All The Skills - Book 4 Chapter 3: Biggest City In The West

With only some lingering apprehension for Brixaby, Arthur headed into the city.

Just past the wall, he stepped into a busy, crowded, twisting street filled with a multitude of shops — all in different, often clashing colors. Most were strung with banners in eye-popping colors, as if every single one was trying to outshout the other for attention. In addition, some had buskers who would regularly yell at passersby. They in turn had to compete with street performers who used both native skills and card powers to interest the crowd.

It was all overwhelming, like the thickest part of a festival at the busiest, most hectic part of the day. But, as Arthur strode along, his ears ringing with the sounds of all of it and his eyes dazzled by the lights of a performer who had just set off some sort of silent fireworks charm, he had the feeling that this was a normal occurrence.

It was so different from the forest that lay just outside the walls.

And Arthur realized, with a feeling he couldn’t quite put a finger on — apprehension? Amusement? Pity? He wasn’t sure — that these people were celebrating and yelling and buying and eating less than fifty feet away from where a mega-scourge had killed several oxen and threatened the lives of guards.

They had been separated only by a wall with, by the looks of it, some sort of sound enchantment. Arthur glanced up to see if he could spot any of the guards patrolling the wall from the other side, and found he couldn’t.

Sound and sight enchantments, then.

The people here hadn’t known there was any danger at all.

And if that mega-scourgeling had broken through, they wouldn’t have been prepared.

It reminded him uncomfortably of Mesa Free Hive. Only they’d been protected by living in desolate wastelands. These people were protected by… what? Ignorance?

He shook his head, and then had to forcefully wave off a vendor who, for some reason, aggressively wanted to sell him wooden beaded jewelry. The woman followed him for a few steps, coming as close as to try to drop a necklace over his head. Arthur ducked and walked away. She yelled at him in another language he couldn’t understand.

Increasing his pace, he felt the road slope upward, which likely aided in creating the height of the buildings. He started to wonder if this place had actually been built on a minor eruption cone.

Dragon hives were built from the cones of ancient eruptions — back when the world was more dangerous, and the cones grew so high that some of them touched the lowest clouds.

But, if this was on top of an eruption cone, shouldn’t the scourgelings be coming out of the top, and not from the forest?

Stranger and stranger.

The frantic atmosphere lessened a bit as he went up the hill. The crowd grew thinner, and it gave Arthur room to breathe. There were still plenty of vendors, but they weren’t nearly as aggressive.

Now he took a few moments to actually take in what the shops were selling… And he found a little bit of everything. Some had clothing, some bits and bobs, others household goods… He even saw one or two cards for sale, securely locked behind enchanted glass, and runes that probably fed into security card anchors.

He paused anyway to get a look at them. Both were Commons.

Perfect Apple Honey Butter Every Time

Skill

Common

The wielder of this card will be granted the supernatural ability to create apple honey butter. Using mana, the wielder will be able to create apple honey butter with unusual ingredients.

The Strength of One and a Half Men

Common

Body Enhancement

The wielder of this card will be granted a temporary, once in a 24-hour period, boon of strength. The wielder’s strength attribute will be increased by 1.5x for the duration of 20 minutes without any bodily damage or exhaustion afterwards.

They were both minor cards, but a little unusual in that they didn’t have major drawbacks. That often was a problem with Common cards. They either had some double-edged sword drawback, giant mana consumption, or an extraordinarily long cooldown.

Arthur briefly wondered how much these cards were, but then glanced at the amount written beside the cards, and remembered, of course, he couldn’t read this language.

So… How could he read the cards?

That stumped him. He remembered when he had first looked at his Master of Skills card as a boy. He’d been so illiterate that he could barely read the description and didn’t know its function until he had placed it in his heart deck. From there, it had been stamped on his heart — his soul. He hadn’t needed to read to know what the card could do.

Later, of course, he’d learned to read and figuring out other cards hadn’t been a problem.

He’d ask Brixaby for his thoughts later, but he suspected the answer was some version of: cards are magic. Placing his first card in his heart had activated his heart deck, and so he had magical sympathy with all other cards.

And since the first card in his heart had been Legendary, he might have more magical sympathy with other cards than he average person.

