Citizen Tales 1 – Visiting (Patreon)

A brunette woman walked with long strides back the way she had originally come. In reality, she wanted to go west. However, her feet had instinctively carried her east and now it would have been way too awkward to turn around. Nothing worse than walking past someone who had asked one to leave.

Instead, she grabbed her smartphone and typed out a simple sentence.

Karen: So, I just met the President.

She was halfway through writing a follow-up to that when the chat lit up with notifications that people were typing a response. A veritable flood of them came in.

Jay: Shut up, no you didn’t!

Hevera: Really? Where? How?

Kim: Did you get an autograph?

Karen smiled slightly at the excitement of her friends and almost ran into someone because of it. She took her eyes off the screen for long enough to orient herself. Everything around her was so fantastic and unusual. An obelisk of grey stone and green energy was right next to her, on these crossroads. A big sign said ‘Transmutation Forge’. It was the lowest among the several road signs attached to an outstandingly mundane looking metal post.

To her right, down a pretty busy street segment, was a massive structure that reminded of a Victorian castle crossed with a cloister. A clock tower stood above it all, reminding her that it was relatively early in the day. It was the Brewery and, over the next three days, she would definitely end up there.

Turning left, she saw the Paper Mill. It was such an odd structure, plucked right out of a video game, consisting of a bunch of wind and water mills that churned steadily in the magically induced winds of the Guild Hall. As a small-town Abyssal, she wasn’t really used to wind in her Illusion Barriers.

There were many other things to look at, the Mana Storage and Factories whose jade green roofs rose above the dense, decorative forest. The nearby small park with its red trees. The canals, rivers, and ponds distributed everywhere. It was truly difficult to take a pick on what was the most interesting around here, and she hadn’t even ventured past the main road yet.

After finding a spot to stand where no one would be bothered by her, Karen checked her phone again.

Jay: Well? We’re waiting?!

Karen: This is just what you get for staying in the hotel.

Jay: Ha-ha, I am roasted… now give the deeds, girl.

Karen: Not much to tell honestly. He seemed to be in a sad mood, I asked if he wanted to talk about it, then some girl with white-blue hair came along and told me to leave. Probably one of his women, she was adorable.

Kim: …You met the President being sad and your first reaction was to ask if he wanted to talk about it?

Karen: What should I have done? Walk by?

Kim: …Yeah, I actually have no idea what the proper reaction would have been.

Hevera: White-blue hair? Like, blue from the shoulders down?

Karen: Yes

Hevera: You know you just ran into the goddess of genocide, right?

Karen almost dropped her phone in surprise. As a matter of fact, she did drop her phone, but caught it before it could fall all the way to the ground. Her mind returned to that short, nervous thing of a woman and tried to combine the visual with what she knew, and imagined, appropriate for a being called ‘goddess of genocide’.

Karen: You’re joking, right?

Hevera: Was this her?

Attached was an image not just of the woman that had sent her away but also of that same woman covered in bone armour, of sorts. The second picture was blurry and Karen wondered when exactly it had been shot. During the Hudson Brawl, perhaps? Of all the women of the President, the goddess of genocide was one that saw combat the least, as far as she and her friends knew.

Karen: Gaia, wow, that’s scary

Jay: Well, there’s like twenty super-beings like that running around the Guild Hall, right?

Hevera: Big difference between the First Lady and the goddess of genocide

Hevera: Rave is so nice.

Karen: Can you not rub into our face again that you worked with her before?

Hevera: I will do what I want :P

Kim: What are the chances that you can go back to the President and get like four autographs?

Karen: Zero. First off, I am not going back anywhere after I was told to leave by the embodiment of genocide.

Karen: Second off, John really didn’t look like he was having a good time. Felt like he was about to cry.

Karen: Was weirdly nice to see that he’s human too.

Jay: You just know that guy is as sensitive as he is hot.

Jay: Speaking of which, how hot was he in person?

