The city opens up to 11 like a picture book, but it is a long time before she can take in the sights. She keeps running the encounter with Sir Jernal and Captain Stelias again and again in her head, examining it from different angles, looking for her mistakes. And finding many.

Why had she been so provocative and rude to the knight, who, as he so vigorously reminded his captain, was only doing his job?

Surely, 11, being a God Gier and all, is not programmed to act like… well, an asshole?

But that was her voice, coming out of her mouth, wasn’t it?

Eventually, 11 makes her way to an open space in the middle of the city, where a busty, stone woman greets her with arms raised and wings unfurled towards the sky. The woman’s body is almost bare, her marble skin sparkling as sunlight casts her shadow across the paved ground. She stands on a pedestal of grey rock, her eyes closed and her chiseled brows turned downwards into a delicate frown, as if she’s feeling an invisible rain on her frozen face. Winding footpaths branch out beneath her like the face of a clock, stretching towards every direction into the busy city.

11 stops by the statue. In bold gold letters, a plaque fastened to the stone pedestal reads,

“Welcome to Kesrock, City of Nranhana.

Founded in 1158.

May all be shielded from adversity under the watchful gaze of the Goddess of Light, the Upholder of Haven, Mother of Life.”

11 frowns. She reads the last part again, checking to make sure she's getting it right.

“Upholder of… Haven?”

A flurry of movements and noises distracts 11 from the statue. A few feet away, two merchants are bickering over a rug laid out across the ground.

“I set my things down here first,” says one, plotting his bag on the rug.

“I was here every day for the past week,” says the other, kicking the bag away.

11 hears the clanking of the knights’ armors long before they arrive, and hurries away into the crowd before any of them can see her.

As 11 circles around the city square, she watches in amazement as it is transformed into a thriving, open market by the many merchants hurrying about. They’re dressed in all manners of colored robes and garments, in combinations 11 never expects can work. One merchant has draped the furs of some exotic-looking animals over his bare belly, while another has slung around his neck the shed skin of some reptilian creature, decorated with dull metallic spikes.

All around her, 11 is surrounded by overflowing carts and wagons, all busily being offloaded onto wooden stalls, or straight to the ground. Then, once everything is settled, the merchants sit amongst their trinkets and begin vying for the attention of anyone who passes them by.

“Cabbages, carrots, and potatoes! Fresh from the fields of Goose Creek!”

“Spices! Spices from the Shaazaw Isles!”

And just like that, business begins.

11 wanders along the stalls, finding herself drawn in by the liveliness.

“Onions! Selling onions!” one merchant yells amongst his baskets of stinky brow balls, his pointed velvet hat making him look like some sort of garden gnome. “Grown along the banks of Elfendale! Taste the sweetness of life, right here! With these onions!”

11 stifles a giggle, and moves onto the next store.

“Potions of resistance!” the next vendor hollers from behind a table filled with glass vials, fanning himself with a wad of animal skin. “Cauldron-brewed by an A-rank spellcaster!”

11 pauses, leaning in to scan the vibrant liquids churning inside the vials. She cannot identify any of the ingredients.

“After anything in particular?” the vendor asks, seeing 11’s interest. “Fire? Lightning? Physical enhancements?”

“Like steroids?” 11 asks, but the vendor just gives her a confused look.

Most of the customers in the market are adventurers, 11 notices, and many of them carry gear the likes of which she has never seen. She passes by a man wearing a staff on his back as tall and thin as he is, with three knarred claws sprouting from its end. Next to him, another adventurer has a shield on his arm the shape of a lion’s head, with two blades sprouting from inside the beast’s gaping mouth. 11’s eyes scan and break the weapons down into their components, and her mind excitedly races to blueprint the intricacies of their designs.

From somewhere to the side, a couple of kids comes tearing down the road, screaming their joy loud enough to split 11’s head open. She winces, turns, just in time to catch one of them as they barrel into her.

“Oof!” the little kid gasps, looking up at 11 with big, I’m-in-trouble-now eyes. “Sorry, big sister!”

Something clicks inside 11’s mind at those words, and for a moment she forgets where she is. “T-that’s okay,” she hears herself saying quietly. “Be… careful.”

The child grins toothily up at 11, and then races off after her friends.

11 looks down into her hands, as if expecting to see some residue left by the kid.

Big sister…

She blinks, and she isn’t in the marketplace anymore, but in a sterile, white room.