It was strange, but he couldn’t linger. Arthur moved on.

The shops in this upper district had enough room from one another to put up signs. Not that Arthur could tell what they were. It was all in that script that looked so overly pretty and loopy, he was surprised anybody could read it.

There were still a few vendors here and there. He stepped over to a couple who didn’t seem busy and showed them the note that Domingo had stamped for him.

Most ignored him, but one or two glanced down at the paper, up at Arthur, then pointed him in a different direction down the street or off around the next corner.

Wherever Domingo had sent him, it was deep within the city. It seemed he had taken about fifteen turns and had completely lost his sense of direction. Then, to make things worse, he felt the ground rumble under his feet.

Scourgeling earthquake! Arthur thought, and then felt a little bit of relief because if that were the case, at least this place would make some sense.

Until he saw everyone quickly scramble to the sides of the street.

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Arthur did as well, and just in time as the rumbling was revealed to be an entire herd of those woolly oxen running down the street.

The animals weren’t pushed along by card powers — at least not that Arthur could tell. Instead, they were hurried along by men and women on horseback with big-brimmed hats, yelling and whooping as they went.

The people who had been forced to the sides of the road didn’t seem to mind. In fact, they laughed and cheered. A few daringly reached out to touch the big brown woolly oxen as they ran by.

Finally, that cleared out, people retook the road, and Arthur continued his way.

Then, abruptly, he found himself directly in front of the shop he was looking for.

He could tell because the swooping characters matched the ones that were handwritten on the note. He suspected the stamp was some version of Domingo’s signature.

Underneath the local phrasing were other lines of characters – all stranger than the next. And some that were arranged vertically.

Then, near the bottom of the list, was something that he could read: Language translation card anchors.

Though… The actual script it had been written in was a little weird. It reminded him of those ancient enchanting books that he and Brixaby had stolen. He thought whoever had written this might’ve done so with outdated information.

Walking in, Arthur was greeted by a woman who sat behind a wooden desk. She spoke in words, of course, he didn’t understand. In answer, he showed her the slip of paper.

She glanced at it and then called to the back of the shop, which was partitioned off by a wall.

A man soon bustled out. He was in his thirties with dark hair, spiked up for some reason, and equally dark eyes that held a sly expression as he beheld Arthur.

“Welcome, welcome,” he said, coming around the desk. “From the Faberge kingdom, right? It’s been a while since we’ve had a traveler from those parts.”

He spoke smoothly without the hint of an accent at all.

“So I’ve heard,” Arthur said. “Where I come from, everybody speaks the same language. I’m a little overwhelmed here.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place. For the right price, of course.” The man took a stack of papers Arthur hadn’t noticed sitting on the desk and handed it to him. He shuffled them around, and Arthur noticed that all the papers were written in different languages. Finding Arthur’s, he handed it over.

It was a basic list of services, and finally, prices he could understand.

His stomach sank. All of them were priced not in coins, but in card shards.

The list started out with temporary card anchors that were usually painted on the skin using a staining oil. Those lasted a set amount of months before wearing thin and having to be reapplied.

Arthur ignored these. He planned to be away from the kingdom for a long time, which meant he needed to plan long term.

The next most expensive was a permanent tattoo – assuming the tattoo itself wasn’t damaged – and only translated the local language which was called Texan.

No, if Arthur was going to do this, then he wanted a universal translation option.

Those, naturally, were the most expensive. There were several different versions of a card anchor tattoo:

– Audio understanding translation for 20 languages — five rare card shards.

– Speaking translation for 20 languages — five rare card shards.

– Two point anchor for audio and speaking — nine rare card shards. (1 shard savings!)

– Reading translation for 20 languages — five rare card shards.

– Written translation for 20 languages — five rare card shards.

– Two point anchor for written and speaking — nine rare card shards. (1 shard savings!)

– Four-point anchor, speaking, audio, written, and reading for 20 languages — one rare card*.

*Financing available, speak to store management.

From the sly grin on the man’s face, Arthur suspected that financing came with some strict terms. He’d heard of some people selling their services for card shards before — signing contracts that were downright predatory.

He wasn’t going that road.

Unfortunately, Brixaby quickly gobbled down any card shard unless Arthur carefully hid it away. And even then, the dragon usually managed to weasel it away from him, given enough time.

