“Fuck sake,” Norman cursed as he reached his final stop. Taking the teleporters had been a mistake. Mostly due to Norman’s lack of understanding of how they operated.
He figured he could just step into any of the circles and then a prompt or something would pop up asking where he wanted to go. Nope. His first teleport took him in the entirely wrong direction.
Thankfully each station had a map and Norman immediately noticed his mistake. So he stepped back into the same circle, only to find he had gone even further the wrong way. It took him another three attempts before he figured out how the stations operated. And he wanted to kick himself for not seeing it sooner. They worked in a simple North, South, East, and West grid.
It was brilliant in its simplicity. Allowing you to cross the massive city rather simply as long as you knew in what direction your destination lay. The reason Norman was annoyed was that each teleport cost money that was automatically deducted from his card, so he was now down additional money and he was running late.
Turns out that crossing four hundred miles was not as quick as he had hoped. He was forced to wait in lines at some of the busier teleporter locations. Although, at least the lines moved quickly.
Norman quickly found the bar that Toby had asked him to meet at. He wasn’t looking forward to dealing with an annoyed Toby due to his tardiness. Then again, this was Toby’s fault. He should have picked a more convenient location to meet at. Not some out-of-the-way location due to perceived security concerns.
The building that housed the bar was the same dull grey as every other gron structure. It even had the ubiquitous graffiti that Norman saw all over the city. It was like it was someone’s goal was to cover the entire city’s first floors with colorful artwork. The only thing that told Norman he had the right place was a sign above the door that simply stated ‘Bar’.
Norman shook his head at the blandness of the sign. A venue meant for relaxation should be exempt from this bureaucratic nonsense. He had to step aside as two very drunk patrons stumbled past him, holding each other and singing some song in their native language. Norman had to stop and stare for a moment since this was the first time he had seen gron without a stick up their ass.
They looked and acted exactly like humans when drunk. At least that was something Norman could understand. He slipped past the pair and into the bar before the door closed.
The first thing Norman noticed and approved of was that the gron bar, or at least this one, wasn’t in the modern human style that he hated so much. It instead sported thick wooden beams and even more sturdy-looking round wooden tables. Going by the fact that a group of gron was having a fistfight in one corner and nobody was stepping in to stop them, it was probably a wise choice to have sturdy furniture.
He skirted around that area while looking around for Toby. He didn’t see the man anywhere and had a moment of hesitation when he thought he might have gotten the address wrong. He pulled the email up on his gron-issued version of a phone. Nope, he had the correct address. Maybe Toby had run into the same issue with the teleporters? He didn’t think so, based on how Toby operated. With nothing to do but wait, Norman went to find a seat.
“Oy!”
Norman turned toward a gron seated at one of the tables that was motioning him over. Norman pointed to himself.
“Yea, yous hums, come er,” the man slurred.
Not seeing Toby anywhere, Norman was curious and decided to walk over. “What can I do for you?”
“Oy, yous new here?”
Norman nodded after parsing the man’s slurred words.
The gron leaned forward, spilling some of his drink on the table. “Theys eva tel you hows you hums gots her?”
Norman already felt a headache building in the back of his skull as he listened to this man’s stilted speech. But he decided to continue the conversation. “You mean here, in this city?”
“Nah! I means yous people.”
“You mean how our lands got here?” Norman asked in genuine curiosity. He hadn’t found anything about it on the gron internet. And certainly, nobody he had spoken to in the city had offered up any information about how it came to be.
The gron nodded. “Yous buy me a drin and I’s tell ya.”
Norman sat down at the table and ordered the man a drink as well as one for himself. One that he quickly set aside after a few sips. Because the gron idea of alcohol made moonshine seem tame. The little bit Norman had drunk was already making him feel flush.
The gron explained how deities were responsible for the fall. Each god had their own layer of the universe and there was some sort of war for territory. Norman wasn’t clear on that part because the gron’s slurring had increased through that portion of the story to the point Norman couldn’t understand his speech any longer.
Thankfully, his speech improved after a bit of time and Norman continued to listen to the story. This is where he learned that the losing pantheon would be destroyed and their lands cast down.
“Holy shit, I had no idea that’s what happened!” Norman hadn’t had any clue that any of this is what occurred. And the fact that gods were fighting over layers, whatever those were, was a bit terrifying.
