Victor

  We didn't talk about anything more important, just regular banter, as we passed through Wheaton and the lands surrounding Caer Caradon. As expected of a capital city, Caer Caradon was big. The whole blame thing was grandiose, and surrounded by crenelated defensive walls; yes, in case you were wondering, said wall also had machicolations.

  They weren't nearly as tall and thick as the walls in Tor Anaura - those were on a ridiculous scale only possible thanks to the magical materials involved - the walls of this city were relatively small by comparison but were still pretty dang impressive. In addition to the machicolated battlements, they had also erected a roof-like structure with red brick shingles on top of the walls so that the city guards could patrol in the shade.

  A river ran through the city, along the north south axis - mental note, the people of this country loved building their cities on top of rivers. We came through the east gate, which was wide enough to allow quite a lot of traffic - it was bracketed by two round towers, and I couldn't help but notice a kill zone as we cruised through. You know, holes for shooting crossbows and the like.

  Naturally, of course we were stopped by the guards. I didn't want any trouble with the law so, I tried to grin 'em to death like Davy Crockett. I'm kidding, I was just greeting them with a smile.

  "Hello officers," I said, and did I seriously just try and reach for my registration? Ugh. Damn muscle memory. My glovebox wouldn't open for a long time yet. "What can I do for you today?"

  The princess leaned in and whispered, "um, they can't understand Eng-lish remember?"

  My palm made sweet love to my forehead, "right. Okay, you do the talking then," whoa! Princess, that is way too close! The princess leaned over to stick her head out of the driver side window, placing her rather ample bosom right in my face.

  I noticed that elves don't seem to mind incidental touching, or is that just her family quirk? It was good that she was wearing that thick leather bustier and not a white t-shirt - huh, upon closer inspection, it actually has little pockets and slots I suppose for things like knives and potions, I rather like the design - focus!

  "Begging your humble pardon. We're adventurers, you see, and I'm taking my friend here to get registered at the guild. He is from a faraway land and is still just learning Common."

  The guard looked flustered; I wondered if he was getting an eyeful of what I was seeing. Nah, it's the car, mate. "Understood, move along."

  Well here we were at last! From what I understood, we had a few days to kill time - I had intended to slay said time figuring out our strategy and trying to earn some money. I had refused all monetary awards from the king, as I felt bad enough they had to put me up at the fanciest inn in town, and the princess had forgotten to pick up her stipend for having done her emissary work; in other words we were on our own.

  But of course spending time in a new city also included sightseeing, dining upon the local specialties, taking in some of the local entertainment; yes, I did wonder what sort of plays and such got put on here.

  I was never much of a theater kid growing up, but I did date a theater arts gal in college for a while, she who must not be named, and we saw a few plays together; that got me interested in watching them a little. I read Hamlet in English lit. Before that class I had thought Shakespeare was boring and for sissies but by the end I was hooked. Some of those quotes are so metal!

  Hmm, didn't I have his complete works in e-book format on my smartphone? I'd have to check later, I did collect a ton of those things. The city was even busier than Middlebrook had been, with far more winding streets and alleys to get lost in.

  The Princess knew of an Inn where we could park my car; it was the same one that she'd stayed at the last time she was here. I had assumed initially that she'd stayed at the elvish embassy or something, but no, they actually had no such facilities here; it was the equivalent of calling an ambassador from the UN over, only to put him up at the Motel 6.

  Okay that's not fair, the inn itself was probably closer to a Red Roof or something along those lines; nice but inexpensive, breakfast included. I still didn't have a good sense of the money of this world, you see, so when the princess told me how much the room cost I had to ask if that was a lot, every time.

  So the inn, known as Dion's Rest, was a two story place with that whole jettying thing going on; half-timbered style, evoking the bed and breakfast grandpa and I went to in Provins. It wasn't the sort of Inn with a built-in tavern downstairs; for that sort of thing you'd have to go across the street to the nearest pub. Hmm that place looked promising: the Twin Grains Tavern, a sheaf of wheat and rye crossed like a jolly roger.

  Well that could come later, we had to drop off our luggage and turn the inn room into our base of operations. Oh. So we're sharing a room, are we? Neat - that makes it easier to protect her; I did promise Val, and it's a matter of duty.

