City Life

A few months later, Kuno and I had become good friends. I learned that he is just a year older than me and lives with his mother and father. Also, I prodded him for more details about Carrions, and he revealed to me that he had already made a contract with one. A familiar inhabits his left arm, and when I asked if it hurt, he said, "Yeah, but it's not that bad."

He also told me that he could make as many contracts as he has parts to give, which I thought was kind of gruesome. Ever since he told me about his left arm, I've been curious about what it looks like in action, but because he hasn't offered to show me, I feel like it might be rude to ask.

"Hey, let's go to the city center!" Kuno said excitedly.

"This is out of nowhere ... why do you want to go?"

"Because you've never been to the city center, right?"
Well, he's right, and I do want to see it, but ...

"Do you really think it will be ok for two demons to go somewhere so crowded?"

Kuno smiled. "Don't worry, I've got something for you!" He quickly reached into his pocket.

"Here!"

It was a black eyepatch with the edges embroidered.
When was the last time someone gifted me something?

I quickly slipped it on to see how it felt. It fit right over my eye, no problem.

"Now we both are just regular humans!"

"Thank you..."

"It's nothing; let's go see the city." Kuno was clearly in a good mood. Maybe he hasn't been there in a long time.

The city has two sets of walls, the outer walls and the inner walls. As we approached the inner walls, I could see all of the shops and vendors lining the streets. I was awestruck. The sheer number of people, the different sights and smells, and the stark contrast between the city center and the outskirts were massive. We started going street by street, just looking at everything. The smells of food drifted through the air. Grilled, fried, baked—I didn't want to complain about the food at home, but this stuff just looked and smelled so much more appealing. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man frying what looked to be dough, then drizzling some sort of sauce on top.
My god, that looks divine.

The corners of my mouth started to get wet.

"It's called sweetbread; wanna get some?" Kuno had noticed too.

"Please."

He smiled and walked over to the vendor.

"Rich friends are the best!" I said to myself.

Now full, we explored some more, looking at all of the trinkets the vendors were selling. Kuno stopped, then turned to look at some stuff a vendor was selling.

"Hey, I'm going to browse some stuff here; you can go on ahead."

It looked like something had caught his eye. I nodded and walked further up the street. That's when I came across what looked to be a library.
I hated the library in my previous life.

As I walked up to the library, I noticed a sign that read "Five Orn Entrance Fee."
What? You have to pay to get into a library?

I started to walk away when Kuno caught up to me.

"Do you want to go in?" he said, out of breath.

"It's ok; it costs money to get in."

"That's fine." He walked straight in, and a few seconds later, I followed after him.
Now I'm starting to feel like a leech.

The library was quite large, with an array of different books. As I was walking around, I got drawn to a book called Battle Magic: Techniques and Forms. I pulled it out and brought it to a table. Reading the book, I learned many new things, but what stood out to me the most was the ways magic could be applied to something. I already knew that most everything can be a conduit for magic, but the book described how weapons and even armor can become conduits for magic. For example, you could apply fire magic to a sword, making it that much more deadly, or you could apply lightning magic to armor to increase your speed. I was completely absorbed reading the book when I remembered that I was here with someone. Reading books the whole time would be a waste of the trip.

"Hey, let's go check out some other part of the city," I whispered while getting up to leave.

Leaving the library, I saw a small crowd forming at the other end of the street. It seemed like the crowd was forming in front of a church. I pointed over to it, letting Kuno know that I wanted to see what was going on.

As we approached the church, I could hear a man speaking to the crowd.

"Let us not forget the thousands of years of war between humans and demons; to allow these demons to live among us is a betrayal of all of our ancestors who died fighting against those creatures ..."
What?

"And to mix our blood with theirs is an abomination!" The man was screaming at this point, swept up by his own speech.

Kuno pulled me back out of the crowd and started walking down a random alley.

"That's the Ursprung Church, and it's why my family doesn't live in the city center." He was clearly upset.

"Everything he was saying is complete bullshit; demons died fighting in those wars too, and they don't want humans and demons to have children because it's harder to discriminate against them."

