Heading to the nearest monument, Tera leads Sal east through the district of Naos to a small park set between two gates out of the city. Just before entering the park, to the south, is the monument known as the Founder's Flame- a huge bronze bowl on a stout stone pedestal from which a pillar of ceaseless fire rises some twenty feet in bright hues of yellow, orange, and red.
There is an undeniable beauty to the Founder's Flame but it pales in comparison to the next monument... already visible from the brazier, two massive statues flank the far end of the park. Each standing over two-hundred feet tall, the figures known collectively as The Guardians represent two young men with flaming staves held high to form a giant arch.
After giving both of those sites the attention they're due, Tera leads her friend west along the picturesque road that serves as the border between Naos and the Capital District until they arrive at huge, open square surrounding another pair of statues. These ones, which tower over humans but do not come close to the scale of the guardians, depict some epic battle that neither girl can place. In the square Tera catches a glimpse of a familiar seeming face, but the boy scurries into a crowd before she can respond.
Pressing on a few blocks further, into the Capital District, the girls arrive at the Cenotaph, a ten story tall tower (one of the tallest structures in Magnimar) of black stones which apparently doubles as some manner of crypt for the wealthy and influential.
Despite the grandeur of the monuments, and the knowledge that there are several more scattered about the city, as dusk approaches the girls return to the market where they began and seek out the alehall. It doesn't take long to locate the Bulette's Burrow, a low broad stone building jutting off the back of a larger brewery and warehouse. The decor inside is stereotypically dwarven with sturdy, well-made stone and metal furnishings, hides froms bears and rams for carpets and wall-hangings, and axes and hammers as decorative touches. The (all-dwarven) patrons each cast a suspicious gaze on the two human women when they enter; however, when they explain that Torvin said to order his usual the stern exteriors crack in wave of laughter and cheers. "The usual!" several of the dwarves call out in response, hoisting half-gallon sized mugs of ale aloft as they do.
Several minutes later the barkeep returns with a tray carrying a roulade of porkbelly stuffed with diced beef liver and onions that must be four inches thick and a foot long. The meatlog is accompanied by half a dozen boiled potatoes and a pile of mushrooms fried in butter. To the girls' dismay, a second tray of all the same food is quickly brought out and one is set before each of them while two of the giant mugs are fetched. A new bout of laughter erupts and an even more widespread cheer goes up, "The USUAL!"
"Yeah, it does," Tera says with a chuckle, "words are just words, easily forgotten or muddled, but seeing something stays with you a lot longer. You can read about Magnimar, but it's another thing entirely to see it."
Tera's eyes grow wide as saucers as she sees what must be close to six pounds of food plopped right down in front of her and Sal. They almost roll out of her head when the massive tankards are added to the weight, and Tera swears that the table is groaning in protest even over the laughter and the cheers. She looks at Sal and gives her a sheepish grin and a shrug before turning to the barkeeper and smiling.
"I see that Torvin was not kidding about the food here being able to fill us up. The plate's almost bigger that I am," she laughs. "Any rules against sharing?"
”No harm admittin’ defeat, child,” the second server, a younger female dwarf, assures Tera, ”our meals’re set far hungry dwarfish men, not a little thing like you. I don’t even finish them every time.”
"Well, I guess we better dig in before it gets cold," Tera replies before saying a quick prayer of thanks and diving into the meal.
"We'll have to ask her, or ask Torvin what it'd take to move him to Sandpoint," Tera says after washing her first few bites down with the hearty ale. "And if this is the usual, I wonder what the extraordinary tastes like," she adds with grin.
===
As predicted, it was far more than Tera could eat, though she managed to get nearly a sixth of it polished off before she was full to bursting. She barely noticed the discomfort, though. She'd downed half of the massive tankard, and the ale's effect is more telling.
"H-*hic*-ey Sssssal?! Haff I? Haff I efer tol' yoooooou I 'ate Sssshhhhhhamelessh! Sssshaaaamelessh Ssssshhhhaaaaaylissh," Tera half shouts in a singsong voice as she leans heavily on her friend, "Ish not 'cuuuuz she put her big booooobs on Zach, oooooor tha' sssshhhhhee hash 'em! No! I caaaaaan give myshelf big boobs too! Just gotsta... gotsta learn da ssssshhhhhpell! Yeah gotsta learnsh da ssssshhhhpell firsht! Then I can be any kind o' woman I wants! I could be bigger than SSSHHHAAMELESSH! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
She nearly takes down Sal as she stumbles to a stop and roars in laughter. Her face is bright and her her cheeks are a deep crimson from the drink. After a few minutes, the fit fizzles out with Tera almost on the ground and clinging to Sal like a drowning sailor to flotsam as she wheezes to catch her breath.