The gron slapped the table hard, startling Norman out of his thoughts. Then he guffawed loud enough to get looks from other tables, “gaws you hums are so gulbl. Hows a grubber like me know this? Dos I look like a chronkler?”
Norman blinked, “What?” The man continued to laugh at him between the big gulps of his drink. Then Norman realized the man was fucking with him. “That’s not funny, that’s just mean. What the hell is wrong with you? And it’s humans, not hums.”
The gron pointed a meaty finger at Norman or tried to. The hand the digit was attached to kept wavering about. “We got stories bout you hums. Jus liks you got stories bouts us. Wanna know what we think of ya?”
“Not really,” Norman replied, done with the conversation and the drunk gron. That didn’t seem to discourage the gron though.
“Sees in ours stories, yous hums are a bunch of greedy, untrusworthy swine that don follows rules. I’m keepin me eyes on you.”
Despite the gron’s foul behavior and previous lies, this was a noteworthy bit of information to Norman. He had always wondered how humanity had caricatures of jorik and then gron. Sure they got some things wrong with the jorik, like the blue skin, but almost everything else was spot on. Pointy ears, self-entitled attitude, good with magic. Although, as far as he knew they didn’t live in trees though.
The gron seemed to be more a combination of dwarves and gnomes, with their short stature and stout frames. Only it seemed they were the worst parts of both species. And it seems the gron had something similar for humans or hum. Norman wasn’t sure if the s was part of the name or an affectation of the man’s slurred speech. He couldn’t even argue the points the man brought up about humans as they were pretty accurate.
“Making friends?” Toby asked as he sat down next to Norman.
“Oy, another hums, bloody multiplying like rabis. Hey, new hums, you wans hear hows yous got here?”
Toby quirked an eyebrow at Norman.
Norman shook his head.
“Nah, mate. How bout you bugger off?” Toby replied in a really bad Australian accent for some reason.
The gron frowned at Toby before standing. “Oy, you bein rude. Buy mes a drink ans lisen to me story or wes gonna have a problem.”
Toby just ignored the gron and turned toward Norman. Which was probably a good thing as the drunk gron man blinked slowly a few times before wavering uncertainly for a few seconds. This ended a few moments after when his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell over where he was standing. A few gron in work attire came out and dragged the unconscious man away.
Norman watched the spectacle before addressing Toby, “you’re late.”
Toby shook his head. “I told you an earlier time because I figured you would somehow screw up on the teleporters. I’m actually surprised you still arrived before me.”
“You’re being awfully condescending to someone you need help from. Besides, I’ve been here the entire time.” That wasn’t true but Toby didn’t need to know that.
“I’m sure. And this is a transactional relationship, Norman, nothing more. Once you fix me we can go our separate ways. How’s the research coming by the way?”
Norman could have argued with Toby or threatened to withhold treatment but he decided to just add this to Toby’s growing pile of things he would need to pay for at a later date. Besides, the man wasn’t worth wasting his breath on.
“Hi Toby, been a while. How are you? How’s Anna?”
Toby rolled his eyes but played along. “How have you been?”
Norman shrugged. “Fine, thanks for asking.”
“…”
“Oh right, the research. Slow.”
Toby sighed. “Can you be a bit more specific? This is kind of important.”
“There isn’t much to say. I’ve been stuck in training for two weeks and haven’t had much time to experiment. Today was my first chance to really experiment but I hit a slight setback. Nothing bad but it just prevented me from doing any more experiments today.”
Toby grunted. “Gotta say, not what I hoped to hear. I thought you would be more motivated to fix me, at least for Anna’s sake.”
“As touched as I am to know you think so highly of my skills, I don’t know what you expect. It isn’t like I have an instruction book about this stuff. The fact that I am making any progress at all is astounding.”
Toby ground his teeth in silence for a bit before replying. “You’re right. I’m sorry for being so pushy, it's just that Anna has been asking questions. I think she might suspect something is wrong with me.”
“You should probably just tell her. If she finds out on her own, she could flip out.”
“Hmm, maybe. I don’t want to distract her now though. She seems to be struggling in this new school setting.”
“Gee, I wonder why,” Norman quipped.