I thought about what that man was saying as I followed behind Kuno, but was quickly pulled out of my thoughts by a change in the atmosphere. As I looked around, I saw people in chains. Up and down, lining the street, were slaves being sold. This was something I kind of expected, but seeing it in person was a completely different feeling.

"I didn't mean to walk down this street; let's just quickly walk to the other side," Kuno said.

"Why are these people slaves?"

"People end up as slaves for different reasons, like not paying off a debt, or if there is conflict between nations, people get swept up into it."

I noticed that there were human and demon slaves here, too.
That church talks about how evil demons are and how great humans are but lets them become slaves all the same. All of this is happening not a few blocks away ... some church you are.

I felt guilty walking past all of these slaves, but I knew that there was nothing I could do there.

Leaving the slave market, we decided we should probably call it for the day.
It was kind of a bad end to the whole trip, but that's how it is, I guess.

That's when we heard yelling from an alley. Being curious, we both looked down the alley to see two kids beating up another person. On a closer inspection, the other kid they were beating on had horns on the sides of their head.
Hmm, I think I know what this is about.

I whispered, "Should we do something?"

"It's up to you," Kuno responded.
Maybe there was nothing I could do to help those slaves, but against two other kids? We got this.

I summoned up all my courage. This is the first time I would be confronting anyone, ever. I stepped into the alley and took a deep breath.

"What do you guys think you're doing?" I said with all my confidence.

"What does it look like we're doing, dumbass?"
This asshole! Damn it, now I have to fight!

"Pfft."

I looked back and gave Kuno a glare. He quickly avoided my gaze, so I turned back to look at the two bullies who were now posturing up. A second glance, these two look about a foot taller than me, but I can't back out now. I start closing the distance between us when one of them charges at me. I backed up a little but then realized at the last moment that the eye patch I'm wearing is messing with my depth perception. He slammed straight into me.

"Urrgghh," I groan as I'm knocked to the ground.

I turn over and face away from him when I hear him coming closer.
What the hell! I'm not going to lose, am I?

As I clenched my hands, I realized something. Right before he brings his foot down on me, I grab a handful of dirt and cast it into his eyes.

"Arrgghh, you dirty bastard!" He screamed.

He kept rubbing his eyes, opening and closing them to try to see. That's when I quietly walked up and delivered a swift, robust kick to his groin. A small gasp came from him. Then, he dropped to his knees.

Ouch, I felt that kick. That was insanely underhanded, and I do feel kind of bad, but at the same time, I'm a little happy with myself.

I turned to look at how Kuno was doing and saw him just weaving around the other boy's punches. The other boy was clearly getting exhausted and so lunged at Kuno, grabbing his shirt. As the other boy went in for the punch, Kuno brought his left arm to the side. Immediately, Kuno's arm began to change, and in less than a second, his arm inflated in size, becoming massive, like the claw of a monster. The color of the arm was black, with an orange-red hue permeating throughout. The arm itself was alive, making small movements and twitches. Kuno then simply pushed the other boy into the wall, knocking him out cold.

"Wow," I say, staring in amazement.

His arm quickly changes back, reverting to its normal form. Kuno brushes off my curiosity and turns to the other demon.

"Hey, we are leaving; you should do the same thing."

"Thank you for helping me."

Kuno immediately breaks into a sprint. Confused, I follow right after him.

"Why are we running?" I said between breaths.

"We need to go before someone tells the guards about us."

I could see a grin forming on his face as we ran past all of the shops and vendors, down the street, to the inner city walls. We zoomed right through the gate entrance and only started walking when we got a fair distance from the inner walls.

"I still don't know why we needed to run," I said, out of breath.

"Using our powers in the middle of a city is considered taboo, so try not to do it."

"Ah."
Yeah, that probably is a pretty serious thing to do.

As the sun began to set in the distance, Kuno started to break out into laughter.

"Why are you laughing?"

"We did a good thing by helping that demon out, and it felt pretty good doing it, right?"

I mean, he wasn't wrong. I did feel pretty good, and overall we had a good day. I started to laugh with him.

I would never have done that in my previous life; I guess I'm changing for the better. I hope every day is as good as this one.