7 6. Wingbeat City

The docks of Wingbeat city were crowded. Ships of all sizes looked about ready to begin their journey. Passenger ships, merchant ships, and ships full of fishermen... they were all kinds.

The land here was sandy but soon progressed into a solid ground with two-storey wooden buildings, unpainted stores made of bricks, trees and grass overpopulating the area.

Seraph had talked about many of the species in the Baldur continent during our sea journey and now I was finally seeing them in person.

Pairs of Dragonborn stood guard infront of stores. These beings were practically human-sized dragons in armour, while some stood as tall as over 6 feet. Seraph had mentioned that they were genderless creatures and were born from the excretion of their Sentries.

A family of Orcs passed us by, and the only male in them was a Beastman. And apparently that was a common sight to see since males were rarely born in the Orc species and hence the males of other species were highly sought after.

They were six feet tall, pale white in their skin tone, possessed green eyes, had cropped short hair and wore armour as though it was the most comfortable thing in the world.

"It's weird seeing the Orcs in pale white instead of the usual green." I muttered some time after we passed them by.

"The usual green? Taeyang, the Orcs haven't been the usual green since centuries. Everyone thinks it's a mutation caused by mating with so many different species for so long."

Not much later we arrived at the place we were looking for. The Guild of Unions.

And we found the reason for that name not too soon after by talking to the Dragonborn standing guard.

It housed a representative from every guild in the continent. Those representatives practically lived in the building.

On walking inside, each representative was sitting in a stall of their own with a banner pinned to it stating the name of their guild.

"Which guild do you plan on joining, Seraph?" I turned to her just as we passed The Sorcerers' Guild's banner.

"I don't know, but we do need to join one if I want to earn something and find my mother."

"Then I presume I could help you," said the man who wasn't present anywhere near us a second ago.

"Let me introduce myself first, " he cocked me a slight smile and I slipped my dagger back in, " I'm Melvin, the representative of The Assassins' Guild. If information on someone or something is what you need, there's none other who know the ways of gaining access to it than us."

The dude had cropped charcoal black hair, blue eyes, a reddish brown skintone and donned a long black cloak plus a metal vest underneath. There was a symbol etched onto the back of his cloak when he turned and asked us to follow.

It was two red moons. One slightly hiding behind the other.

"Here," He patted to a rolled up scroll he pulled out from his cloak and placed on the desk of his stall, " this here contains a list of all the people that left this city's shores today, along with a description of their physical features. You can't ask why I have it, but if you can guess, then it would be best that you keep it to yourself."

Huh. Looked like their guild was contracted to assassinate someone on one of those ships. I didn't yet know how this world worked, but I needed to learn new ways to kill. And collecting information about my next preys before heading in for the kill would indeed be helpful.

But first, I had one question.

"Would you teach me magic if I were to join you guys?"

"Hmmm?" He smiled at me, "Ah, I see, you haven't discovered your affinity yet. Seeing as you're human, there's only a 50 per cent chance that you could be allowed into our guild. Here."

He placed a circular stone tablet onto the desk, it was etched with strange symbols and markings, plus four white marbles were inserted into it.

"Go ahead," Seraph patted me on the back.

And I placed my hand on it, waves of colours began emitting from the tablet and enveloping my arm. Then the marbles lit up. Soon the colours enveloped all of me, then they all turned translucent.

"Ah! You pass! It's wind. Perfect for assassination!" Melvin gave me a broad smile, "Come here tomorrow and I'll have a few books on basic and intermediate wind spells ready for you."

Perfect.

I turned to Seraph, "I've decided to join this group, what about you?"

"I need to think over it a little more," she said to Melvin.

"No big deal, no big deal. I smell a lot of fire magic from you, that's surprising for a mermaid, but I must commend you on your grit," saying so he flashed a thumbs up.

After that we passed by a couple more stalls, spoke and were scouted by a few more representatives. Seraph seemed to show some interest in The Halflings' Guild. It was for halflings of every specie, and that did sound like something she would be happy to be a part of.

Even the representative was a jolly old half beast half human lady who was quite the hugger. The only thing that set her apart from the beastwomen I had seen were that she had fur only on her forearms and a bit on her face.

The usual beastwomen Seraph had said during the sea journey, had almost all of their body covered in fur except for some portions of the face, the chest and stomach.

Later that night when we found and checked into an inn, I asked her the question I had been meaning to ask since quite a bit of the day.

"What specie was that Melvin guy?"

She turned to me as she was getting into the tub full of sea water that had even a headboard attached, apparently that's what mermaid beds looked like.

"Ah, he was a Shade. I guess I forgot mentioning about them earlier. They are creatures of shadows and possess many crazy abilities. Never go against them during the night or when around any shadows. Ok, Goodnight".

"Goodnight."