The streets in the middle of the commercial district were always full of life. A mélange of races shuffled through narrow paths, with stalls selling all sorts of goods and services lining the sides. The voices of salesmen echoed loudly, the dozens of conversations melding together into undecipherable noise. That being said, there was a general feeling of positivity, especially on such a perfect day. The temperature leaned closer to the warm side, though a calming breeze offset that.
However, a peculiar sound seemed to rise above them all. Calling it music would have been a bit of a stretch, as it seemed to more closely resemble cacophony. That being said, the aberrant syncopation seemed to be drawing a crowd.
The individuals formed a wide semicircle around the source. It was a vehicle that seemed to be a cross between a wagon and a vendor stall. Made completely out of wood, it seemed to be in perfect condition... at least on one side. The side that mattered and was pointed towards the crowd was made of handcrafted wood, polished to a brilliant shine. The other side... not so much. The term scrap would be more accurate.
The center of the near side opened outwards, revealing the inside of the wagon. An immaculately kept sign hung above the window, the words “Vanidici Emporium” scrawled artistically. On the bottom ledge of the window was an eclectic mix of glass bottles filled with mysteriously colored liquid. Charms and pendants were draped along the sides, unknown objects were stuffed into alien looking boxes.
The crowd continued to grow as the volume of the music continued to increase. Suddenly, the sound of a dozen trumpets, mixed with what suspiciously sounded like the roar of some feral beast shook the entire cart. Erupting outwards from the top of the wagon in a burst of glitter, Omir Vandici appeared. He front flipped forward, landing in a triumphant stance, in solid form with his arms extended upwards. Immediately after, a second burst of noise and confetti exited the top of the wagon, a small form of a Praeca. The red ursine animal did a similar front flip, landing with a delicate flop on top of Omir’s head.
The crowd erupted in a surge of applause, though most of it was directed towards the bear than the laicar. “Welcome! Welcome!” the brown-haired salesman announced, his voice energetic and excited. Catching the eye of a young Laicar woman to his side, he gave the girl a wink, who immediately blushed at the sight. Omir looked out at the crowd, gesturing back towards the cart behind him.
“I’ve travelled far and wide across the realm, gathering only the best and rarest potions and poultices for sale.” In a blur he suddenly appeared next to a bunch of glass vials. “Dangerous magicks, and forbidden potions.” he grabbed handful of ebony dust from an open container. Throwing it on the ground, he disappeared in a plume of black smoke.
He appeared suddenly in the middle of the crowd, much to the surprise of the shocked audience who quickly stepped back. Reaching into his cloak, he pulled out two more vials of liquid. “Made by sages from far-away corners of the Earth, these legendary potions have been known to make even Death run in fear!”
The children in the group gasped out as he disappeared in another plume of black smoke. Appearing in front of the wagon once again, he grabbed two vials, throwing both to the small creature at his side who caught them with his bushy tail.
“To the untrained, handling these ingredients would be suicide. But don’t worry! Even Death himself has bowed to my skill.” Omir snapped at his partner, the small creature running towards the back of the wagon. A large screen was ejected by the top of the wagon, hanging down the side. The Praeca ran out from the side, pulling a device on a cart behind him.
“I present to you these real testimonials from satisfied customers!”
The red bear tapped the device with his paws, a grainy image being projected from the side. The black and white film appeared on the screen. An elderly Laicar woman appeared on the screen, a pair of circular reading glasses being the most striking feature.
“Oh, before I met Mister Vandici, I used to get terrible pains in my back. But after just one sip of his elixir and I was fixed up just like new! I feel like I’m fifty-three all over again!”
The small creature pressed a button on the device again. This time an image of a Demvir appeared on the screen. The mechanical creature was made of jagged, triangular parts. A single red eye sat in the center of its face.
“MISTER VANDICI’S PERFECT POLISHING POULTICE HAS GIVEN ME A SHINE THAT I HAVEN’T SEEN IN YEARS, EVEN NOW I’M GETTING LOOKS FROM ENVIOUS, BIOFORM, EYES.”
