Kile of Zumada

33. Coal City Proper

Once Lija had spent a day resting to get her energy back, the party decided to move on. Their first goal, they realized, was to figure out where they could find the massive deposit of Borxite they had heard about, and where they could find Chaosbound who were familiar with Wild Magic. Lija was being entirely too quiet, and it bothered Kile, but if she was going to be stubborn about murder he wasn't going to stop her.

The short trip to the town square had been utterly silent.

"You know," Alora said, "it'll be a lot easier to communicate with people if we're communicating with each other."

Lija looked at her, frowned, and then looked back out.

"You two aren't going to get over this disagreement if you don't talk about it."

Lija leaped off the cart and grabbed the reigns of the gremel.

"I will return the gremel," she said. "You two ask at the store."

And before either of them could object, she was off. As soon as she was out of sight, Kile let out a sigh.

"Look, if we're going to talk this out, she has to want to talk it out. It doesn't work if both parties aren't ready, and you can't force that."

"Are you ready?" Alora asked.

Kile looked at her, and grumbled, "if she's ready to apologize for being so cranky."

He could see Alora picked up on the message. She sighed and waved her hand, "let's just go see the general store, hm?"

Coal City was kind of a microcosm of the Mountain Confederacy. A city sized cavern carved out of the wall, held up with arching pillars.Inside some of those arching pillars were small houses or shops, but most of the buildings were on the ground, usually pulled up from Ludia by the powers of Earthbound but occasionally hand made out of stone or brick, sometimes even metal. There was even a large wooden building in the center of town. Charge Luxite crystals hung from the ceiling, illuminating the town and twinkling like stars, but they weren't always bright enough to make things visible - hence the need for the Luxite torch. The city was unplanned, but still sensible.

The building they were going into was one of the ones that had been built out of brick and mortar. Inside, a black haired, pale skinned man with pale blue eyes and an orange nose patch of the Confederates.

"What can I do fer yah?" He asked.

"We're just here to top up on food and water before heading further in," Alora said. "But we also had a question."

"Oh, really?" He asked with a smirk. "And what do a bunch'a intrepid youths want to know?"

Kile began picking over the shelves for fruits he knew how to cook into something interesting.

"Well, it's sort of complicated. We're looking for a Chaosbound who happens to know something about Wild Magic."

"Ah, kid, you're asking the wrong person. I'm a humble shopkeep, I don't know anything about Bound or this Wild Magic stuff. Sorry." He hung his head before a realization suddenly hit him. "But you know who might," he said with realization, "Callan Ironborne. She just visited here and I think I remember her mentioning something about it. She's the Chaos Exemplar. She's super friendly, been aching to help people ever since she got the mantle. If you can find her, she'll probably be able to help, even if it's just by pointing you in the right direction."

"Where can we find her?"

"Oh! Right! Stoneheart City. When she was passing by here a few weeks ago she was preparing for a trip to the ruins, I suspect she'd be back by now. If you hurry you'll catch her before she wanders off again. She's always happy to help, but that means she's always busy."

Alora smiled. "Thank you very much, we'll head right there!"

Kile brought his selections up, "we'll take these."

"Of course! That'll be 23 ingots," he said.

"We...only have Imperial Value Tokens..."

He smiled, "ah, that's fine, that's fine! Money is money."

They made the purchases, and headed out.

"You know, we don't need the cart while we're here. It's mostly for the tent supplies, if we just stuck with our bedrolls we should be fine here." Kile realized.

"Good point," Alora agreed.

Lija approached them, down a gremel. Her attention turned only to Alora as she spoke.

"When I spoke with the handler, he told me that while he knows where some of it is, if we want to know where the largest Borxite deposit is, we should ask the mining guild stationed in Stone Heart city - they'll have that information."

"What a coincidence!" Alora said. "We were told something similar. The Chaos Exemplar is actually really happy to help people and she's in the same place."

"Excellent," Lija said. "We have our next goal, then."