Royce falls over, hugging his knee with one arm and his other arm clutching his foot, the one he decided to slam into the giant stone wall. After he was done sobbing for a minute or two, he gets up and limps through the hallway.
The torches light up as he passes them; curiously, he gets closer and sees that they weren’t ignited by fire, but it was light by light scattering around a sharp gemstone of sorts, he thinks it might be some hollowed out quartz. He tries to yank the torch out, but it doesn’t bulge at all, not even a tiny bit of movement. Through his constant wriggling of the torch, he notices that even being slightly to the right of the torch turns it off. He keeps wiggling it for fun, or at least tries to wiggle it, it just doesn’t bulge, it was also too thick to even be used usually as a torch, also because it was a rectangle.
Relenting, he steps back, looking down the hallway he wanted to limp his tired self down, but he’s more worried about the fact he’s currently trapped in. He actually finds it difficult to breathe, probably from all the dust that was kicked up or ages old gasses building up in the pyramid, he doesn’t exactly see a maintenance crew around here or an AC so he has to tolerate the lung issue.
Starting to slowly walk down the hallway, he holds his palm up in front of him, taking a breath as he tries to make some light, a yellow ring sputters out of his palm due to his exhaustion. A magic circle expands to cover his palm, the light coming out a bit dim, but Royce could actually see in case the torches go out, he doesn’t quite trust them.
Right before he takes another step, he instantly crouches down, looking at the ground, using his light magic to illuminate the ground. Right where his foot ends was clearly a pressure plate, a raised stone with a yellow ring painted onto it, the paint faded and chipped. Royce looks both ways, there was an entire row of the raised stones, hesitantly reaching hand over the line of stones he sees more flatter stones, also painted with several of the yellow rings, he would’ve tripped if he hadn't checked.
Royce carefully steps over the stones, hugging the wall as best as he could as he avoids the bigger pressure plates. Puffing up his chest and ignoring the pain in his ankles and legs. Tiptoying around all the raised stones he sees as he squints his eyes to both focus and to not be blinded each time he passes a torch on the wall.
He can see a stairwell at the end of the hall, the unlit torches have a small glint as he waved his light in front of him, the gems acting like high visibility vests. Silvery in color.
While distracted by the end of the hallway, he trips; hitting a stone with his nose. But before he got up, two pillars slammed into each other right above him, he felt the wind sheer off his shoulders, he had enough space to crawl from under them, he does so with a cold sweat as he doesn’t even risk touching the pillars.
In his shock and fear, he his hand grabs one stone and it sinks, Royce immediately panics, scrambling around and bolting a few feet from that spot, and doing so he steps on several pressure plates, simply feeding his panic and fear, which snowballs to him running around more and activating more and more; tripping on one more row, he just puts his hands on the back of his head, but nothing happens. But some dust and sand falls on him, he glances up to see another wall coming down on him, but it gets stuck. But Royce hyperventilates, still panicking he freezes on the spot.
After a few minutes of twitching and whimpering, he finally calms down, the stone wall above him hasn’t moved, no ominous rumbling, no more pressure plates, that he could see. He crawls forward, his hand catching nothing after some persistent scuttering on the ground. It was the start of the staircase, it was much larger than he was expecting, spiraling down to below the surface.
Slowly rising to his feet, Royce dusts himself off, trying not to peer off the edge so he won't get nauseous. The torches lining the staircase lit up in sequence when he was standing straight. Lighting up the base level as well, glimmering brightly.
Royce saw what looked like a large, stone coffin right in the middle as he descended. Royce nearly slips down the stairs, but holds still, kicking a chipped piece down. It didn’t make a sound until a few seconds later with a dull thud; Aside from exhaustion, his foot twitches in hesitation and fear, he doesn’t get any confidence, but he descends down slowly.