The device suddenly turned off, Omir shooting a sudden glance towards the ursine. Clearly shaken up by the change in the practiced program, the red bear suddenly started aggressively tapping its paws on the device. Smoke started to rise from the device, as it started to malfunction. Three separate videos were played simultaneously the screen.
He glanced quickly towards the wagon, quickly stuffing another pinch of powder into his pocket as confused looks appeared on the audience’s face. He ran over towards the projector, the Praeca jumping on his shoulder. As the device continued to heat up, it began to beep violently. The crowd backed up in fear.
At the last minute, he threw the powder on the device and kicked the cart upwards. Igniting instantly, the device detonated. Instead of shrapnel, the contents were launched skywards, as they exploded into a variety of colors.
Makeshift fireworks in a sense.
The crowd suddenly ooh’d and ahh’d as the lightshow continued. He shot an annoyed glance towards the Praeca who simply raised both paws upwards in a shrug.
“Yes, you will be celebrating too after you purchase our wares!”
Omir walked into the crowd. “Sir!” Going towards a slightly balding middle aged Laicar, he placed his hand around his shoulders. “Is your mind twenty, but your follicles forty? Simply dab this on twice a day and within a week it should be as good as new!” The salesman handed the man a vial of blue liquid.
Quickly he turned around to an Enlil female, handing her a red tube. “Ahh a blue feathered one, quite a rare sight and quite a lucky gift. However, reds are in this season! But don’t worry, just add this to your bathwater and you’ll be crimson in no time!”
He then jogged over to a Velen child, clutching her mother’s leg in shyness. The Praeca ran forward, placing his paws on the child and licking his face. The child giggled and smiled as he began to play with the creature. “Madam, don’t you want to make sure that that smile always stays on her face? If she’s getting ill, just mix this into her meal and it’ll cure any ailment.”
Throwing the last bit of black powder in his pocket onto the ground, as the smoke cleared he appeared next to the wagon once again. “And for you all, in this wonderful city of Terminus, I offer you a once in a lifetime deal! Thirty percent off all our wares, with a money back guaranteed if you’re unsatisfied with the results. Terms and conditions apply.” He mumbled something rapidly under his breath, rehearsed to be spoken with such speed that it was nearly impossible to undersand. The ursine ran behind the wagon once again, as another burst of confetti erupted from the sides.
The crowd continued to grow around the Vanidici Emporium wagon. The crowd, successfully duped by Omir’s shock and awe demonstration, quickly started to snatch up the products he had put out for the day. Vials, pendants, tonics, and elixirs were flying off the shelves, and Exa was flying into his hands.
“How much for the Anti-Vistra Ward?” asked an Enlil woman standing behind him.
“One-thousand exa,” replied the brown-haired salesman, as he grabbed the cash from the avian’s hands,
“Requires one day of charging in direct sunlight and works for up to three to five days in specified conditions. The exact conditions are the written in the ancient Velen text along the side. Thank you!”
He ducked away before the Enlil woman realized that she couldn’t speak a dead language.
“What’s this?” asked a small Laicar child, holding a vial of black sludge in his right hand. He raised it up to his face with a puzzling look.
The small red ursine, Denu, ran over to the child. The Praeca preformed an ornate set of gestures and squeaks to explain the product. It rose on its hind legs, attempting to make the most intimidating face it blink, it grabbed the vial raising it up in the air with a triumphant call. The Praeca teetered back, before collapsing on its back with a pitiful mew, its right leg twitching.
All the while the Laicar child struggled to understand.
“Monster repellent,” explained Omir, “Five hundred exa per vial.”
“Ohhh!”
The kid quickly reached into his pocket, pulling out a wad of crumpled exa and handed it over. “I’ll take two vials!”
Before he could reply again, another voice from behind called him over. Denu jumped on his master’s shoulder, as the two ran over to another customer. It was a petite Enlil female. She held a pink parasol in her right hand, her plumage matching the vibrant shade.
“I have… you see… a problem!”
“Well I bet I have something that can help!” the charming salesman replied with a smile.