Another blink. There are machines all around the room; ventilators, heart-rate monitors…

11 closes her eyes, feeling the world tittering beneath her feet.

Big sister…

The words echo around 11, crashing against the inside of her skull.

Warning!

Abnormal neuro-activity detected.

Re-starting B.Blockers integration...

“Nranhana’s skinny backside, this is a robbery!”

11 snaps awake into drenching-cold reality. She looks around, dazed, seeing a different part of the market. She’s walked herself to the edge of the square, where the stalls are more spread out and their goods draw less attention.

“Friend, this here is fine cinder-clay.”

“Aye, but you can sell gold for less!”

A lone man is squatting by an almost vacant ground-stall, locked in a heated discussion with its merchant. They are both oblivious to 11’s arrival.

“It feels darn light, too,” says the squat and very wide man, as he examines a ceramic teacup under the sunlight. “Believe me, fellow, that a dwarf’s hands can tell pre-millennium work from present-day imitations!” He squints at the floral patterns circling the base of the cup, then runs inquisitive fingers through his waterfall of light grey beard. 11 stares, wide-eyed, as the beard sparkles like a river of liquid silver, parting between the man’s thick digits. He turns to the merchant. “I will offer you the generous sum of 1 silver Bit, sir, for this here teacup.”

“My friend,” the merchant replies with barely masked annoyance in his heavily-accented voice, “this is genuine cinder-clay, this I guarantee. As you know, after the failed assassination on the emperor of Jinyu in 980, every piece of cookery utensil in the palace was replaced with a lighter version of this material, which reacts on even the slightest touch of poison. What you’re holding there is genuine Jinyu cinder-clay, the last of its kind. It feels light because of its purity. Everyone knows that, as I’m sure you do too, my friend, for someone so interested in the initiated arts.”

“Hm, you have a point there, by Sharn.” The stout dwarf nods agreeably along to the merchant’s spiel, and the scene reminds 11 of a fable she's read in Mother’s database - the one about the emperor and his invisible clothes. She steps in and taps the dwarf on the shoulder, cutting him off from his next question.

"Hello," she says, "can you help me? I appear to be lost."

“Lost, you say?” The dwarf turns from the ceramic cup to 11, squinting, and for a moment she worries she might be again mistaken for Princess Hastarine. She tugs self-consciously on the edges of her hood, making sure it is hiding as much of her hair as possible, and she suddenly wonders if this is how Aralyn feels, every time the elf girl has to walk among humans.

“I’m afraid I don’t quite get what you mean, lassie,” says the dwarf, hefting himself up. "You look too old to be lost in the literal sense, and too young to be lost in the metaphorical sense." He wipes his hand across his faded wizard's robe, and offers it to 11. "But lucky for you, I just so happen to have the answer to both kinds of being lost.” The skin on his face is leathery and spotted from the sun, but his smile is warm and generous. "Safir Silverbeard, is my name. Some call me the Dwarf of Fortunes, others call me the Hero of Peddlers." He winks, one bushy eyebrow bobbing. "But mine lady can call me the Grand Master of Trades, if she so wishes."

11 shakes his hand, feeling rough callouses and dry skin. “Pleased to meet you,” she says, "Safir Silverbeard, Dwarf of Fortunes, Hero of Peddlers, Grand Master of Trades."

“Nranhana’s eyebrows,” the dwarf says, laughing, “a lassie with a firm handshake and a great sense of humor! Now that's something rare enough to pay to see!” He looks at 11 again, this time in friendly appraisal. “You must be a foreigner to Gandolia, aye. Are you an elf, perchance?”

“No,” 11 says, trying her best to reciprocate with her own smile. “But thank you.” She likes the way Safir is talking to her, affectionate yet respectful at the same time, as if they have known each other for a long time.

“I am looking for someplace where I can find information,” she says, steering the topic back to the purpose she's come to this city in the first place. “A place like a library, or someplace with books where I can learn about the world?”

“Someplace to learn about the world…” Safir repeats the words as he spends a minute thinking. “Aye, methinks the Heroes’ League would be the place to look for information,” he concludes. “I’ve heard they have a remarkable restricted section locked away somewhere in that overly-decorated party hall of a guild.” He turns the ceramic cup around in his hands absentmindedly as he speaks, and 11’s eyes follow the light speckling along the cup’s imperfect body.

“However,” Safir goes on, “if this is your first time dealing with the League, and as an outsider no less, then I wager they would not let you into their restricted section, or even the archive itself without a high-ranking adventurer’s license. Only Nranhana herself knows what they keep locked down there, and why.” He looks to 11, one hairy eyebrow raised.

