Sam woke up feeling extremely well rested. The bed in the hotel was so comfortable that he had fallen asleep the second his head touched the pillow. He had never slept so well in his life. Sam got up out of bed and changed into his nicest clothes. He didn’t want to stand out and get dirty looks again looking like a poor farmer boy in the dining hall of the hotel like he did when he first arrived in the lobby. Sam descended the multiple flights of stairs and followed the signs posted on the walls to the dining hall, which looked more like a fancy restaurant than a dining hall, but he had begun to get used to everything taking him by surprise and was now able to control the dumb look on his face... to some extent.
Breakfast and dinner were included with his stay, so he planned to eat at the dining hall for those meals. Once he entered the dining hall he was shown to a seat by a front of house staff member dressed in a formal suit who manned the counter out the front of the hall. Once he was seated he was handed two different menus. The menus were made out of a hard but squishy material which felt soft to the touch. One of the menus was a drinks menu which was green with silver lettering while the other was a food menu which was a deep red with gold lettering. Sam carefully opened each of the menus and browsed their contents which ended up being quite a lot as each had about 30 different items on them. Eventually he signaled over a server which he had to watch the diners do as he had no idea and didn’t want to make himself look like an idiot. Sam ordered himself a tall glass of orange juice as well as a full breakfast with sausages, eggs, bacon, roasted tomatoes, mushrooms and two thick slices of buttered toasted bread.
To say that it was the most delicious breakfast he had ever eaten would have been an understatement. His mother was a great cook, but this was incomparable with how high quality each of the ingredients were. The orange juice as well was a lot stronger than he was used to. The orange juice sold in the village was normally watered down to get more out of it, but this was pure orange juice. He was a bit overwhelmed with the strong orange flavor to begin with but got used to it after he had finished about half the glass.
Once Sam had finished his breakfast he headed back up to his room and changed into some more comfortable clothes for walking around the city. He also wore his sword belt, he didn’t think he would need it, but he was far away from home and decided it was better to have it and not need it than to need it but not have it. Once he was changed Sam sat at the end of his bed and took a look at the map he had purchased at the river docks information office yesterday. He was trying to create a plan for what he was going to do for the next few days while waiting for ship he was taking out of the city to arrive. He had decided that today he would look around the city. The market, the castle and then the shopping arcade he thought. He wanted to also check out the dungeon, but it was located outside of the city, and he would need to leave early if he wanted to have a reasonable amount of time looking around and it was already late morning. He decided that he would do that tomorrow, he wasn’t sure what he would do after that other than to go by the harbor office to confirm the ship was going to be leaving on schedule.
Sam left the hotel and headed towards the centre of the city where the map showed the markets were held. It took Sam about an hour to walk from the hotel to the markets which were pretty much in the centre of the city. He had drastically underestimated the size of the city and despite having the map and the magic arrow to follow to his destination he still managed to get lost multiple times. Once he rounded the final bend on the road to the market square Sam’s jaw once again dropped. The scale of the marketplace was insane. The square was filled with market stalls for as far as he could see. He couldn’t even see the buildings on the other side of the square. Not to mention how many people there were filling the spaces between each stall. It looked like there was hardly any room to move.
Sam looked around at the market, he didn’t know where to start. His eyes darted from left to right as new sights and smells caught his attention. It wasn’t until a sweet smell wafted towards him from his left that he knew where to start his market trawl. Sam walked towards a stall with a few people lining up along the right-hand side. The stall had a white and pink colored marquee and Sam could see two people working in the stall. Sam joined the end of the line and as he grew closer he could see that one of the vendors was cooking something on a stick over a flat-topped grill. The second vendor then took the mystery sticks and dipped them into a metal container filled with a light pink liquid. After the vendor dipped it into the liquid he appeared to then scoop something out of the other containers and roll the stick onto it covering it in an assortment of different things.
Once he was near to the front of the line Sam saw the sign placed on the table that read ‘Mallory’s Doughnut sticks’. He didn’t know what a doughnut was, but it sure smelt nice. Once Sam made it to the front of the line he ordered one doughnut stick. “What would you like on your doughnut? You have a choice of raisins, Gira nuts or crushed sweet rock” the Vendor said. Sam wasn’t sure what Gira nuts were or what crushed sweet rock was, but he did like raisins, so he decided to choose those. After confirming, the vendor dipped the doughnut stick into the thick pink liquid before he scooped a couple of scoops of raisins onto a tray and rolled the doughnut stick onto it with the raisins sticking to the sides of the doughnut. The vendor then handed the doughnut stick to Sam and he paid the man 5 small copper coins which Sam thought was expensive. After he had taken a bite of it however he no longer thought it was expensive.
Sam spent the next two hours walking around the market stalls tasting all sorts of different foods he had never even heard of before. He knew he had to be careful with his money as he only had a few small silver coins and had already spent around 30 copper coins on food in this market alone. This money had to last another 3 weeks and he couldn’t keep spending it on food at the market, which was why he decided to leave the market for another location. He wanted to keep looking through the market but knew he couldn’t risk accidentally spending too much money. Everything was new and he was finding it too tempting.