Kuroi walks out from another trading hall, pushing the curtain at the front entrance aside to go back to his camel. Weaving through the small crowd around the corner and onto the road, untying his camel from its post, he pauses as he notices his box is missing, rushing around to the other side, maybe thinking he went crazy for a split second, his eyes wide as his box is truly gone. His hands are just at his sides in disbelief.
He runs his hand over his face as he can already feel his stress rising. He looks around, he doubts anyone who was native here to steal from him, since, he was literally the only person who delivered cargo and resources around, at least to the places nobody else wanted to travel to. So it makes no sense to him why anyone would just snatch anything off of his camel. Let alone his personal belongings, then again, someone did steal his spear this morning.
Just as Kuroi was ready to start grinding rocks with his teeth in anger, his eye catches the red color of his box, his head turning fast enough to crack his neck to see who had it. Sitting on a wooden post on the river; the road clear so he could see right to it. The human duke holding it while angrily inspecting it over and over, Kuroi only gets even angrier when he notices the duke has been poking his fingers around inside that box.
Kuroi decides to walk towards him, his eyes locked on the duke, his eyes constantly going back to the box in case the duke even twitches in a way he doesn’t like, a single scratch or chipped on that box would warrant death in Kuroi’s eyes. Kuroi’s hand rides up to rest on the handle of his sword.
The rest of the hare-folk that see him just back off or make way. Some vendors, given his very job, seem hesitant to do anything, but some members of the merchants guild, or anyone who respects Kuroi in some way all silently pull their weapons out, the target was obvious, the human snob at the river.
The dukes two bodyguards instantly feel the change around them, one nudges the other with his elbow, making him glance around to make sure he wasn’t the only one noticing, they both glance over to see Kuroi, staring daggers into them and the duke, The other bodyguard pats his peer on the shoulder, noticing a small group on each side of them. He turns around to pat the duke on the shoulder to snap him out of his angry inspection.
“Sir Koffman! Please, get up!” The bodyguard says to shake the duke to his senses
“What is it Carl!? I’m busy!” The duke immediately goes pale as he looks up, nearly jumping to his feet.
“Sir Koffman, could we use your assistance?” the other bodyguard says in a panic.
“I will! I will! Calm down Karl, even if their dumb animals, enough of them are still dangerous!” The duke’s comment gets more glares, making the group around them larger.
The duke steps behind his two bodyguards, putting his hand on the spine of their swords as they draw them. Two deep blue circles start forming on the dukes palms, their blades spark with lightning, its color a deep blue like the magic circles, but it seemed faulty somehow.
“There! You only get a few swings before it's out, don’t waste it like last time!” The duke says as he backs up a few steps, still having his magic active over his palms.
“Sir!” The bodyguards respond as they stay equal distance from each other.
As they inch closer, Kuroi doesn’t even pay them any mind, he was too angry at the duke, and his box on the ground, when the duke got up, he dropped the box, letting it hit the sand and wooden planks. Kuroi draws his sword, the large, heavy curved head of the ram dao was intimidating to the bodyguards, they haven’t really seen such a sword.
Kuroi sighs, closing his eyes before looking back up to actually meet the bodyguards. He swipes the blade across the ground, striking the stones on the road hard enough to make some sparks. Instantly infuriating the two bodyguards.
“What do you think you're doing!?” One of them shouts, Kuroi can’t really tell who shouted, they looked the same, twins probably.
“To disrespect your sword like that!” The other shouts back, both of their swords pointed towards Kuroi now. Their blades spark and ark when they get too close.
Kuroi doesn’t care what they have to say. The two are on guard and stressed, this crowd around them clearly has them thinking more about themselves rather than the duke, who looks like he’s ready to soil himself as he has his back to his bodyguards, the other two groups closing in on the duke. He waves his hands at them, trying to get them to back up or flee. His hands lash out electricity, arking into the air as his fingers make streaks of lightning, now frantically trying to make them back off.
