About half a day after our ride aboard the bas ferry, right around the time the sun was getting low in the sky, we arrived at a small layover town with a harbor. I didn’t much know the lay of the land, so it didn’t completely register, but the boatman told us that traveling from where we’d set off to here would’ve taken two or three days by land. And if that was true, we’d managed quite a shortcut.
Me, Gourry, and Ran all got an inn together and were about to enjoy dinner when... I realized that I couldn’t read the menu on the wall at all.
That made sense, of course; it was still in the same weird alphabet. And yes, while most of the letters were recognizable and I could sound them out if I had to, I couldn’t be completely sure I was reading them right. I tried to translate the item at the top of the menu, presumably the day’s special, but all I could get was “gogiburdruhante,” which didn’t make any sense to me.
Cue Ran’s time to shine!
“Hey, Ran,” I called as she gazed at the menu herself.
“What is it, Nissy Lina?”
“Can you read the top line for me?”
She looked at it and said, “Sure can!”
...
......
“Er, I mean... please read it out loud.”
“Oh, yah. It says gogiburdruhante.”
I was right?! Too bad it still made no sense to me!
“So, what’s that...?” I asked.
“Hmm, ‘gogi’ is a kind of fowl. It’s tasty. And ruhante is a dish where you roll out dough real thin, sprinkle oil on top, then put stuff and sauce on it, and roll it all up and fry it. It’s crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside! And the stuff they put on it is gogi, so it’s gogi-bird ruhante!”
“I see...” I asked Ran to decipher the rest of the menu for me in the same way.
Whew. Having Ran around turned out to be a huge help after all. Without her, I would’ve had to ask for dishes at random, and potentially end up with a meal of samey food. Plus, having Ran read things out to me was getting me a little more used to the language and how to decipher it. I mean, all I was amassing right now was food vocabulary, but still.
Anyhoo, I ordered a few things and some drinks and...
“Nissy Lina.” Ran tilted her head while we were waiting for our food. “You really can’t read?”
Geh... I paused for a moment, considering how to respond. It was true that I couldn’t read the language here—which was through no fault of my own, mind you—but I still didn’t really wanna cop to it out loud. I wondered if I should admit we didn’t know a lot about the area. Ran would figure it out sooner or later anyway...
Then again, if I told her the unvarnished truth—that I was from the other side of the demon barrier erected a thousand years ago, and that after slaying a whole bunch of high-ranked demons, one of their friends had sent me out here out of spite—she’d probably assume I was lying.
“The truth is, Gourry and I... are from a faraway land.” I chose my words carefully. “There was... something of an accident.”
“An accident?! Like a boat sinking?!”
“Hrm, well... Something like that, I guess,” I said, keeping vague. “The point is that we’re a long way from home, and the writing here is different. So having you read for me is a huge help.”
“No probsies!” she said, puffing out her chest proudly.
“Thanks. I appreciate it. Basically, we’re looking for a way to get home... Do you know a lot about the area, Ran?”
“Hmm...” At this, she hummed lightly. “I left my own home to go on a-wandering, so nah!”
“Oh? What’s your homeland like?”
“Green and bountiful!”
“Yeah? Sounds nice.”
“The middle of nowhere!”
“Yeah? Sounds rough.” Then again, she’d mentioned an elf had taught her that nifty little jump-enhancing spell, and elves tended to live in areas of untouched nature. “Did that elf who taught you that spell live there too?”
“Used to! But about ten years ago, they just went away.”
“Oh, really?” That put a damper on my plan to have Ran put me in touch with them. We kept chatting for a bit until...
“Here you go!” The waitress brought the various items of my order, and the lively—even raucous—night began.
After three days of travel, Gourry, Ran, and I found ourselves before the large wall and gate to Palbathos, capital of the Kingdom of Luzilte.
I’d like to give you a brief primer on the place’s history, but unfortunately, I knew nothing about how it was founded or anything that had ever happened here. We’d lost touch with the outer lands a thousand years ago, after all, so I was a little out of my depth on the regional history.
