“Get the hell out of here, filthy human!” A wood spirit yells at Eden as he slams the front door shut.
“Wait please!” Eden yells out, but it is far too late. The wood spirit has already gone out of hearing distance in their shop, which upon reading the sign on the door is called “Vince Pelony’s Flower Shop”.
Damn, another one did not even let me in their store. I really was lucky with Linda, that is the 5th one in a row. At least he did not hit me with a shoe like the last one. Eden thinks, rubbing his cheek to help deal with the phantom pain he was feeling from being hit by a shoe about 20 minutes ago. Why wood spirits would have shoes; Eden has not got a clue, but he does know that the one shoe shop in the shopping district makes mighty fine shoes.
Eden begrudgingly climbs down the tree on the rope, which was in much worse shape compared to Linda’s rope. However, Eden climbed down it faster than before from learning how to climb rope, so it only took about a minute or so to safely reach the bottom. He had already picked out the next, and last, place in which he would go: “Carton Pelony’s Cotton Town”. He picked this place originally in hopes that his brother, the owner of the shop he just went to, would let him in and use that as a way to get to the store he actually wanted to go to, Carton’s.
If only Vince here was half as nice as Linda or Plantus, then I might have gotten some more information on cotton usage. Not to mention the basic information I could just obtain from Vince and his brother. Well no matter, perhaps I can trick Carton into thinking Vince let me in, or that they have no relation and Carton is a nicer wood spirit. Eden hopes for, but believes that Carton will be like most of the other wood spirits with their prejudice against humans. Still, Eden goes over to the tree that houses “Carton Pelony’s Cotton Town” and begins to climb the rope. Luckily for Eden, this tree is one of the if not the shortest tree in the whole shopping district, or at the very least in the central area. The tree is roughly only 20 ft (6.1 m) tall, and the shop is far in a way smaller than that. When Eden reaches the porch of the shop; a common thing all of the shops so far have had, he notices that the door is shorter than Eden, being roughly 6 ft (1.83 m) tall. The shop has a good bit of mold in its wooden walls, and no part of it looks undamaged, be it the cracked windows or the splintering wood. The shop looks more like a drug den than any functional store.
You know, maybe I should not have gone here. This certainly does not look like a real business, but I guess looks are sometimes deceiving? Eden thinks, though he has negative confidence in his last thought. Regardless, Eden still goes to the door and opens it. A loud creaking rings out from the hinges, now showing their rusty selves. The inside of the house does not quite match the filth of the outside, as it is far worse looking and smelling in there, though Eden himself does not smell all too nice himself, so it hardly affects him. The first thing he notices is the dirty looking clothes all around on cracked hangers and shelves. Behind all of that is a pretty small wood spirit sitting behind a small wooden desk. The wood spirit is smoking a cigar with their non-existent mouth.
“Oh what can I do for you- GET THE HELL OUT HUMAN!” The wood spirit, presumably Carton, roars out the second his eyes gaze upon Eden. His growly voice gives off the impression that he smokes a pack a day, and even his starting tone for normal customers makes him sound like a 4th rate gangster.
Turns out the looks were as honest as can be. Eden concludes as he watches the wood spirit hurriedly fly over to Eden. The wood spirit is clearly trying to appear threatening, but his short stature makes that a hard feat to accomplish.
“I SAID GET OUTTTTT!!!” The wood spirit screams, much like a banneche. Eden gets into a defensive position before speaking.
“Wait hold on! Would you happen to be Carton Pelony, brother of Vince Pelony?” Eden quickly asks. The wood spirit in response stops dead in his tracks, giving Eden a death glare.
“Yeah, what of it!?” The wood spirit yells out, albeit in a lighter tone than right before.
“Oh, it seems I got the right shop then. Your brother recommended that I come here after I finished shopping at his store. I was curious about cotton and its usage around here, I am new to the wood spirit kingdom you see, and I wanted to meet a specialist in the field, which luckily the first shop owner I talked to led me to one. May I be allowed to ask a few things?” Eden polity asks, a mild amount of respect could be heard from his voice.
