I actually missed getting into Meria, which was a bit of a disappointment. I suppose there are consequences to sleeping half of a journey away after all.

  When I eventually did wake up it was pretty early morning, and it was actually quite empty around where we were. Cassie woke me just as we were getting out of the caravan, and the only people around were people who had been on the caravan, as well as one guy managing the stables that had clearly been woken up just for this.

  After handing in our passes to Brian, we had a bit more time to get our bearings. Neil had gone ahead to the Guild, both because the Revenant was a threat and because coming in with him may skew our chances of getting in, and he didn’t want to take that achievement from us.

  Before he’d left, he had encouraged me to just be open with the Guild about my whole inhuman-ness situation. Apparently they had taken in worse for less, so I should be fine.

  I wasn’t really sure how I felt about that. Part of me was still insisting that nobody should ever know, which was impossible for several reasons. Another part of me rather wanted a place to be a bit weird. I was going to need it if I got any shiftier, after all.

  Cassie and I were strolling down one of the larger, still empty streets when we started seeing a lot of people all of a sudden. We saw why as we made our way closer we began to hear a constant ambient noise, like the sloshing of water against rock.

  Oh right, Meria’s coastal isn’t it.

  As we took a turn around a bakery, we both paused at the site before us. Far in the distance, the city took to the water. Rather than cobbled baths and brick buildings a good chunk of the city was just floating.

  Even that didn’t prepare us for what came after it, though. At the very edge of the city, wooden piers fell away into a vast expanse of blue. It was like a giant, moving mirror of the sky itself, low enough for people to reach. I could just about see waves crashing against the piers. They were gentle now, but I couldn’t imagine how big they could get.

  Cassie was slightly less taken aback. “Yep, that sure is a lot of water.”

  I turned to her. “Really? That’s all you’ve got? No contemplation on how comparatively tiny you are? No mad dash to go and visit it?”

  “Lia, we lived by a lake our whole lives. It’s hardly the first time I’ve seen a large body of water. Wait, how is it your first time?”

  She’d lost me. “What lake?”

  “The lake. You know, the one about half a mile away from your house. Are you saying you didn’t know it was there!?” Cassie seemed devastated, so I had to do something.

  “O-oh, that lake. Of course. The lake that I have been to, all the time. Constantly visited that one. With the… water,” I rambled, quickly realising how unconvincing I was.

  “It’s no use, Lia. I’ve failed you! I never took you to the lake. We’re turning this adventure around, that’s for sure. This is unforgivable!” Cassie swept an arm back in the direction we had come from and began to march back.

  “Hold on,” I called, causing her to stop and turn to face me, an exaggerated expression of remorse on her face. “We have water right there. Just take me there at some point. Not now though,” I quickly added.

  Cassie’s expression cleared, and she theatrically wiped her brow. “Great idea! I was going to say something, but now that you’ve suggested it you can’t back out! I’m so glad we found a solution.”

  Oh, you little…

  I sighed. “Can we just go to the Guild now?”

  Cassie shrugged. “If you want. I’m pretty sure it’s over there, though.” She pointed towards the floating portion of the city.

  I shook my head. “How could you possibly know that?” I asked.

  She shot me a flat look. “Neil literally gave us directions.”

  “Oh. Well, you can’t blame me for that, I’d just woken up!”

  She shook her head. “How you slept so soundly after the whole Revenant thing is beyond me. I’m starting to think that you have sleep magic too.”

  “Oh no, that’s pure skill,” I responded as we continued towards the sea. We walked in silence for a while, just taking in the city. It truly was beautiful, with the early morning sun glittering over the sea.

  “Cass,” I began hesitantly. “Is there actually a lake that close to my house?”

  She looked at me questioningly. “Yep. I swear, I tried to get you to go for ages when we were kids. I genuinely have no idea how you don’t remember me pestering you about it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “No, I’ve got nothing. I mean, I can see me not wanting to go, but I don’t actually remember it.”

  Cassie shook her head. “You’re going in that water, one way or another. Mark my words.”

  Oh dear. How long are we going to be here again?

  -----------------------------------------

  Walking on the floating portion of the city was weird. It somehow managed to be both more and less stable than I had imagined. I don’t know how, but it didn’t really react much to the smaller waves that crashed into it or travelled under it.

  Still, there was a baseline level of movement that it seemed to hold to, being a floating platform in the sea. It made me feel weirdly unsteady, and then made me feel foolish for feeling unsteady on a mostly stable platform. It was strange.

  Cassie didn’t seem to be having any trouble whatsoever, but that was just like her. In some ways, I swear she was more adaptive than I was.

