NOVEL WEB 365. Entering the City
The city gates rose up before Ike. He looked up, taking them in. The walls were neat and regular, and stretched on for miles. It reminded him of Shopkeep's city, but ten times larger. No, maybe a hundred times larger. As he stepped through the gates, he realized why there were farms outside the walls: it was because there was no more room within them. This wasn't like his home city, with its massive rolling plains and a small central city within the walls. The second he stepped inside, there were houses, businesses, and shacks. The buildings grew larger and denser toward the center of the city, but they never let up, not for an instant. Alleys and roads carved through the city, twisting and turning at random.
In the center of the city, the paths were laid out logically, in a neat ring pattern, but beyond the city's core, the roads wandered at random. Once, this city had been like Ike's, with a central city and a lower exterior city, but as the city had expanded and expanded, those exterior parts had been absorbed into the city. What had once been cow paths and convenient alleys were now canonized roads, with all the weirdness that came with that. Some houses sprawled on large lots; others squeezed into triangular silvers of land.
Hawkers sold their wares on the side of the road, shops displayed fresh food and clean clothes, and monster-parts shops showed off their rare horns, skill orbs, and furs. Somewhere in the distance, a tannery billowed its noxious fumes into the air. Ike glanced at it, the sight and scent familiar, then glanced away. He'd left that life behind long ago, and he didn't miss it.
There were no particular scanners at the gate, nor anyone watching too closely for beasts to enter. At the same time, with a city this big, Ike would be surprised if there weren't some beasts living within it. Plus, given how peaceful it was outside, maybe they just didn't need to worry about hostile beasts entering the city. If there were no hostile beasts left, then it simply wasn't a threat.
Mag had to swoop down to enter through the gate, but nothing stopped the bird from entering, the same as nothing stopped Wisp from entering. Between the two of them, Ike was more startled by the fact that Wisp got through okay. Mag was mostly harmless, but Wisp was actively a problem. He frowned over his shoulder at the walls. Something wasn't right. Either this land was so peaceful that it simply didn't have to worry about man-eating beasts, or something wasn't right.
Then again, he thought, looking at the top of the city, maybe it was just that the mages in this city were so strong, that a mere Rank 3 man-eater was no problem. After all, most mages killed. Why discriminate against a murderous beast? As long as she didn't hare off and start eating civilians, she was no different from most of the mages here.
He wouldn't put it past Wisp to wander off and eat some civilians, but for the most part, her tastes seemed aligned with powerful beings, not random weaklings. It did make sense. At their Rank, they didn't really need to eat, so the only reason to eat, other than taste, was for the mana, aether, or other high-powered item, like venom or blood, imbued in the person or beast's body. Wisp gained nothing from eating mortals, so she had no reason to do it, other than boredom, and he didn't plan on sitting around enough that Wisp got bored. They had a Brightbriar to find, and a mystery to unravel.
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The three of them walked down a back alley, and their party of one multiplied to three. Wisp peered around, deeply interested in everything around them. Like Ike, she stood out a bit in her tattered, filthy robes. Mag stood tall and mature, as mature as his small frame allowed, looking around at the fellow well-dressed mages in his fine red-and-black robes. He adjusted his collar every now and again, narrowing his eyes at anyone, man or woman, who was dressed more garishly than him.
"These people know how to attract a mate," he commented, as they passed by a particularly brightly-dressed man in a peacock-feather robe.
"That's not how it works for… well, I guess it kind of is," Ike allowed. It wasn't like nice clothes would get you a girlfriend, absent of anything else, but a good sense of style and displaying one's wealth through brightly colored clothes both worked as strategies to find a pair. He'd seen it work in the slums, and it clearly worked here, as the peacock man sauntered past with a woman on either arm. He was pretty sure the guy wasn't going to 'mate' with the girls in the way Mag imagined, settling down, building a nest, and raising children with them… but he was going to mate with them in a certain sense, so he wasn't wrong either.
"You see anyone hanging out in dark alleys yet?" he asked Wisp, glancing over his shoulder at her.
"Nope. I'm lookin', though. What was that guy's deal? This is a city that cooperates with beasts, so why was he acting like beasts are illegal?"
"It does?" Ike asked.
Wisp started to nod, then paused. "Did the last time I was here, few hundred years back, before I got dumped in the Abyss and shit. Back then, I was just an innocent baby who knew nothing of the world, so I made an itsy-bitsy mistake and got kicked out, but they should've forgotten me by now."
Ike gave her a look. "Was that itsy-bitsy mistake eating someone?"
Wisp dropped her jaw. "No way! How'd you guess?"
"Let's just call it a hunch," Ike deadpanned, sighing aloud. At the very least, Wisp was higher-Rank and taller than she'd been back then. Hopefully it was enough to keep them all from getting run out of the city when the city guard figured out she had a rap sheet.
"That Som guy sure was uppity, though, wasn't he? What was his deal, do you think? I mean, a two-Rank gap, I'd be shitting myself, not calling names," Wisp pointed out.
Ike shook his head. "Maybe he has a lot of faith in this backer of his. I don't know."
"His faith better not be misplaced, because boyo's playing with fire," she muttered, then licked her lips.
"Don't eat Som."
"But he's going to attack us. It's self-defense."
"It isn't self defense to eat people. And I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to premeditate self-defense, either."
Wisp huffed. "You humans with your complicated human rules. How am I supposed to defend myself, if I don't premeditate my self-defense? Only my attacker's allowed to think about it and strategize, but not me? That's ridiculous. Ludicrous. We should be allowed to plan our self-defense. If we set up an ambush because we know someone's going to attack us, it's their fault for walking into it."
Ike pointed at her. "That's spider logic if I've ever heard it."
"Ahah, you can finally recognize my superior spider logic, hmm? Yes, yes, it's good you've finally learned. So, have you awakened to the beauty of webs and the fine art of premeditated self-defense?"
Ike chuckled. "Let's just keep our eyes open. In the meantime, though, why don't we check out the shops?" It had been a long time since he'd been in civilization. Might as well take full advantage of it. He didn't really know what he'd want to buy, but he hadn't been to a whole lot of shops, either. Maybe they had interesting gear or flying objects cooler and faster than the basic brooms they'd stolen.
"Ooh, that one sells meat!" Wisp said, pointing.
"Wisp, that's a monster-parts shop. They're selling the bits for potions or gear-making."
"Yeah, or eating. Let's go!"