Notice! Skill “Trickster” Has been activated.
Carton scratches his non-existent neck as he goes “deep” into thought.
Brother got me a customer? Did he finally want to become a halfway decent brother after all these years? No, I do not want that fuckers help! Carton screams in his mind, coming up with how he shall deal with the man in front of him. He gathers a small amount of mana into his right palm and points it towards Eden.
“Leaf Shot!” Carton yells out as a large magical leaf is made and fired out of his hands, aiming for Eden’s neck. The leaf fires forward, easily about 200 mph (322 kph) as it cuts into Eden’s flesh. Luckily, Eden was able to move his head just enough to only let the leaf make a sallow cut into his cheek. Still, thick blood flows down his cheek and onto his clothes. Eden however stands without much reaction to the stinging pain in his cheek. His eyes gaze upon Carton straight, not blinking nor wavering.
“Might I ask what that was for?” Eden calmly asks Carton, who looks a little shaken up from Eden’s attitude.
“I want you out my damn store! That was your warning shot, now get the fuck out before I really do something.” Carton declares as he points his finger to the door. Eden complies, turning away from Carton and walks out of the shop.
“Fine, but I should inform you that warning shots are not meant to kill the target. You should be careful where you aim that leaf of yours.” Eden casually informs Carton as he opens the door. He walks out, never taking the slightest of glances back at Carton. Carton floats in silence as Eden leaves the store.
The Fuck was that!? Since when did those filthy lumps of flesh gain the gull to face us like that? Those fucking nature destroying bastards! Carton questions in his mind, but quickly switches to cursing out the human race. But before he gets caught up in an endless hate fest, he takes a puff of his cigar and lets up a large cloud of smoke, calming himself down.
Eden stands right outside of the shop, looking as steadfast as ever. Blood still flows from his cheek, but the sticky ichor that is blood slowly begins to clot the wound. But after a few moments, Eden’s body drops a little, losing the show of bravo he was giving off.
Oh this stings! I thought they had to use plants to cast their spells. No, that is not important now Eden. I need to check if I have some kind of cover or something for this wound. No, why would you, Eden? You are not a doctor. But I should not let this wound go untreated. I got to have something to at least help. Eden believes as he hastily scans through his inventory, so engrossed to find a way to cover the wound that all pain is lost on him. Luckily for Eden, he has just obtained a way to heal himself without harming others; the handkerchief. The item was magically enhanced to apply a healing effect once per day without cost. Eden grabs the handkerchief out of his inventory and places it on the wound. The handkerchief does nothing at first besides clean off some blood.
Why are you not healing me? Do I need some sort of key phrase or something? Eden thinks, but then he realizes that the handkerchief started to glow in a faint green light the second he thought the word healing. A rush of vitality flows through Eden, and the wound closes up, along with giving Eden replacement blood. Furthermore, the traces of blood on his face are gone from the handkerchief cleaning it off. His shirt however is still stained with a bit of blood.
I should probably wipe this off. Eden thinks as he places the handkerchief on the blood stained shirt. The blood vanishes the second the handkerchief touches it. Furthermore, the dust and dirt all over his clothes disappears along with it. Though this is only true for where Eden directly places the handkerchief on his shirt, so cleaning the whole shirt while wearing it would be impractical. Eden puts the handkerchief back in his inventory once all of the blood is wiped off, along with a good chunk of the filth that covered his shirt, and then climbs down the rope to the ground. This hardly takes any relevant amount of time due to Eden’s experience. But once he reaches the ground and looks around, he notices that most of the wood spirits around have left, and a good amount of the shops have a massive close sign made from vines. Upon looking up Eden also notices that the light that normally shoots through the cracks of the cave roof is now appearing orange mixed with red.
It must be close to Dusk or night right now. I guess I should go back home. Wait, I forgot to go to the wanderer’s district! Will there still be things open there? Eden worries as he starts to run towards where he parked the vine orb. With the great speeds in which Eden was running, he is able to reach the vine orb in a few minutes. The parking area is just about empty, but Eden does not concern himself with this matter, and hurries over to the parking stick in front of the vine orb.
