Chapter 136: 134 – The Markets

Still possessed of a slightly unbelieving countenance, the alchemist nevertheless decided to trust her honesty and walked off, stating as he left, “Swear to the Sage, this better not be a prank.”

After Makhus walked off Zef grabbed Zel’s attention, asking, “Are you sure you’re alright? No serious injuries? No internal damage from that ridiculous Thundercannon?”

Looking herself over, Zelsys honed in on all the aches that she had tuned out until now. She then shrugged and nodded, “Scrapes, a few bruises, muscle pain, nothing broken or dislocated I don’t think… Not now, either way. I think my shoulder popped out and back in once or twice.”

“You think?” Zef questioned with exaggerated concern. “I suppose it’s only reasonable, I don’t recall seeing you take a direct hit. In fact, I’d say you were downright uncharacteristically cautious.”

---

On their way through the market, cutting through the crowd and ignoring stand after stand as they went, they noticed the band getting off the stage. Something about a special guest.

One man walked out, his presence somehow so intense as to drown out other people around him. Indeed, both Zel and Zef stopped for a short while just to spectate. He was obviously Ankhezian, plainly displaying his great big ears with stretched-out earlobes, accompanied by long snow-white hair. He sat down on a one-legged wooden stool and began playing a three-string lute.

With inhuman deftness he strummed a relatively simple melody, merely implying his true skill with occasional, seemingly impossible flourishes. And his singing, it was much the same - simple lyrics in simple tones, yet every once in a while, there were two, or even three voices, all originating from his mouth.

“Stone-breaker, ground-shaker, earth-waker, dredging up the bones of history…” 

“Whence destruction he shall wreak, forbidden beasts and kingdoms lost to time shall be unearthed!”

“So it has been before, so shall it be again, naught that which is buried ever so remains…”

Zel couldn’t know whether such myths were commonplace, but she also couldn’t help noticing the apparent connection between the old man’s lyrics and the situation with Ubul. She could’ve sworn he looked at her with sly eyes, but then again, his gaze was drifting all over the crowd, and it retained the same slyness all throughout. Perhaps she was just being overly suspicious, but even as the two of them turned from the stage to continue their browsing of the market, the memory of that man inexorably anchored itself in her mind.

Soon enough, they came upon a sizable tent attached to the back of a grounded Ankhezian hovercraft, one that appeared to be nearly pristine from the outside. It would’ve been a strange sight under any other circumstances. The tent had a large wooden sign outright marketing the place as an arcane pawnbroker - the big wooden sign even listed a baseline service fee for appraising a trinket without buying it.

Entering into the tent had her eyes briefly glaze over at the surfeit of varied artefacts laid out on shelves all throughout the rush-floored, wooden-framed tent, though she quickly directed her attention to the counter. It was an actual L-shaped counter, just with a suspicious number of seams and a weird-looking metal section at one end covered by runes. The hovercraft connected to the tent at a point behind the counter, which was sectioned off by a curtain that hung from the tent’s frame.

Behind it sat a diminutive, hook-nosed, bearded older man in a simple white robe, several golden earrings hanging from his left ear and a great big turban of purple fabric covering his head. A thick golden trail ran from his right eyebrow to somewhere beneath the turban, the slight canyon of scarred skin around it suggesting that it was a chop wound in his skull that had been filled in. On the turban sat three bladed rings, his hair was dark brown, and his eyes the colour of amethyst.

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He regarded the two of them, smiling through his luscious facial hair and beckoning them to, “Come, come! Take a look around. I’m certain there is something in my humble establishment to interest the founders of a new heroic family. If you’re looking to sell of course, I will cut you a fair deal… Within reason. I need to make a profit somehow.”

At the raising of Zel’s eyebrow, he added, “It is only good practice to do research on people of note in one’s next destination of business… Especially those the Matriarch herself takes an interest in.”

Zef made no qualms about taking up the offer, trusting Zel to do exactly what she did - approach the counter, and lay her cleaver on it.

“I have questions, and the sign out in front suggests you have answers. Do you?”

The Pawnbroker fixed his eyes upon the cleaver, looking it up and down for a few seconds before he looked up at Zel and nodded, “And that question would be…?”

---

Zel spent the next several minutes explaining details whilst Zef walked amongst the shelves browsing, marveling at the wide variety of artefacts, niche and strange though their functions were. All of them had attached labels stating the price and describing their function, with some being small paper tags and others being booklets… Or entire books, in a few cases.

Most looked either very old, or uninteresting - portable Aqua converters, a little tube that would focus an internal lightgem into a powerful beam, an Ignis-powered lighter, a livingmetal shaving razor. Such were the spoils of modern technology that one found at a pawnbroker’s. Still, Zef decided to buy the lighter, the razor, and the light - altogether they totaled up to a few dozen gelt.

Others were more specific, more interesting, but also orders of magnitude more expensive - enchanted jewelry made up a large portion, alongside old or foreign models of attribute readers. Some barely had the attribute-reading feature and dedicated much of their surface to buttons, whilst others approached more modern models or even Zel’s in features - out of curiosity, Zef looked for one most like Zel’s tablet.

She found two.

Both had prices listed in the order of thousands.

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