Not that he had to try hard recently: Arthur had wanted him to be as strong as possible for whatever they faced in their new kingdom. Long story short, he didn’t have a card shard to his name right now.

But he did have other options.

“Do you take trade of high-quality goods, or just cards?” Arthur asked, taping the four-point anchor option.

The man made a show of sucking his teeth and thought. “It depends on the good. And of course, I’ll have to get it appraised, friend.”

“Well, between you and me, you may want to keep what I have… between us.” Arthur made a show of looking around. “I hate to part with it, but I have no means of selling it anywhere else without an understanding of the language.”

The man’s eyebrows raised. “You’ve piqued my interest. Come with me, but don’t try anything funny, my saferoom is enchanted with more security than you believe. If you try anything funny, you will be dead twenty ways before you even realize it.”

“No tricks,” Arthur said. “I deal in good faith.” This was a complete lie, but he wasn’t looking to scam anyone today.

Well, at least not this guy.

Though he did wonder what those security runes looked like.

The man, who Arthur noticed still had not introduced himself, led him to the back, then locked the door behind them before turning around to look at Arthur, one eyebrow raised. “I suppose you’ve got a card for me to look at? Something you stole?”

“Better than a card,” Arthur said.

And, from his Personal Space, he pulled out one of the enchanting books he and Brixaby had stolen from the Free Mesa Hive’s council.

… One of the primers.

He handed it over, and the man stared at the title for so long that Arthur would have wondered if he had trouble reading it, except for the fact his expression was of pure disbelief. Then he started paging through quickly.

The book, enchanting secrets, were kept strictly that: secret. Anybody could tell this was an old book, but it was a primer, a way to get a student started. Perfect for beginners.

Arthur wasn’t a complete fool. He and Brixaby had already read through this book. And, using Arthur’s eidetic memory and mental bookshelf, the information was there forever.

The man looked up. He’d schooled his expression rather quickly, but Arthur had still caught the gleam in his eyes. He knew it was worth a lot. And, more importantly, so did Arthur. “What do you want for this?”

“That is the equivalent of a Rare enchanting card,” Arthur said, “or even better.”

“It’s old as dirt, kid. The techniques are outdated – who even knows if anyone practices like this before?” he said, proving he knew something about enchanting.

“Doesn’t matter,” Arthur replied. “It’s enough to get started with, and it’s not under lock and key with the Enchanter’s Guild.”

The man looked at him closely.

“It’s in Faberge Kingdom script. Not many people read that.”

“You do, which makes you only one who can translate it for others to buy,” Arthur said. “But if you don’t want it —” He reached out as if to take the book back.

The man drew away, book still in hand. “Don’t be hasty now!” And Arthur knew that he had him.

They went back and forth, Arthur knew these goods were good and he pressed for every advantage. And even though he knew he could use the subtle mind card that Valentina had given him… he held himself back. So far his Haggling skill was up to the challenge.

The only real hiccup came when the man looked at him, with an expression that Arthur wasn’t sure liked.

“Are you running from the Faberge Kingdom because you stole this beauty?”

“My reasons for being here are my own.”

“The Reshuffling, aye. I’m not judging, I’m only saying that there’s work for people with sly hands.”

“I’m not a thief,” Arthur said, a bit harshly.

The man grinned. “I suppose you bought this fair and square, with receipts and all.”

Arthur ignored that, and thankfully, the man moved on. He did agree, reluctantly, that it was worth the equivalent of a Rare card.

“It’s better than a Rare card,” Arthur said.

The man sucked his teeth again. “You want shards on top of this?”

“No,” Arthur said. “I don’t even want an anchor.”

The stopped the man cold. “Why not? My work is solid – I have testimonials.”

It was a reverse of their previous positions. Now he was trying to sell Arthur, and the way he kept one hand flat on the top of the book said he did know the true value.

“I’d need two tattoos and one wouldn’t work.”

“I assure you they would—”

“All I need is lessons,” Arthur said quickly. “And a ten second use of your card.”

“My card?” he recoiled, one hand flicking up as if to cover his heart before he caught himself. “Why?”

“Have you ever tried to tattoo a dragon?” Arthur asked with a grin.