“We all have to make sacrifices. This is better than fearing for our lives every night.”
Norman nodded. “You learn anything about how to get out of here when the time comes?”
Toby sighed. “Not yet. I’m limited in where I can go during my shifts. I did learn an interesting fact today though.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, all this graffiti is being done by one person. Apparently, nobody knows who it is. They asked all of the compliance officers to keep an eye out.”
“Um… ok. That seems like a silly thing to be concerned about.”
“For us, sure. But for the gron, it’s a big deal. You see how regimented they are. Shit like this drives them nuts.”
“I guess. I don’t think we should get too mixed up with the gron’s problems though. Let’s just lay low until I can get this figured out so we can get the hell out of here.”
Toby blinked at Norman. “Are- Are you okay?”
“What? I’m fine, why?”
“I just never thought I would hear words of reason coming from your mouth.”
“Man, fuck you.”
“Hey, don’t blame me for my surprise. Tell me one time when something you said was a good idea?”
Norman paused to think, certain he could call Toby’s bluff. The pause extended far longer than Norman cared to admit before Toby replied.
“Uh-huh.”
“Whatever. Let's talk about something else. How’s Anna? No, shit, we already talked about her.”
An awkward silence followed before Norman glanced at his phone. “You know, it’s getting late. I should get going so I’m not late for my first day of work tomorrow.”
“Yeah, me too. I’ll reach out if anything changes on my end. Keep anything important out of your emails. There is no telling who is reading them. We can discuss it the next time we meet. If it’s something that can’t wait, use the word ‘home’ in your email.”
“Yes, Mother.” Norman wanted to roll his eyes at Toby’s paranoia. But it had kept them alive when Sin’s men were after them so he couldn’t be too annoyed by it.
It was just a hassle to try and keep all of these secret words straight. If Toby ever found out Norman had written them all down on a slip of paper he stuck in his grimoire, he would probably be pretty upset. Hmm, Maybe Norman should accidentally slip it into their next conversation just to force Toby to have to redo everything. That thought got a chuckle out of him as he left the bar.
MJMarkgraf I apologize to all the non-english speakers for all the drunken speech.
“Fuck sake,” Norman cursed as he reached his final stop. Taking the teleporters had been a mistake. Mostly due to Norman’s lack of understanding of how they operated.
He figured he could just step into any of the circles and then a prompt or something would pop up asking where he wanted to go. Nope. His first teleport took him in the entirely wrong direction.
Thankfully each station had a map and Norman immediately noticed his mistake. So he stepped back into the same circle, only to find he had gone even further the wrong way. It took him another three attempts before he figured out how the stations operated. And he wanted to kick himself for not seeing it sooner. They worked in a simple North, South, East, and West grid.
It was brilliant in its simplicity. Allowing you to cross the massive city rather simply as long as you knew in what direction your destination lay. The reason Norman was annoyed was that each teleport cost money that was automatically deducted from his card, so he was now down additional money and he was running late.
Turns out that crossing four hundred miles was not as quick as he had hoped. He was forced to wait in lines at some of the busier teleporter locations. Although, at least the lines moved quickly.
Norman quickly found the bar that Toby had asked him to meet at. He wasn’t looking forward to dealing with an annoyed Toby due to his tardiness. Then again, this was Toby’s fault. He should have picked a more convenient location to meet at. Not some out-of-the-way location due to perceived security concerns.
The building that housed the bar was the same dull grey as every other gron structure. It even had the ubiquitous graffiti that Norman saw all over the city. It was like it was someone’s goal was to cover the entire city’s first floors with colorful artwork. The only thing that told Norman he had the right place was a sign above the door that simply stated ‘Bar’.
Norman shook his head at the blandness of the sign. A venue meant for relaxation should be exempt from this bureaucratic nonsense. He had to step aside as two very drunk patrons stumbled past him, holding each other and singing some song in their native language. Norman had to stop and stare for a moment since this was the first time he had seen gron without a stick up their ass.
They looked and acted exactly like humans when drunk. At least that was something Norman could understand. He slipped past the pair and into the bar before the door closed.
