The Guild Capitol: Chapter One

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The entrance to the portal that led to Asteroid Manifest was grand -- a great stone arch depicting sculptures of feathers and scrolls scribbled with Archean text guarded it, along with two Peacekeeper sentries who looked that the newcomers, nodding once in hello, before returning to their alert stations. The whole scene looked almost from a storybook, instead of smoothly paved asphalt, instead pretty marbled cobblestone (which was oddly flat to walk on) and a wide road headed towards many buildings that seemed almost out of place with how advanced they were compared to the stone roads. A large fountain rested in the center of a circled town square, four figures sculpted into it; one was a woman with a dryad looking face, her body wrapped in tight clothes as she was forever suspended in a graceful bound. A second creature looked to be almost spiderkin, but was quite large in comparison to vavare and had a much taller and leaner torso, with insect eyes and mouth that was locked tightly with vertical razor teeth. A third man was also sculpted, vaguely familiar to any who had met with Arya on the first mission; a simple silhouette with an almost cartoonish skull for a face. Finally, the sculpted man most heightened was none other than a depiction of Ragnarok himself, his swirling flames across the bottom of his robe forever suspended in stony projection.

Cafe store fronts littered with different aliens of all kinds and likeness, many walked around and avoided the new tourists though did smile and wave a few times as they passed. The large fountain was occupied by a woman, with fox ears and tail, wearing a top half of a kabuki mask while playing a shamisen, three orbs of water of different shades being played around with by the three draconic serpents that seemed delighted with her presence. On the other side of the fountain was a group of Terrans -- or would have been, if many of them didn't look malformed or changed, one man with spindly arachnid legs sticking out of his side as he wore a mask, a few of them having differing features of cross species from the Galaxy. One old geezer was covered head to toe in runic tattooos and was tiredly carrying heavy and thick gossamer dragonfly wings on his back as they sang merrily.

Across the way were a group of three normal looking Terran, all women, who were handling equines of massive size, two of them easily twelve feet in height, the third dwarfed by about four less feet. While the first two were powerful and the color of the sky; one a blue roan and the other a stormy gray, the smaller was spindly, quicker, and of a dark black, looking almost skeletal. The final oddity about these horses were the fact that they each had a pair of alarmingly huge wings. The bigger two gracious and feathery, and the tinier one with large, leathery bat-like ones.

Kay was attracting attention again. This timeby a group of three almost elvish looking people, all wearing that same wolf-embroidered tabard. They then quickly lost interest when they spotted Flora, who was waving them off, chuckling and returning to speak among themselves.

"Welcome to Capitol Square!" Flora said happily, "This is basically everyone's entertainment center for the more city-minded folk."

James sorted through the ornaments curiously. "Hmm, we could get the kids ornaments. Kids don't really need toys when they have craft supplies, do they?" He looked at an ornament of a stylized glass dragon, smiling.

Dawn shrugged then shook her head "they can't play with an ornament though, it's just to look at. Though maybe we could get one for all of them and a toy they can play with."

"Most of them are old enough to enjoy pretty things, right?" James had no idea. He had never been a kid, darn it. "I developed my interest in pretty stuff when I was about five, " he said.

"I guess so" Dawn said and shrugged again. "I don't know about regular kids either. They may like it."

"Kids are so confusing, man." James shook his head. "Yo Rigel, what was your favorite toy growing up?"

Rigel looked over at them and shrugged "I liked video games" he said with a shrug

James smiled. "Good. I'm sure they'll have access to those here. At least, I hope they will."

Rigel chuckled and nodded then picked up a photo holder to look at it. He put it down and moved on, looking at the stuff. "Maybe we should look for a toy store?"

"Sounds good!" James bought the little model shuttle, collected Bianca from the birdhouse, and headed after Dawn and Rigel.

Rigel and Dawn looked around for a toy store, going over when they spotted one.

James wandered into the store, and looked up at the ceiling happily. Nice to be indoors, especially when the ceiling was decorated like this one was, oooh.