"Hehehe! Heh! No, ish not 'cuz o' tha'. It'sh 'cuz she's washteful! If I wash her, I'd have my own harem! I should... I should... I should go get Aldern, yeah! I should go talk to Aldern and Zache!" Her voice gets louder as she forces her legs to take more of her weight. Her smile is almost frightening as her laugh turns just a little menacing. "I should tell 'em their in mmmmmmy h-harem now! Yeah! I sssshhould do that! Should go get all the pretty boys and men and make 'em mine! Muahahahahaha!"
Her grin turns lusty as she turns to Sal and looks up at her through her batting lashes, "I'd sssshhhare with you, or get you a haaaarem too!" She reaches up and paws playfully at the neck of Sal's tunic, missing the first couple of times. "Could be fun with more."
She pulls harder on Sal's arm, trying to get to her ear.
"Could be fun with just the two of us, mmmmhmmhmheheheehehehe!"
Her hands fist, pulling at Sal's tunic as she buries her head into her shoulder and giggles like a little girl who'd just gotten kissed, but then she stops. For a long moment, she stands there, hanging onto Salomae with white knuckled hands.
"Hey Sal," she says in a much weaker voice, "I think I'm gonna be sick"
Tera winces at Sal's sudden volume, and finds herself ready to fall as she loses the support of Salomae's arm. Her stomach heaves as she stumbles and barely catches herself. She claps a hand over her mouth as she suddenly turns pale, even a little green. She manages to choke her supper back down, but it's very clear that the young mage is not feeling well.
"Nnnot ssssho loud," she begs through clenched teeth, "gonna be sick."
Desperation proves to be the mother of necessity, and Tera looks for a place to toss her cookies. Even as inebriated as she is, she knows that losing her supper in the middle of the street could be bad.
With one determined, staggering step after another, Tera slowly makes her way to a row of bushes hidden in shadow. She grimly hangs on until she's out of the line of sight of the people still on the street, then heaves out all of the ale and food that'd been roiling around in her belly.
Several minutes later, she stumbles back to where she'd last seen Sal and looks around for her friend with bleary eyes.
"S-sal? Wwwwwheeere'dya go," she asks softly, her voice trembling with a little fear.
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It takes a minute for Tera, in her condition, to place the sound welling up around her... Sal isn't much faster, but she is first to recognize the noise: a crowd of dwarves laughing!
As 'the street' comes into focus (momentarily) it is clear that it was more of an aisle... down the center of the common room... mere feet from where the two had been eating and drinking. The young female dwarf who had helped bring out the food and drink is laughing less than the others as she begins cleaning one of the potted plants by the door. "Alright ya two," the barkeep calls out as he walks up next to the small human women and helps steady them, "I gotta couple bunks in the warehouse far just such an occasion... Its upta ya whether ta use one or two..."
At his final comment, another roar of laughter erupts as he leads the two lightweights to their modest accommodations.
Tera felt her cheeks heating back up as lucidity returns for a moment. As what just happened dawns on her, she feels a chill run down her spine and she's certain that she'd have been sick again if she had anything left in her stomach.
"Two, please," she mutters, managing to keep her voice from cracking as a lump rises in her throat.
After being lead to the bunks, Tera stumbles a bit as she takes off her robe and boots, revealing the tunic and pants underneath. Without a word to Salomae, she slips into the top bunk and curls up with her back to everything.
”Up an’ at it!” a deep dwarven voice booms. In the windowless room between the tavern and the rest of the warehouse, it’s impossible to tell what time it is but the two young women’s headaches tell them it’s earlier than they want to get up.
”These beds’re far sleepin’ it off, not loungin’ all day,” the dwarf continues far too loudly, ”an’ shockin’ly, ya got a visitor...”
"Visitor," Tera asks as she holds a hand to her throbbing head. Everything after ordering the Usual was fuzzy, and her dreams had been weird to say the least, something about dwarves and making a pass at Sal.
Ugh, whatever. Drunken dreams are just that, dreams. It's not like Sal can see them.
"How do you handle the headaches," she grumbles as the pain in her skull redoubles with her standing up. She manages to push through it and freshen herself up a little, but she doesn't need a mirror to know she looks terrible, and she almost loses the contents of her stomach when she bends to pull on her boots.