One bodyguard tries to swing at Kuroi, Kuroi swings back, but he lets go of his sword before it makes contact, letting his sword take the electricity as he punches the bodyguard right in the nose, bloodying it, possibly breaking it. But the bodyguard punches back, right on the left side of Kuroi’s face, making him stumble a little, but the entire group behind Kuroi advances the moment that happens.
The bodyguard has to bring his sword up close as he tries to swat away the flurry of spear thrusts, sword swipes and even the occasional punch. He only manages to take down two or three of the hare-folk, anyone with a sword who clashed got electrocuted, but the people who got lucky shots in with spears and their fists made contact, one spear piercing the bodyguard in the stomach.
The other bodyguard reaches out to grab his brother by the collar after he got stabbed, but Kuroi slashes his forearm, he feels the large head of the sword scrape his bones, but he still manages to grab his peer and drag him back a little.
“Duke! We need assistance! Duke!?” He looks back to see that the duke was already subdued, flailing like a child. He is in disbelief that they were overwhelmed so easily by a bunch of talking animals.
The hare-folk have the duke pinned to the ground, some holding his holds, some stepping on his back, and one of them has a particularly mean look on his face with a basket of terrible looking fruits, looking like someone had hurled all over them.
Before the bodyguard could say anything, he was surrounded, distracted by the duke and his sad state. Now there was a sword held to his throat. He drops his sword in surrender. Angrily grumbling about the circumstances of his situation.
The harefolk all line them up, tying them with their hands behind their back. The duke had a bag over his head. One harefolk seemed to be throwing fruit at the duke, always hitting him right on the head, leaving both stains of fruit and stains of throw up.
Finally, having the chance to wipe his face with the small amount of blood off of him, Kuroi spits, feeling his bleeding gums and cheeks leak. He walks around the three humans, leaning over and picking his box, its contents spilled out, he thinks most of the pills are still there, he hopes. He wipes the sand off of it, putting the pills back in the box, wrapped up in the cloth. Kuroi stops when he hears a small snicker behind as he puts the lid back on as softly as he could.
“So who is it for?” The duke's muffled voice came out from the sack, Kuroi doesn’t answer, “Is it that important to strike a duke?” Some of Kuroi’s muscles twitch as he restrains himself, walking past the duke to get away from the words, “are they for you? Some stupid dying siblings, cousin or bedridden parent?” Kuroi grits his teeth, his movements slowing down. The duke seemingly has an epiphany, making a taunting chuckle, “I know now. It's for them. The one carved onto the box. He looks like an old fellow, maybe a complete foreigner from both sides of the ring. He certainly looks like he needs some sort of exotic medicine to stay alive.” Kuroi turns around to look at the duke, his guess was correct, Kuroi was filled with enough anger that he's thinking about cutting his head off, after all, his blade looked unquestionably qualified for beheading.
Royce finally gets to the bottom, his legs feel like jelly and maybe he twisted an ankle on the way down. He doesn't know, but he sits down, his head falling back enough to hit it on the step behind him. Making him hold his head and stomp like a kid. When he stops his muffled whining, his gaze falls upon the giant stone coffin in front of him–correction; he sees the giant piles of gold coins and blue and orange gems behind the giant stone coffin.
He gets up, making giddy noises with his hands close to his face like a little girl, seemingly forgetting his exhaustion as he vaults over the stone coffin with a slightly impressive vertical just to trip into the pile of coins and gems. Which hurt, but his excitement and a little bit of his greed has a stronger pain tolerance.
He throws the coins and gems into the air, making it rain upon him, which hurts too, but he's crying in a mansion so let him be. Still making giddy noises, one hand shoving as many coins into his clothes as possible, making little piles of his own with the gems. Right as he was getting up, slowly due to fatigue, he heard something shift. He looks around, his eyes immediately locking on to the giant coffin that he totally flung himself over. He holds one finger up as to get a word in as he feels a great sense of forebodingness.