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Sam pulled the map out of his pocket and unfolded it. The castle was located the furthest from the hotel so he decided to go there before the shopping arcade which he could walk through on his way back to the hotel. Sam began his walk towards the castle which, unlike Highhill is not sat on a hill. After another 30 minutes of walking through the city Sam finally came upon the castle. He looked down on it from an elevated pathway. The castle was surrounded by a thick heavily fortified wall. Atop the wall sat what he assumed were ballista’s not that he had seen one before but based on the description he had read in the recent history book a couple of weeks ago he assumed that was what he was seeing. Each ballista had two soldiers standing next to it each armed with a spear. There were then soldiers patrolling sections of the wall walking back and forth between the stationed ballistae. The gate to the castle was open and there was a short line of people waiting to enter the castle.
Sam spent some time watching the guards search through the carriages and carts before letting them pass through the gate to the castle. While it was a fairly nice castle it felt quite small in comparison to the rest of the city. He wasn’t sure whether that was because the castle was small or whether the cities surrounding the other castles he had seen up to this point had all been a lot smaller therefore making the castles appear bigger. Even the walled fort that wasn’t quite a castle in Rimour looked like it was bigger than the castle here. Sam spent a few more minutes watching the people come and go before eventually getting bored and deciding to head back for the hotel via the shopping arcade.
Sam entered the shopping arcade only to find it mostly empty. It seemed that most of the stores had closed for the day and most of the people that normally would have been filling the streets had already gone home for the day. It wasn’t really that late, but it was a weekend, so he supposed some of the stores decided to close early. A couple of the higher-end stores in Rimour closed early on weekends but most of them stay open until around 6pm so this was unusual for him.
The shopping arcade ended up being a bit of a disappointment as the only stores he found open were extremely high-end and far out of not only his interest but also his budget. Sam decided to head by one of the information booths on his way back to the hotel, well that was if it was still open. It was slightly out of the way but would be worth it to get some information on traveling to the dungeon tomorrow. Thankfully it was still open although he only had about 10 minutes before it was to close at 5pm. Luckily the short time frame wasn’t a problem as there was no one else inside when he entered. Walking up to the information desk Sam asked the clerk about getting to the Dungeon town. “If you want to get to the dungeon town and back I would recommend taking one of the long carts first thing in the morning. The carts are run by the Adventurers Guild and are for transporting Adventurers and Dungeon Divers from the city and back as most of the more established parties don’t stay in the town. These normally depart from the front of the Pexicon Adventures Guild Branch at 6:30am and normally arrive in Hertz the dungeon town at around 7:45am. The return trip is from 5:30pm to 6:45pm and they depart from the same location as the drop off in the morning outside the front of the Dungeon Diving Sub Guild branch office” said the clerk. “Okay thank you for the information” Sam replied as he headed out of the information centre before checking his pocket watch. It was just before five and didn’t want to have a late dinner, so he made his way back towards the hotel.
As Sam arrived back at the hotel he was starting to feel hungry again. All the walking around town had given him quite an appetite. He went back up to his room and changed back into his nice clothes before heading back down to the dining hall for dinner. Unlike in the morning the lights had been dimmed and a more relaxed atmosphere hung in the dining hall when he arrived. He once again lined up at the counter out the front and waited for the front of staff attendant to show him to his table. He once again was given two menus to order from. This time the drinks menu was a light red with a green leaf patten on the front. There were both alcoholic and regular beverages to choose from. He had never had alcohol before as his parents said he was too young, but he was 13 now and considered an adult so he could choose some if he wanted. In the end something else caught his eye. An iced Cherry Fizzer was the drink he decided to order. He had never had cherries before as they were considered a luxury fruit but since all his food and drink were covered by the Academy he didn’t need to worry about the cost and decided to enjoy himself and order what looked to him like the most exciting drink on the menu.
From the food menu Sam ordered a roast beef dinner which came with potatoes and an assortment of vegetables he had never heard of and was covered in a rich gravy which he was also excited for. He had had gravy before, but it was quite thin and watered down. He nearly chose the chicken, but chicken was quite common back in Kait whereas he only ever had beef on special occasions, so he chose the beef instead. In the end it turned out to be a great decision. The roast beef dinner was one of the most delicious meals he had ever had. He also made an excellent choice with the drink. The Cherry Fizzer was very sweet and tasted really good and it had bubbles in it that tickled the back of his throat when he drank it.
After dinner Sam went back to his room and spent some time reading one of the books on the bookshelf in his room. It was a pretty interesting book about the founding of Pexicon and before long he found himself dozing off. It was still fairly early in the evening, but Sam wanted to make sure he was up in time for the cart ride out to Hertz. Sam put the book down and got ready for bed. He lay his head down once again on the soft pillows and quickly fell into a comfortable slumber.