  Everyone was a lot more active in the seafaring portion of the city. To absolutely nobody’s surprise there was a lot of fishing going on. To my surprise the second most common job seemed to be some form of lifeguard.

  By the look of it, Meria must get a lot of tourists. That made sense, I suppose, considering that it did sound like a holiday location gone too far. Still, even in the early morning our trip to the Guild was punctuated by three separate occasions of people falling into one of the gaps between a pier and a building, plunging into the sea.

  Two of those people I recognised as being from our caravan, which gave me a healthy dose of second hand embarrassment to recover from. Cassie just laughed at their misfortune as we watched them get dragged out of the sea by more experienced swimmers.

  Eventually we did make it to the Guild. The entire floating portion was split into these little sections, which were connected by boardwalks between them. The Guild had four of these sections to itself. It wasn’t as big as the library in Perch, but it was certainly busier.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Walking through the front door, I was immediately struck by the noise. People were chatting in groups all around the room. Adventurers were signing up for things at the front desks, or talking things over at one of several large boards, each of which had a variety of submissions posted to them.

  I could only assume that the Guild was open at night too, because there were people here who looked like they’d been here for hours, and it was maybe an hour since sunrise.

  I unconsciously grabbed for Cassie’s waiting hand as we made our way deeper into the room, coming to a stop at the end of the shortest of three separate queues, each of which was waiting for a different front desk.

  “Very busy,” I muttered, more to myself than anything else.

  “I guess a lot of people like adventure,” Cassie whispered back.

  I shrugged, not really having an answer. As the queue slowly moved forward, I took a closer look at one of the larger boards, which I now saw was labelled as a ‘Quest Board’. All across it were scattered papers, each seeming to detail different available jobs.

  They certainly gave all of the information I could think of needing. Location, task and reward were obvious, but they also included who had posted the quest, whether or not you needed to see said benefactor, a general overview of the situation surrounding the quest and even the type of quest it was.

  Apparently, picking up someone’s scheduled order of mushrooms counted as ‘gathering’. Personally, I thought hiring a bunch of adventurers to pick up your shopping was as wasteful as it was ill-advised, but what did I know?

  Thankfully, it didn’t take us too long to get to the front of the queue, from which point I let Cassie take the lead.

  “Hello, welcome to the Meria branch of the Adventurer’s Guild. How may I help you?” The man at the front desk spoke with an enthusiasm that couldn’t possibly be less fake.

  “We’re here to join,” Cassie replied simply.

  “I see,” The receptionist answered. “Would that be as reserve members or full time?”

  What in the hells is a reserve member?

  “What’s a reserve member?” Cassie asked, clearly on the same wavelength.

  “A reserve member is a member of the local community who we can count on in a time of crisis. If ever we don’t have an adequate amount of adventurers, we field our reserves to fill the gaps.” His speech seemed incredibly rehearsed, but it did answer the question.

  “We’ll be joining full time then, please.”

  The receptionist pulled two forms from… somewhere. “Excellent! If you could please fill in for me. Bring them back when you’re done.”

  Cassie stared at the forms. “We don’t have anything to write with,” she stated.

  “That’s just fine, miss. You see that box to your right? Please tear the end of that off for me. There we go.” The receptionist spoke like he was explaining something basic and obvious to a geriatric visitor, even though I could only guess at what would happen from context.

  Cassie turned to the bronze box which was labelled ‘Pen Dispensary’ on the edge of the receptionist’s desk, which had a small piece of paper sticking out it with a swirling rune on it. She tore and the slip of paper folded in on itself, before lengthening into the vague shape of a writing implement. It had a little nib at the end and everything.

  Both of us stared at the paper before turning and looking at the box, which had a new slip of paper somehow. Cassie just shrugged and tore another piece of paper and handed the ‘Pen’ to me. My fingers tingled slightly where I touched it.

  “Please move along, there are other people waiting in line,” the receptionist urged with an impressive amount of passive aggression. We exited the queue and found a pair of chairs and a table to sit at and fill out our forms.

  “Do you know what?” Cassie said as we sat down.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Of all things, I was not expecting a pen dispenser to be the first bit of proper utility magic we saw.”

  I considered this. “What about the enchantment on that marketplace beneath Perch?”

  She made a face. “I guess, but that wasn’t visible, you know? It was all happening in the background. I mean like, in your face enchantments.”

  “I saw some floating lights at the library,” I suggested.

  “Yeah, no. Firstly, lights don’t count. They’re way too basic. I can do lights, and I was an apprentice two weeks ago. Secondly, I wasn’t there, so it didn’t happen.” Cassie counted her points on her fingers, which was slightly excessive for two points.