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Do I just go in and fly off, or do I have to interact with this parking stick thing? I should have asked someone this before now, when it was too late. Eden contemplates before choosing to go right up to the parking meter. He sees it looks the same as before, and the only thing to interact with is the hand scanner. Having no better ideas, Eden places his palm on the hand scanner once more. The meter lights up green, and in a flash the text on the screen changes, now saying “Thank you for stopping at the shopping district. Please leave the parking space at your earliest convenience.”.
“Oh thank god I was right.” Eden mumbles to himself as he sprints towards the vine orb. The orb quickly opens the doorway once Eden gets close enough to it, allowing Eden to enter inside. The vine doorway closes itself back up once Eden gets inside and reaches the helm. The map appears shortly after, showing all the locations Eden can go to. He admittedly selects the Wanderer’s district and the vine orb begins its flight once more. While the vine orb flies Eden over, he first takes off his clothes to clean them with the handkerchief, which was a rather short process. He also wipes himself a bit to clean off the foul odor that has been plaguing him. Afterwards, Eden spends the rest of his time playing with the map interface.
You know, it would make sense for this thing to show the time in some way. I have not seen anything that tells anyone the time, be it from a watch, clock, or any digital display. Does the kingdom not use a time system? No, that is ridiculous. Eden concludes, though he was not at all satisfied with his inability to see the time. Eden starts to look deeply into the map, looking for anything that could give him some amount of information. However it would seem as though Eden’s good luck has run dry on that end.
Could this thing be voice activated? Eden wonders, and not seeing any harm in the idea tests his theory.
“Show Time!” Eden yells out. The map gives no response.
“Clock!” Eden yells much like before. The map still gives no response.
“Ah, Date!” Eden yells with much less confidence. However, this time the map does give a response. At the top of the map screen a date and time show up, stating “15/40/3056, Woodian calendar, 1800 hour”.
Woodian calendar? So they do not use the same calendar I am familiar with. I guess that should be expected, that calendar was made by the Romans, and there is nothing stopping the wood spirits from making their own I suppose. Though it seems like they use a 24 hour clock, and since it is at 1800 hours, yet light still shines through the cracks in the cave ceiling. Based upon that, this date must be during this land's summer time. Eden concludes, but does not spend too much time on that thought as he has already landed. It would seem the distance between the shopping district and wanderer’s district was hardly long at all. This is to be expected given the wanderer’s district is little different then the shopping district, pardon the origin of the traders. Eden feels the impact of landing, and glances over to where the vine orb normally opens up. Like expected, the vine orb’s doorway was open, so Eden walked outside of the vine orb to look around.
The area where Eden parked is almost identical to the area he parked at in the shopping district. However, upon looking past the parking lot, Eden sees much more normal looking houses, or at least to him. The wanderer’s district seems to be laid out in a strip mall sort of way, with what looks to be about 15 or so lots with their own shop. Eden walks closer to the area; of course after he registers his parking space at the meter, to be able to better see what the shops there are. Much to Eden’s displeasure, most of the shops are closed. In fact, there is exactly one store open out of the 15: the one on the far right.
Does this kingdom have some kind of curfew or something? How could every store be closed at 8? I guess at least one store is open. Eden wonders as he walks over to the last store open. Upon looking at the store however, Eden wishes that this store was closed like the rest of them. The windows were all blacked out, and a chill ran down Eden’s spine whenever he was near it. His mind goes numb, and his movements slow, becoming more dramatized the closer he gets to the store. The wood is pitch black, much like ink. Ink is likely the best word to describe the shop, as otherwise one would have to claim that the wood was bleeding with the black ooze that slowly poured from it. There was also a sign made of metal above an inky door, reading “tension”. While the shop was certainly anything but traditional, it was however a work of art.
