Despite the fact that Sin’s men had seemingly given up the chase, the group still ran on. It had only been an hour since they had entered this savanna-like zone. And already the tall grasses of wherever this chunk of land had come from were starting to get taller than Norman, making it nearly impossible to see where they were going.
Anna was also complaining that she could only see the ugly backside of her brother, much to Norman’s amusement and Toby’s consternation since he switched to the front of the group after they realized there was no pursuit.
Another issue that they had run into since entering this grassland was a pervasive fog that hadn’t been noticeable at the edge of the zone. It seemed to hang below the tops of the grass and Norman couldn’t spot even a whisp of it above the grass. Although it was dark out so he couldn’t be sure.
“Toby, this feels all sorts of wrong.” Norman glanced around the field of grass – he was the only one still able to see over the top by this point – and what he saw was not comforting. It was just more endless grass everywhere he could see in the wan moonlight. Maybe the reason nobody returned from this zone, wasn’t because there was some hidden nasty lurking about, but because they simply got lost in this stupid grass.
“Stick closer together. I got a compass, we will follow that until we leave this area.”
Norman frowned at the distorted pitch coming from Toby’s voice. He sounded echoey and far away.
“Norman, I’m scared,” Anna said quietly as she slowed to walk next to Norman. “Please hold me.”
Before Norman had a chance to respond, the entire area changed in an instant. Instead of walking through an endless meadow of grass that got progressively taller, they were now standing in what looked like a train station. Bland grey walls were interspersed with graffiti and advertisements of all sorts, in an unknown language. There was also what looked like a large arrivals and departures board flicking through destinations, with some marked in red.
“Oh thank god!” Norman exclaimed, earning a painful slap from Anna.
“All new arrivals please head to the left,” a monotone voice spoke in the air. If it had come from a hidden speaker, Norman couldn’t see it.
As Norman rubbed his sore arm from where Anna had slapped him, the group headed left. As far as he could tell, they were the only three arrivals in the massive station. And there was no other place to go.
The place was filled with odd advertisements, featuring… dwarves? Well, whoever they were, they sure as hell looked like stereotypical dwarves. Thick short bodies, braided beards, and well, that’s really where any resemblance ended to the stories.
The advertisement about dwarven lingerie left little to the imagination. Perhaps Norman and Toby stared a bit too long at it as they heard a polite cough coming from a booth further along the hallway.
In the booth was a male dwarf – in what can only be described as corporate work-issued clothing – looking at the group. The front area was even sectioned off by those rope barriers that allowed venues to stuff more people into a line.
Seeing no way past the line without moving it, they followed the zigzagging path to get to the window. Norman didn’t think the gruff-looking dwarf would be happy if they bypassed the neatly laid-out path even if they were the only three people present.
Toby was first to step up to the booth but the dwarf cleared his throat and pointed at a white line of tape on the floor, then a sign on the side of the window.
The dwarf leaned out of the booth to glance at the sign, then he gave an exaggerated huff of annoyance and did something out of sight. The sign changed from whatever language it had been in into English.
Norman wasn’t sure how that worked, since it was only a piece of paper taped to the wall. He figured it had to be magic.
The notice simply read ‘Remain behind the white line until you are called!’
Toby rolled his eyes as he returned to behind the line. But the dwarf didn’t seem to be in any hurry as he organized things on his desk into neat orderly lines. Not that they weren’t already in neat orderly lines before the three of them arrived. Once he finished with that, he settled in his seat, clasped his hands over each other on the desk, and stared at the group.
Norman could see Toby was getting close to exploding when the dwarf finally spoke. “Next,” he said in the same dull monotone as the voice from the hidden speaker.
The three moved to all approach the wall but the dwarf seemed to choke in indignation. “One at a time!” he squeaked out, sounding a bit like a boiling teapot. “Unless you are a family group under article 9-6-53 of the family group codex.”
The dwarf went on and on about more articles, citing this and that, oblivious to the fact that their group had no way of understanding or interpreting these regulations.
Norman paused before crossing the line, but he pushed Anna to keep going.
Toby and the dwarf got into a back-and-forth about the situation that couldn’t quite be called a shouting match. “She’s my sister!”
“Yes, as you’ve said multiple times, yet where are your parents?”
“I told you, I am her legal guardian.”
The dwarf snorted, “I don’t see anything in our system stating you are her legal guardian.”
“What! How would we even be in your system? We’re human, not…” Toby gestured at the man behind the counter, “whatever you are.”