  The rooms at Dion's Rest were more my speed than the Platinum Flagon's had been - more cozy and less ostentatious. Ours was a double - two beds, and a bathroom adjoining. No fancy slime tubes this time, sadly, and no running water - no, we'd have to request hot water from downstairs, someone would have to carry it up and we'd have to keep adding boiling water until it was just right - I'm just kidding, the princess could simply create a sufficient quantity of hot water and dump it in the tub.

  Yep, time to spread out like a starfish on the mattress again, it's tradition, ah, the princess decided to imitate me on the opposite bed. They were nice beds, fairly cozy, would highly recommend.

  Once we had dropped off everything that we didn't wanna simply leave in the Cadillac, we took a stroll through town towards the Adventurer's Guild. It was a large rectangular building inside of a fenced-in yard - complete with training dummies, an archery range, and even an area where I saw a pair of spellcasters having a wizard's duel.

  There were also hitching posts and little stalls for animals of various sorts - wait, is that a friggin' lion? Yes it was, there was the king of beasts himself just resting in a wooden stall with a bowl full of ground meat in front of him. Bright golden fur and a glorious red mane, looking all majestic.

  I coughed, "Ah princess, not to put too fine a point on it but, why is there an actual lion here?"

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  "Oh him? That's Siegfried. He's the animal companion of one of the adventurers who lives full-time here. He's a real sweetie!"

  "But…a wild apex predator? Ain't that kinda dangerous?"

  The princess laughed, "no, he isn't wild. He has a bond with a paladin, that is, a holy knight - he is loyal, tame, smart," she turned to the lion and adopted a doting tone, "and he's a good boy!"

  The lion preened, smugly. Okay, he was pretty cool-looking, I'll admit it. Entering the front door of the guild hall I found that it had a high ceiling, with the entry hall opening up into a tavern-like room. So many interesting people sitting at tables, ah, there was an actual bar on one side where one could order drinks.

  Let's see, for the crowd of people inside I'll give you a quorum: an elf with silver spiky hair with a long-bladed sword, a bipedal lizard wearing breastplate, a woman with the ears and tail of a cat dressed like some kind of bandit, a dwarf with a red beard and a huge hammer, oh there's a guy with an impressive suit of armor, and there's a cat boy wizard, and a lady warrior in a somewhat revealing suit of hide armor.

  Felt like I'd walked straight into a certain cantina - like did somebody say "play sexy time on the radio"? It seemed like the majority of the people here were humans, but man, were there so many kinds here!

  Opposite the bar there was what was plainly some sort of reception desk with four windows, and the far wall between the two had a large bulletin board covered in papers of various sizes. Stairs behind the reception desk led upstairs on the left, downstairs on the right. There were people huddled around the board on the wall, too, and they seemed to be having a spirited debate about something or other. Before we went inside, The Princess tugged the arm of my coat, leaned in, and whispered.

  "So, hey, except for the guildmaster and receptionists, nobody here knows I am a princess. So…"

  I tipped my hat, "keep it under wraps. Got it."

  We approached the desk, and a pretty lady with brown hair greeted us, "good morning! Oh, Illiana! Back so soon? I thought you were going to go visit home?"

  The princess nodded, "well a lot happened but," she indicated to me with a palm facing upward, "I brought someone here who wishes to register - and I'd like it if we could form a party together, officially, as well."

  The receptionist brought out a sheet of paper, "please fill this out, dear. I'll get the assessor while you work on it."

  The princess and I sat at one of the tables, of course I asked "what's an assessor", and she informed me that it's a magical tool for analyzing a person's talents, and for recording past deeds. I was curious what she meant by past deeds, but the princess told me that the receptionist could explain it better, also, explaining it was part of her job and it was something she took a lot of pride in.

  All right so I filled out the form. Name, age, and sex were obvious - let's see, home country, United States of America, under race I instinctively started writing "white" but the princess stopped me and told me that it meant whether I was human or elf or whatever, so I scratched out the "w" I'd written and wrote "human" in the remaining space.

  Party role was a "circle" one, the princess suggested circling "mixed attacker" because of the fact that I was pretty handy with a bowie knife and was a fairly decent marksman too. Job Classification - I stared at that one long and hard - was this like picking a class in that mmorpg I played in high school?