The first thing Norman noticed and approved of was that the gron bar, or at least this one, wasn’t in the modern human style that he hated so much. It instead sported thick wooden beams and even more sturdy-looking round wooden tables. Going by the fact that a group of gron was having a fistfight in one corner and nobody was stepping in to stop them, it was probably a wise choice to have sturdy furniture.
He skirted around that area while looking around for Toby. He didn’t see the man anywhere and had a moment of hesitation when he thought he might have gotten the address wrong. He pulled the email up on his gron-issued version of a phone. Nope, he had the correct address. Maybe Toby had run into the same issue with the teleporters? He didn’t think so, based on how Toby operated. With nothing to do but wait, Norman went to find a seat.
“Oy!”
Norman turned toward a gron seated at one of the tables that was motioning him over. Norman pointed to himself.
“Yea, yous hums, come er,” the man slurred.
Not seeing Toby anywhere, Norman was curious and decided to walk over. “What can I do for you?”
“Oy, yous new here?”
Norman nodded after parsing the man’s slurred words.
The gron leaned forward, spilling some of his drink on the table. “Theys eva tel you hows you hums gots her?”
Norman already felt a headache building in the back of his skull as he listened to this man’s stilted speech. But he decided to continue the conversation. “You mean here, in this city?”
“Nah! I means yous people.”
“You mean how our lands got here?” Norman asked in genuine curiosity. He hadn’t found anything about it on the gron internet. And certainly, nobody he had spoken to in the city had offered up any information about how it came to be.
The gron nodded. “Yous buy me a drin and I’s tell ya.”
Norman sat down at the table and ordered the man a drink as well as one for himself. One that he quickly set aside after a few sips. Because the gron idea of alcohol made moonshine seem tame. The little bit Norman had drunk was already making him feel flush.
The gron explained how deities were responsible for the fall. Each god had their own layer of the universe and there was some sort of war for territory. Norman wasn’t clear on that part because the gron’s slurring had increased through that portion of the story to the point Norman couldn’t understand his speech any longer.
Thankfully, his speech improved after a bit of time and Norman continued to listen to the story. This is where he learned that the losing pantheon would be destroyed and their lands cast down.
“Holy shit, I had no idea that’s what happened!” Norman hadn’t had any clue that any of this is what occurred. And the fact that gods were fighting over layers, whatever those were, was a bit terrifying.
The gron slapped the table hard, startling Norman out of his thoughts. Then he guffawed loud enough to get looks from other tables, “gaws you hums are so gulbl. Hows a grubber like me know this? Dos I look like a chronkler?”
Norman blinked, “What?” The man continued to laugh at him between the big gulps of his drink. Then Norman realized the man was fucking with him. “That’s not funny, that’s just mean. What the hell is wrong with you? And it’s humans, not hums.”
The gron pointed a meaty finger at Norman or tried to. The hand the digit was attached to kept wavering about. “We got stories bout you hums. Jus liks you got stories bouts us. Wanna know what we think of ya?”
“Not really,” Norman replied, done with the conversation and the drunk gron. That didn’t seem to discourage the gron though.
“Sees in ours stories, yous hums are a bunch of greedy, untrusworthy swine that don follows rules. I’m keepin me eyes on you.”
Despite the gron’s foul behavior and previous lies, this was a noteworthy bit of information to Norman. He had always wondered how humanity had caricatures of jorik and then gron. Sure they got some things wrong with the jorik, like the blue skin, but almost everything else was spot on. Pointy ears, self-entitled attitude, good with magic. Although, as far as he knew they didn’t live in trees though.
The gron seemed to be more a combination of dwarves and gnomes, with their short stature and stout frames. Only it seemed they were the worst parts of both species. And it seems the gron had something similar for humans or hum. Norman wasn’t sure if the s was part of the name or an affectation of the man’s slurred speech. He couldn’t even argue the points the man brought up about humans as they were pretty accurate.
“Making friends?” Toby asked as he sat down next to Norman.
“Oy, another hums, bloody multiplying like rabis. Hey, new hums, you wans hear hows yous got here?”
Toby quirked an eyebrow at Norman.
Norman shook his head.
“Nah, mate. How bout you bugger off?” Toby replied in a really bad Australian accent for some reason.
The gron frowned at Toby before standing. “Oy, you bein rude. Buy mes a drink ans lisen to me story or wes gonna have a problem.”