“There’s no need to be rude, Sir. Humans, so disrespectful. Since you are not in our system, you will need to fill out these forms.” The dwarf handed a stack of forms – easily an inch thick – to Toby.
Toby got heated again. “I can’t read this!”
This time the dwarf rolled his eyes. “Just tap the page to change the language. I thought you humans were advanced. I guess not if something basic like this was never invented in your world. You can fill the forms out over there.”
Norman looked to where the dwarf pointed and winced. The tiny shelf wasn’t much larger than the width of the papers, Toby had been handed, but it was the awkward height that was going to be an issue since it seemed to be built with only dwarves in mind.
The dwarf watched Toby go before turning back to stare silently at Norman. For his part, Norman just smiled and waited. This was like going to the DMV, only worse.
Eventually, he was called up to the counter.
“Name and occupation.”
“Norman. And by occupation, do you mean what I do as a job or what was assigned to me by the world?”
The dwarf sighed, “That is your calling, not your job. Unless you also do that as a job, then I suppose it could also be a job.”
Norman liked the sound of calling. Did that mean he was destined to always be a necromancer? How cool was that!
Shrugging, Norman answered, “Necromancer.” The man didn’t even bat an eye as he entered the information into whatever system he was using. It was invisible to Norman from this angle, which was pretty cool.
“You’re not in our system. And I don’t see any job by the name of Necromancer.” The man sighed again.
Norman was beginning to think sighing overdramatically was a prerequisite for his position. Or maybe the man just practiced it as an art form.
“Physical or magical?”
“Huh?”
Another sigh, “is your job physical or magical based.”
“Oh, um… magical.”
“I’m just going to put it down as generic mage. The Bureau of Work Affairs can get the specifics.”
Norman didn’t like the sound of having to deal with yet another branch of this… “Um, what do I call you people?”
Ooh, a different type of sigh from the dwarf this time. This one sounded more amused than bored or exasperated. Although the man did not change his tone.
“If you are referring to me personally, I am Clerk6657 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Migrant Services. If you are referring to my race, I believe you humans have stories of us where you call us Dwarves. We are actually called Gron, but will answer to either if asked, pursuant to section 6 article…”
Norman’s attention wavered as the man continued to state arbitrary legal articles like they were gospel. Which might actually be the case for his people. Eventually, the man finished touting whatever law he was going on about. And then came the dreaded stack of papers. Thankfully they only seemed to be half as thick as Toby’s. Norman would take the small win.
The only problem was, there was only one desk, and Toby was still at it, and seemed like he would be for some time. Norman was going to ask the clerk if he could use his desk but when he turned back toward the window, it had a closed shutter with a sign that said ‘Gone to Lunch’ on it with a clock that was set for two hours.
Norman groaned, he was going to utterly hate this place, he just knew it.
He looked around but the little office where the clerk had been was at the end of the hall. There were no other doors, and going back to the room they came in at didn’t help. As there were no doors in there either.
It was probably something he should have noticed when they arrived, but just appearing in the room was a bit of a shock. Norman did find some vending machines, but they took a form of payment he didn’t have. He shook his head and headed back toward where Toby and Anna were still filling out their stack of forms.
He sat on the ground next to his backpack, since there were no seats in the area. He hoped it was an unintentional oversight by the dwarves, sorry the gron, but something made him think otherwise. Even the floor was textured, preventing Norman from using it as a writing surface. It was like this entire place was designed to cause the people who ended up here as much irritation as possible without stepping over some imaginary line.
Since Norman had nothing but time, he pulled his grimoire out and looked through it. Looking through the book didn’t give him any pleasure though. With his tank empty, there was no spark from looking at the spells.
He decided to flip to the back of the book where he put those random spell bits and bobs. The ones that didn’t quite fit into anything. He needed to learn what these magic components actually did, instead of just relying on dumb luck and prebuilt spells. He was pretty sure the prebuilt nature of his armor spell was why it didn’t form a complete set of armor. Something was fundamentally wrong with the spell, yet he didn’t know what that thing was, since all that little spark told him was when a spell worked. Not if it worked properly.
Norman used the time until Toby and Anna completed their forms to compare the symbols from Bone Wall and Bone Armor. Since they were the two most similar spells he had. There was some overlap in a few of the symbols that he hadn’t originally noticed. This seemed to be due to how the symbol was oriented in the magical script.
Just as his research started to give him a headache, Toby called to him.
“It’s all yours.”
Norman walked over to the tiny shelf and did his best to fill out the overly verbose governmental forms. He wasn’t quite sure why his favorite childhood color mattered. Or who they thought he was, considering the next question asked if he had ever overthrown the rule of a benevolent dictator. Hell, Norman was pretty sure that statement was an oxymoron.