This thing is hideous! I feel bad for the shopkeeper who has to try to get customers with such an appearance. Oh how I would bless their souls if I were a priest or religious. Eden believes, despite the harshness of and the total inaccuracy of his thought, as he motionlessly stands right in front of the door. All it would take to go inside is to push the inky door, but Eden is unable to move with speed any faster than a snail. His brain function has come back to him, but his body is no longer listening. It takes Eden roughly a minute or so to start pushing the door. Contrary to what Eden had believed, the ink does not stain nor even touch Eden. Some kind of forcefield prevents the two from interacting. Finally however, Eden opens the door and gazes upon the dark inside of the room. There are hardly any sources of light in the shop, pardon a small candle near the back of the room. Eden can make out some items on a few shelves around the store, but any details on the items are unseen by Eden. What is seen is a creature, wearing some kind of abyssal coat, reading a book. On the coat the words "foreshadow" can be seen. Underneath the coat appears to be some kind of tux, but it would be hardly visible even if the shop was lit like a christmas tree. The creature raised its head to face Eden, and it suddenly shut its book.
I jumped in surprise a little upon hearing the loud shockwave which that book made. Could a book really make such a loud sound? I am unsure of such an idea, but there were more pressing matters.
“Hello.” A voice rang out to me. It was likely the shopkeeper’s.
“Hello. Are you still open?” I asked the shopkeeper. I heard no response for a while. In fact, I heard little sound at all, nothing besides my breath and heartbeat.
“Yes, I believe we still are. Welcome to my shop. I hope you find what you were looking for.” The shopkeeper says in what should have been in a more upbeat tone, though I can say for sure that there was little positivity in his words. The creature took upon the tone one would expect an arrogant superior to take upon someone they believe is a lesser being. The creature then makes a large grin while fully facing me. The teeth resemble that of a shark, and however tall the grin was, it never reached his eyes. It was obvious that this was little more than a conman’s smile, though it felt almost too fake to even be an attempt at a real smile. But I still advance all the same. Maybe I am judging a book by its cover, though this time it is less of a children's book and more of a high class novel. So I start to peruse the items inside the shop, however few there might be. Few is certainly a key word in my eyes, as I could count the amount of items of any quality on one hand. The first thing that catches my eye is a large gun, looking similar to a musket, near a few other clearly damaged firearms that likely do not work.
The gun was made mostly from bronze, and its color was entirely different shades of brown. The gun was about as long as my arm, along with a bit of my shoulder. The hole in the muzzle was roughly the size of a baseball. Most interesting of all to me however was the engraving on the muskets stock. I could see the words “chekhov's” on it. The gun was placed on the bottom part of the shelf, and if this was not a store, I would have thought this was done to hide the item. As I go to grab the gun however, the stock lightly hits the shelf right above it as Eden obtains the weapon. Though I am sure there was little force on the collision, the shelf still falls apart, having a bunch of old guns land on Eden’s back. They did not hurt me much at all, but damn was it annoying. Who makes shelves this fragile? No matter, I will place the guns back to where they should be and then analyze the good looking ones. So I began the process of sorting the guns to where they should be found, but the second I touched a flintlock, it suddenly fired out a metal pellet. Luckily, the firearm was not pointed at me, but it did nail another one of the guns; a duelling pistol. When the pistol was hit, I said another bullet flew through the air. This bullet did not come from the flintlock like last time, but rather the just-hit pistol. One by one, I saw a gun fire off, hit another gun, and then that gun fired its own bullet.
*Bang! Bang*
The sounds of the guns being fired ring throughout my head. It is far louder than any of the guns I have ever heard being fired before. Did the creator of these guns never hear of a silencer? Though I guess I should not be complaining, after all not one of the bullets hit me, and every gun has been fired. Well, except for one. The original gun never fired anything, nor did it get hit. In fact, where did the gun go? Now that I am looking around, I do not see the firearm anywhere. This is not good- no, this whole situation is horrible for me. What if the shopkeeper makes me pay for all the damages? I doubt I have the capital for such a purchase. But would it be right to do nothing about all of this? “
Those who have done no harm to you should not be harmed by you.” I say to myself. Though I could claim that the shopkeep does not have good intentions based upon how he acts, in truth it is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, something that has not yet happened. Though I am surprised that the shopkeep-ow! A loud collision happens between my head and another thing, probably metallic. I then hear the thing crash onto the ground, and when I turn my head I see a slab of copper, roughly 0.5 ft (15.24 cm) thick, with the word “Irony” inscribed on it.