“Well… you… see… oh I can’t say it’s too embarrassing!” she replied blushing. Or at least he thought it was a blush considering she turned the same color as her feathers. She looked up for a moment at Omir, before blushing further. “You see… I’m from a much colder climate. The heat here is… unfortunate. I get terrible sweats that drench my feathers! This is unacceptable for a lady such as myself!”
“Hmm…” Omir tilted his head whispering something to the Praeca on his shoulder. Denu blinked, confused, before a look of shock overcame his face. The creature rapidly squeaked back, before Omir whispered something back. With a grumbling noise, the ursine jumped off his shoulder and ran to the wagon.
With a grunt of exertion, Denu appeared from behind the wagon towing an odd contraption that was easily five times its size. Slowly pulling it over, it arrived next to Omir, before flopping down on the ground and panting. He scooped up his partner with his hand, as the bear slapped him with his tail.
“Tada!” he announced before gesticulating wildly at the device. It appeared to be a cross between a water-heater and a vacuum cleaner.
“Umm,” replied the Enlil, “Might I ask… what this is?”
“I’m glad you asked!” he announced loudly, as the crowd slowly began to gather around them. “I present to you the Vanidici Re-energizer Five-thousand! Ladies and gentlemen-slash-gentlebirds-slash-gentlefish-gentlemasculineunits, I present to you the future!”
The crowd gasped.
Omir gave the gathered group a confused glance. “Anyway. Are you tried of spending hours every morning preparing for the day? Tired of all the time it takes to polish your external casing, or clean your scales? Does your plumage look horrendous when you first get up? Well worry not!”
He walked over to the pink Enlil, extending his hand which she took with another blush, turning a pink that Omir was convinced was outside the visible light spectrum. “If you would kindly stand over here and hold this,” he handed her the vacuum shaped nozzle.
Denu jumped off his shoulder, landing near the control panel at the top of the cylindrical part of the device. Omir stood in front of it.
“On my mark, point the nozzle directly at me!”
He reached into his pocket, concealing a pinch of black powder in his hand. He grabbed another vial of red liquid, spilling it on his jacket, an ugly red stain covering appearing on the white. “Oh no! I have stained my precious jacket. This would normally take hours to scrub and clean, and there’s no guarantee the stain will be removed. However, have no fear, the Re-energizer is here! Now point it at me.”
The girl lifted the nozzle, while the Praeca pressed the big red button on the control panel with its paw.
“Re-energizer activate!”
The device roared to life with a sound more reminiscent of an engine. Plumes of exhaust smoke exited the top of the cylindrical boiler. As the crowd was distracted by the device, he dropped the pinch of powder, a plume of black smoke erupting from the ground. In one deft move, a change he had practiced time and time again, he took off his stained jacket, revealing the identical outfit below. He swapped the ordering of the two outfits, so that the new jacket was now on top.
As the smoke dissipated, he stood with a confident smile on his face. “Voila! Stain gone!”
The crowd broke out into a chorus of applause.
“Now, I’ve only demonstrated what the Re-energizer does on clothing. The same results can effect everything from your actual appearance to the appearance of objects around the house, if they fulfill certain requirements,” he whispered the last bit, which was muffled under the loud roar of the engine, “All for one, easy payment, of seven-thousand exa!”
“I’ll take one!” exclaimed the pink Enlil, handing him a large stack of exa from her bag. She clapped her hands together, two brutish Enlil guards picked up the Re-energizer. Not that Omir noticed that is. He was too transfixed on the pile of exa now in his hands.
She snapped her purse shut before handing it to one of the guards. “This is exactly what I was hoping you had Mister Vanidici. Your record for excellence certainly wasn’t a lie!”
“Only the most excellent products for the most excellent customers,” he replied with a coy smirk.
Clink!
Another cross landed in the quite sizeable pile in the back of the Vanidici Emporium wagon. The exa collected would even make the richest of men pause. Small… donations… that compounded to a staggering sum, it was really a grassroots movement. In fact, it easily rounded off the quota that he had set for this part of town, it was time to move to a different part of town.