Karen: Sigh… really hot… why is that what you think about all the time?

Jay: Hey, you don’t know, I may have a shot at it!

Hevera: You can most certainly try.

Karen put the phone back into her pocket, as the conversation turned to how they could each try and score a date with the President. As four single ladies on vacation in the capital of the Federation, they were all hoping to meet someone interesting – or at least get to taste every kind of wine they brewed with magic around here.

Smiling, Karen looked over her shoulder, where she had met the President, and then resumed her walk around the Guild Hall. She knew interest in him was the kind of stupid fantasy normal people had when thinking about dating celebrities. ‘Not like I need a relationship with the guy for him to turn my life around,’ she thought.

Before Fusion, she, her friends, and their respective families all had been part of a Chasm community. That was to say: they had taken advantage of Gaia’s protection of the mundane to protect themselves from the violent parts of the Abyss, effectively living on the borders between. They worked as assistants to a local Apothecary outpost, which gave them moderate protection during the day. At all other times, they only occupied small or heavily protected Illusion Barriers. They rented mundane properties, worked mundane hours, and magic was just something they had been born with and used for convenience. It was the world they had been born into, so they lived in it. That was all there was to it.

Chasm was a term that had come to describe that particular lifestyle eventually.

Karen had pretty much resigned herself to spending her entire life in the coastal city. Travel had been dangerous. The Apothecaries kept a principled protection over their assistants, but if she went on a vacation somewhere and got caught by a Trap Barrier, then that was a short-trip into a Mana Factory. Moving to Europe or the Little Maryland had often crossed her mind, but she liked her life where she was. Plus, the airport was one of the easiest places to get kidnapped. Either one left as a massive caravan or not at all.

Then, Fusion had expanded into her area. First there were rumours of a blonde, brown-skinned woman wrecking any of the known crime lords in the area. Karen had caught a glimpse of her one time, when she had come into the hospital to have a quick chat with the local Apothecaries. From what she heard, that woman had wolf ears now?

In any case, John Newman had a meeting with all the crime lords in the area, and a little time later, she found herself an inhabitant of the state now known as the South Meltpot. The changes from there had been rapid. There was a general sense of ease in the air, as she travelled around. Fusion’s track record of bringing prosperity had already been proven by that point. Everyone was happy to exchange the brutal crime lords and the uneasy peace brought by tributes and limited resistance for law and order. The worst most people could say about John Newman was that he was a massive pervert.

The taxes were low, the laws clear, the military presence transitional, and the imposed government system largely autonomous. Now, Karen could travel without worry.

She had always heard the Abyss was an impressive place and seen her fair share of photos from other places. This was the first time she actually witnessed what magical engineering could do beyond mundane structures. Sure, the magical hospital she had worked on had its fair assortment of odd and unusual instruments, but that was entirely removed from the super-massive star fort that one could see from practically anywhere in the Guild Hall.

Even from a distance, it was mind-bogglingly gargantuan. The fort itself must have been a hundred or two hundred metres across and a dozen metres high. Then there was the Palace and the Statue of Liberty stacked on top of that. How high did the construct reach in total? Three hundred metres? How many floors did the Palace have? By her estimations, it was about a third of a skyscraper, so something like 20?

It was just interesting to think about these things.

Karen looked with wonder, even as she continued to retrace her steps. The Buildings were impressive, but so was the landscape. Magic was present in basically every aspect around her. The grass bristled with eternal green, an occasional red or deep purple sheen to patches of it. Crystal clear water streamed idly through the smooth-edged canal that surrounded the Commercial District.

Across the bridge was where the true bustling activity was at. Shops were spilling out into the streets, extensions of them getting put up so the stream of visitors that everyone was expecting could be served on the fly. Entirely new outdoor stores, primarily food places, were lining up around the outer walkway of the district.

