“So.” Thomas hesitated, wondering whether it was polite to ask. Then decided it didn't really matter. “Can you talk?”

Arias looked at him; she tilted her head to the side, then to the other, and finally shrugged. Well. Alright. Maybe he shouldn't have asked. He was following her through the forest of immense towers, trying to ignore the other people around. The air was full of a dull thrum of conversation, but it was impersonal and distant. There was no sky, just the strange magical – he assumed magical – glowing spheres sporadically and apparently randomly placed atop pillars. The light was cold and sterile.

“Well. I am sorry if you aren't in the mood, I'm going to talk, because I can't not.” Another shrug; she wasn't looking at him anymore, but was apparently still listening.. “I thought we'd come here and we could help people. But we didn't come here for the reason I thought we were coming here, and I guess the reason I thought we were coming here is basically moot? Like, this voluntary evacuation thing, people are just going to leave the plane, just to avoid the crowds?” A nod.

“I don't know what a plane is, I realize. It's flat, I guess. Like, what happens if you reach the end? Do you fall off?” No response. “Does the world just end in a wall? Like, you walk into a wall, and can't walk any further?” A pause, then a shrug. He took a moment to guess, taking a moment to try to formulate a question with a simple yes or no response. “So not a wall, but you can't go further?” A shrug. Okay. Maybe she didn't know.

“And there are other planes, I take it. A lot of other planes. Do they all look like this place?” She shook her head. “The elder mentioned a sea. Could I go to a plane that's an island and beaches?” A nod. The volume was increasing as they moved, and the sporadic people moving around them were growing denser. His attention shifted over, watching two columns of people in orange and green hooded robes pass by.

“Probably not an island paradise. There's probably like … sharks with legs.” She paused briefly before shrugging. “Figures. So I wanted to help people. And I guess there's probably still stuff we could do. That I could do, sorry. You and Anne and Norris have helped me out a lot, and I don't even know if I've thanked you. Thank you.”

Arias glanced over a shoulder, and give him a stern nod. He hesitated when she held his gaze, and then nodded back. This seemed to satisfy her, and they kept walking. Thomas was quiet for a moment as he considered his time here, staring off to the side. Now that he thought about it, he hadn't actually been here that long. It sure felt like a long time, though, perhaps because he'd spent half his time recovering from some injury or another.

He blinked and jerked as he realized he'd been absently staring at a naked woman, and quickly averted his gaze. A question bubbled up, but he let it die, looking around instead. Nudity was basically just normal, here; it wasn't sexualized, it just was. Well, not normal; most people wore clothes. But those who didn't, didn't really attract any attention. Why did most people wear clothes at all?

Then … no. No, wait. Nudity wasn't normal in Piketown; people might swim naked, but they walked around wearing clothes. And it hadn't been normal anywhere else, at least not that he had noticed. He looked around again. And blinked, taking in the sheer variety of different kinds of clothing. Noticing the different hairstyles, the different skin tones.

The way other people just kind of … avoided looking at other people. The way they clustered, and moved in groups, with people like them. A hand touched his shoulder, and he jumped; Arias was frowning at him, and then he realized he'd stopped walking. He started after her again. There were different cultures here. The nudity wasn't normal, exactly, it was just another cultural group.

At least two cultural groups, as he let himself look. Most people who wore nothing, simply wore nothing. But a man and woman walking together definitely marked another, their skin marked in intricate spiraling inks or maybe paints, and adorned in a variety of silver jewelry. His brain flashed blank as he realized that a lot of the jewelry was piercings, or suspended from piercings. But the roar of human interactions had grown oppressive, so he couldn't ask Arias about it. Not that he was certain what he could ask her.

The industrial twilight of the city gave way to animalistic frenzy; the crowds thickened, a wall of people as far to their left and right as Thomas could see, wrapping around the towers; the people grew closer together the further they moved. Thomas found himself stepping on the back of Arias' boots twice before he started shuffling, as the press of anonymous faces shoved them into each other – at least he was barefoot, she didn't seem to have noticed. The roar of voices was an oppressive weight on his consciousness, clothing and flesh passing by him almost too quickly for Thomas to process.

They moved forward in jostles and jerks, moving left and right as often. Step. Jerk. Step. Arias turned suddenly, and then she was behind him; he started to turn to look for her, and then a hand was on his shoulder, guiding him like a … like a battering ram through the people. Not that there was anywhere to go. Other noises joined the frenzy; shouts to be overheard. The assorted pleasant smells of the mana bleed were replaced with the assorted unpleasant smells of humanity, and the air grew warm in his nose.