“Alright Denu, that calls it for today’s share. This might be our biggest haul yet! You got the fully tally?” Omir exclaimed as the clapped his hands together.
The red Praeca squeaked with excitement as it ran over to its master with a piece of paper in its mouth. The brown-haired man took it from the creature and unruffled the paper. What appeared to just be a bunch of paw prints and dirt covered the margins. With a disgruntled look on his face, he simply tossed the page over his shoulder.
“Whatever, I eyeballed it and it looks pretty damn good if I may say so myself. Time for the buisness review!” Omir announced as he suddenly jumped to his feet. The Praeca ran forward before sitting down in front of him.
The Laicar stepped back to the projector at the back of the wagon. He slammed his fist down on the top of it as it wheezed its way back to life. A grainy black and white picture of a map of Terminus was projected onto a screen. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a pointer that he extended to max length.
“With this I think we can call the lower quarter complete. I’m rather happy with how it turned out and I have to attribute it to our new marketing strategy. The exa we paid for this projector was very worth it. Also, the investment in blasting powder and smoke grenades made the cons… err… sales a lot more… umm… convincing…” Omir explained.
Denu stood still, soaking up the information eagerly. Or maybe he was just bored.
“I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a vehicle repair shop in the more… upscale commercial district. We can get this piece of junk renovated with this exa and then move onto phase two of the operation,” he aggressively pointed at a street in the middle of town, “We’ll have to invest in some new powders, fireworks, megaphones, and smoke devices. This needs to get fancy fast. I’m thinking more bloomand pizzazz.”
Denu shook his head eagerly.
“Now for step three, we need to reinvest—“ Omir started before he was abruptly cut-off by a bang on the door.
The force was so strong that the wagon itself began to sway, the mountain of exa cascading down the side and littering the floor. He stomped angrily forward, slamming open the door in response, “Hasn’t anyone taught you that it’s impolite to—“ Before he could a finish a sharp pain spiked on his face. It lasted for a brief moment before everything went dark.
---
He opened his eyes, as his vision was still blurred. The front of his face throbbed with pain, one that by this point he was all too used to. He had gotten punched… again. Why was this becoming a near weekly occurrence? It ruined his appearance and perhaps worst of all it hurt his business! People didn’t like buying things from people with broken noses.
Getting up on his feet, he slowly began to recognize his surroundings once again. The wagon was behind him as he was clearly dragged in front of it. The brown-eyed man began to put two and two together. Scales, gross grey ones. Velen… quite a big fella… Omir thought.
The Velen in front of him was easily two feet taller than him and possessed quite a bulky stature. The grey scales were enormous and intimidating, as were the pointed face with a predator’s teeth. The Velen merely grunted as Omir got up to his feet. He swiveled as another sound caught his attention from behind.
Not another one… I think?
Maybe his vision was blurry but as far as he could tell the two looked identical. Sans for outfit, one seemed to prefer brute brown over grunt grey.
“Oh, you’re not seeing things. There’s just two of them, twins you know,” a particularly shrill voice explained. Bright pink plumage, rather short, an annoying beak thing, though the brown coat covering her was new.
“Wait, I know you. You bought the Re-energizer right?”
“Bought is pushing it thief! What you did was scam me! I turned it on and it blew my feathers clean off!”
“Ahh… well… you see…” Omir quickly began to backpedal, “It was in the terms and conditions. Did you use it perhaps on a clear day? Did you make sure that there was at least three front molars of a Velen in the near vicinity? Did you make sure to bind the device to an avatar of Castus before activation?”
The Enlil woman blinked twice, “What?”
“If you had read the owner’s manual…”
“There was no manual!” shouted the woman, turning roughly the same shade of pink as her feathers. She snapped her fingers.
The Velen behind him grabbed his shoulders and dragged him back into a hold. The second brute lumbered forth, cracking his knuckles. “Boys, boys. You guys like to talk right? Let’s settle this without resorting to violence. I’m like a quarter Velen, you wouldn’t hurt a bruddah right? We gotta stick together and all. Fishpower… yeah…”
Oooof!