  “Whatever. Let’s just get the paperwork over with, shall we? Question One: Would You Consider Yourself To Be A Team Player? Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree, Other.”

  Cassie stared. “Yeah? Maybe? Depending on the team?” I watched as Cassie circled ‘Other’ and began writing in the space provided. I just circled ‘Agree’, because I highly doubted they were going to check.

  “Question Two,” I began. “Do You Have Experience Combatting Magical Phenomena? If So, Please Explain How Much.”

  Again, Cassie started writing down a detailed explanation of exactly how long she had spent learning under a wizard, which had to count as magical phenomena of some kind. I ended up giving a somewhat vague account of my fight with the Gloom Stalker. I was sure they would ask for more, but I wasn’t just writing the whole thing down for anyone to see.

  “Question Three,” I started once more only to be interrupted.

  “Hold on,” Cassie said. “Should we be discussing these? Like, get an outside perspective?”

  “If you like,” I answered. “Question Three: Are You Trained In Any Form Of Combat Viable Techniques? If So, Please List Them Below And Explain To What Degree You Have Practised Them.”

  I scanned the form, counting how many questions there were. I had to turn it over, because it turned out to be double sided, and I eventually came up with a total count of twenty five questions.

  Oh boy. This is going to be a wild ride, I’m sure.

  ---------------------------------------

  It took us over an hour, but we did eventually finish our paperwork. I decided to heed Neil’s advice and be honest about my capabilities, which I hoped wouldn’t come back to bite us.

  Somehow, Cassie managed to keep her energy up the entire time we filled out the documents. Although, this had been her dream for far longer than it had been mine so I suppose that made sense. I was just glad we were finally here.

  We managed to get our forms back to the receptionist pretty quickly. The Guild’s main hall had emptied out quite over the past hour, either going out after taking something from a Quest Board or heading deeper in to the building at some point. I had no clue where, since there had to be limited space here. After all, the building was on the water, so they couldn’t just be going underground or something.

  Still, we were told to just keep waiting by the receptionist, who had kept his unfailingly fake politeness the entire time. I couldn’t really blame him, it must have been exhausting having to deal with some of the more eccentric members of society all day every day.

  After a while just sitting and chatting, we were greeted by a surprisingly scrawny man. He was only about my height, and probably skinnier. It was a lithe kind of skinny though, rather than a malnourished kind. Under a heavy coat he was, for some unknown reason, completely covered in what appeared to be wet bandages, with no skin showing. Even his face, although I could only see the bottom half of it. The rest was buried beneath a heavy hood of the same damp material.

  “This way, prospects,” Bandage Guy said. His voice was muffled, and surprisingly deep. It had a reverberation to it that I wouldn’t have expected from his small stature.

  Cassie and I stood and followed the man, who lead us through a door in the back I hadn’t even seen until this point. The door opened into a cramped room, which seemingly lead nowhere.

  “Uh…” Cassie uttered, which was about all that was going through my mind too. However, Bandaged Guy wasn’t perturbed. He raised his arm and reached into that heavy coat, pulling out a small round stone. He placed that stone in the centre of the room and barked an incantation, his voice sharp. “Transitus!”

  The stone began to warp, small cracks lighting along its edges. I took a step back as those cracks spread across the entirety of the stone, white light shining through the fissures. After a moment I felt the surface of my skin buzz to life as a pulse of mana spread throughout the room. Then a second, and then a third.

  With each pulse the light inside the stone grew brighter and brighter, until the stone itself was impossible to see. All at once the light dimmed, revealing the stone was nothing but dust. Then the light exploded outward again, my skin burning at the mana usage. I shut my eyes in response even as I felt my body start to react to the sheer amount of magic in the air.

  When I opened them again, I saw that in the stone’s place stood a rift, harsh edges shifting as it defied space and opened into a peaceful looking grassland. Cassie was staring at the portal with stars in her eyes, and I couldn’t help but do the same. Whatever my body was doing had my mana sensitivity slowly decreasing, so I could revel in the sight ahead of me slightly more comfortably.

  “Would you mind actually going in, prospects?” Prompted Bandaged Guy. “It’s closing in about five seconds.”

  That shook us from our wonder, and Cassie stepped through without hesitation. Even when she appeared safely on the other side, though, I couldn’t quite bring myself to step through. It felt… weird, like trying to force yourself to walk into a wall.

  “Ugh, newbies,” Bandaged Guy grumbled as I felt him move behind me. “You’ll thank me later, prospect.” That was all he said before I felt his hands on my back and he pushed me through the portal.

  very long journey, we finally made it to the Adventurer's Guild! I wasn't sure whether to make it a rowdy group of eccentric adventurers or a well-oiled professional organisation, so I decided to just go with both.