Our trip to Almas was pretty uneventful, aside from a group of bandits that Calais handled easily. Once we arrived, we booked passage on a ship bound for Absalom. The boat was much smaller than I had expected and we ended up without a room of our own. I spent some time trying to explain the benefits of citrus to a sailor who appeared to have advanced scurvy, but he didn’t seem very interested.
The first thing that struck me about Absalom was that I had never seen a city of that size(For reference, I learned later that the city had a population of almost 304,000.) that didn’t have any skyscrapers. Sure, it had a number of large buildings, but nothing like the skyline of a similar city at home. The view of the nearby Kortos Mountains, however, gave me some great scenery to enjoy.
The city is comprised of fourteen smaller districts, each governed by its own district council. Calais’ uncle kept a modestly large home in the Ivy District, named such for its tree lined streets, so we headed there, passing through several other districts on our way. It struck me just how different each of the districts was.
The three story house we approached wouldn’t have looked too out of place in a well to do suburb back home. From the outside, I guessed that it was approximately the equivalent of a seven bedroom home with spacious kitchen, dining and living rooms. Considering that I wasn’t sure they’d have running water, I was uncertain as to how many bathrooms they might have.
The door was opened by a gentleman whose race I didn’t recognize. He looked almost human, but had an inhuman beauty to him. Calais introduced him as Wyran, his uncle’s dedicated manservant. I later learned that he was an aasimar, a race of beings with mixed mortal and celestial ancestry. He recognized Calais immediately and led us to the master of the house.
Calais’ uncle was a man of strange contradiction. He was at once fat and bald, yet also somehow wispy and had flowing hair. Let me explain. He was overweight, to be certain, but there was still a slightness to his frame. And his head was visibly balding, yet his hair was long and pulled back into a ponytail that seemed to flutter ever so slightly in a wind despite the fact that we were indoors. Combined with his glasses and the robes he dressed in, it made him look like a cross between a wizard and an aging hippie.
Calais introduced us and I learned that his name was Hanuun. I was invited to tell him more about myself, so I related to him the story of my trip to Golarion and then to Absalom. He was a jovial sort of man and laughed often with a deep, bellowing guffaw at the more entertaining parts of my tale. After my tale, Calais asked him to help me find a wizard who could get me home, or if barring that, he would help me get into the Arcanamirium so I could learn how to get myself home.
Hanuun shook his head regretfully. “Alas, m’boy, I don’t believe anyone here knows the magic you would need to make your trip home. And I’ve had a bit of a falling out with my old colleagues at the school. Lord Gyr, especially, would block my efforts to sponsor anyone right now.”
“Surely there is something you can do, Uncle,” Calais pleaded.
“There is one option, perhaps, but it’s not a guaranteed success and will require a lot of hard work on your part, young Kyle. Are you interested?” He looked at me pointedly.
“I’m not afraid of a bit of hard work. Just as long as you aren’t going to ask me to fight bandits or something like that. Eventually they’re going to get wise to my groin kicks and I’m afraid of what will happen at that point.”
He chortled at my remark. “Nothing so dangerous as that. No, I was thinking that perhaps I could teach you the basics of wizardry. You could stay in one of the guest rooms and study with me for the next six months or so, then take the entrance exam. If you do well, they would let you in regardless of your connection to me. I don’t know how successful we’ll be with so little time, but it’s worth a shot. Are you interested?” I nodded my agreement. The next day, studying began.
Hanuun was pleased that I already knew how to read and surprised at just how quickly I learned what he taught me. His pessimism quickly turned to optimism over the first few weeks as we worked.
My concerns about restrooms were unfounded. They did indeed have three of them, though they housed only baths and not other essentials one would find in a modern home. The baths were filled using a magical bottle that conjured endless water from nothing, then the water was heated by tossing in rocks heated in the oven. It all seemed kind of labor intensive, so I began drawing up plans for a better system in my spare time.
I showed my plans to Hanuun and he was intrigued, to say the least. After considering it for a few days, he asked me to help him construct the system. Over the course of the next three months, we spent approximately six hours a day on studying, then Calais would come over and we’d spend the next six hours working on installing the home’s new centralized plumbing system.
It wasn’t too difficult, considering my twenty first century knowledge, Calais’ strength and Hanuun’s ability to shape the stones of his house with magic to allow us to run pipes from the attic to various tubs and sinks as well has his ability to use magic to fabricate any part we needed as long as I could give him an adequate description. It was also made simple due to the fact that there were no electrical wires running through his walls either.