He was just finishing up the last of the forms when he heard the voice of the gron call Toby up to the counter. Had it been two hours already?
Not wanting to be holding everyone up, Norman hurried through the rest of the questions, giving one-word answers where possible. And otherwise giving the shortest possible answer just to have something in the field.
He made it back in line just as the clerk handed Toby what looked like a ticket. Then it was his turn at the window after another five-minute staring match where the clerk attempted to do as little work as feasibly possible.
Norman was handed a ticket and told to use the platform in the main room.
“Um, what platform?” he certainly hadn’t seen any trains or anything or even a wall that would slide away to reveal some sort of tube transport.
The clerk managed to give the sigh to end all sighs, dragging it on far longer than he had to, just to show Norman how little he thought of him before replying. “There are teleporter platforms marked on the floor in the main atrium. Or did you think you just arrived here by pure happenstance?”
Norman was pretty sure that the last question was rhetorical. Leaving the gron clerk to his own devices, he walked over to his bag where Toby and Anna were waiting for him.
The group headed toward the atrium and quickly found the marked-off circles on the floor. Norman had dismissed them as some weird decoration before.
“So… do we all just step into one at the same time, or take individual ones?”
“We could ask the clerk,” Anna suggested.
Both Norman and Toby shook their heads at that suggestion.
“That guy would probably make us fill out forms just for the privilege of the answer. No, we all came together, let's just leave together,” Toby pointed to one of the circles.
As soon as they crossed into the circle, there was a flash and they were standing in another room. This one had many more people- beings coming and going. There were mainly gron, a few jorik that were looking disdainfully around at everyone and everything, and hell, even a few humans other than them. Everyone was queuing in lines where more booths filled with gron clerks were asking them questions.
Norman nudged Toby and pointed at one of the signs that flipped between languages. It read ‘Customs’.
Toby looked panicked for a bit at seeing that since all of them had weapons, but he quickly relaxed as he saw more than one person in the crowd was armed. Norman even saw sparks of what he assumed was magic as the people in line were forced to touch large metal orbs placed in front of the booths before they were allowed through.
With no other choice but to proceed ahead, the three of them got into a line together.
Despite the fact that Sin’s men had seemingly given up the chase, the group still ran on. It had only been an hour since they had entered this savanna-like zone. And already the tall grasses of wherever this chunk of land had come from were starting to get taller than Norman, making it nearly impossible to see where they were going.
Anna was also complaining that she could only see the ugly backside of her brother, much to Norman’s amusement and Toby’s consternation since he switched to the front of the group after they realized there was no pursuit.
Another issue that they had run into since entering this grassland was a pervasive fog that hadn’t been noticeable at the edge of the zone. It seemed to hang below the tops of the grass and Norman couldn’t spot even a whisp of it above the grass. Although it was dark out so he couldn’t be sure.
“Toby, this feels all sorts of wrong.” Norman glanced around the field of grass – he was the only one still able to see over the top by this point – and what he saw was not comforting. It was just more endless grass everywhere he could see in the wan moonlight. Maybe the reason nobody returned from this zone, wasn’t because there was some hidden nasty lurking about, but because they simply got lost in this stupid grass.
“Stick closer together. I got a compass, we will follow that until we leave this area.”
Norman frowned at the distorted pitch coming from Toby’s voice. He sounded echoey and far away.
“Norman, I’m scared,” Anna said quietly as she slowed to walk next to Norman. “Please hold me.”
Before Norman had a chance to respond, the entire area changed in an instant. Instead of walking through an endless meadow of grass that got progressively taller, they were now standing in what looked like a train station. Bland grey walls were interspersed with graffiti and advertisements of all sorts, in an unknown language. There was also what looked like a large arrivals and departures board flicking through destinations, with some marked in red.
“Oh thank god!” Norman exclaimed, earning a painful slap from Anna.
“All new arrivals please head to the left,” a monotone voice spoke in the air. If it had come from a hidden speaker, Norman couldn’t see it.
As Norman rubbed his sore arm from where Anna had slapped him, the group headed left. As far as he could tell, they were the only three arrivals in the massive station. And there was no other place to go.
The place was filled with odd advertisements, featuring… dwarves? Well, whoever they were, they sure as hell looked like stereotypical dwarves. Thick short bodies, braided beards, and well, that’s really where any resemblance ended to the stories.
