Kaldalis took a moment to check in on Bangen. She was busily picking over a literal mountain of books, nowhere near bringing her research time to a close. She still had a few hours until her requested wake-up call at nightfall. Without access to any more research of his own, he figured he could leave and come back when it was time to get her out of the library.

He wasn’t sure how to spend his time now, though. Hours of free time in the city, but no real interest in interacting with what it offered. He wasn’t really an extrovert looking for a night on the town, nor did he have any real objectives unfinished right now.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. He had one objective he could work on.

Kaldalis made his way down towards the docks. Fishing in the middle of a proper harbor was going to be different from the more wild locations he’d become accustomed to, but if his guess was right, he’d still be able to catch Pale Perch here. They were supposed to be prolific in all environments. It seemed likely that they would be present everywhere in the world.

It looked like the harbor was always going to be insanely busy. There didn’t appear to be any ships coming or going at the moment, but the place was a flurry of activity. Sailors and dockhands were busily carting around unidentified crates and barrels between carts on the road and the ships at the docks. It was a constant ballet, and Kaldalis had to be careful stepping into it.

There was an empty dock far to the west side of the harbor, where no ships were docked. Once he got to the head of it, he was free and clear of the mess of workers. Without anything on the dock but unattended ropes, nobody needed him out of the way to move goods around. He headed out to the far end of the dock and got his fishing rod out and a roe-covered hook in the water.

The gentle lapping of waves against the pier’s supports was immediately relaxing. He took a deep breath, and tried to let the bureaucracy fade into memory. He tried not to think about the boring baby quests, the absolute garbage system around getting into the dungeon, and the restrictions on the library keeping all the real information locked out of reach.

“Sir! Sir!” A voice interrupted his thoughts. “Sir, you can’t fish here with a permit! You have to pay a fee to use the dock, even just for that.”

Kaldalis felt an immediate white-hot spike of rage drive through his brow from the inside. For a brief second, he was going to turn to violence. He wanted to whirl around and punch someone right in the eye. It was an irrational desire, and he pushed it down, but he had to acknowledge for a moment that all the Baimer bullshit was starting to really get under his skin.

He took a deep breath and turned around. The speaker was a Talsar woman in the armor of a city guard. Kaldalis thought briefly that it was irresponsible to be wearing heavy metal splint mail over water, but quickly remembered that the swimming mechanics in this game ignored armor.

“You need to pay to fish here,” the Talsar repeated. “Either hand over your catch, or pay four crescents for the hour.”

“Fine,” Kaldalis said. “I’ll pay.” He restrained himself from grabbing a fistful of coins from his purse and hurling them into her face. He carefully got out a pair of half-doubloons and put the two semicircular coins into her scaled palm. “Is that it? Do I need a license? A scheduled window to come back next week? Do I have to put my line in a barrel full of already-dead carp?”

“No,” she said, giving him a strange look as she took the coins. “You just fish.”

“Good,” Kaldalis said, trying not to say it too sharply. “I’ll do that, then.”

He turned away and threw his line back into the water. He tried to let the sound of the water relieve his stress again, but it had already soured. As he watched his line in the water, he felt the guard’s eyes on his back, and knew she was waiting to chase him off - or extort another doubloon from him - in an hour’s time.

Garyung had asked him to give Baimer an honest chance, and Kaldalis could feel that chance slipping away. He was at his wit’s end with this city. Even as he was reeling in his first catch, he was thinking about how stupid the whole city made him feel. If he had a month to run around and do all the little quests that would get him the favors and memberships he needed, he could make the town worth his time. But he was only here for a few days. He suspected it would take longer than that to earn access to the library, let alone make real progress on the questline Garyung had done here.

After the first few fish, it seemed that the only thing he could catch here was Pale Perch. For the average fisher, that was probably a huge pain in the ass, since they were low-value fish that weren’t even high enough level to be fun to catch. But Kaldalis had a quest to amass an ungodly number of them. Seeing the quest tick up cast by cast felt like the first good thing to happen to him since he got here.

As time went on, he realized that true relaxation was going to be impossible. Even if he couldn’t feel the watchful eyes of the guard counting away his time here, the sounds were too much for him to ignore. The wind off the ocean couldn’t drown out the dull roar of the city, and every shouted order and boisterous laugh just reminded him of the mess he’d spent all day fighting against.

