I had two choices on how to reach Port Royal. Three, really. I could walk all the the switchback path, I could pay three copper to ride in a carriage pulled by a team of oxen with other passengers and some cargo, or I could pay a silver, the equivalent of half a day’s work for a normal person, to ride in a cable car that travelled up some towers and all the to the city proper.

  I pressed my face against the gss off the cable car to take in as much of Port Royal as I could while I approached. The city was built on three rge pteaus, eae ending at a sheer cliff face with a small wall all around it.

  The city itself was a sea of red roofs sprinkled with the occasional bronze or blue reen. Off to the East were a series of five big towers that stuck out of the mountain side and cast long shadows across the port. And, barely visible on the west side, was the actual port. It overlooked a rge chasm, bridges spanning the gap with ropes dangling down to the airships docked below.

  That was going to be the third pce I would visit. First Juliette’s husband’s inn, then the Exploration Guild’s headquarters, then the airship docks so that I could gawk at all the pretty flying ships.

  The cable car stopped with a k and the young grenoil manning the trols opehe door and doffed his big floppy hat. “We’ve arrived, dies as,” he said.

  I was one of the first off, backpack boung behind me as I nded on the cable car’s ptform. We had stopped above a little staging area o the main gates. There looked to be pces where lines of people would wait during the day to be let into the city, but--te as it was getting--those were all empty and only a few guards stood around attentively waiting for the person to climb the hill.

  “Thanks for the ride!” I called over my shoulder as I skipped over to the huge gates.

  “Hello ma’am,” the guard said. “First time in Port Royal?”

  “It is!” I said.

  He nodded his helmeted head. “Wele to Port Royal. I’m going to I you and your items, after which, if you’re not carrying anything suspect, you’ll be allowed to enter. Do you uand?”

  “I do,” I said.

  His eyes glowed in the depths of his helmet and they twitched to my backpack, then up and down my body. I felt like I had just been x-rayed or something and had to resist the urge to y arms over my chest.

  “Yood to go. Wele to Port Royal.”

  Smiling, I passed first the guards, thees, before ing to a stop.

  The area right after the entrance en pza. A little fountain standing in the middle of a square lined with shops and homes, not one of them less than two stories tall. Lanterns hung on poles alongside the streets, giving everything a cheery golden glow.

  People of all sorts walked around or chatted. Some were pag up stalls with blue cloth roofs while others sat o the fountain and ehe evening air. Most, I noticed right away, were grenoil, but there were a feies and some sylphs and even a couple of humans.

  I grinned as I started walking deeper into the city. That’s when the st hit me. Or rather, the stench. There had to be an open sewer somewhere because the pce smelled like poop.

  It still wasn't as bad as a rotting Dunwich abomination, though.

  Someone ughed from behind me and I turo see a guard that was a good foot shorter thaandio one by the gates. “Always fun to see try folk take in the Port Royal air,” he said.

  “Does it always smell so... like this?” I asked.

  He nodded. “It’s the steam vents, mostly. Smells worse in the Scumway, not that you look the sort to go venturing down there. I’m told it’s the sulphur in the ground or some such.”

  “Right,” I said. “Um, I o get to the inn by the east gate. Do you know where that is?”

  “East gate? That’s to the East.” He poio his right and down one of the roads. “That way, then you take a right onto Tripping Lane and up to tral. That cuts through the city West to East. ’t miss the gate from there.”

  “That way, Tripping Lane, tral. Got it!” I said. “Why’s it called Tripping Lane?”

  The guard shrugged. “Heard the earth mage who made the road was off his rocker on Mattergrove wihe entire road was bumpy and every step on the side paths was different to the . Some ripped and broke his hey’ve fixed it after that, no worries.”

  “Okay, ! Thank you guard person!” I waved over my shoulder as I started towards the inn. The roads were very tight, much more so than anything bae. It was obvious that they hadn’t pnned around cars and the like. But I could see lines criss crossing above and even the occasional cable car whizzing by so maybe they didn’t o worry about that.

  The cable cars weren’t the only ued thing. There were pipes all over. Some gurgling with water, others smoking as hot steam rattled through them. The few people out and about who had stopped to chat had to scream over the stant g of pipes and the occasional shrill whistle.

  The houses, and I only guessed that because plenty of them had clothes out to hang and dlelight flickering within, were all pressed together with hardly any room between them, it made navigating the steep road like walking through a narrow chasm.

  I did enjoy the architecture though. The homes all had stone walls on their first floors and everything above that was covered in wooden pnks. The roofs had shiiles that gleamed in the e light of the evening and more than one home was freshly painted in blues and yellows and turquoise.