The advertisement about dwarven lingerie left little to the imagination. Perhaps Norman and Toby stared a bit too long at it as they heard a polite cough coming from a booth further along the hallway.
In the booth was a male dwarf – in what can only be described as corporate work-issued clothing – looking at the group. The front area was even sectioned off by those rope barriers that allowed venues to stuff more people into a line.
Seeing no way past the line without moving it, they followed the zigzagging path to get to the window. Norman didn’t think the gruff-looking dwarf would be happy if they bypassed the neatly laid-out path even if they were the only three people present.
Toby was first to step up to the booth but the dwarf cleared his throat and pointed at a white line of tape on the floor, then a sign on the side of the window.
The dwarf leaned out of the booth to glance at the sign, then he gave an exaggerated huff of annoyance and did something out of sight. The sign changed from whatever language it had been in into English.
Norman wasn’t sure how that worked, since it was only a piece of paper taped to the wall. He figured it had to be magic.
The notice simply read ‘Remain behind the white line until you are called!’
Toby rolled his eyes as he returned to behind the line. But the dwarf didn’t seem to be in any hurry as he organized things on his desk into neat orderly lines. Not that they weren’t already in neat orderly lines before the three of them arrived. Once he finished with that, he settled in his seat, clasped his hands over each other on the desk, and stared at the group.
Norman could see Toby was getting close to exploding when the dwarf finally spoke. “Next,” he said in the same dull monotone as the voice from the hidden speaker.
The three moved to all approach the wall but the dwarf seemed to choke in indignation. “One at a time!” he squeaked out, sounding a bit like a boiling teapot. “Unless you are a family group under article 9-6-53 of the family group codex.”
The dwarf went on and on about more articles, citing this and that, oblivious to the fact that their group had no way of understanding or interpreting these regulations.
Norman paused before crossing the line, but he pushed Anna to keep going.
Toby and the dwarf got into a back-and-forth about the situation that couldn’t quite be called a shouting match. “She’s my sister!”
“Yes, as you’ve said multiple times, yet where are your parents?”
“I told you, I am her legal guardian.”
The dwarf snorted, “I don’t see anything in our system stating you are her legal guardian.”
“What! How would we even be in your system? We’re human, not…” Toby gestured at the man behind the counter, “whatever you are.”
“There’s no need to be rude, Sir. Humans, so disrespectful. Since you are not in our system, you will need to fill out these forms.” The dwarf handed a stack of forms – easily an inch thick – to Toby.
Toby got heated again. “I can’t read this!”
This time the dwarf rolled his eyes. “Just tap the page to change the language. I thought you humans were advanced. I guess not if something basic like this was never invented in your world. You can fill the forms out over there.”
Norman looked to where the dwarf pointed and winced. The tiny shelf wasn’t much larger than the width of the papers, Toby had been handed, but it was the awkward height that was going to be an issue since it seemed to be built with only dwarves in mind.
The dwarf watched Toby go before turning back to stare silently at Norman. For his part, Norman just smiled and waited. This was like going to the DMV, only worse.
Eventually, he was called up to the counter.
“Name and occupation.”
“Norman. And by occupation, do you mean what I do as a job or what was assigned to me by the world?”
The dwarf sighed, “That is your calling, not your job. Unless you also do that as a job, then I suppose it could also be a job.”
Norman liked the sound of calling. Did that mean he was destined to always be a necromancer? How cool was that!
Shrugging, Norman answered, “Necromancer.” The man didn’t even bat an eye as he entered the information into whatever system he was using. It was invisible to Norman from this angle, which was pretty cool.
“You’re not in our system. And I don’t see any job by the name of Necromancer.” The man sighed again.
Norman was beginning to think sighing overdramatically was a prerequisite for his position. Or maybe the man just practiced it as an art form.
“Physical or magical?”
“Huh?”
Another sigh, “is your job physical or magical based.”
“Oh, um… magical.”
“I’m just going to put it down as generic mage. The Bureau of Work Affairs can get the specifics.”
Norman didn’t like the sound of having to deal with yet another branch of this… “Um, what do I call you people?”
Ooh, a different type of sigh from the dwarf this time. This one sounded more amused than bored or exasperated. Although the man did not change his tone.
“If you are referring to me personally, I am Clerk6657 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Migrant Services. If you are referring to my race, I believe you humans have stories of us where you call us Dwarves. We are actually called Gron, but will answer to either if asked, pursuant to section 6 article…”
Norman’s attention wavered as the man continued to state arbitrary legal articles like they were gospel. Which might actually be the case for his people. Eventually, the man finished touting whatever law he was going on about. And then came the dreaded stack of papers. Thankfully they only seemed to be half as thick as Toby’s. Norman would take the small win.