“S-sorry?” He says cautiously
The coffin starts glowing, enormous rings of light magic start activating as engravings on the coffin are flooded with light, the bright yellow color hard on Royce’s eyes. The lights dim down, but a mummified hand starts pushing up one side of the coffin lid. Royce immediately jumps onto it, jumping up and down to keep it shut.
“Nope! Not gonna happen! Nonononono!” Royce says frantically, his continuously mounting exhaustion stabbing him in the back.
Royce is flung off the coffin lid, the lid almost falling right on his head, but it crushes his turban, if he had long hair, he knows it would have got caught. He looks back to the coffin, a pillar of light streaming out of it. The entire pyramid glowing.
Those outside can see the beam of light shooting out of the golden cap of the pyramid. The light blooming and radiating outwards, the duke can see the light through the sack over his head. Kuroi and the rest of the harefolk are staring dumbfounded, most with their mouths open in disbelief, including Kuroi. The giant beam went on and on, even illuminating a few sky islands hidden by clouds. But it started getting hot, really really hot. Those close to the pyramid started to spontaneously ignite, having to roll on the ground or smother themselves as even their fur was catching fire, those near the river, like Kuroi and the group around him instinctively jumped into the river, the sack on the duke’s head catches fire. The dry, coarse fibers of the sack are easier to burn.
His bodyguards immediately kick him into the river, housing the fire, but the duke's wig, mustache and crooked nose are burnt. He flops onto the river side after struggling to swim with his hands behind his back.
The beam quickly dissipates. The river was nearly boiling, most water around in small sources evaporated, the air filled with steam. Most people were smoldering or their clothes burnt.
Royce gets to his feet, seeing a decayed and mummified figure rise from the coffin. From what he could tell, it was a harefolk, one ear looked like it was eaten by bugs, some mushrooms were growing our of his stomach and probably his intestines, his clothes a ragged and torn robe, wearing gold rings, bracelets, and necklaces. His robe had mold growing on it, his body looked water logged. Water gushes out of the mummies mouth, seemingly trying to speak, but it makes only groans.
“Look, I was only trying to partially grave rob. No hard feelings?” Royce says with a nervous smile
The mummy points a finger at him, the tip of his finger manifesting a large ring, the magic circle getting bigger and bigger, an orb of light condenses right in front of the ring. It looked like he was about to get the receiving end of a final flash. But the mummy then slowly points its finger at itself, blasting its own body with the ginormous beam of light. Royce can see its silhouette go from rotting mummified corpse to something resembling much more of a living being.
His robes were still tattered and ripped, but they were a clean white now, at least covering himself. His fur was a light gray, any mold or fungi that was on his body was killed and disinfected. He takes a deep breath and exhales.
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“I am Renei Vuth of Oscri. What purpose do you have for trampling on sacred grounds of the eternal pharaoh? Speak!” The scholar commands with a wave of his hand.
“O-oh! Well… y-you see, I was just…” Royce fiddles with his hands, foot tapping nervously, “I… was hoping to acquire some magic… from… F-from you?” Royce says as he points both index fingers at the scholar, trying to be charming.
“And why would I bestow my magic to an intruder? One that confessed to grave robbing?” The scholar crosses his arms, his lightly wrinkled face stoic, but his eyes widen as he really gets a good look at Royce. But Royce doesn’t notice.
“Well! I simply… heard the difficulty of your magic, perhaps… if you gave me even a little, the people of this city might try to learn from you again, maybe even worship you?” Royce says as he calms down a bit, feeling that his head has cooled off a little now.
“I am already the eternal pharaoh, I do not need the worship of the people. My magic, however, while not powerful, is tedious and laborious for any use, even then, I don’t wish to impart it to you. Regardless of how stubborn you are. I merely am happy the people of Oscri find use in making light for its simple use of illumination.” The scholar continues to look Royce up and down, he is confused, he was awoken earlier than he anticipated, his seal was simple and a terrible indicator.
