The Exchange

In the midst of the bustling merchant streets a man was weaving through the crowd. It was late, most of the shops and vendors along the market had either closed up or left.

Michael was trying to get out of the city with their shipment with no one noticing him. His outfit was rather nondescript. They needed to get back to their city with these supplies as quickly and quietly as possible.

He was making it back to the river shipyard where a man was sitting on a box, keeping his eye on a couple other boxes around him. His outfit was similar to Michael’s. He was wearing a low hood that covered a pair of dark furred fox ears that were perched on the top of his head. He had darker hair than Mike did, it looked like actual fur that covered the side of his head, neck, and along his arms.

“Kane,” Mike called out.

Kane’s dark brown eyes began to glow blue as he just stared in front of him, when they went back to normal Kane looked over at him. “Mike, what’d you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, they wouldn’t take them, I couldn’t get the catalyst,” Mike took out the small bag in his pocket of different colored vials and small scrolls of paper. He underhanded the bag to Kane. Each of them was full of magic and different colored materials. They would have paid for the entire trip and gotten them something to keep the cargo safe in transport, if the merchant had accepted them.

“What about my sigils?” Kane jumped down from the crate and looked through the bag.

“The owner thought he was too good for alchemy, he wouldn’t even look at them,” Mike said.

Mike looked around at the crates. “You know this city better than I do. I don’t want to just leave these here.”

“I know enough to get into trouble,” Kane said and cupped his hands over his mouth and let out something like a bird call.

Mike looked around, “Are we getting into trouble?”

“Maybe,” Kane said.

They waited for a couple minutes. Kane climbed on the tallest box and began looking around until someone walked over to them, giving Kane a strange look.

The person was bigger than them. Almost twice as tall as them with very inhuman features. Not the least of which was the black and brown fur, and his fluffy black and brown striped tanuki tail.

“Well, well, I thought you were going more north than west,” he said.

“I did both, we’re just down here for some supplies but we’re having an issue with transportation,” Kane said to the man, he took out a vial with splinters of a reddish wood in them. Red fire magic was visibly curling around the splinters.

“Michael, meet Sado of the Lakes, he lives closer to the core of the Empire, he’s Natalia’s uncle,” Kane introduced.

“Really?” Mike looked him up and down. He and Kane’s wife looked nothing alike.

“Would I lie to you?” Kane said, looking insulted.

“For a shiny rock? Absolutely.” When Mike said that both Kane and Sado laughed.

“Yeah, I would. Natalia is the niece of Sado’s wife, Anya. Pleasant lady, good cook. She hit me with a broom handle when she first met me.” Kane said as Sado walked closer to look at the vial in Kane’s hand.

Kane smiled at Sado and stuck the vial back into the bag and pulled out a couple small scrolls, tied together with bits of twine. Some of them were on white paper, others were written on black paper. Kane carefully unfurled one of the scrolls. With the writing of it exposed, Sado was able to look at the magical sigils of the scrolls. Chalky white ice magic writing scrawled onto the black paper.

Each with usable magic for a myriad of purposes from mild distractions to being able to make bigger spells with them. But the only purpose that Kane had wanted them for when he’d made them was to pay for passage. He’d made a couple of them and needed to stay away from using magic while he recovered.

Sado looked it over. “Hmph, Imperialists. They wouldn’t know good magic if it bit their ears off.”

“We need to get back up north,” Kane said. “Your boys can get us up safely, and you can get what we would have paid the shipyard.”

“You had some Ignis pieces earlier, let me see it,” Sado said.

Kane and Sado looked at each other for a little bit before Kane finally took out one of the red wood vials and underhanded it to Kane.

Sado studied it for a bit. “Must be your making.”

“Fire was never my specialty, nor was free magic, I’m an alchemist,” Kane said but held out a short note of paper with chalky writing. “I didn’t get to show off in Lakeside too much.”

Sado hummed to himself a little and let out a couple short whistles. Two people dressed as freight workers came out and began organizing some other people to move Kane and Mike’s crates with the others and onto a nearby train that sat close to the river.

Kane handed the bag to Sado after taking out some scrolls and one of the vials with tiny sandstone rocks inside. Sado looked in the bag as he was talking with the two travelers.

As everything was going down, the three of them were close to the river, Sado looked at something intently and yelled at someone at the other side of the trainyard.

“What’s going on?” Kane asked as he leaned around Sado to get a better look.

At that second Sado smiled and shoved Kane over and into the river.

“Woah!” Mike shouted and Kane flailed around on the surface before settling into a floating on the surface. The hood had tipped back and Kane’s ears were pressed flat along his head.

“What is wrong with you!” Kane shouted, starting to scream up at them in another language that Mike couldn’t at all understand.

Sado laughed at him. “Swim little fox, you look good in the water.”

Kane yelled at him again before swimming over to the shore and pulling himself out.

The last of the crates were loaded onto the transport train and Mike walked into the back train car with the other coachmen and attendants. Their cargo was separated from the others. And soon the train took off as Kane was changing into dry clothes.

“I’ll be happy to be back home after spending so long down south,” Mike said.

“Here, before we settle for the trip back up, I think Anya is with the head chef,” Kane said.

Mike followed his friend up towards the front couple of cars and slipped into the kitchen car.

“Anya,” Kane called in.

“Hey!” A shorter woman shouted as she looked at them. “You scoundrel, where’s my niece?”

“Defending lives up north, I’m certain that she’d be happy to see you,” Kane said.

“What are you two doing in here?” She demanded.

Kane pulled out a scroll and held it out to her. “My friend and I were looking to have some good food for the train ride. We’ve had a hard day.”

“Not hard enough,” she huffed out but took the note, unfurling the scroll to carefully look at it before saying something to

The woman looked at the note before looking back to talk to the head chef. Kane and Mike were ushered out and back into the train car. The door was held open so that Kane could joke with Anya and she could yell at him.

Soon the two of them each got a large bowl of mushroom and vegetable soup. Anya even got them some crispy warm bread. Which Mike could only assume meant she didn’t hate Kane nearly as much as she was acting like she did.

Both Mike and Kane hungrily started tucking into the soup, Kane still talking with Anya and the head chef as the train continued north, important cargo still safely stored inside.