“I don’t have a high-ranking license,” 11 says, answering the dwarf’s unspoken question in the vaguest possible sense, as to not let on the fact that she doesn’t have a license of any kind.

Safir does not seem bothered, though. “Many travel to Gandolia for that same reason,” he says. “Aye, but you’ve come a few weeks early, I’m afraid. The next exam is a moon’s cycle away.”

“Oh,” says 11. “That’s a shame.”

“Regardless,” says the dwarf, brows furrowing into a pair of kissing caterpillars, “even then, the League is not going to let you through with a newly acquired license, unless you pay your way up the fast-track...” The caterpillars leap apart as Safir's eyes light up. “Oh, but of course!” He laughs, his belly shaking under his dusty robes. “The Needle! Why didn’t I think of it sooner? By Nranhana’s forehead! I must be getting old!”

“The Needle?” 11 echoes.

"Aye." Safir leans down and carefully places the cup back onto the merchant’s blanket. His dusty robe clings to his back as he does, and 11 notices for the first time the hint of muscles moving beneath the fabric. The dwarf straightens.

“Nranhana’s Needle," he says, hands on his hips and a distant look in his eyes, "is a beautiful tower as mysterious as it is old. Some say it had been erected there by the goddess Nranhana herself, to pin the ground against the sky, so that her sister Sharn cannot drag the realm of men back into the depths of her hellish domain. Others say it had risen from beneath the land like a tree, to mark the center of the entire world as it rose from out of the ocean." He glances sideways at 11. "Both stories are quite ridiculous if you ask me, more akin to bedtime tales than legends, but you can decide that for yourself when you see it.”

11 follows the dwarf's finger to see where he’s looking.

There, in the distance, a rectangular stone pillar stretches up from between a cluster of buildings, taller and sturdier than any man-made construct 11 has seen. Thick vines crawl up the sides of the pillar, latching onto the stone like the tentacles of something which dwells beneath the earth. At the top of the tower, a clear crystal dome sits snuggly above the stone, and the vines congregate there, merging into a frozen flower bud, white as bone, on the tip of the dome. Sunlight glances off the parts of the crystal roof visible from beneath the vines, fracturing into rainbows.

How have I not noticed that tower when I came into this city? 11 thinks, incredulous. I really should pay more attention to the present.

“Just go around those tall brown buildings over there,” Safir says, making gestures with his hands that don’t mean anything to 11, “and you’ll reach a large garden in the middle of an island. Don’t go through them though, the brown buildings I mean. They’re abandoned and are scheduled to be taken down. So go around them, and stick to the open path, understand?”

“Thank you,” 11 says with a polite bow. “I'm in your debt, Safir Silverbeard, Dwarf of Fortunes-”

Safir's laugh makes his face look ten years younger. “The pleasure is mine, lassie. You take care.” He goes back to his cup.

Without another word, 11 turns, and walks away, leaving the dwarf to examine his...

She stops, turns back around.

“The cup is a replica,” she says quickly, pointing to the ceramic teacup Safir is holding again. “The ink is oil-based, old but not enough to be considered antique. The material is a polymer treated to look like something else, and only the handle is loaded with low levels of ceramic; that’s why it’s so light. There’s no sign of decomposition on the polymer itself, which one would definitely find if the item really is as old as it is trying to seem." She pauses to breathe. "And one other thing, I would imagine any cutlery made for an emperor would be tempered by the best craftsman in the kingdom, yet the cup bears no markings like that.”

11 cuts herself off. She does not really know why she’s meddling in a trade between two strangers, and by the murderous snarl on the merchant’s face, she knows she’s made an enemy by doing so. But seeing Safir's smile stretch across his face, 11 knows then that she's done the right thing, even if it's not too logical.

“What’s your name, lassie?”

Munchkin... 11 briefly contemplates using the nickname Aralyn came up for her, but thinks better of it. For some reason, she is not fond of the idea that anyone other than Aralyn should be calling her that. Shaking her head, she says, “I’m just repaying you a favor, so there’s no need to think more about it.” She then turns and hurries away, for real this time, before anyone can have the chance to ask anything more.

As 11 follows the path towards the tower in the distance, she allows her mind to wander, about the exchange outside the bridge, about her actions with the captain and Safir, and what she might’ve answered, if the dwarf had persisted to know her name.