Toby just ignored the gron and turned toward Norman. Which was probably a good thing as the drunk gron man blinked slowly a few times before wavering uncertainly for a few seconds. This ended a few moments after when his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell over where he was standing. A few gron in work attire came out and dragged the unconscious man away.
Norman watched the spectacle before addressing Toby, “you’re late.”
Toby shook his head. “I told you an earlier time because I figured you would somehow screw up on the teleporters. I’m actually surprised you still arrived before me.”
“You’re being awfully condescending to someone you need help from. Besides, I’ve been here the entire time.” That wasn’t true but Toby didn’t need to know that.
“I’m sure. And this is a transactional relationship, Norman, nothing more. Once you fix me we can go our separate ways. How’s the research coming by the way?”
Norman could have argued with Toby or threatened to withhold treatment but he decided to just add this to Toby’s growing pile of things he would need to pay for at a later date. Besides, the man wasn’t worth wasting his breath on.
“Hi Toby, been a while. How are you? How’s Anna?”
Toby rolled his eyes but played along. “How have you been?”
Norman shrugged. “Fine, thanks for asking.”
“…”
“Oh right, the research. Slow.”
Toby sighed. “Can you be a bit more specific? This is kind of important.”
“There isn’t much to say. I’ve been stuck in training for two weeks and haven’t had much time to experiment. Today was my first chance to really experiment but I hit a slight setback. Nothing bad but it just prevented me from doing any more experiments today.”
Toby grunted. “Gotta say, not what I hoped to hear. I thought you would be more motivated to fix me, at least for Anna’s sake.”
“As touched as I am to know you think so highly of my skills, I don’t know what you expect. It isn’t like I have an instruction book about this stuff. The fact that I am making any progress at all is astounding.”
Toby ground his teeth in silence for a bit before replying. “You’re right. I’m sorry for being so pushy, it's just that Anna has been asking questions. I think she might suspect something is wrong with me.”
“You should probably just tell her. If she finds out on her own, she could flip out.”
“Hmm, maybe. I don’t want to distract her now though. She seems to be struggling in this new school setting.”
“Gee, I wonder why,” Norman quipped.
“We all have to make sacrifices. This is better than fearing for our lives every night.”
Norman nodded. “You learn anything about how to get out of here when the time comes?”
Toby sighed. “Not yet. I’m limited in where I can go during my shifts. I did learn an interesting fact today though.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, all this graffiti is being done by one person. Apparently, nobody knows who it is. They asked all of the compliance officers to keep an eye out.”
“Um… ok. That seems like a silly thing to be concerned about.”
“For us, sure. But for the gron, it’s a big deal. You see how regimented they are. Shit like this drives them nuts.”
“I guess. I don’t think we should get too mixed up with the gron’s problems though. Let’s just lay low until I can get this figured out so we can get the hell out of here.”
Toby blinked at Norman. “Are- Are you okay?”
“What? I’m fine, why?”
“I just never thought I would hear words of reason coming from your mouth.”
“Man, fuck you.”
“Hey, don’t blame me for my surprise. Tell me one time when something you said was a good idea?”
Norman paused to think, certain he could call Toby’s bluff. The pause extended far longer than Norman cared to admit before Toby replied.
“Uh-huh.”
“Whatever. Let's talk about something else. How’s Anna? No, shit, we already talked about her.”
An awkward silence followed before Norman glanced at his phone. “You know, it’s getting late. I should get going so I’m not late for my first day of work tomorrow.”
“Yeah, me too. I’ll reach out if anything changes on my end. Keep anything important out of your emails. There is no telling who is reading them. We can discuss it the next time we meet. If it’s something that can’t wait, use the word ‘home’ in your email.”
“Yes, Mother.” Norman wanted to roll his eyes at Toby’s paranoia. But it had kept them alive when Sin’s men were after them so he couldn’t be too annoyed by it.
It was just a hassle to try and keep all of these secret words straight. If Toby ever found out Norman had written them all down on a slip of paper he stuck in his grimoire, he would probably be pretty upset. Hmm, Maybe Norman should accidentally slip it into their next conversation just to force Toby to have to redo everything. That thought got a chuckle out of him as he left the bar.
MJMarkgraf I apologize to all the non-english speakers for all the drunken speech.