”Headache cures’re here,” the dwarf answers setting down two cups more reasonably sized than those from the previous night which he apparently anticipated needing. ”Yar visitor’s waitin’ in the bar far his breakfast, an’ he already cleared yar tab, so best not leave ‘im waitin’ too long.” As the two young women rise and struggle to put themselves back together the dwarf clomps off to tend to his customer.
Tera's too out of it to bother looking before she downs the concoction. The burning causes her to go into a fit of coughing, but she manages to stop after a moment.
"Next time we go eat at a dwarven tavern, I'm asking for the me-sized drinks," she declares in a hoarse whisper as her throat complains rather loudly about the lava masquerading as a hangover cure. She casts a quick spell to clean out her cup and another to fill it with ice-cold water. She repeats the trick a few times to stop the burning and twice more just to be sure.
"Do you want some," she asks in a more normal voice after her sixth cupful of water.
The late morning light is overwhelming as the two young women reenter the Bulette’s Burrow. As their eyes slowly adjust, two figures come into view seated in the tavern: a sullen, white-bearded dwarf nursing a large mug of ale; and, a human man in his late teens or early twenties, whom Tera thinks might be the same familiar face she saw yesterday in the market but couldn’t place...
It doesn’t take long to become certain who was their visitor as the rather well-dressed human stands and exclaims, ”Tera, is it really you?!?” before fully processing the sight of her and then in a murmur, almost as if talking to himself, adds, ”gosh, are you alright; you look terrible...”
"L-liam?" Tera stares for a second as her mind pushes through the last of the alcohol daze and the mushy-headedness of the hangover.
"No, not a friend. He's a my liar of a cousin who promised me he wouldn't grow any taller and leave me to be the short one in the family," she answers Sal's question with a mock glower at Liam and a playful jab at his arm.
"Liam, this is Salomae Amsel, one of my closest friends from Sandpoint. She and I learned that you ask for elven portions when dining with dwarves last night," she jokes, laughing weakly for a moment before settling down into a chair and letting the room spin a little.
"What made you come looking for us," she asks, "Was it seeing me in the market yesterday?"
”Uh, actually, it’s Greyson,” the auburn haired boy corrects Tera sheepishly, ”Liam’s my older brother, by almost two years... I am almost as tall as him now though...”
Suddenly realizing he has been asked a question, the young man answers, kind of, I guess... The only reason I knew you were in town is because I saw you yesterday, so that was obviously a factor. But really, my main motivation was to see how you were- we heard about the goblin attacks... it looks like you weren’t hurt... is everything alright there now?”
His voice suddenly drops off considerably and he adds, ”but secondarily, I also wanted to warn you that Grandfather is pretty uneasy about the state of things in Sandpoint and has been talking about bringing you back here, finding you an easier appointment here in the city...”
Tera's eyes widen as Greyson corrects, then narrow as he explains the situation. As Sal blurts out her protest, her expression softens and she looks down at her hands as she nervously rolls a magical spark rotating through the colors of the rainbow over her fingers.
"What do my parents say," she asks, more out of some misplaced sense of duty than any real desire to hear the answer. Though she's looking at her hands, and not Sal, the other young woman can see her eyes have turned pitch black.
"I have no idea..." Tera's kinsman answers somewhat apologetically, "I overheard my father mentioning it, but I have no idea how far its gone in terms of official discussions..."
Greyson looks at his sullen cousin with some real concern and adds, "you were always kind to me, even though I was the annoying little brother when you and Liam played... I just thought I should warn you, in case you wanted to save that conversation for when the news of the goblin raids isn't quite so fresh..."
"Sorry, Grey," Tera apologized. "Family's been a bit of a sore spot lately. I'm not going to be going to the manor with you. Sandpoint is my home, and I've got friends waiting for me there."
She gives her cousin a sad smile as she reaches up and squeezes his arm. The spark on the fingers of her other hand fades into nothing. Her eyes are are no longer the black pools they'd been, but there was something still unsettling about them, something hard that didn't quite come out into the open.
"Take care of yourself Grey, and tell Liam I said hello," she says in a voice closer to normal, "I hope to see you two the next time you come to Sandpoint. I'll tell you all about what I've been up to."
"Somehow, I thought you might say that," Greyson answers with a little bit of a smile, "you might want to steer clear of your immediate family until you leave town, just in case they want to bring you back too..."
The same dwarf who was tending bar last night brings over a plate heaped with scrambled eggs, fried cubes of potato and pork belly (quite possibly leftovers from last night), and a sliced tomato that's been charred on a grill. "Feel free to take some, if you want," the young human offers as he hungrily digs in to the pile of food.
