Chapter 21
The evening air carried the smell of fish guts and tannery runoff. Not the charming part of Vellhorn.
Luna led the way with effortless confidence. Every city had the same anatomy underneath the skin, and she couldn’t wait to dissect this one. “Stay close,” she said. “Don’t talk unless I tell you to. And stop walking like that.”
“Like what?”
She smirked.
“Like what?” he repeated.
No answer. He didn’t know what that meant, but he tried to slouch a bit. It felt wrong.
They left the main streets behind within minutes. The cobblestone gave way to packed dirt, then to something that squelched. The buildings narrowed, leaning toward each other like drunks propping one another up. Laundry lines crossed overhead, blocking what remained of the moonlight.
Luna slowed at a corner. She studied the wall of a building for a moment, running her fingers along the stone near a drainage pipe. Alsen saw nothing remarkable, but she apparently did, because she changed direction.
“What did you see?” he asked.
“A fishhook-style mark.”
He looked back. If there was a mark, it was invisible to him.
They turned down an alley that smelled worse than the street. A man sat against the wall, asleep or dead, Alsen couldn’t tell. Luna stepped over his legs without breaking stride.
The alley opened into a small courtyard lit by a single lantern. Three doorways, two boarded shut, one with a faded sign that might once have depicted a cup. Luna headed for the cup.
Inside, the tavern was about what Alsen expected. Dark, cramped, populated by people who looked like they either stabbed others for a living or got stabbed for a living. The air tasted of pipe smoke and stale beer and something sharper underneath, something herbal and acrid.
Luna walked to the bar. The bartender, a woman with a shaved head and arms covered in scars, looked her over, then at Alsen. Her expression soured.
“He’s with me,” Luna said. “He’s the sponsor.”
The bartender’s expression unsoured slightly.
Luna ordered two beers. When they arrived, she didn’t touch hers.
She leaned on the bar and spoke to the bartender in a low, conversational tone that Alsen couldn’t quite make out.
The bartender responded with single words and head movements.
Luna nodded, left a coin on the bar, and walked to a table in the corner.
Alsen followed, carrying both drinks.
“What was that?” he whispered.
Luna shrugged, scanning the room with a lazy, disinterested gaze that Alsen recognized as anything but. “That’s complicated. Imagine me asking you about what that page meant while looking over your shoulder when you’re trying to decipher a book.”
“So… that’s what I’m doing right now? Being a hindrance? Annoying you?”
She flashed a faint smirk and headed across the room, aiming for the tavern’s back exit.
Alsen left the beers at a nearby table, where local drunks instantly snatched them. He rushed after her. Yes, he was the hindrance, he realized.
They left the tavern. Luna navigated by marks Alsen couldn’t see, scratched into corners and doorframes, and the underside of window ledges.
Each one pointed them deeper. The streets grew narrower, the buildings older, the people fewer.
At one point, they descended a set of stairs that led beneath a bridge, then followed a tunnel that ran alongside what sounded like the city’s sewer.
The place stank so strongly that Alsen pondered inventing a smell-only shield. Luna walked too fast for that though. She ducked under a low archway, passing through. He followed.
They emerged from the tunnel into a wider passage, this one lit by oil lamps hung from iron hooks. A few people moved through the corridor, none of them making eye contact with anyone else. Luna fell into the same pattern, gaze forward, stride purposeful, and Alsen did his best to imitate her.
At a junction, two men sat on crates, playing dice. One of them looked up as Luna and Alsen approached. His eyes lingered on Alsen for a beat too long. “Your friend smells like money.”
Luna didn’t slow down. “And blood of fools that tried to take it.”
The man snorted, but didn’t pursue it.
Luna stopped before a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands. She knocked three times, paused, knocked twice more. Alsen noted the pattern.
The door opened a crack, revealing half a face and one suspicious eye. Luna said something too quiet for Alsen to catch. The eye moved to him, then back to her. The door opened wider.
They stepped into what could be, very generously, described as a shop.
The space was a converted cellar, its walls lined with shelves that held jars, pouches, dried plants, bottles of various liquids, and several items Alsen couldn’t identify.
A table in the center served as a counter, behind which sat a thin woman with silver-streaked hair and reading spectacles perched on her nose.
She was grinding something in a mortar, and she didn’t look up when they entered.
“Customers,” the doorman announced.
