Capítulo 21: Norneau

Kordia finished Kir's sketch so quickly that he wondered if she might have taken a shortcut like only drawing his head.

Instead, when she showed it to him, it was a perfect rendition of his entire body - wings included - in the thinking-man pose he'd held until she said he could stop.

"It's... um... wow..." he couldn't believe the level of detail she'd gotten in only an hour, and with not a drop of ink wasted or a single unnecessary mark on the page. "It's very... flattering?" he tried.

"S-so you like it?" Kordia asked, her tail wagging.

"It's amazing," he replied. "I almost want to keep it myself..."

"I'll draw another!" she said, her eyes lighting up. "Maybe a different pose... or a change of clothes..."

"No, no. That won't be necessary..." He laughed nervously. "Here, let me show you how I clean my claws after using ink..."

He showed her a simple method where he gathered water out of the air and used it to pull the ink off her claws.

"There's plenty of water in the air, depending on humidity," he explained. "You just pull it into a ball, use magic to rotate it, and... there! Done. All you have to do is evaporate the water and let the ink fall back into the pot." He demonstrated.

"That is so... practical. I never thought of using water magic like that..." Kordia said.

"Well, when I was younger I figured the best way to build up my mana channels was to just use magic for everything... That worked up to a point, and I really should see if trying it again will still work now that my wings have grown out."

Kir didn't know why, but he felt like with Kordia he could be a bit more open and friendly now that he seemed to have earned her trust. He picked up the picture from the table as Kordia packed away her things, looking at it. Even though it was just black and white, it felt alive because of her skill.

"I wish you were a second-year," she sighed. "Then we could go to class together. You sound like a prodigy..."

"My parents are the prodigies. Maybe if we run into each other after my exams you can meet them?" Kir offered.

Kordia instantly turned red. "M-me? M-m-meet your... your parents?" She started laughing nervously. "I... uh... I gotta go!"

She slammed the door open in her rush to leave, bouncing it off the wall and leaving a crack in the brick. Then she slammed it open again as she returned and took the picture from Kir's hands, her face still red.

Kir was left dumbstruck, wondering if he'd scared her away just by offering to let her meet his parents.

Not knowing what else to do, he walked out of the interrogation room. Kordia was nowhere to be seen, but the guard who had escorted him into the room eyed him with a sneer. "Pretty picture you got outta that beast girl. That way to the city." He pointed behind him down another hall Kir hadn't had time to see before. "Get on out, boy," he said, leaning against the wall.

He tried to trip Kir on the way out, but Kir was ready for it. He just kept walking after.

There was no sign of Kordia outside the gatehouse either, and no one paid attention to him as he exited except to stare as he put his hands in his pockets and started walking.

As he finally escaped his perdition, he stared about. Things were much more crowded than he thought they would be.

A lot of the buildings down here were built out of plaster and wood that stuck out from a first story of concrete. The gate had a wide street, funneling cart traffic toward the center of the city.

Kir took the sidewalk, grateful that unlike the Earth's medieval period, this city at least knew what plumbing was. He heard water underfoot as he crossed over a grate, and the overall lack of smell in one regard let him take in the many and varied scents of food being cooked nearby.

The lowest tier of the city was definitely the bustling hub of its culture, and all over he saw people going about. Many made way for him, and while he was tempted to take flight, he noticed that no one else with wings was doing so. Instead, he saw what could only be described as large sleds transporting people from some unseen place toward the second wall of the city.

A sudden itch in his claws warmed Kir before a large beastfolk man, bear-like, shoved Kir a bit too hard with his shoulder as he slowly plowed his way through the crowd.

"Watch where you're going, sulfur breath," the man said, glaring at Kir.

Kir chose to ignore him, instead waiting until he stepped away before deciding to look for someone who looked like they knew their way around.

As he followed the gate road, he eventually heard people crying out in the street, trying to attract customers to their stalls or stores.

Before he arrived at the stalls, however, he felt a mote of pain as something plucked out one of his lower feathers.

He barely got a glimpse of the street urchin before she ran off into the crowd, holding his feather in her tiny fist. A few people who saw the whole thing just laughed at him.

Kir's wings were too cumbersome to go running after the girl with so many people about, so he shook his head and turned, heading into the market where, thankfully, the crowd started to thin out.

He stopped at the first merchant stall, where a man was selling fine brass kettles and cups, and asked if he knew where the Madame Dragon was.

"Piss off, demonblood," was all the man had to say.

One by one, the merchants all proved to be of a similar disposition, and Kir learned a lot of new names people had for demonkin. Many of the insults involved sulfur, but the more creative ones had to do with accusing him of cannibalism, infanticide, greed, and a number of sexual acts that Kir knew to be rather impossible.

Kir found himself wishing he'd stuck around with Lucifer. Hardly anyone would let him get a word in edgewise.

After what felt like an hour of fruitless attempts, during which he started feeling hungry, he finally struck upon the idea of just following the carts as they flowed out of the market.

He figured, with there being two large roads leading away from the market square, he had a fifty-fifty shot at spotting wherever the inns were.

After some light contemplation, he decided to go to the right, since it would have less distance to go until he hit the wall, and he could backtrack quicker if it was the wrong way.

Later, he would come to wish he'd gone left.