  I almost missed Tripping Lane because of how my head was on a swivel to take in as much as I could. The road was, disappointingly, pretty normal, though there were a few pubs with some rowdy ers at both ends.

  tral was much wider than any of the other roads I’d been on, with a patch of greenery down the middle and enough space that the people walking about had plenty of room around them. I shifted to the middle of the road, looked both ways, then started headiward and towards a rge gate some hundred meters away. All the buildings along the street were either shops with big windows showing off their goods or very pretty homes with little fences and tiny gardens out front.

  A low rumble from above had me ing my neck up and then gasping as an airship flew past so close that I could make out the individual pnks of its hull. Brackish, blue-grey smoke poured out of a pair of engines in two nacelles at its sides as the ship veered around in the air and aimed towards the docks.

  “This pce is awesome,” I muttered.

  The East Gate was manned, just like the front gate, and I could see that the homes and businesses on its other side were far han those I had passed so far, with actual lots around them and mps that weren’t quite so far apart.

  “Hello ma’am,” one of the guards at the gate said. “Do you have business on the East side?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I’m looking for an inn. The owner is called Julien. I have a letter for him.”

  “Courier's guild?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Exploration, but not yet, I’m just delivering the letter for a friend.”

  He looked me up and down, then fixated e who had poked her head out of my bao look around.

  “Right, go on in,” he said. “Third building to yht, you ’t miss it.”

  “Thank you!” I said as I shot past him and skipped along the road until I came to the front of a building that couldn’t be anything but an inn. It had a huge front, with three stories topped by a steep bronze-coloured roof with a couple of eys poking out the top. A ghrough the checkered windows revealed a bunch of people sitting at round tables and finishing up their evening meals.

  A sign hung over the door. Ron and Roll Inn.

  I walked in with a snort at the name only to be assaulted by a barrage of fresh sts. I had fotten hoort Royal smelled over the course of my short walk. The Inn, in plete trast to it, smelled heavenly. There had to be some magic keeping the nasty smells away.

  “May I help you?” a young grenoil girl asked as she watched me just breathe in through my o it the smells to memory.

  I shook myself to refocus and fired a small burst of ing magic at my clothes. I wahem to smell like the inn, not the sewers outside. “Yes, yes you !” I said. “I’m looking for Julien.”

  “Julien? He’s at ze ter,” she said as she half-turo point.

  There were two grenoil behind the bar, one was far too young, and too female, to be Juliette’s husband. The other was a big fat frog, the biggest I had ever seen, with a blindingly white apron around his tummy that was straining under his girth and a smile so huge it could have swallowed me whole.

  He was talking to a er that looked to be on his way out, pig a hat off of a rack built into the end of the bar to hand it over to the t who left with a wave over his shoulder.

  I stepped aside to let the man pass, then walked over to the bar. “Hello, sir,” I said as I moved over to the bar. “May I sit?”

  He blinked big froggy eyes at me aured. “Sit away! Zere’s always a free seat at my bar!”

  I plopped myself down, removed my hat, and with a deft flick, pletely missed the hat ra the er a my hat flying down a hall that, I suspect, led to the washrooms.

  “Oh no!”

  Ding! For doing a Special A in lih your Css, you have unlocked the skill: Cute!

  I froze.

  No. No! Cute wasn’t a skill, and I wasn’t cute. I was attractive and pretty but not cute.

  “Are you okay ss?” Julien asked.

  “I-I ah, ah, I... shucks,” I said. I could freak out about it ter. Instead, I pulled out Julien’s letter and ha over to him. “This is for you.”

  He looked at the letter, then his eyes widened and his smile grew tenfold as he saw the seal atop it. “From my dearest Juliette!”

  “Yeah, she, she wanted me to deliver that to you,” I said. I absently pulled a silver from one of the pouches of my bandoleer a on the ter. “If you have a moment, I’d like a meal too. I o... to drown my sorrows in delicious food.”

  “Ah, keep your girl. Juliette would have my head if I treated someone who did a favour for her wrong,” he said before popping the seal and unfolding the letter. He moved bad cackled as he read, a sound that had a few of his staff shivering in what I suspected was horror. “She called me an oaf!” he said with glee.

  My eyes met those of the barmaid and she shook her head. “I’ll get you some supper,” she said.

  I nodded and the my head thunk onto the ter. Cute. Cute. I wanted Fireball. Or... or literally anything else.

  Ding! Two of your current skills are eligible for Merging: Cute, Friendmaking.

  “Merging?” I asked Mister Menu, a kernel of hope flickering to life in my chest.

  Merging skills will reset merged skill to the lowest rank. All skill and general points will be refunded. You may pick which slot the new skill will occupy as long as there is an avaible slot and the new skill matches css requirements.

  That sounded... brilliant! I liked Friendmaking, it had potential, but Cute didn’t, and it would mean maybe freeing up another skill slot for somethier down the line!

  There was literally no way for this to g!

  Do you wish te Cute and Friendmaking to unlock the Sedu skill?