He was trying not to hate the city, but quietly introspecting on it was just making it worse. His mind flashed through his day, picking out all the little indignities. He couldn’t stop thinking of the bored disinterest of the man who’d taken Onirioago into custody. He still felt guilty that he’d been involved in murdering helpless-seeming animals trapped in pens. He remained frustrated at the very idea of a 4-man dungeon being bogged down by scheduling until it was as frustrating to organize as a 25-man raid. And that was ignoring the library he wasn’t allowed to read in.

And now he had to pay to fish, sitting on an unused dock not bothering anyone.

Fishing was having the opposite of the desired effect. Instead of relaxing and letting his stress melt away, he was growing more and more agitated the longer he thought about it. He needed a better distraction.

The most distracting thing he could think of was an energetic puppy. He usually let a lot longer pass between fishing trips, and so Ein wasn’t as full of energy as usual right as he spawned in. But the little corgi had more than enough energy to take Kaldalis’s mind off of his problems. Kaldalis was glad the dog decided to run up and down the dock yapping at the water instead of running to the end of his leash range and getting underfoot among the dock workers.

“Hey!” the Talsar guard barked. “Sir!”

“Whaaaa-aat?” Kaldalis yelled back. “What now?”

“You can’t have a pet off a leash here, sir,” she said, pointing angrily at Ein. “You would know that if you had all the proper licensing for it.”

Kaldalis felt the blood rush to his head at the mention of licensing. He imagined standing in line somewhere in the city for hours to be told when to come back to stand in a slightly different line for even longer.

“God damnit,” Kaldalis cursed. He opened his pet menu and dismissed Ein. “Fuck this. Fuck you, fuck your dock, and fuck your fucking city!” He turned to yell up at the city instead of the guard. “Fuck your castle, fuck your quests, fuck your asshole guards, fuck your dungeon, fuck your fees, fuck your lines. Fuck aaaaaall-” He gestured widely, encompassing the whole city. “-of this!”

“Sir,” the guard said, giving an exasperated sigh. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“If-fucking-only!” Kaldalis shouted, hearing his voice rising and unable to stop himself. The floodgates were open, and he was going to keep going until someone stopped him. “I’d absolutely love to get on the shittiest boat in this harbor and sail the fuck away from here at the highest velocity possible. But I need to be in this hellhole because otherwise a psychotic criminal is going to chase my ass down and kill me if I don’t show up to her trial, because your bureaucratic bullshit will let her fucking walk!”

The guard seemed unimpressed by his building outburst. He wasn’t sure if she was going to arrest him, or just let him keep going until he ran out of steam. Considering he hadn’t even starting talking about the adventurer petting zoo of murder, he suspected she would be forced to arrest him.

“Hold up there,” a boisterous voice came from the right. “Kaldalis, my boy! Did I hear you say you’d leave here on another ship? I’m hurt!”

Despite himself, Kaldalis felt his anger stop boiling over. In the context of all the sweaty dockhands and grimy sailors, Big Mike looked like he’d stepped out of a cartoon. His colorful red and blue outfit clashed horribly with the grimy city, and the giant hat was unlike anything anyone else was wearing. His appearance was just silly enough to cut Kaldalis off before he could dive into the next part of his rant.

“Of course not, Big Mike,” Kaldalis said with a sigh. “I was just-”

“There’s not a problem here, is there?” the captain asked, looking between Kaldalis and the guard.

“That’s up to him,” the guard said. “If he’s going to make a scene, I’ll have to haul him in, but if he’s going to shut up and leave, we’re fine.”

“I’ll shut up and leave,” Kaldalis grumbled. “I didn’t need to be fishing anyway.”

“Nonsense,” Big Mike said, clapping Kaldalis on the shoulder. “Come on to the ship. You can fish off the back. Dock time is already paid for over there. You already know the rules of my boat, so you won’t be stepping on any toes you don’t know are there, right?”

Kaldalis hadn’t realized that was an option, and made no protest as the captain led him up the docks towards the Rambutan.

“Thanks for the bail-out, Big Mike,” Kaldalis said at last when they headed up the gangplank onto the ship.

“No problem, boy,” Big Mike laughed. “I’d’ve been there sooner if I’d seen you to save you a few crescents. I recognized that blue streak a mile away, though. You picked that up from one of Filomena’s crew, right?”

Kaldalis wanted to dispute that. His propensity for cussing had come directly from his father. That said, he was usually a little more well-mannered with his language than that. All he could really offer was an embarrassed nod, which got him an energetic slap on the back and an uproarious laugh out of the captain.

“I knew it,” Big Mike said, gesturing for Kaldalis to head to the fishing dock. “Maybe I’ll make a sailor out of you one day, boy. Until I do, though, you stay out of the way, alright?”