“I can see that.” The woman set aside the mortar. She studied Luna, then Alsen, then Luna again. “You’re not from here.”
“Passing through,” Luna said. “Spreading blessings of peace along the way.”
She paused for a second. “What are you after?”
“Anything that alters perception. Psychoactive herbs, mushrooms, dream-inducers, anything that gets you to see things that aren’t there. Or things that are, that you normally can’t see.”
The woman’s eyebrows rose above her spectacles. “That’s half of the shop.”
Luna motioned at Alsen. “Does he look like he can’t afford it?”
With a grunt, the woman got up. “You’ll want to be careful with some of this,” she said, already moving along the shelves, selecting jars and pouches with practiced hands.
“Spiralroot will open your mind, but too much will convince you the floor is trying to eat you. Moon’s Breath is gentler, mostly visual distortions, feelings of connection with the surrounding elements. Good for meditation.”
She placed a small jar on the table. Moved to another shelf.
“Ashbloom is the heavy stuff. You’ll lose time with this one.
Hours will feel like minutes, or the other way round.
Mages used to use it, or so I’ve heard. Before mages stopped existing in any meaningful number.
” She set down a wrapped bundle of dried flowers, dark gray with orange veins running through the petals.
“Do you have anything similar to yellow and purple mushrooms?” Luna asked. “Where I come from, we had mushrooms that were popular with dream mages. They knocked you out for half a day.”
The woman paused. She looked at Luna with a sharpness that hadn’t been there before.
“You’re from far away indeed.” She reached for a high shelf, retrieving a small wooden box.
Inside, nestled in dried moss, sat three mushrooms. They were smaller than Alsen expected, pale blue with dark spots.
“Voidcaps. Different from what you’re describing, but with a similar effect.
Dissolution of the boundary between conscious and unconscious perception.
They’re as expensive as they are illegal. ”
Luna snorted. “As if this city had any guard. Add something fun.”
The woman rolled her eyes. She added another large pouch. “This will entertain you, young miss.”
“I’ll be back if it doesn’t,” Luna said without hesitation. “Toss in that, that, that, and that.” She motioned over the shop.
The shopkeeper picked up and laid out the chosen items. A pouch of dried leaves she called Fool’s Green, which apparently made everything funny for several hours.
A small vial of something liquid and faintly luminescent that she called Starwater, which she described as the mildest option.
And a wrapped portion of what looked like tree bark, which she simply called Bark, without further explanation.
Luna nodded. “How much?”
“Forty gold, all of it.”
Luna reached into Alsen’s pocket, pulled out a pouch, and scattered a pile of gold on the counter.
Alsen wasn’t even mad. That was impressive. He kept gold in pouches of fifty gold each, so he didn’t need to count the coins.
“Keep the change,” Luna said.
The old woman’s eyes lit up. She started collecting the coins. “May your generosity one day be returned to you.”
Luna quickly packed all the stuff into her backpack. The old woman didn’t get halfway before Luna finished. She spun for the exit.
Luna opened the door, seeing half a dozen men standing on the street’s other side. They weren’t even trying to hide their weapons.
“Come back again,” the shopkeeper shouted.
The men slackened their stances, one of them rolling his eyes.
Luna and Alsen walked out, the men scattering.
They left the underground the way they came. Luna navigated the return route without hesitation.
They returned to the inn within the hour. The common room had thinned out, only a few drunks remaining. They headed upstairs.
Their room had two beds, a table, a washbasin, and a window that Luna would normally climb out of to sleep on the roof. Tonight, she pulled the chair to the table instead and started laying out their purchases.
Alsen sat on his bed. “So, how do we do this?”
“We start with the mild stuff and work up. I’ll try everything with you.” She uncorked the Starwater. Its faint glow illuminated her fingers. Then she reached into her backpack and pulled out a small, stoppered bottle he hadn’t seen her buy. She added a few drops from it into both cups.
“What’s that?”
“An enhancer. It’ll make it absorb faster.” She poured the Starwater into the cups and handed one to Alsen. “Cheers.”
They drank.
The Starwater tasted mild. A warmth spread from his stomach, and after about ten minutes, the edges of everything softened.
The lantern light gained a pleasant halo.
The walls looked slightly further away than they were.
He tried reaching for the Pellicle, for the membrane of energy between the physical and the spiritual, but felt nothing beyond a vague sense of expanded awareness.