“THEN! Sorry. Then… Why not give it to me for a different reason? You see, I think, I hope, to rectify the bad blood between the harefolk and the humans.” Royce says as his heartbeat finally slows to normal rates. He raises a finger as he sees the scholar about to open his mouth again, “If I can not mend the terrible state of humans and Harefolk, then maybe I could at least make some of the dukes of the nearby empire at least become neutral, trade even, with the city-”
“The city’s name?” The scholar interrupts Royce, the scholar still trying to figure Royce out.
“Oscri.” Royce calls out quickly. Not the same way as the locals say it, more pronounced and less casual.
“Who am I?” The scholar says, he knows it’ll be an easy answer, but he’s still perplexed by Royce, he doesn’t fit any descriptions of the warnings he received, his soul was almost porous and spongy, he was simply filled with holes.
“The scholar of light!” Royce feels like he should be kneeling to sell it, “Renei Vuth of Oscri!” Royce added a bit hastily to make sure he didn’t get it wrong from a technicality standpoint.
“Who are you and why do you personally wish to have my magic?” The scholar says with a wave of his hand. It doesn’t make sense… His coffin is only able to be opened by a reincarnation. And there was only said to be one in the coming hundred years. If the warning was wrong, a fellow scholar was supposed to open his coffin for him.
“I am Royce Harsguard. I am an alchemist. I heard that your magic was supposed to be of extreme difficulty to master, maybe light magic could be used in some way for my alchemy. I assure you, I am stubborn enough to put it to good use.” He bends the knee, really trying to sell the alchemist bit as much as he can.
“What is your experiment?” The scholar says, calling his bluff. Royce sweats a little, biting his lip before he calms down.
“How to measure the tiniest forces.” Royce says confidently.
“Why do you need to measure forces that small?” The scholar points at him, questioning him.
“...” Royce looks like he’s straining himself extremely hard, thinking as hard as he can. Biting his lip nearly enough to make it bleed, “To measure the mass of particulates, make medicine as efficient as possible with the effective mass of the expensive materials, use as little as possible but get the most out of it, to weigh the things no one has trouble lifting. It could also have industrial use, it probably does.” The scholar is on the verge of being convinced, he certainly sounded like an alchemist.
“Fine. I just have one more question before I give you some of my magic, answer truthfully. Are you a reincarnation?” The silence is defying, Doyce doesn't really know what that means or entails, he thinks he is, but he doesn’t know what this guy'll do if he says yes, but would he get more mad if he says no and was lying?
“Yes. I think so.” Royce says without so much as a breath to brace himself. But the scholar is just even more confused. But he relents with a sigh.
The scholar opens his hand, a strip of light coming off of it, “take it.” He says, trying his best to sound regal but it sounded defeated instead. Royce hesitantly grabs the strip of light, it glows even more brightly before the light pops off the strip, Royce looks down, a bit puzzled.
“A pamphlet?” Royce says with a disappointed look on his face.
“It saves resources and meets the minimum requirements. Why would anyone want some big, heavy book that contains like five spells? That's wasteful. And you can keep it in your pocket. Not that really matters since it's tethered to your soul. Might fill a gap in there.” The scholar says as he starts to walk up the giant spiral staircase.
“Pardon?” Royce asks quickly when he hears that last bit
“You're pardoned for trampling upon my tomb. I need some fresh air…” the scholar says groggily. Showing his age a bit with his slouches back.
Royce gets up, dusting himself off, he peeks into the pamphlet. It reminded him of the folded paper that comes in a Yu-Gi-Oh deck box, with the little flow chart and everything. It was covered in some sort of magical fog of war. Covering the other spells except the first. There were five boxes in the middle of the pamphlet, it had a fold for each one. The first box he could see. It was some sort of offensive spell, or at least he hopped so with a name like “light grenade” he taps it, expecting something to happen, but he impatiently taps the paper.
