Norman, Kelle, and Will

He rode Gul towards one of the side walls but before he got there, he shrank Gul back down. He quickly ran, looking for the massive entrance, and went to the left. After running for a bit, he saw a small door hidden in the shadows that blended quite nicely with the walls. He wouldn't have seen it if he wasn't looking for it.

He checked around the place and saw a few patrolling guards asking what he was doing. When they asked him, he panicked a little and just yelled, "DOES ANYONE HAVE FURBOWS?? I'm looking for some wild furbow! is anyone willing to give me some for free?"

The soldiers jumped back, raising their magic spears ready to thrust them, but put them back down after hearing him and said, "Oi, oi, why did you have to yell?"

"Jeez. come, follow us." the second man gestured him to a shady part and asked him to show his hands. Zeeth held them out and they inspected the stamp on his hand with a magic tool that laminated his hand and the stamp. After the scanning was complete, the light turned green and the soldiers looked up to him with a smile.

"Follow me, there will be someone behind the door waiting to lead you and give you your new license and all your legal documents. We will take the tentacon and move it in through the gates later. Don't worry, we're professionals." they escorted him to the room and the stone door suddenly stretched into a pair of stone hands that grabbed Zeeth and pulled him in. An old lady sat at a desk, ready to lead him around.

She picked up a cane and swung it around, gesturing him to follow her. She walked onto a massive, circular platform and he followed along. Right after getting on, bright blue and black lines started shooting upwards, more and more of them came up and covered them in a cylindrical blanket of blue and black stripes that was sprinkled with tiny little dots of light like stars.

It looked like he was looking into the midnight sky, which he did spend a lot of time looking at.

Soon, the blanket fell away from the same way it had come, shooting upwards through the top circle and he reappeared in a large, fancy house filled with people.

Many of them had stopped to watch the blanket of light fall away to watch who was underneath. When they had appeared, all those watching cheered, "Emma!" and many the others stopped to come back and joyfully talk to her too. There were so many people talking that Zeeth couldn't hear them all, but they were asking things like, "how much did you sell the last house for? How many council positions do you have now? How many main buildings do you own?"

He looked at all of them and saw that their eyes were filled with what seemed like respect. He hadn't seen this before, but he recognized it once he saw it. He then looked at the old lady, who was at least a foot shorter than he was, and wondered what crazy thing she had done to get all this respect from so many people.

At last, she yelled, "Shut up! This here is a boy that has just been sent to us for care! He is under my watch, you will treat him as you would treat me! Introduction over, get back to work!" Zeeth was surprised at how loudly this old woman could talk.

"Yes, ma'am!" Everyone cheerfully yelled back. A few came to shake Zeeths hand, "good day! I'm Norman, you can call me Norm like everyone here. If you need help with learning telekinesis or brewing the best green jinj tea around, come ask me."

"Hey, I'm Kelle, don't listen to him about the jinj tea, I make the best here."

"What did you say?" the two, Norman and Kelle, continued to bicker on. They seemed to be twins, Norman a guy and Kelle a girl, both the same height, just a little shorter than Zeeth, and their hair was a glossy white.

"Oh, thanks, I'm Zeeth."

Emma walked down the platform as he followed, then looked at him, jabbed him a few times with her cane around the body, and said, "alright, alright. Okay, so I'm sure you can go around by yourself. Here is a map. You should go to all these locations marked with a red X. This dot is where the map is at. If you tap on a location with magic, it will show you the fastest way there by walking. Tapping on it twice with magic will show you information about it and instructions on what to do there. Follow the map and you should be safe."

"Oh, okay. Thank you."

"Yeah, yeah." before he even finished his words she had already turned around to walk away. She turned back and said, "If you need to get in contact with me, triple tap it where the do of the map is. I will get the location of the map and you can write on the back to talk to me."

"Okay, thanks so much." Again, before he finished she had started to walk away, but this time she nodded her head before disappearing behind a crowd of walking people.

He looked down at the map, tapped the closest X and a blue line connected him to the X. He just had to walk forward two blocks and left 3 blocks. He started walking forward but soon reached a wall with no door.

He needed to find the exit to the house. He had entered by the weird portal, but he didn't know how to leave. He went looking around for a few minutes for a door, but the only openings he saw were sunroofs that let the light in. he even thought a few times of jumping up and out of the roof but decided it was a bad idea and went looking for someone for directions, but everyone seemed busy with their own tasks and he didn't want to bother them.

He was considering calling Emma but soon saw Norman and Kelle at a tea brewing station making tea. He jogged up to them, happy to see some familiar faces, and waited for them to be done with their tea because the face they made while concentrating on their tea-making was too serious for him to mess up.

They were so focused they didn't even see Zeeth standing next to them for a few seconds.

"AAAAHH!" Norman had finished his tea making and looked up, satisfied, but yelped when he noticed Zeeth right next to him. "Oh, hey. You scared me there. You here to try my tea?"

Kelle noticed Norman talking and looked up at Zeeth as well, still bent over her cup. "Oh hey, perfect timing. You wanna taste test our tea and see which one is better? Of course, mine is, but he needs another person to tell him that."

"Yeah, that's a great idea. Then you could finally realize that you're tea isn't half as good as mine. Here, try it before it gets cold."

"Oh, thank you, but I was looking for the exit." he took a sip of the tea that Norman was putting right in his face and exclaimed, "oh! That's good! It's so minty and fresh."

"Oh, yeah, try mine. It's even better. Also, we can show you the exit after this. We have to leave anyway too."

Zeeth took the cup Kelle was offering and took a sip, "Woah, this is so good too." he took another sip, "it's warm and soothing."

