parts. One of the quarters looked like a small cafeteria with a collection of tables and chairs that were half full of people who were chatting and eating. The final section of the room had a series of noticeboards against the walls where papers were tacked against the board.
"It's a fairly standard layout that most adventurers guilds would look similar to."
Dryth glanced over his shoulder to see that Ewan had caught up with them.
"There's a bit more focus on paperwork and lines since we're here in the kingdom, but otherwise I doubt there are many of these kinds of locations that look too different." He pointed to where three distinct groups were looking over the pages stuck to the noticeboards. "Area where jobs, or bounties in this case, must use the right vocab and all, are made available. The bounties as notes or pamphlets stuck to a large board method was popularized at some point in distant history and now it's used in places all of the world, although I've heard there are some groups or nations that use their own style."
He turned and pointed at the eating area where a number of people were staring at them. "Cafeteria, canteen, bar, or other place where adventurers, sorry, bounty hunters, can relax, get some food, socialize, trade info, get to know each other, so on and so forth. And finally," He wave to encompass all the lines and desks. "The area in which jobs are accepted, completion or failure is reported, rewards are dished out, and all of the paperwork is finalized. Oh, and over there..." He pointed into a corner where Dryth could just make out some stairs behind a very large man who looked like he was about to fall off his stool onto the table in front of him. "Are the stairs. Upstairs is offices for higher ranking officials of the Agency assigned to this station and a lounge for special hunters." He waggled his eyebrows at Dryth and started toward the stairs.
"What's below us?"
"Storage and a training area you can rent to use. There are some employees and retired or active hunters that offer lessons in their specialties and that's where you'd meet them to be taught. I don't suggest buying any lessons while you're here though, you won't be basing yourself from this station."
"We won't?"
"No, it takes too long to get outside the walls each time you want to come get work since the only place I can teleport to in the capital is Association headquarters, and I'd have to teleport you every time. It makes much more sense to base yourself from the bounty station closer to my home."
"What? But you said your house is in the middle of absolute nowhere!"
"And it is! Said just nowhere happens to be about thirty minutes from a decent sized town with a bounty station." He turned back for a second to grin at Dryth.
A man with a dagger obviously clipped to the outside of his belt stepped out from somewhere as they approached the stairs. "Help you?"
"I'm Ewan, I have a meeting with Steel."
The man just raised one eyebrow at him, so Ewan rolled his eyes and pulled out his special red card for the third time that day. The guard's eyes dilated for a second before he nodded and stepped back. "Go ahead."
"Our deepest thanks." Ewan led the way upstairs and then past a large door where the sounds of boisterous conversation were flowing and to a door all the way at the back of the building. There was a sign on it that Dryth didn't have time to read as Ewan swept open the door and shouted, "Steel! My friend!"
"You don't get to call me that!" The dark haired man sitting behind the deck barked. "And why are you just bursting in without knocking!?"
"Why can't I call you that?" Ewan whined.
"You know damn well why!" The man pointed angrily at him.
"Fine, fine." Ewan rolled his eyes and stepped back out the door, shutting it behind him.
Dryth and Sindri were left there inside the office with this unknown man with the hard eyes and the distinctive scar on his cheek staring at them. "Um..."
The door burst open again. "Myus! My friend!"
The man behind the desk, Myus, glared at Ewan before letting his head slam into his desk once. He came back up with a reluctant smile on his face. :"You're a dick, you know that?"
"Only to my very best friends." Ewan replied happily, "For everyone else I'm a complete nightmare!"
"Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before." He pointed at Dryth. "This the student you talked about?"
"Students, plural. Young Sindri is the snake and he's sapient, too."
"You mean he's a person?" Myus nodded to Sindri. "My apologies, Ewan didn't mention if his human student was also a Contractor, so I wasn't sure."
"Of course he's a Contractor! You think-"
"I don't care, and I don't have time for you to rant at me." Myus gestured Dryth forward. "We've got an hour before the training excursion and these forms all need to be done so that you're officially registered as a bounty hunter for the Bounty Agency before then."
"Is this breaking the law?" Dryth asked, glancing at the papers.
Myus snorted out a laugh. "No, kid, it's barely breaking internal policy. All I'm doing is fast tracking your application for a probationary hunters license. It'll piss off some of the sticklers, but it won't hurt anybody and no one's going to get in trouble for it." He gave Ewan some side-eye. "Now hurry up and get it done so you can leave before your teacher starts annoying me."
"Myus!" Ewan protested with too much wounded innocence in his voice, "Aren't we friends?"
Shaking his head as he stared down at his desk, Myus let out a deep sigh. "Too late kid, you took too long.”