  "Don't worry about that one, it's asking about your specialty - when you're new you won't have one yet but you can train and learn a bunch of new things to kind of hone yourself into that classification. I mean it isn't exactly a rigid system, just a baseline to stick on your card to give people a general idea of what you can do. Some guild halls offer training intensives that teach specialized skills, too, which is a great perk of joining, but the best way to learn is to do!"

  "Ohh, so it's an M.O.S., is it? Got it. Wait, card?"

  The princess nodded, and brought out a thick piece of card that had her face painted in a little square on the left hand side. Name Illiana, age 203, sex female (you don't say), height 5'4", weight none of my damn business, 36d, 23, 34 - HUH?

  "Why in the hell did they feel the need to put your three sizes in there?"

  The princess snatched the card, red as a beet, "I mean well look, it's asking for your inseam, waist, and shoe size too."

  I looked at the paper, "huh, so it is." I wrote those in, too. The princess had to examine my boots in order to convert American sizes to their measuring system.

  "Sometimes you find magic clothes in a dungeon and they need to be tailored. Armor needs adjustment, too."

  "Makes sense," I said, 36d ain't bad. I know, imaginary Duke, calming down now, stop wagging your finger and calling me "pilgrim".

  I finished up and then the receptionist came out and had me sit in an armchair. Once I was comfortable she placed a bowl-shaped leather cap engraved with strange runes. I felt a bizarre sensation coursing through my body, I saw everything that had happened since coming to this world pass me by like a vivid dream.

  "Oh," the receptionist says, "the manaloom is reacting - that means that you've earned some achievement patches already!"

  "What? Huh?" I was too winded to comprehend what was going on..

  On the desk there was a flat apparatus of some sort with spools of white thread resting on an armature. A pair of articulated doll arms with shiny silverish needles in place of hands were mounted on either side of the square. It brought to mind those robot arms at a car factory, and in more ways than one - the thing came to life, the doll arms started moving at an alarming speed. The needles were glowing like a blue laser. Wait, was it making something? Yes! It was making something with that thread over there; but despite starting out white it was making something multi-colored.

  It's like one of them newfangled 3-D printers, and now I understood what was meant by "manaloom". A few moments later, a completed patch of fabric was shunted into a wooden tray at the front end of the device, and then the process repeated. Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit, that was, well, I had no words.

  The receptionist handed them patches over to me, 11 in all. Each one had a thick border, a unique pictogram, and a subtitle. Huh? This reminds me of something; I scratched my head trying to remember. Oh, most of the borders were sort of silver but some were more gold-like…there it is again a certain sense of deja vu. I had to ask.

  Not recallin' if I saw the princess use her powers, I tried it in common, "please to be telling, what are these things?" It was at that point that the princess sheepishly stood up and delivered her semi-signature spell by a tap to the receptionist's shoulder. Yeah she corrected my grammar too - why did I find that side of her so cute?

  The receptionist smiled broadly, "I am glad you asked! When you perform some brave, reckless, or heroic deed, or meet any conditions that have been inscribed into the manaloom, you'll earn one of these. Take this one for example," she held up one, the picture was of a cartoonish sword, and their numeral for five, "this one is Pentastrike - defeat five foes with a single attack."

  "Huh? When in the hell did I do that," I blurted out, on the verge of a second epiphany. Oh wait for it.

  The princess leaned in and said, "um, the night you were summoned here, you know."

  "Wait, hitting those guys with my car counted? Huh."

  The receptionist nodded, "regardless of your methods, if by your actions a hostile creature dies or is otherwise incapacitated by a piece of your equipment, it qualifies as your victory. It's usually mages who earn this one first."

  I stroked my chin, "oh yeah, I saw Val take down three guys with one strike, didn't I? But wait, so, what are these for?"

  "They're used as a measure of your prowess as an adventurer, and as you attain more you will be well on your way to advancing in our ranks, you need to complete a certain number of official quests, but you only start needing to worry about collecting patches when the time comes to advance to bronze or above, and only one specific patch is required to advance from gold to platinum."

  "Okay, hold on, I need a moment," I took in a deep breath, and groaned.

  "These are friggin' merit badges, aren't they?"