He was too distacted by everything now, the strange hairstyle of the man in front of him, the wierd animals, there was a two headed bird on one's shoulder. He looked past to the front of the line, there seemed to be a couple of armoured soldiers checking the people before letting them enter.
"What are they looking for asked Ash?" he had directed the question to Relik, but he didn't know that Relik had already applied the translation spell.
The white haired man with his hairs tied up I a wierd knot turned to look at him.
He gave him a lookover, showed his teeth ina weird way then spoke.
"Mostly ther are just looking for any illegal material, you know like unregistered creatures or something" said the man.
Ash nodded at a loss of words, would Relik be considered as an illegal material.
"You are new here?" he asked next.
"Yes, I travelled a very long journey" said Ash.
"I can tell from your clothes, it must be cold from where you are, I'll recommend to wear something loose" said the man indicating the robe he was wearing.
He was right most people here wore loose clothes made out of something like cotton.
Ash had started to feel a bit hot in his track suit.
"Yeah I think I better" said Ash and the man turned back as the line moved forward. Ash was glad his first interaction in the world seemed to went all right.
"That was a nordic tribesman, they can jump really high" said Relik, making Ash immediately glance at his legs, he seemed to be wearing some kind of shoes made out of a leathery material only it was green in color.
The line moved forward, Ash wasn't bored at all since he had a lot to gawk at, as the capital came closer he could now see through the large gate inside at the crowdy streets with even more peculiar things than he could imagine or his eyes could look at once, he couldn't wait to get inside.
He was next in line now, and finally he dared to look at the guards, they were wearing brode silver blue armour, the armour looked heavy and too clunky and hard to move in, it had that old medieval look that he had seen in the movies. They were also carrying swords, which was what Ash was interested about. They were large, there handles big and the only word that came to his mind was that they lookedreal, actually made for killing and probably had done so before. They were also oozing a bit of energy, even Ash could feel it now, since his senses were over sensitive now after all the changes in his surrounding.
The nordic tribesman that was in front of him entered the city, and Ash moved forward for his turn.
"Name and purpose to visit the city" asked the guard on the left he had a scroll and thin glass rod in his hand with which he was noting down the names.
"Ash Blake, umm pleasure" he said quickly since Relik hadn't told him that they were going to ask that and what to answer, and he answered reflexively like he was in an airport.
The guard had definitely heard that description the first time, he took a second to process his answer than wrote it down giving the other guard a glance. Ash wondered worryingly what kind of conclusion they had come across but it was fine as long as they let him in.
"Are you carrying anything of value? something the city should know about?" asked the guard next.
"Nothing in particular" said Ash.
"And are you fine, if we use a detection spell on you" asked the guard.
Ash didn't know what he was talking about, Relik hissed at him in his head to say yes, so he nodded.
The other guard brought out a small glass ball and placed it in front of him and the ball glowed yellow.
"All right you are fine, you'll just have to pay the entry fee, three silvers" said the guard. But Ash didn't had any "silvers" on him.
"Show them my emblem" hissed Relik.
Ash straightened up Relik and showed the guards the front emblem on him.
The guards peered at the symbol for a second then nodded and wrote down something.
"All right, Welcome to Cirkena, traveller" said the guard and moved aside to let him in.
Ash said a quick thank you and entered the capital.
He took his first step in the city, the first thing he noticed was the change in the amount of noise, just after a few more steps he had entered what seemed to be the crowdy market of the city.
There was just too much to look at, there were shops selling all kind of things from food to large big blocks of glass.
"There that guy is handing out maps of the city, get one" said Relik.
"But we don't have any money" said Ash.
"Just pay him with something else, maps are cheap, you can trade anything for it" said Relik.
Ash checked his pockets all he could find that he could part with was a small turnable knife.
"No that might be a bit too valuable, don't you have something else" said Relik.
"No, we'll just exchange it for some coins and the buy the map, what else can i buy from here?" asked Ash.
"Umm, you can get some food, no, there look at that shop with that fat blad man, yes, he is selling spell scrolls, he would have plenty of change and must be used to barter" said Relik .
The man Relik was talking about was huge and looked intimidating, he was keeping a close eye on anyone who moved stand too close to his shope, there must be a lot of theives in this place, thought Ash.
"Well the capital is a bit overcrowded and everyone fights to survive one way or the other" said Relik.
Ash moved to the shop and the man looked at him when he approached with a daring look.
"What can i get for this?" said Ash showing him his knife.
"A knife, are you kidding me?" scoffed the man. Ash then folded the blade and closed the knife. The man's eyes were wide now and he snatched the knife at once and inspected it.
"Must be one of that crazy old man's inventions the one on the end of the Gorp street right? Well it seemed valuable enough, fine I'll give you a fire level two and a water level one, that's it nothing more, no negotiation so don't waste your time" said the man.
"Fine, but only the fire one, five me coins for the rest" said Ash.
The man was a little pissed about this but he had said the price himself, so he handed him a tied up scroll and a few coins.
Ash could tell without even asking Relik, which ones were silver, ther were two silver ones and a bunch of coppers.
With the money in his hands Ash felt more confident. Definitely his own society had trained him to think that money was everything and without it he felt like he was unarmed.
He went to the map seller and bought a city map for one copper. He opened it up to look at the capital from a different view, the colour pelet of the map was different from what he was used to, it was white and shades of brown, which he felt were not right for indicating where the castle was.
"Don't you know where is what?" Ash asked Relik, since he couldn't understand much of the map, he could read the letters after Relik's spell but the names didn't mean much to him.
"I am not good at remembering streets, look for where all the guilds are, they should be near the castle, they will all have there own emblems" said Relik.
Ash looked and there were on left of where the castle was a lot of words all written besides some kind of symbol.
"Those are all the major guilds, you can tell since they paid the map maker to put there names on the map, they are more here now then I remember, the competition must be hard, we won't get into any of those, they won't let you in since you are untrained and haven't attend any academy, what we are looking for are the smaller ones, there will be plenty of them in the same district, they'll let you join along while you are still a noob, that's what most people do who don't have too much money, once we'll get in a guild, we can take small quests and earn money and pay for training at the academy" said Relik.
"Why do i have to go to an academy if you can teach me?" asked Ash.
"All I know about training is from what I have seen with my eyes, it's not what I was made for, I was made as a traveller's companion, that's what my emblem shows" said Relik.
So they headed towards the guild district. Ash took the way which was closer to the castle since he wanted to look at it from closer.