"I think I'll pass. Still feeling woozy," Tera admits with a chuckle followed by a groan.
Hungover and with bellies still full from the night before, Tera and Sal make their way back to the stables with their sack full of coins and gems. The cool fall breeze blowing in off the Gulf soothes their heads as they roll north up the Lost Coast Road, but the grinding sound of the wood and iron wheels turning endlessly through gravel and over cobblestones--which they'd barely noticed on the way down--seems nearly unbearable.
Both young women are somewhat relieved to disembark from the carriage around lunch time when is clatters to a stop near the southern gate of Sandpoint.
"Hey! Wait up! My legs are shorter than yours!"
Tera calls out as she scurries to catch up with Sal.
It’s just after lunchtime when Tera and Sal return to the Cathedral. Most of the attendants are engaged in their afternoon chores, and a familiar peacefulness fills the halls.
Marcus makes it a point to loiter near the gates durring the times carriages are expected. When he sees the travel-worn ladies clamber out, he is quick to greet them.
"Welcome back! Welcome back! What happened? What was Magnimar like? Did you see anything crazy? Did you have to fight highway men? Did you meet anyone famous? Things have been crazy here since you left! There are sooooo many books here! Did you know some people study magic?! Did you eat anything weird? I ate a whole pie by myself! Why aren't you guys talking? You don't look so good! Did you get cursed by an evil witch?
" I spent some time at Orins house! Turns out, he's really nice for a guard! His Aunt Sara is really nice too! He has a brother too, but he's a little strange! Aunt Sara makes great pies! The priest's here said I can read any book I want as long as my fingers aren't sticky! Isn't that great?! Are you sure you guys are ok?! I have some breakfast sausage left over if you are hungry?" the overexcited young lad declares. Fishing a lint-covered piece of meat out of his pocket, he nearly shoves it into the faces of the girls.
"Yup, and as for people studying magic..." Tera claps her hands together and spreads them apart to reveal a rainbow and a fancy looking "Tah-Dah!" "I could have told you that."
A weary but happy Kaede falls into step behind the others, carrying her gear from her trip. "I see that your trip was pleasant."
"It was good, even got to see a cousin of mine," Tera says. Her mood darkens somewhat, but it seems that whatever it is, it isn't enough to keep her from smiling.
"Sal and I missed you, Kaede. I think you would have loved seeing the monuments around Magnimar. Maybe next time we can even go to the Bazaar of Sails!"
Sitting in one of the trees near the gate, picking idly at an ink-stain on his fingertips, Zache looks up as the carriage approaches. Squinting into the distance to see if his hunch is correct, he beams and waves to the girls before dropping from the tree and jogging over to wait with Marcus and Kaede. "How wonderful to see such rays of starlight return to our dreary skies!" he grins. "It sounds as though your time has been far more eventful than ours - well, most of us anyway," he adds, glancing at Marcus.
"Quiet?!? This place is never Quiet! There's always something going on here! I think most of Sandpoint never sleeps! There are so many candles lit at the cathedral, you can't even tell when it's night!" Marcus beams as he stumbles through the events of the last few days. His color is back, and his exuberance bears little resemblance to the boy in captivity at Thistletop.
To anyone who will listen, he describes Sandpoint as though none of you had ever seen it.
Tera blushes at the compliment from Zache, then gently punches Sal in the arm at her self-deprecation.
"Hey, you're the one that could stand in for a goddess of the woods. Kaede and Zache will back up on this, so no questioning the poet on who's a ray of starshine around here. Especially when he's a Desnan."
And best not to mention that drunken dream from last night, she thought with a mental shiver.
Kaede faintly smiles. "I was helping the guard with properly claiming Thistletop," she says as she tries to work some knots out of her shoulders. "Sheriff Hemlock is working on trying to get a permanent garrison from Magnimar out there. I just felt that it was only proper to go and help. After all, one must prepare the canvas before you paint on it."
"To be fair, it was just grunt work. Cleaning, dealing with provisions, guard duty. The only time I had alone was when I communed with the Rose in the morning... The cave that we entered the second time was perfect for that, actually, since it faced the sunrise. Currently, there's about 10 or so guardsmen out there at a time, and the good Father and sister Amet'Ra sent Brother Hargev to properly tend to the new Sarenite shrine. "
She yawns a little. "Hard work, but it felt so good. How was Magunimar*? Were you able to sell everything?"