People brushed by him, touched him. Somebody squeezed his butt; the hand left his shoulder, and the offending touch disappeared. Arias' grip returned a moment later. Through the press of humanity, he got a glimpse of a bearded man holding aloft a colorful strip of something, in front of a paneled surface, and then was gone. Somebody selling fabric from a wagon, maybe? He was guided onward. The press of people passed around him, faces spinning by; nobody else outright grabbed him, but there were other touches, pinches.

The crowd began to thin again. He could take full steps, instead of shuffling. He caught glimpses of stalls, vendors shouting unheard into the tumult, showing off goods. Clothing and dishware. There was food, as well, but the smells assaulting his nose of unwashed humanity, colored the perceptions of the steaming skewers of meat and colorful breads in a distinctly unappetizing way.

The crowd thinned more; the forest of towers rose around them as before, the location not obviously different in any respect, save that here, the towers were wrapped by tables and carts, colorful signage Thomas couldn't decipher hung above them. Everywhere he looked, people were selling things. Vegetables, piled high, in colors and shapes Thomas didn't recognize, raw fish and meats. He didn't see any of the manna, any summoned food or dull gray items, as he began looking for them.

Arias moved back beside him, offering something up to him. He looked down, and blinked at the … that was his coin bag in her hand. With … the strap cut. Oh. He accepted it from her, but then had to hold it in his hand, as he couldn't attach it to his belt anymore. Well. He began looking, and Arias followed when he made his way to a merchant selling leather goods.

Arias picked something out for him; a buckled pouch, the distinctive feature of which was a thin metal mesh embedded in the surface of the leather. At his questioning glance, the bearded merchant pointed at the hand Thomas clutched his own purse in, and produced a small blade; the edge did not penetrate the mesh.

Negotiation in the noise was performed by gesture. Arias did not intervene, and Thomas suspected he might have overpaid, but he left the stall two silver and eighty copper lighter; a belt with the same mesh replaced his. They then moved on, Thomas' eyes swiveling around at the parade of goods around him.

Food and cloth seemed the most common things to be sold; he didn't see much in the way of clothing itself. One stall caught his eye, and it took him a moment to disentangle the massive wooden structure behind the merchant; a tower of chairs. His attention drifted on, Arias having taken the lead once more, freeing his attention for the myriad offerings on display.

And froze, at a line of naked men and women, a woman in front of them dressed in a puffy shirt and trousers, gesturing at those passing and shouting, not that he could hear whatever it was she yelled. Arias was five or six steps ahead of him before stopping to look at him, then at where his attention was directed, then back at him with a look somewhere between exasperated and amused, expressions which gave way to concern at she studied him.

Thomas forced himself to unclench his fists, the details slowly asserting themselves in his mind, as he realized his initial impression had been mistaken. The men and women were enticing passersby. His attention took in the cloth … tents, kind of, behind them. He forced the scowl off his face, and gave Arias an embarrassed shrug and smile, turning to follow her again. She didn't turn away from him immediately, studying his face, then looking at the stall, then at him again.

They made their way away from the open-air brothel. Thomas would have to explain that later. He wasn't a prude, he wasn't angry about people selling sex … okay, he was a prude, but he wasn't angry about people selling sex. Well, no, he found himself kind of annoyed about the way it was done, out in the open. There were children here! Maybe! He didn't see any right now, now that he looked.

Selling sex was … he had complicated feelings about that. Thomas shook his head, trying to sort through a one-sided conversation – a twice-over one-sided conversation, given that it was currently taking place entirely in his head. Did they sell people here? Was that a thing? What would he do if he saw it?

Arias stopped suddenly, and Thomas was forced to stop behind her with a jerk, looking around, to realize they were waiting in line in front of another table, although the word didn't do it justice; an enormous curved surface that seemed to wrap halfway around the tower. A young woman was putting colorful spheres into green paper bags at the front of the queue, exchanging gestures with a hooded figure, whose back was to Thomas.

Thomas looked around the table; an old man helped another queue, to their right. An old woman was moving down the table, straightening and adjusting the bowls of brightly colored spheres, each bowl representing a distinct shade of a very detailed rainbow; her bright gray eyes darted around the people moving around the table.