“Oh, come on! Everything else is magical but the process can't be that convenient!?” He huffs a little before lifting his finger, seeing that it had some numbers on it.
“300 MD u 200 OFQ u” he has no idea what that means, but there's a blue diamond and orange crystal in front of the numbers. He turns around, seeing the utter pile of the blue and orange gems. He gets a little devious smile on his face as he creeps up on the pile, whistling colonel Bogey as he looks at the gems gleam. He jumps onto the pile, turning over to try and get snug, one leg over his knee as he taps the first spell on the pamphlet. The entire pile starts to glow in a bright yellow light, seemingly melding together.
As the light grows more intensely, the scholar sighs, rubbing his face in defeat, “I did kinda let him be with all that expensive shit.” He lets it go, no point now, Royce already learned the spell. The scholar decides to turn around and go see the mess he just made. He sees Royce making little gem angels in the leftover gems, still whistling away, hurting the scholar's ears a little. The scholar is just over it, he walks over to Royce, picking him up by the collar and walking up that stairs.
“W-wait! There's something I want to try!” Royce says hastily.
“You can use your new spell outside, I will not let you destroy my pyramid.”
“A-actually…” Royce is fiddling with his fingers, “could I have the rest?” Royce asks boldly, trying to look as cute as possible.
“Absolutely not! Do you have any idea how many years worth of manifestation diamonds you just used? Do you even know the currency transaction exchanges!? You an alchemist right? Then you understand the institutes of the Mamba ring would be furious with you for losing nearly decades worth of research material!”
The scholar then chucks Royce up, he tumbles through the air in a panic before the scholar grabs him again, now at the top of the spiral staircase. Royce is still thinking he’s in the air, taking a moment to realize he was at the top. The scholar looked rather disappointed, that grumpy old man look on his face as he looked down the hall.
“None of the effective traps activated except the walls? Only one of them even worked properly, at least the gas trap seemed to be active.” The scholar drops Royce, letting him get up by himself.
Royce quickly dusts himself, looking back down the spiral staircase. Still a bit confused.
“How did you?-”
“Lightspeed, kid, don’t try to learn it, you’ll vaporize yourself.” The scholar says as he starts walking down the hall.
“Why not!? Regardless if you made light magic, you didn’t get vaporized!” Royce points with a jealous finger.
“I’m a manifest scholar. We’re immortal. Besides, I’m over 200 years old, I’ve had more time to learn how not to turn into dust.” The scholar places his hand on the wall, making all of the carvings light up, Royce can see the heatwaves come off his hand.
The walls crack at the extreme heat seemingly being delivered into them as the scholar guides his hand along the carvings. The carvings, now visible, look simply like how the scholar obtained light magic. It's a little hard to decipher it when the whole concept of light magic blinds him every time. He stumbles behind, his guts feeling like mush now that he’s moving after being flung a substantial distance.
“Ok, but, why did the entire wall just crack?” Royce says as he clutches his stomach, he didn’t think he’d be this queasy
The scholar looks at him, his head snapping around to lock gazes, “You're not an alchemist at all are you?” Royce avoids eye contact, did he say something that stupid?
“Uh… Elaborate?” Royce says with a nervous smile, the scholar has his head cocked to the side a little as he reexamines Royce.
“Entropy. The will of god. The most substantial countermeasure to all magic?” The scholar says as he gives an irritated and dismissive wave of his hand as he walks off, rubbing the bridge of his nose in his agitated confusion.
“U-um… That didn’t really explain-” Royce quickly shuts up, thinking that agitating a guy who can move as fast as light is suddenly a bad idea.
Royce just quietly follows behind. Maintaining a distance that doesn’t really matter given the speed the scholar had shown. Royce fiddles with his fingers as he sees all the traps in the hallway retract as the scholar walks by them. The walk back was easier than he was expecting, he thought he’d have to pull some daring stunt to save his life.