A fist slammed into his stomach as the wind was immediately knocked out of him. Omir coughed, laughing at the same time, “You happy?”
“Swindler, you’ll rue the day you crossed me!” melodramatically announced the Enlil.
“What’s your name, hon?”
“Hmph! Adrianne Beatrix Iunia Juno Monaria the Fourth, Third Descendent of the Prestigious Monaria Vizers!” she announced with sudden fanfare, “And you will suffer your just consequences for your greed. Boys if you would please!”
The grey-coat wearing Velen pushed him to the ground, as they both began to approach him, their imposing stature towering over him. Denu squeaked from behind, as Omir located his partner.
“Oh aren’t you the cutest!” exclaimed Adrianne, as she picked up the Praeca and began to scratch his belly. Denu squealed with delight, completely forgetting about the impending fight.
“You’re useless you know that?”
Reaching into his pocket he grabbed the two metal balls and quickly undid one of the sashes on his waist. Quickly tying it into a knot, he cradled the metal between the fabric. He jumped to his feet, at this point being all too familiar with a good old fashioned brawl. Spinning the sash rapidly to the side, the metal created an imposing circular arc that could easily smash bone.
The brown-shirted twin swung out, as Omir ducked rapidly below the attack. Contorting his body the twisted the direction of the makeshift meteor hammer, as the sash spun taunt around the Velen’s arm. He pulled down, twisted the arm painfully and using momentum to his advantage. With a loud snap the bone quickly broke from the stress.
The brother yowled in pain as he grabbed his arm. Omir twisted his body once again, undoing the grasp and returning the sash to his side with one quick motion. The enraged Velen ran forward attempting to tackle him, as Omir side stepped it with little difficulty. The charging fighting tripped on the ground, landing with a thud as the force shoved dirt into his face.
Pleased with himself he smirked to himself, relaxing his guard for a moment. A sudden pressure on his chest choked him, as the second twin, who he had honestly forgotten about grabbed him from behind. Lifting him into the air, the Velen slammed Omir painfully on the ground using his superior weight to drive the force home. His vision was littered with stars as his head his the ground with a thud.
The Velen wasn’t done yet, as he was lifted up into the air with ease. Still dazed he simply was dragged back towards the pink-plumed Enlil. “Hmm, it seems as if you’re more suited to fighting than I thought. No matter, that was simply the prelude after all,” Denu hopped out of her arms, as she reached down for the bright pink parasol next to her.
“It’s unfortunate that the Monaria House has escaped you. The magics of the House have been our legacy, passed from generation to generation. It is our history and our power,” she explained as Omir was thrown in front of her. She tapped her parasol once on the ground, as an ornate symbol was magically carved into the ground. It was formed of two concentric circles, four diamonds circumscribed in the center.
“It is because of my honor, which you have insulted, that I must sentence you to your fate,” she tapped the ground twice with her parasol, as the arcane symbol glowed with a brilliant red light. Clearing her throat she began to sing,
“Ego, ego sum. Ego ero ei!”
The haunting melody resonated with the air around him. Omir felt his body begin to levitate as he struggled against the force. However, regardless of how much he tried his muscles would not respond. The red light transitioned to a shimmering pink, the circles below him transforming into a black void.
“Excedat. Neficia notis et ultra campana orbis,” she sang, as twenty-seven wisps of energy erupted from the ground and began to circle him. Her voice began muddled, as Omir felt his senses begin to dull. His eyes glazed over, still completely conscious of what was occurring but unable to process any of it.
His mouth was forced open as the aria continued to echo, “Qui ex morte vultus inanis viginti septem…” The wisps suddenly forced themselves into his body, as he began to convulse and contort. Writhing in pain but unable to comprehend it in the slightest, a powerful acidic feeling build in every cell in his body. He began to scream as the song repeated once again. New wisps rose, forcing themselves into his body, the song repeated.
As she reached the peak, he felt his body ascend even farther into the sky as within an instant the energies faded. He slammed down against the ground as his consciousness faded once again.