The only problem was, there was only one desk, and Toby was still at it, and seemed like he would be for some time. Norman was going to ask the clerk if he could use his desk but when he turned back toward the window, it had a closed shutter with a sign that said ‘Gone to Lunch’ on it with a clock that was set for two hours.
Norman groaned, he was going to utterly hate this place, he just knew it.
He looked around but the little office where the clerk had been was at the end of the hall. There were no other doors, and going back to the room they came in at didn’t help. As there were no doors in there either.
It was probably something he should have noticed when they arrived, but just appearing in the room was a bit of a shock. Norman did find some vending machines, but they took a form of payment he didn’t have. He shook his head and headed back toward where Toby and Anna were still filling out their stack of forms.
He sat on the ground next to his backpack, since there were no seats in the area. He hoped it was an unintentional oversight by the dwarves, sorry the gron, but something made him think otherwise. Even the floor was textured, preventing Norman from using it as a writing surface. It was like this entire place was designed to cause the people who ended up here as much irritation as possible without stepping over some imaginary line.
Since Norman had nothing but time, he pulled his grimoire out and looked through it. Looking through the book didn’t give him any pleasure though. With his tank empty, there was no spark from looking at the spells.
He decided to flip to the back of the book where he put those random spell bits and bobs. The ones that didn’t quite fit into anything. He needed to learn what these magic components actually did, instead of just relying on dumb luck and prebuilt spells. He was pretty sure the prebuilt nature of his armor spell was why it didn’t form a complete set of armor. Something was fundamentally wrong with the spell, yet he didn’t know what that thing was, since all that little spark told him was when a spell worked. Not if it worked properly.
Norman used the time until Toby and Anna completed their forms to compare the symbols from Bone Wall and Bone Armor. Since they were the two most similar spells he had. There was some overlap in a few of the symbols that he hadn’t originally noticed. This seemed to be due to how the symbol was oriented in the magical script.
Just as his research started to give him a headache, Toby called to him.
“It’s all yours.”
Norman walked over to the tiny shelf and did his best to fill out the overly verbose governmental forms. He wasn’t quite sure why his favorite childhood color mattered. Or who they thought he was, considering the next question asked if he had ever overthrown the rule of a benevolent dictator. Hell, Norman was pretty sure that statement was an oxymoron.
He was just finishing up the last of the forms when he heard the voice of the gron call Toby up to the counter. Had it been two hours already?
Not wanting to be holding everyone up, Norman hurried through the rest of the questions, giving one-word answers where possible. And otherwise giving the shortest possible answer just to have something in the field.
He made it back in line just as the clerk handed Toby what looked like a ticket. Then it was his turn at the window after another five-minute staring match where the clerk attempted to do as little work as feasibly possible.
Norman was handed a ticket and told to use the platform in the main room.
“Um, what platform?” he certainly hadn’t seen any trains or anything or even a wall that would slide away to reveal some sort of tube transport.
The clerk managed to give the sigh to end all sighs, dragging it on far longer than he had to, just to show Norman how little he thought of him before replying. “There are teleporter platforms marked on the floor in the main atrium. Or did you think you just arrived here by pure happenstance?”
Norman was pretty sure that the last question was rhetorical. Leaving the gron clerk to his own devices, he walked over to his bag where Toby and Anna were waiting for him.
The group headed toward the atrium and quickly found the marked-off circles on the floor. Norman had dismissed them as some weird decoration before.
“So… do we all just step into one at the same time, or take individual ones?”
“We could ask the clerk,” Anna suggested.
Both Norman and Toby shook their heads at that suggestion.
“That guy would probably make us fill out forms just for the privilege of the answer. No, we all came together, let's just leave together,” Toby pointed to one of the circles.
As soon as they crossed into the circle, there was a flash and they were standing in another room. This one had many more people- beings coming and going. There were mainly gron, a few jorik that were looking disdainfully around at everyone and everything, and hell, even a few humans other than them. Everyone was queuing in lines where more booths filled with gron clerks were asking them questions.
Norman nudged Toby and pointed at one of the signs that flipped between languages. It read ‘Customs’.
Toby looked panicked for a bit at seeing that since all of them had weapons, but he quickly relaxed as he saw more than one person in the crowd was armed. Norman even saw sparks of what he assumed was magic as the people in line were forced to touch large metal orbs placed in front of the booths before they were allowed through.
With no other choice but to proceed ahead, the three of them got into a line together.