"So? Which one's better?"

"I don't think either is better than mine!" A third, much taller, much darker man came behind them.

Kelle pointed a spoon at his head and said, "Oh, shut it Will. your tea is terrible, everyone says so. You're only good at cooling the tea down for us."

Will slumped down sulkily and picked at something on the table. He looked really sad, a total contrast from how prideful he was earlier.

Norman and Kelle looked back at Zeeth, not paying any attention to Will, "well? Which one is better?"

Zeeth looked at Will, wanting to console him a little. "Oh, well shouldn't we help hi-" Kelle held a hand over his mouth.

Norman whispered to him, "Don't mention him. Once he thinks that you're trying to talk to him, he becomes beyond annoying and doesn't stop talking to you for hours. He would get really prideful, following you around with a high head and a pumped chest and acting like it's so great to be able to talk to you like you were our Founding father or something.

Beating him down with words like that is harsh, but it's the only way to control him. In a few minutes, he'll jump right back up and trying to find new people to talk to. Everyone here tries to kind of avoid him except us, who beat him down and he still considers us his best friends."

Kelle whispered to him, "Right, so don't try to talk to him. You will likely regret it."

Kelle leaned in and asked, "so, which is better? You still haven't answered us."

"Oh, ummm," this was the first time he had come across such a hard question to answer. Either choice sounded bad to him. He just stood there, feeling the pressure of social talking, and kept looking back at the two teacups as Norman and Kelle kept inspected his face, making it harder for him to decide.

Norman studied his eyes and jumped up with delight, "He looked over at my tea! He chose my tea!"

"What the hell, he looked at my tea too!"

"Yeah, but he looked at mine longer! It was a silent choice because he didn't want to hurt your weak feelings!"

"Yeah, right, you're just conceited!"

"Hey, guys? What about my tea?"

They both turned to Will and shouted at once, "No one cares, Will!" and started yelling again.

Just as Zeeth turned around to try and leave by himself, thinking it was faster to look himself than to wait for them, they called after him, "Hey, you wanted to leave right? Follow us."

Their yelling had seemed to stop instantly and they were walking side by side, drinking tea. Zeeth watched them, perplexed. 'What is up with these two?'

Norman looked back at Will, sighed, and yelled, "Hey, Will. You wanted to buy new shoes, right? Follow us, were going to the General's general store."

Will literally jumped up at the table after hearing his name and a giant, warm smile blossomed on his face when he heard the invitation. "Yeah, I'll come! Hey, did you know sneaker prices went up by 2.5 percent since last month? That is outrageous, I should've bought more last month. And talking about price rises, I heard the prices for tentacons have gone up. Oh! Did you hear, someone brought a live baby tentacon here recently."

Norman and Kelle already seemed tired of his talking, but when Zeeth heard about the baby tentacon, he wanted to ask him about it, but Kelle beat him to it.

"Baby tentacon? I hope the owner doesn't decide to kill it. It would be a great pet for someone to raise here. I'm actually looking for a pet to carry my things, a tentacon would be perfect. Maybe it would even impress the Eight enough to give me another badge."

"How much does a live tentacon cost to buy?" Zeeth had finally spoken up, interested in any information on the tentacon.

Will happily answered, "oh, easily 500 styrs. Maybe 450 for a baby one, but live monsters are really hard to catch. Actually, a baby tentacon could be sold for more with the right marketing. You could say that they would live for longer and would be easier to tame."

"Um, I think I have about 2,000 styrs in this card left. I can afford about 450, I hope this guy is willing to go lower though."

Norman looked at Kelle with bewilderment, "When did you rack up so much money? I only have 1,500!"

"I do other jobs and chores when I can't sleep at night. That's when no one is around to steal the jobs, it's a great time to hunt lightning bugs too."

"That's how? Damn, I should be doing that. Wake me up the next time you're doing that, I can help."

"Me too!" Will tried to include himself in this opportunity to hang out with his best friends.

"No way! You talk so much that you're going to wake everyone else up too."

"No, I promise I won't talk!"

"You've promised that before and haven't kept your promise for a minute! You just kept laughing and got us yelled at!"

"I'm so sorry, please let me join!"

Before they finished talking, they arrived in a small room. It was filled with platforms a lot like the one that he came in, but these were much smaller and could only fit one person at a time. Some larger ones in the back could fit 3 to 5 but no larger than the one he arrived in, which seemed to be able to fit 20 people easily.

"Alright, Zeeth. This is how you leave or enter. But before you leave, you need to sign a contract that will be provided soon. It states that you will not speak a word or even try to make it known that this place exists and is the home to all these people. When you try to tell others, your entire body will freeze up, you will run to us against your will and tell us what you did. Also, some small stuff like you won't hurt the Eight or anything."

"Who's the Eight?"

"They're the eight greatest magicians here in Vasaleus, personally taught by Afir, our founding father. Emma, the lady who brought you here, is one of them. That's why we were all so excited to meet her."

"What is the Vasaleus?"

But before they could answer, a magic paper was being constructed in front of him. The writings were still being written on and he could read them as they fell on the paper, I will not reveal to a soul or anything the secret of the Vasaleus. I will not pee in the drinking fountains...

"I will not pee in the drinking fountains? Why do we need a rule like that?"

"Oh, that rule was made specifically for- nphmph." Kelle had begun to talk with amusement, but Norman clasped his hands over her mouth with embarrassment and said, "jokes! She meant to say jokes!"

Will looked confused and said, "no, she meant to say-"

"Will shut it."

"Okay." But it was too late. The damage was done. Zeeth knew Norman had done something related to peeing in the drinking fountains but decided not to pursue it. It would be a story for another time.