Unable to help herself, Karen wandered over to a halfway finished ice cream store. Something sweet and cold sounded just right for the weather. The brunette joined a row of people waiting. There was a woman serving customers with what of her stock she could already reach. They were one day removed from even the unofficial start date, but where there were customers, there was a will to make money.

Karen did not care for the hustle; she just wanted her ice cream.

The row steadily moved. One could say it grew shorter, but in reality people kept joining behind her. Karen had just about made it to the front when she, and everyone else, were suddenly forced to take half a step to the right by a gust of wind.

Karen heard babbling, while still regaining her balance. “You there! The greatest and greatest of all concubines demands ice cream! Pretty please? Can I have some?” The culprit of the gust, and of cutting in line, was an even shorter, arguably more adorable woman than the one Karen had met earlier. She had incredible long, green hair and her sleek legs were on near complete display. Only rings with intense lighting iconography hid some of her ankles.

‘I would kill for legs like that,’ Karen, who was quite a looker herself, thought.

“Here you go, Miss Sylph.”

“Aww, you’re so sweet, but Miss Sylph is the name of my older sister, I think, maybe. Anyway, peppermint and chocolate! Audible gasp, I have no money!”

“That will not be!”

“Scarlett will scold me if I don’t pay people working for her!”

“I… do not work for Scarlett…”

“That’s what she wants you to think!” Sylph nodded three times to herself. “You say you don’t work for her and then she buys the entirety of the waffle business just to force you to put ice cream in cardboard cups! A travesty! Waffle supremacy! Soup would be so much better if you could eat the bowl afterwards! Getting money, be right back.”

Karen watched, in awe, as an aura of lightning enveloped the green-haired, short woman. A streak of blue and green, she dashed away. In a matter of seconds, she was a tiny dot in the distance. Karen, and a few others in line, stared after her. The majority just moved on. “Miss, can I take your order?” she was snapped out of her thoughts by the question.

“Uhm, yes… uh… peppermint chocolate, please?” the combination was on her mind now, so it just made it out of her mouth without thinking about it. Halfway through preparing the waffle, the woman inside the halfway-build store looked up and visibly braced herself. Karen only managed to turn her head, then she was almost toppled over by another gust.

“Aaaaand, I’m back. The Guild Bank is soooo complicate- wait a moment, I didn’t even need to fly there! Ah, whatever, gimme!” Sylph slammed a Token on the counter. “One ice cream please!”

“Here you go,” the woman behind the counter said with a smile and handed it over. “Please don’t cut in line next time.”

“Oh… OH NO! Gnome will be annoyed with me… Sylph away!”

“…Does that happen often around here?” Karen asked, while watching her own ice cream being prepared.

“There’s always some air elemental with a sweet tooth flying around,” the clerk responded with a little giggle. “Sylph herself is not a particular rarity either. We’re not allowed to sell too much to her though, apparently she gets hallucinations when she has too much sugar.”

“Is she… important or something?”

The woman furrowed her eyebrows. “Are you a foreigner?” she asked.

“South Meltpot… not sure if people have come up for a name for people from there yet.”

“Ah, I suppose Sylph isn’t in a lot of photos with the President?” The ice cream seller shrugged, evidently confused by Karen not knowing who that had been. “That was John Newman’s personal air elemental. Rumour has it she could conjure a lightning storm that could evaporate the entire district.”

“Seriously?” Karen took the waffle and stepped aside so the next customer took over. She wanted to continue the conversation, but the woman in the store got too busy serving the next customer. After ten seconds of waiting, Karen walked away. ‘This place is crazy,’ she thought, opting to experience more of this with her friends later that day. For now, she would head back to the Hudson Barrier. The weather there would be less nice, but it was an interesting place to explore in its own right. From what they had noticed so far, it was a bustling city and a ghost town, all depending on where one went. ‘We probably could have saved ourselves the hotel and just squatted somewhere.’

Karen went on to have a pretty eventful stay.