Claire stepped back, but the crowd pressed in, a tide of anxious faces and desperate hands. Her breath hitched as the air thickened with screams. Paddy growled low, hackles raised, but even his warning bark was swallowed by the noise. The knights were trying to maintain order, but the crowd was growing bigger, and the people were determined to get to Claire.
Then, a sudden crack split the sky--like thunder without clouds.
Vidar stepped forward, tall and imposing, his magic mount roaring like a storm at the sea. He had a staff in his hand that glowed faintly, runes spiraling upward in a dance of light. With one sweep, he released a wave of unseen force. It rippled outward, invisible yet undeniable, pushing the crowd back.
People stumbled, eyes wide, fear overtaking their hunger.
"Enough," Vidar bellowed, his voice echoing through the air with authority. "Have you forgotten the rules already? You will not frighten her. Right now, you look more like thieves than vendors. Do you want to scare her away? If she doesn’t return tomorrow, who will you trade with for food?"
Silence and unease danced through the crowd.
"The prince has tasked me to have a conversation with this Lady," Vidar continued, "He wants to know what else we can trade besides the edible sixth rank sea monsters. Through her, trade will flow, and your bellies will be filled. But you must follow the rules."
Some people decided to disperse immediately, after all, Claire had run out of things to trade today. Others stared at her, hope flickering in their eyes, fragile as candlelight.
Vidar gestured to the carriage. Two knights escorted Claire and Paddy inside. Others continued carrying her goods back to the boat. Vidar entered and sat in the same carriage as Claire, opposite her.
Paddy leapt up, but didn’t attack the mage. Like Claire, he was very wary of the man before them.
"I hope you have not been scared away from Driswen, Miss....." Vidar raised a brow, waiting for her to fill in her name.
"Claire." She said, in the cool voice she used when doing business. "It would take a lot more than a crowd hungry for my goods to scare me away." If she left, where would she find premium seafood at the cost of 2 to 10 dollars? This was a gold mine and she planned to mine it for a long time. If the pearl could be passed on to her children, they would take over after her.
Vidar touched his chest. "I am Vidar, Prince Stellan’s personal mage and chief knight of all his territories. May I ask where you come from?"
Claire shook her head. "I would rather not say for the sake of my safety. In my line of business, keeping your core secrets close is the key to surviving."
"I understand," Vidar said, nodding. "All businessmen and women are much like that. It is not my intention to pry your secrets from you. I am just curious about what brings a successful trader to a sixth-tier city."
Claire laughed. "Others see dirt, I see potential."
"Potential," Vidar muttered, as though the word was foreign to him. The mage wondered what potential a place like Driswen had.
He didn’t ask another question for a while, and Claire kept her silence as well. She patted the top of Paddy’s head which was stuck out of the carriage window. As the carriage rattled through the city streets, Claire observed the parts of the city she had never seen. Cracked walls, faded murals, roofs patched with mismatched tiles. Children played barefoot in alleys, their laughter thin, their bodies thinner. Everywhere, poverty clung like dust, impossible to shake off.
"It wasn’t always like this," Vidar said. "Believe it or not, this land used to be beautiful."
Claire believed him. Once upon a time, the cracked buildings were new. There were so many old houses, closed businesses and alleys, meaning that at one time, people had deemed this place worthy to live in.
"Why can’t you grow your own food?" Claire asked, her voice tight. "There is land here. I have seen at least eight large empty fields."
Vidar’s eyes glimmered for a moment. "Because the land is cursed by drought. Anything that grows in the soil for more than two months dies. It is no ordinary drought--it’s a magical one. It began when a wayward mage did something sinful. A mob of people killed that mage. In an act of vengeance, his mother, who was also a mage, went around stripping life from the soil to punish all living people.
She started with small cities, where it would not be noticed by the royal house quickly. Only after she got to the bigger cities were her actions noticed. It took eight mages tangled in a deadly battle to bring her down. She chose to kill herself, but even then, she died while cursing the land and its people.
But it was too late. The lands she poisoned and cursed were already ruined. Production fell. Big cities locked their gates, refusing to take in refugees. The king, under pressure from noble houses, split cities into tiers. The ruined lands became sixth tier cities, forgotten by the empire."
The story sounded like something straight out of a fantasy movie to Claire. One of those movies where a beautiful young woman, who happened to be a mage, set out on a quest to find the magical stone or something to heal the land. Along the way, the heroine always managed to find love.
Vidar continued. "It so happened that the sixth-tier cities lie near the Abyssal monster sea where monsters breed endlessly. The very creatures you trade for. Without proper food, people here turned to the Abyssal Sea for sustenance. Only desperate people would eat sixth tier creatures from the Abyssal Sea."
Claire’s stomach twisted. She thought of the crabs, and shrimp she had hauled home, prized delicacies in her world, yet here they were despised, symbols of desperation. This thought brought another question to her mind. What was the difference between sixth tier creatures and first tier ones.