When we finished, Hanuun had plumbing. It was a fairly simple system, to be honest. Two tanks in the attic would be filled each morning using the magic decanter. One was placed next to the oven’s chimney, which we altered a bit to allow the rising heat to warm the water. We also used the light of the sun to heat the water further. The other tank was filled with water that was allowed to remain cool. Pipes from each ran down through the walls to the two bathrooms and kitchen. Gravity does the work of getting the water where it needs to go.
Of course, Hanuun bragged about it to some of his neighbors. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of the houses that own one of those decanters have similar systems by now.
Once we finished the water system, I focused on my studies in earnest. Hanuun was amazed with how quickly I learned what he was teaching. He told me that I was chewing through the lessons faster than any apprentice he had ever seen.
Before you think that I’m some kind of amazing genius, I should explain something. Most of the lessons we went through were meant for people who very little education at this point. Someone like me with thirteen years of public school(Fourteen if you count pre-school) and a year of eighteen credit hours each semester of college was outside what they had planned for. I am amazing, and I am a genius, but I don’t want to give you the wrong impression about this whole thing.
So it was that I passed the entrance exam with flying colors. I managed to impress many of those on the recruitment board, which I thought was pretty cool. Unfortunately, impressing them meant little towards helping me pay for tuition and the supplies I’d need. I was forced to sell off almost everything I had left. I kept only my violin, since it held sentimental value, my messenger bag, since it wouldn’t sell for much anyway, my clothing(especially my duster, since I love that thing) and one boot knife.
Hanuun offered to let me stay with him as thanks for the work I’d done, but I still had to cover my food and tuition expenses. With what I’d made, I had enough for about two years. To put it into perspective, it could take anywhere from two to twelve years to complete my schooling. I immediately began to think of ways to earn money while I was going to school. I started out by spending time at the Arcane Exchange, a magic shop near Hanuun’s house, trying to devise ways to use magic items to create equivalents of modern comforts we had back home. In the first two years, I really didn’t come up with anything big, though I did manage to figure out a way to create air conditioning sometime later.
What really ended up paying for most of my tuition came as a bit of an accident. Over the course of the first year or so, I made several friends. The first was Scott. He was kind of a douchebag, but he was the kind of douchebag that one doesn’t mind hanging out with. I know it’s hard to explain, but think about people you hang out with. I’m sure there’s probably someone you know who is a bit of an ass, but still fun to be friends with. Then there was Kerric. He was Scott’s friend and was the opposite of the other man, reserved, a bit shy, but a good friend nonetheless. I made another friend, Auris, in one of my classes. He was a teenager and was at about the same level of studies as I was, having entered at a much younger age than I. A bit talkative, that one, but he had some interesting magical theories.
Finally, there was Nerina, beautiful, brown haired Nerina. Nerina with the blue eyes that you could just fall right into. Nerina with boom in all the right places. Baby got back, is what I’m saying. Also, legs that just wouldn’t quit and a chest to match the buns. Also, she has these little dimples she gets when she smiles that still make my knees quake just thinking about them.
I first met her while in the Arcane Exchange. I was so lost in thought that I hadn’t noticed her. I can’t be sure that I remember what I was thinking about, but I believe it had something to do with trying to devise a way to create a magical trolley system for easy travel through Absalom. All I know is that she approached me.
Again, I was lost in thought and didn’t notice her. I’m not sure how long she stood there before saying something. I don’t precisely remember what she said, but I do remember turning and seeing her, which is followed by all thought leaving my brain and me making a bit of a fool out of myself. Eventually I recovered and we began talking. Her voice was sultry and somewhere in the mezzo-soprano range and she had an ever so slight accent that served to amplify the sexiness of her speech.
Our conversation quickly turned into a half-flirting, half verbal sparring match between us and led to us having dinner together. She had a quick wit and a sharp tongue to match her stunning body. We were quick to become friends, but I quickly found that she wasn’t interested in more than that. Still, we developed a rather close friendship, filled with that constant flirtation and innuendo that seems to permeate some male-female friendships.
What’s probably most important, however, is that Nerina could both sing and play something called the mandolin(it’s like a soprano version of the lute, in case you had never heard of one either). Scott was also a singer and could play the piano. Kerric had a way with the trumpet that could set your hair on fire. And Auris could play drums, though he had never seen the setup I proposed to him, in the style that many bands use back home.