But his thinking, “Entropy?” given that magic exists, entropy might have changed in function, however, after seeing the scholar move that fast, he feels a little stupid, obviously friction plays a big part of the heat, however, he transferred the build up of heat to the wall, causing the entropy to raise in the wall instead of himself, therefore, avoiding the negative effects of the magic completely by destroying something else instead of his body, regardless of his supposed immortal body, so it must hurt quite a lot to let entropy lower. Royce remembers he didn’t feel the greatest when constantly using light magic, but he’s not to sure about it being the complete same with such a difference of scale. Either way, he probably doesn’t use such a spell so frivolously, he does seem rather rushed at the moment.
The scholar’s ear twitches, he glances over his shoulder to see Royce constantly mumbling to himself, “Not the strangest human I’ve met before.” The scholar mumbles himself.
The big door that closed Royce in opens, he stops his mumbling as he sees actual sunlight in maybe a few hours. His eyes were shrinking just a little, it wasn’t as intense as light magic, but his eyes immediately find something else apparently way more interesting.
“My turban!” he says as he lunges forward as the wall lifts slowly, yanking his crushed turban out and holding it in his hands.
He pouts as he holds the ripped and sandy cloth, he was really starting to like it. He looks around now that the wall lifted, the pyres were lit, a surprising amount of things outside the pyramid seemed to be scorched now. Some people’s clothes were even burned black, most of the harefolks were still dousing themselves with water, some having to cut and shave patches of burnt fur.
“Uhhh. What happened?” Royce says blankly.
“Probably a cause of me being released from the coffin, given how I was released early, all that magic went into the normal magic circles instead of inside of the tomb, I was saving up my magic for someone else.” The scholar says as he walks past Royce, his voice was clearly irritated as he bumps Royce.
Royce doesn’t say anything to upset gramps over here. Royce gently taps him on the shoulder, making him turn around with a grumpy look on his face. Royce points roughly to where he remembers the river to be.
“Could I ask for one more, little, tiny favor?” Royce says with a little falsetto while making a little pinching motion.
“Adding all those extra words isn’t helping.” The scholar says as he dusts himself off, trying to look presentable for the people who are about to see his form again in an unknown amount of years.
“Just… throw me into the river, yeah? You look strong enough, don’t have to be, actually, wait no, it’d feel like hitting concrete-” The scholar grabs him by the collar, spiking him into the air like a javelin.
“Good luck.” The scholar says with a deadpan face.
Royce is tumbling around like a ragdoll in the air, after a few seconds, he snaps out of his confusion, now panicking, “not deja vu, but I’m pretty certain I’ve been through this already!” Royce quickly spreads his arms and legs out, trying to stabilize himself, he can see he’s certainly going to land in the river, he sees a whole punch of people there, must be some crew ready to unload a boat. He even sees a boat pretty close to the river. But he’ll be more excited if he survives. He holds his hand, thinking for a moment.
“Oh, man, I hope I don’t sound super cringy. Light grenade!” Royce says with a flush of embarrassment.
A bright orb comes out of his hand, a magic circle flickers quickly as the orb comes out of his palm. It was about 5 inches in size , smaller than a baseball. He thinks about how to detonate it, and it does, right in his hand, when he thought “detonate” he’s blinded for a second, his ears ringing, it certainly has some force behind it. He quickly holds his hand out, now slightly more concentrated as the magic circle shines a bright yellow, “Light grenade!” Royce says without as much panic than before, this time he tried making several at once, and they all shot out like it was a tennis ball launcher, they’re all close together and he’s getting awfully close to the river now.
Just about a few seconds from hitting the water, he shoots a few light grenades into the water, “Detonate!” He yells, alerting everyone on the ground to where he is, they just see a plume of light and bubbles come from the river and a small yellow explosion in the air. Royce splashes into the water, alive. He gasps for air, quickly crawling onto the docks, holding his arm, his forearm has scratched up on the bottom, getting some rocks.