He looked around as they waited in line. The noise was incredible, and he had a thought which nagged at him like a headache; given that you couldn't hear anybody, why did people bother trying to shout over the noise – but if people didn't shout to be heard over the noise, then it would be quiet enough that shouting over the noise would be worth doing.

Now that he was looking, yes, there were children here. But where he had expected to see children mixed among the adults, instead they formed their own little groups, distinct from the adults. They moved in mixed-culture groups, as well, ranging in age from barely past the age of walking to young teenagers, and none of them looked malnourished, and … and … oh.

Thomas looked straight up, feeling intensely uncomfortable. Okay. Yes, he was a prude, and he was fine with being a prude. He turned firmly back to staring at the back of Arias' head, not wanting to look around anymore.

She got a bag of colorful spheres, exchanged for a silver and some coppers. Then they were on their way; Thomas was surprised at first when she didn't immediately head back the way they had come; the people around them changed as they walked, the immense cultural variety giving way to a more uniform collection of people; the vast variety of clothing gave way to plainer browns.

He couldn't tell how Arias navigated; every tower looked the same to him, plain gray blocks. The ground didn't vary. The only signage seemed to mark businesses; maybe those were recognizable? Or perhaps she just had some kind of distinction or skill or spell that let her find her way around. But they moved into a part of the market that Thomas started to recognize as, not just culturally homogeneous, but of a culture he kind of recognized; these were the clothes that Norris and Anne wore; boots, pants, shirt; there were subtle differences in the collars, in the hems, but the shades of brown were uniform. The men wore capes, like Norris.

They didn't all wear the floppy-brimmed hats. Indeed, very few people wore them, mostly people who carried weapons, whose belts were heavy with lumpy pouches. He drew closer to Arias, suddenly concerned that if he got lost, he would have trouble finding her in the crowds; she wasn't even unusually tall, here.

Thomas looked at an insanely large and muscular man who was stirring an enormous wooden – cauldron? It looked like a single piece. Smoke rose from a smaller covered iron cauldron sitting inside it, suspended by a net of thin chains. Another man, tall but thin, was ladling some kind of brown grain into plain-looking clay bowls for customers, and adding meats and sauces on top of that. The style of food looked familiar, but not.

He saw the same cookware at another stall, as they continued walking. The same, but different. At the third stall, the cook was adding chips of something to the iron pot; flames licked upward as he did. It was … a strange way of cooking, but, he supposed, probably used less metal? But metal seemed plentiful here, compared to wood.

Arias stopped at three stalls, each of which sold clothing. Finished clothing, rather than cloth, which he was startled to realize was itself somewhat unusual. He watched in – well, not silence, but the overbearing noise was its own kind of silence – as she carefully dug through piles of shirts and pants, quickly and efficiently doing measurements of seams using only her hands.

Neat stacks of clothing – he had gasped at the amount of silver that left her hands with the first purchase, not that anybody heard – made their way into three bags. He averted his gaze at the third stall, feeling like an intruder, as she dug her way through pale fabric that seemed thin enough to see through. It felt somehow worse when she put her purchases in the bags, and he realized that the not-bras made their way into two bags along with the socks and shorts, and that he had been seeing Anne's underwear. Yep. He was a prude.

She made more stops, picking up various small things; an odd white stone and a leather strap, from a store which had knives on display, he couldn't make heads or tails of, but mostly the things she bought made sense. He stopped paying too much attention, and found himself just anxiously waiting to get back out of the oppression of noise and people. He didn't want to be here anymore, and he felt kind of guilty about that – couldn't he do something to help people from home here? – but he just wanted to be gone and go back out to the quiet villages and towns, where there was grass and sky and quiet, and – huh?

The roar had changed. He started, when he realized Arias was standing next to him anymore, and looked around, finding her a moment later, to one side of a crowd, standing with four other people in floppy brown hats, in a line; a bundle of brown clothes … no, a person, lay on the ground behind them; in front of them stood seven figures, enormous in what he was startled to recognize as plate armor, made out of a blue-gray metal. There was blood on the ground, and on the mace of one of the armored people.

“OI!” The shout which ripped out of him startled the shit out of him, and it took him a good half-second to realize he'd used Call Out; he wasn't sure if he had intended to do that. That had done it, though, gone right through the incredible noise. Seven visored helmets spun slowly and leisurely on plate mail towards him. His heart sank into a bottomless pit of foreboding, eyes were drawn to the maces, which were … jagged. This would hurt.