On our way here, I’d asked a lot of people what Palbathos was like, but all I’d gotten in response was that it was “a large city” with a “magnificent castle” and other standard capital-ish tidbits. Nobody gave me a rough history of the place or told me the origin of its name. Not that most folks cared about that kinda stuff, but still.
“It’s huuuge!” Ran cooed as she looked up at the place.
I’d seen quite a few castle towns back in the inner lands, and this was on par.
At the gate, we went through the entry procedure, which really just meant paying a toll. And next thing, we were walking out the other side and watching the city expand before us.
Probably as a safeguard against invasion, the streets and buildings weren’t laid out in straight lines, which made it hard to see very far. Around the distant town center stood a wall a story taller than the one surrounding the town, and over it, we could see castle spires.
“Now then...” I spoke to Ran as we walked around what appeared to be an entertainment district. “Looks like we made it. What’s your plan next, Ran? As I mentioned before, we’ve got some things to look into here.” I was hoping she’d stick around and teach me a little more about the local writing, but I wasn’t gonna twist her arm.
“Hmm...” Ran made a big show of thinking. “I’m just a-wandering, and you guys are good at finding great restaurants, so it might be fun to stick together a while longer. But I’m not sure I can help you with what you’re investigating... Ah, I know. Let’s get an inn together, and I’ll see the sights, and we’ll see what happens after. Howzat?”
“That’d be great,” I said.
“Awesome! Oh, Nissy Lina, how’re you investigating?”
“Hmm... Good question.”
On the way here, naturally, I’d talked to plenty of people about the various nations and routes in the area. I knew if I caught wind of a country with a huge impassable desert to the north, I’d know exactly what that was, but...
While there were rumors, they were largely conflicting ones, and it was clear there was a lot of bad info out there. Nevertheless, I did learn one thing from it all: If I asked about a given set of conditions (like a country with an impassable desert), people could at least tell me if something like that existed nearby. And the fact that that hadn’t happened told me there wasn’t.
I was hoping to get some more reliable information here in the capital, but whether I hit up the church, the court magicians, the library... If I just barged in any of those, they’d turn me away at the door. That left me with one option.
“I got a letter of introduction from the captain of the guard in another town to give to someone in the guard here. I figured I’d start with them.” With that, I pulled out the letter of introduction and gazed at it.
It was a rough parchment scroll sealed with wax, written with Captain Bronco’s name and addressed to what looked like “Captain Morgan, Head of Palbathos’s Fourth Division.”
“I’d say I’m up to speed now.”
His first words told me what was going on—and that the situation wasn’t good.
I’d asked around town and quickly learned where the Fourth Division’s base was. I then went and handed over the letter, saying I wanted to ask a few questions. They made me sit and wait awhile in a bare-bones room in the guards’ station. It felt more like an interrogation room than a parlor, but I was in no position to be choosy.
After some time, at last, a man named Morgan—a handsome middle-aged blond—came and introduced himself. He sat down, and that was the first thing he said. Basically, he knew what I wanted, but whether or not he would grant it was another question—that was the vibe he was giving me.
“Bronco and I go way back. I know him well enough, but...” He glanced down at the letter of introduction in his hands. “‘Mistress Lina is a very powerful magician, so please be accommodating to her. And I hope you’ll use this amazing find on my part to consider me for promotion,’ it says.”
Broncooo! Trying to use the situation to get ahead, huh?! That’s not to say people shouldn’t be ambitious, but give me a break!
Captain Morgan looked me straight in the eye for a moment. “He’s asked me to be accommodating, but what exactly is it that you want?”
“Information,” I responded immediately. “Me and Gourry here boarded a boat in a faraway country called Zephilia, got shipwrecked, and wound up here.”
“What? We did?!” The one who shouted in response to my story was Gourry... Wait.
Didn’t I tell you that was going to be our cover ahead of time?! I really wanted to yell that at him, but I had to keep my cool in front of Captain Morgan.
“Hmm? That seems to be news to him,” Morgan said suspiciously.
I responded gravely. “The shock of the incident caused his memory to become... estranged.”
“Estranged? Not lost?!” Morgan asked.
I responded coolheadedly, “That’s the term the doctor used.”