“Owowowow!” He said like a frantic kid, his forearm was only bleeding a little, but his whole body felt even more sore, “This is going to hurt so bad tomorrow!”
He stops when he sees Kuroi looking at him like he just seen a ghost, “oh, hey, man. We good?” Royce says casually while still jumping between legs because his arm still hurts.
“Y-yeah.” Kuori responds shocked.
Royce turns around, seeing the duke and his bodyguards all tied up, somewhat drenched. They look equally shocked, but they seem more happy to see him. He holds up a finger to stop them from saying anything.
“Befooooore you say a damn thing, I already know you’re in the wrong. Now shut up, I went into the pyramid, woke up the scholar, stole from him. He is clearly still salty about it because he threw me into the river right as I figured out my suggestion was a terrible idea, since, it almost killed me. Now give me money.” Royce says as he holds his hand out to the duke, a grubby hand wanting money.
“Now, what- I-.” The duke is dumbfounded, his brain overloading given the rollercoaster of a day he’s had.
“I’ll be additional muscle for you.” He says as he yanks at the duke’s ear.
“I- Yeah- You're hired.” The duke says breathlessly.
Royce returns around, right as he’s about to say something, the tatters of his turban fall in front of him, “aw, man… don’t remind me.” He clears his throat, crossing his arms as he points at Kuroi.
“We won’t have any problems about it, we will simply… leave!” Royce says as claps his hands a little, hearing the creaking of the boat come up from the river.
Royce points to the boat behind him, “see?” he says with a little grin, helping the duke and the body guards onto the board the second it stops, which they let him on, because from their perspective it looks like he’s helping them get away from a supposedly angry crowd of harefolk surrounding them before anything got crazy.
Royce does a little happy jig as he escorts the duke onto the ship, feeling pretty successful right now, almost happy. The humans on the ship are honestly understandably confused. But they unload their goods for trade, so Royce has to wait maybe an hour or two.
Royce is whistling on the side of the boat, kicking his legs as he watches the merchants on the dock haggle and bark at each other as they try and get more coin out of the other. Royce doesn’t notice until a few seconds later but Kuroi is standing on the dock, holding a cloth package, throwing it right at Royce’s head, making him fall back onto the deck, before Ryoce could identify why it was so heavy, a large coin purse comes arching over and slams right on his forehead in the same spot.
“Why don’t you switch to a javelin!?” Royce says as he gets back to his feet, barking back at Kuroi in response, a hand holding his forehead.
“Shut up! Take that to the human city and take it to Mockingbird! They’ll know who you mean! Now go before I start remembering how annoying you are!” Kuroi says while shaking his fist.
“Screw you!” Royce says back, shaking his fist in mock.
“SCREW YOU!” Kuroi shouts back.
“NUH UH! I SAID IT FIRST! YOUR’S DOESN’T COUNT!” Royce says and quickly blows a raspberry at him.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT DOESN’T COUNT!? YOU BETTER HOPE THAT BOAT LEAVES SOON!” Kuroi says while stomping his foot.
Royce quickly runs off like a giddy kid escaping a beating, jumping below deck as his laughter dies off with a faint echo. Royce lands flat on his feet, he thought he was going to stumble, he’s been doing that a lot today. He walks past a few crew members and merchants, going into a private room given to the duke, who was sitting down with his arms crossed and a grumpy look on his face. His two bodyguards at his side.
“Nope. Going to bed, I’ll talk to you in the morning, don’t steal anything on mee, I will use absurd amounts of light magic to blow a hole in this boat.” Royce sees the appalled look on the duke’s face, but he holds a finger up, “NO, shut it! I said what I said!”
Royce flings himself onto the hammock that was hanging off the wall, the private room didn’t have much else than the label of private and a door, it had the standard fillings like the rest of the crew. Royce almost immediately falls asleep, finally letting his fatigue and exhaustion slam his eyes shut like his body had been demanding for hours. The things Kuroi has thrown at him in his arms closely.