So I found myself with a band, but I needed to adapt things so that we could make use of the songs I knew from home. I got together with an instrument maker and between my knowledge of the instrument and his skills, we had an acoustic guitar for Nerina put together rather quickly. Putting together a set of drums followed after. They paid for their own instruments, of course, since I was the only person in it for the money.
Thankfully, my time in the school orchestra(It was an experiment to see if there would be interest in that sort of thing at the request of our new band teacher from back east.) had been supplemented with an elective in Music Appreciation and Classical Music Studies(We just called it “Music”) that had taught me how to compose and pick out notes just by listening to them, so it wasn’t too difficult for me to create sheet music for some songs I knew(Of course, I had to adapt the music to some different instruments). About five weeks later, we had practiced enough for me to feel confident that we could do well.
Our first gig was at a bar of some kind, playing for tips. It had a bit of a rocky start, but we really hit our stride during “Devil Went Down to Isger”. We made something on the order of several silver pieces each. It wasn’t bad, but it wouldn’t be enough on its own, even with weekly performances.
Two things worked together to improve our fortunes greatly. The first was that quiet, unassuming Kerric was an extremely shrewd manager. He booked us weekly gigs all over town. Eventually, as taverns saw that business boomed with live entertainment more energetic than the average bard, he managed to work that into a bidding war between a couple taverns. This resulted in a contract to play once weekly for four gold pieces each at one of the largest taverns in town.
The second was what kept us that contract. People in town loved the influx of new music. Just like back home, anything from far away was considered exotic and worth checking out. And, of course, you can’t get more exotic than music from beyond the stars. Add in the fact songs can actually form an addiction-like response in people to the fact that I come from a world where we recognize this and can mathematically predict which songs have a high chance of scoring said addiction to the fact that I’m unscrupulous enough to use this and you have cover band that plays almost nothing but chart toppers, even if the set list contains a ton of one hit wonders. People ate it up.
Not to say there weren’t any snags. Special mention goes to the time that we performed our cover of “Love Bites(So Do I)” and the crowd thought Nerina was confessing to being a vampire. I barely managed to head off a fatal case of lumber to the heart for her by convincing the crowd to use sunlight to prove or disprove her status as a member of the undead. It was an awkward night and we retired that song from our rotation immediately.
We became pretty famous in the city. After a year of playing, we even got the attention of the patron of a large orchestra. We ended up agreeing to a joint show with them, which meant six months of preparation to allow the adaptation of songs I knew into a larger scale performance.
During the time we prepared for the big event, we still performed at the tavern, and that’s where one of the most interesting events of my life began to unfold. It was three weeks before the big concert when, after a particularly energetic performance when some guy in the crowd started hitting on Nerina. It wasn’t just that he was hitting on her, but that he was being a self-entitled jerk and a bit of a pig about it. So, seeing as how I’m not the kind of person to let that go unchallenged, I jumped down from the stage that they had erected for us and told the guy to knock it off.
He looked familiar, but I thought nothing of it. Our confrontation escalated until it came to blows. I’m not sure who threw the first one, but I threw the last. He went sprawling to the ground. Another man, much larger, rushed at me. I recognized the clothing he wore as similar to that worn by bodyguards of nobles. I realized that I must have just knocked out his client, so I tried to apologize, but he’d have none of it. Since this man was larger and reliably much more competent a fighter than I, I did the only sensible thing. I kicked him in the jewels and he crumpled to the ground next to the man he was protecting. We then took off since we didn’t want to deal with those two once they recovered.
Naturally, we didn’t get paid for that gig.
I didn’t think much of it for a while and the week was more or less normal. Then, the day of the next performance, I received a package. The attached note read “From a fan.” I opened the package and found a belt inside. It was an elegant item and matched my coat rather well, so I tried it on.
Immediately after putting it on, I felt really dizzy. I managed to recover after a moment. I looked to the ground in case the room started spinning again and noticed something new. Well, two somethings. I rushed to a mirror. Staring back at me was a beautiful woman. I looked down to confirm, checked on certain things to see just how far it had gone and then took off the belt to see if removing it would revert the changes. Glancing at the mirror after removing the belt, the same stunning woman stared back at me.
I saw the figure in the mirror’s mouth move and heard myself say, in a sweet and feminine yet utterly horrified voice, “Aw, shit.”
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