The capital was loud in the way that living things are loud not overwhelming exactly, just full of itself, every corner occupied with something happening and someone making noise about it. Voices layered over each other across the stone streets, vendors called out to anyone who slowed down near their stalls, and the whole city moved with the particular rhythm of a place that had been busy for a long time and intended to keep being busy indefinitely.
Fainyx watched all of it from Weinhart's arms with the quiet attention of someone cataloguing rather than experiencing, his eyes moving steadily from one thing to the next without lingering too long on any of it.
Different races passed by them as they moved through the main street. Tall elves with the kind of effortless posture that suggested they had never once slouched in their lives, dwarves examining weapon stalls with the focused intensity of professionals, beastkin with ears that flicked at sounds the rest of the crowd hadn't registered yet. He had known all of this existed. He had seen versions of it rendered on a screen. But there was something about standing in the middle of it, smelling the city air and feeling the breeze and hearing the actual overlapping noise of it all, that made the difference between knowing something and being somewhere feel very large.
This wasn't a game.
It really wasn't.
A breeze moved through the street carrying the smell of grilled meat and Fainyx's attention shifted toward it before he had consciously decided to look, following the scent to a row of food stalls lining the near side of the street, skewers sizzling over open flames, golden pastries stacked in neat rows, drinks in colors bright enough to catch the afternoon light.
Liam stopped so abruptly that Adam nearly walked into him.
"Wait!" Liam said, pointing with great conviction at a specific stall. "That one! I remember that stall!"
Adam looked at the stall. Then at Liam. "...What about it."
But Liam was already moving, weaving through the foot traffic with the focused energy of someone on a mission, and Adam sighed the particular sigh of someone who had accepted that this was simply how things were going to go and followed after him at a considerably more dignified pace. Weinhart walked steadily behind them, entirely unbothered.
The stall was nothing remarkable to look at but the smell coming off it was genuinely good and Liam had already ordered three skewers before anyone else had fully arrived.
He took a bite.
Froze.
"THIS IS SO GOOD!"
Adam accepted one with the composed expression of someone reserving judgment, chewed slowly, paused for a moment, and said "it's decent" in the tone of someone delivering an objective assessment.
Liam turned to him like he had said something deeply offensive. "Decent?! That's your reaction?!"
Adam did not dignify this with a response.
Liam turned to Fainyx instead, holding out a skewer with the expression of someone expecting a much more satisfying reaction. "Fainyx, try this!"
Fainyx nodded and Weinhart adjusted his hold slightly so he could reach. He took a small bite and chewed and his face did not change in any visible way but inside something settled pleasantly because the flavor was genuinely good, rich and well seasoned, the meat tender in a way that suggested whoever was running this stall knew what they were doing. It wasn't exactly like anything from his previous life but it hit somewhere in the same direction and that was enough.
Liam was watching him with barely contained anticipation.
Fainyx gave a small nod.
Liam beamed like this was the best possible outcome.
They kept moving after that, which in practice meant Liam kept moving and everyone else followed, the city offering itself up in pieces as they went. A stall selling small carved figures that Liam picked up and examined one by one. A section of the market where accessories were laid out in rows that caught the light. A corner vendor selling trinkets of unclear purpose that Liam found fascinating and Adam found baffling.
Fainyx shook his head each time something was held toward him for consideration. None of it caught his interest in any particular way and he had nowhere to put most of it anyway and he was still thinking about the restaurant and the tracking spell and the thousand year old dragon in the kitchen so his attention was not fully available for trinket evaluation regardless.
Then he stopped.
Not because anything dramatic had happened. He simply registered something at the edge of his peripheral attention and his gaze moved toward it without deciding to.
A small stall tucked between two larger ones, slightly messier than its neighbors, the kind of place that looked like it hadn't been reorganized in some time. The items on the table were old, worn at the edges, stacked with the casual disorder of someone who knew where everything was and didn't need it to look tidy.
Books.
Adam noticed him looking. "...Books?"
Fainyx nodded and Weinhart stepped closer, bringing him near enough to read the spines properly. Most of them were basic --- introductory guides, old herb references, the kind of thing that wouldn't tell him anything he didn't already know. But basic wasn't useless and he scanned the titles methodically until one caught his attention and he pointed at it.
Adam picked it up. Read the cover. "Basic Mana Circulation." He glanced at Fainyx with an expression that was difficult to read. "You want this?"
Fainyx nodded without hesitation.
Adam handed it to the vendor without further comment and paid without being asked. When the book was placed in Fainyx's hands he held it against his chest and felt something settle quietly in him the way it always did when he added something useful to what he knew. Even something simple could be worth having. He had learned that a long time ago.
They reached an open square a little further on where a crowd had gathered in a loose circle around a performer standing at the center with the confident posture of someone who had done this many times and enjoyed it.
"Watch closely!" the mage called out.
The Performer Whispered a chant that takes a minute until a flame appeared above his palm, small at first, then splitting and twisting and reshaping itself into forms a bird with wings that spread and folded, a running wolf, a small dragon that opened its mouth and released a tiny burst of fire before dissolving back into the base shape. The crowd clapped and murmured appreciation and Liam's eyes went wide with the specific delight of someone seeing something for the first time.
"Woah..."
Fainyx watched with a different kind of attention. The mana loss per shape change was higher than it needed to be, the forms collapsing at the edges slightly before being reinforced, the control functional but rough around the transitions. Competent, the crowd pleasing but the spell is not efficient.
He still thought it's not bad It's just lacking some basic stuff.
"Fainyx, did you see that?" Liam asked, turning to him with the brightness of someone who had just had a very exciting idea.
Fainyx looked at him for a moment.
Then nodded his head.
********
By the time they left the square the sun had started its descent, the light softening across the rooftops and turning the stone streets a warm amber that made the whole city look slightly more peaceful than it had an hour ago. Even the noise had settled into something gentler, the afternoon crowd thinning gradually as people began moving toward home.
"Should we head back?" Adam asked.
Liam looked like he wanted to protest, opened his mouth, closed it again, and then turned to Fainyx instead with something quieter in his expression than his usual energy. "Did you have fun?"
Fainyx hadn't expected the question.
He thought about it genuinely for a moment, the food stall and the book and the fire performer and the city moving around him with all its noise and color and the particular realness of being somewhere rather than watching it and then nodded.
It was a small nod but genuine.
Liam smiled immediately, wide and uncomplicated, and didn't say anything else about it which Fainyx appreciated more than he would have been able to explain.
They started back toward the carriage at an easy pace, no running, no dragging, just walking through the quieting streets as the light continued its slow change overhead. Fainyx rested slightly against Weinhart's shoulder and let his body acknowledge that it was tired without doing anything about it yet, and watched the city from a comfortable height and thought that this world was considerably less predictable than a screen made it look and that this was probably not entirely a bad thing.
Above the rooftops the Aurenthal Royal Academy floated in the distance, its mana formations pulsing their slow steady light against the darkening sky, patient and permanent and waiting for whatever came next.
He would go there someday.
Not now.
Not yet.
But someday.
They reached the carriage and Fainyx's gaze shifted without particular intention toward a narrow alley nearby, drawn by something he couldn't immediately identify, a faint sense of observation that brushed against his awareness for just a moment before dissolving back into nothing.
He looked.
Shadows. Nothing visible. Nothing his senses could pin down.
He looked away after a moment and didn't think much more of it because his body was tired and they were going home and whatever it was had already gone.
He didn't know that somewhere not far behind them, someone had just confirmed exactly what they had come to confirm.
And was smiling about it.