Homebrew magic (Pt. 2)
"Are we there yet", Demmy complained.
"Should be just a little bit more", Myzkik tried reassuring her, but he himself didn't sound too confident.
"We've been flying over this ocean for hours, where is your mystometer taking us?", Demmy asked.
"According to the map, someplace called Nippon, it's next to Bharat, Zhongguo, and Pilipinas", Myzkik explained.
At this point, the moon hovered over the open ocean. The waves shimmered as the bioluminescent bacteria and zooplankton bloomed during the red tide. Underneath the rough waves were full of fish swimming peacefully in the open sea.
By the time they had arrived, the horizon was just starting to change color as the dark night started to change into light purple and indigo, with bands of orange and hints of yellow just starting to appear.
"That's a pretty cool atmospheric function", Myzkik commented.
"Raileigh scattering nerd", Demmy teased.
"It's Rayleigh, plus I don't what to heard it coming from you. Remember our class on Hilbert's...", Myzkik received a punch before he could finish the sentence.
Eventually they had arrived in a school building watching groups of little people sitting at the table, with their professor writing down strange symbols on the whiteboard.
"Look at them, they're busy learning like we are", Demmy observed the students in class.
"Why are they inside, the classroom's so boring", Myzkik remarked.
"Let's go to that place", Myzkik pointed to a black and white sign on the building. Inside the smell of alcohol, smoke and tea wafed out the door.
Myzkik ran off and seeing this, Demmy chased after her partner.
"I wanted to see what they were learning", Demmy was unhappy with their quick departure.
"You couldn't even understand what they were saying, plus let's finish up. We only have 1 day left", Myzkik pointing to one of the sign plates inside the pouch hanging by his side.
Inside the building were lots of older men and women gathered around square tables. Each table had a set of straight lines criss-crossing each other.
"What are they doing", Myzkik asked.
Demmy started to flip through her notes, "I've seen this before. It seems to be a game. In the other countries they play something called chess. However in various tea houses and game parlors they play board games like shogi or as this game is called Go (围棋)."
"meh, I prefer our space battle stratego", Myzkik yawned.
One of the players grabbed a black stone from his pot, holding it between his index and thumb finger he placed it on one of the star points on the board.
"san-san", the player declared.
His opponent thought for a second before grabbing a white stone and placing it two spaces up and one to the left of the opposite side of the board.
The first few moves were played rather quickly. However as the game went on longer and longer, the board started to turn into the shape of two snakes, with one white dragon trying to bite the tail of the other black dragon.
"It's like the yin-yang Daoist symbol", Demmy said.
"It looks like our demuirge pet snake ouroborus", Myzkik eyes started to close as the trip here and the peaceful games started to make him sleepy.
Demmy watched the game, trying to understand the rules. All around people were stroking their beards and drinking tea. A few of the women in the room were explaining the board, coming up with new moves and lamenting missed opportunities the players made.
All the while their mystometers glowed brightly. After charging for a while a bright flash had transported them to a cold city somewhere in the northern hemisphere of the planet.
At this point in time, Myzkik woke up.
"Where are we?", he asked.
"How would I know you're stupid machine took us somewhere just as the game was about to finish", Demmy was upset as she felt she was close to understanding some of the rules.
She recognized the terms "Muramasa sword", "Cosmic style", "False eye", and "Poison", and "Stone buddha". They were some of the terms her grandmother written down talking about the various formations and artifact crafting.
Myzkik inspected his Mystometer.
"Uh oh..", Myzkik said ominously.
"Uh oh!?! What does that mean?", Demmy glowered at Myzkik.
"Whoops, should have said that", Myzkik said.
"The Demuirge messaged us saying we've got 3 hours left. You make any progress?", Myzkik asked.
"3 HOURS", Demmy shrieked, she started to get stressed out by the short time constraint.
"Calm down Demmy, breathe...", Myzkik went to her side and tried to make her feel better.
Myzkik had a list of places to visit when he went to their teacher's office hours.
"We've only got 2-3 places on the list. We'll have some more time before the presentations Demmy. Don't worry", Myzkik comforted his partner.
Taking some deep breaths Demmy calmed down.
Approaching another apartment building, they walked inside to find.
While the building from the outside was blocky, extending from the ground to the sky. Inside was much cozier and grand. The floor was covered in black and white tiles, a red carpet was placed on the floor.
Various fixtures and furniture was inlaid with shiny gold colors, as the lights hanging from above sparkled like a diamond as the gaslights burned. There were shiny brown cabinets and marble tabletops. They had stepped in the lobby of Mr. Anderson's Hotel.
"Did your mystometer take us to the right place", Demmy asked.
"I don't know, it seemed to get stronger when you were focused on the game and took us here."
As they walked around they found another event happening. Various exhibition halls, one full of people dressed up in suits drinking wine. Another ballroom had ladies and gentlemen dancing, with two people dressed up in a white dress and a red and black suit.
There were people dressed up in white coats arguing over a projector screen, men holding shovels displaying old rocks, then in the largest dinner room were more board games.
Various names and pictures hung on the wall, Botvinnik, Kramnik, Nezmedinov, Tal, Alekhine, Capablanca. Empty frames with various letters were penciled in MVL, Fischer, Anand, Magnus.
"It seems that we've arrived in a chess hall", Myzkik speculated.
"I would have preferred Chinese chess or something", Demmy was still miffed at their sudden exit from the Go match.
People were carrying computers back and forth, heavy machines faced a sharp eyed person.
The name plates read, "Deep Blue" and "Kasparov".
The mystometer started to glow again.
"I think it's coming from that box", Demmy suggested.
The pair approached a cardboard box. Opening it, they found pages of paper with symbols and numbers they didn't recognize, 一, eins, nijisan, 2, ∈, Σ, ζ.
Various people with different faces and colors were scribbling, punching the buttons on calculators and writing text on the computers.
"They look like wizards", Demmy said.
"Yeah, they all have ties, white shirts, a piece of string with a card on their neck, and most of them have pens in their pockets", Myzkik observed
"Don't forget the glasses", Demmy added.
"Weird uniforms, they don't really look like magicians though. More like the statisticians and mathemagicians we have at home", Demmy thought.
Myzkik and Demmy started to take notes trying to capture the moment, so that they would have something to present.
Myzkik's pen started to draw a realistic drawing as it sketched the scene with color and shadowed edges.
"We done here?", Myzkik asked.
"I am, where to next?", Demmy asked.
Demmy pulled out a globe and placed her fingers on various countries, cities and capitals. The places glowed as she touched them.
"Chicago, the windy city? Ottowa? Paris? Abu Dhabi?", Demmy asked.
"Someplace called the mind's treasure chest, in 牛-纽约", Myzkik said.
"Oh sorry, it's read New York", Myzkik responded.