“Ah, so it was ‘Irony”. If I had to guess, you messed with “chekhov's”, did you not?” The shopkeep creepily informs me, much to my surprise. I jump a little at the sudden talking, but soon recognize the voice and I turn around to finally get a decent look at the creature. Or at least that was what I wanted to do. No matter how much I stared at him, the only details I could make out where his shark-like teeth, the coat, and a slight amount of a tux, though now I can see a golden shine coming from it.
“Did your parents never tell you not to stare? Oh wait, I should apologize for assuming you could remember them, Eden.” The shopkeeper states, almost sounding sarcastic, but I have a weird feeling that these words were at least partially honest. At their very least, I could feel a great deal of confidence in the creature's words. Wait, no that is not the important part.
“How do you know my name? Why can you so confidently state I have no recollection of my parents as well?” I ask the creature, though I do not expect an honest response. A good merchant never sells out their suppliers after all, and I doubt this (guy?) wants to give up such an informer. Actually, why would anyone care to know things about me?
“A good merchant never sells out their suppliers, Eden. Though I am sure you already know this concept. That I am certain. Though I must point out that your questions are hardly relevant to the current predicament.” The shopkeeper states as it points to the mess of guns.
“Oh yes, I will clean that up for you. However, I am not quite sure where each of these items goes on the shelf.” I inform the shopkeeper. But should I mention the loss of the gun? Maybe I simply did not see it in this dark shop, but if it is truly gone, then who knows what the shopkeep might do. No, I should be honest here as the one at fault.
“There is one more thing, in which I must apologize for. I have not noticed the gun with the words “chekhov's” on it. Perhaps I just glanced over it, but I worry it might be gone.” I tell the shopkeep while looking down, much like a sinner does in repentance. But what happens next shocks me to no end. Laughter roars out of the shopkeep. The creature laughs and laughs like a manic, and I tremble a little out of fear. But such as suddenly as the laughter had started does it end.
“Do not worry, Eden. The disappearance of the gun is simply a byproduct of it interacting with “Irony” over there. Once “Irony” is placed back on the spot on the shelf it belongs to, all of its effects will cancel out, and “chekhov's” will reappear.” The shopkeeper declares with great confidence. Not a shred of fear can be found in the shopkeeper. I nod my head to show understanding and begin to restock the shelves under the shopkeeper’s guidance. True to his words, when I place the copper plate named “Irony” on a spot on the top shelf, "Chekhov's" shows up right where it originated. The restocking of the other guns was surprisingly easy for me, only taking a few minutes. The shopkeeper walked away once he told me where to place everything, and returned the second I finished with another book in hand.
The book was clearly old, no, ancient. The title was in a language I have never seen before, and the book had a faint glow surrounding it.
“Here, take it. Believe me, you will need it. Open it on your harshest hour” The shopkeeper states as he places the book in my hands. I start to try to politely decline the offer, but one look at the creature gives me the feeling that he will not take no for an answer.
“I thank you. Anyway, I shall get going now. But might you humor me in why you are giving me this book?” I ask the shopkeeper.
“It is simple really. I have not laughed like that in quite some time. So go on now without regret.” The shopkeeper quickly answers me. Having nothing else to say, I slowly thread my way through the dark shop and to the doors. Luckily, the dreadful feeling and the ink was not present on this side of the doors, so I could easily reach and open them. When I walk outside, and the doors are about to close behind me, I hear one last thing.
“Oh I forgot my last reason. You shop with great morality.”
