"Anthony! I'm back!" Morgan said as she jumped off of her horse. He cocked his head and chuckled a bit. This girl had the same zest about her the older Morgan had. Another sign she was the real thing. But there was one aspect of her that should've been the same no matter what personality she may have had.
"Welcome back. Did that sword end up working out for you?"
"Yeah! It felt great. So what did you want to ask me?" Miriel's horse arrived at the stall, allowing them to dismount and listen to the question.
"There was a birthmark the other Morgan had that you should also have. That is, you have a patch of brown skin on your upper left arm that looks like a swirl. Not only that, but it tends to itch when you sleep, which makes you toss and turn trying to scratch it. Is that correct? " Anthony pointed towards her arm, which was covered. Miriel smiled at the description of her daughter's behavior – she had seen exactly what the merchant described happen one time when she came to her tent and found her rolling around on the ground, having fallen asleep studying one of Hale's tactics books and subsequently attempting to reach for her left arm. Only after waking her up and pulling up her sleeve did Miriel find out about the itchy birthmark, which unfortunately did not seem to have any foreseeable cure.
"How did you… you must really have met her, then."
"Would you mind letting me see it, just to be sure?" Morgan nodded and pulled up her sleeve, exposing the brown swirl on her upper arm.
"Well, I'll be. That's it, alright. So, you want to find yourself? Not a problem. She's in Kalsoba, the realm that your sword came from. It's actually not too difficult to reach from here. Leave town out this way and travel in a straight line for about an hour. You'll find the gate at the end of that. Try not to diverge from that line. The plains around here tend to look pretty identical, and the gate is actually in the ground, not floating above it like most gates, so it won't stand out like the others." He noticed the rest of her group approaching, immediately seeing another Trickster with black hair. The outfit didn't suit him. That guy didn't even have the hat.
"Thanks. Oh, hey! Father! I know where we need to go now!" She ran over to the badly-dressed man, which made Anthony scratch his head in confusion.
"Father?" He said, pointing at Hale. He was also trailed by two dark mages and a timid-looking archer.
"Yes. Your surprise is to be expected. Morgan and I had both traveled from alternate timelines and have been residing with a younger variant of him for some time now. You may have already deduced that the woman behind me is my mother, which would have been a correct conjecture as we share a great degree of resemblance." Laurent explained to the merchant.
"Great! Lead the way, then."
"You're Morgan's father, huh? What's your name?" Xenosoul Morgan, as much as she was willing to speak about the realms, magic, tactics, Einherjar, or clothing design, never mentioned her family unless asked. Even then, she never spent that much time talking about them. Anthony wondered what might have happened to her to ignore such an important thing.
"Hale. Thanks for telling us where to find her. Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a sister named Anna, would you?"
"Yes, I do. Many of them, in fact. I suppose you've met one of them before. Well, then you know how excellent my goods are! After all, both your children bought something from me and looked very happy with their purchases." He moved his hand to show the tactician the rest of his wares.
"I've still got some great stuff for you. All of you should take a look! Even you two – no reason you should leave for Kalsoba without the best supplies in the realm." Anthony looked back at Laurent and Morgan. That would explain the wordy mage's black hair.
"What about dark magic tomes? Or better yet, some Reeking Boxes? I love those things!" Henry walked up to the stall and tried to look inside the tent. Surely the most cheerful practitioner of dark magic he'd ever seen, Anthony thought. The gloomy woman next to him looked far more the part.
"Fairly certain I've got both in stock. Let me bring out the tomes for you."
"So, where are we going? How we will reach the next realm?" Hale asked Morgan.
"It's about an hour ride from this side of town. Anthony told me that we should travel as close to a straight line as possible."
"I see. Anthony, huh? Clever name. Now I have to know: are all the boys born to your family given that name and raised in the family business?" He asked the merchant as he came out with a stack of purple and black books, which he laid out on the table for Henry to look at.
"Actually, our bloodline seems to give us more girls than boys. Most of the male individuals within my family are either married in or look like those married guys. In order to preserve the familiarity, only those boys that have the look are raised as merchants. I really don't know how many of us there are, but I'd say for every Anthony you see, there are at least eight Annas. Anyways. Enough about me. So, have you found something you like?" The merchant looked to Henry, who was giggling at the contents of a particular black book with a dark, brownish moon on the front. Tharja had also begun to peruse the tomes and seemed satisfied with what she was seeing as well. Noire merely stood behind them, sighing.
"Yep! Why don't they have stuff this good back home? I'll take it." He started to rummage through his cloak for his gold. Tharja narrowed her eyes at a particular section in the book she was skimming and then looked at Hale, quietly laughing.
"Very nice! It seems like your world doesn't have a very broad selection of tomes. Luna isn't exactly common, but there isn't a single copy of that where you come from? Oh, I think I might just go there next." He took Henry's gold and noticed another stack of it being placed down next to it by the gloomy woman.
"That's for this." She held up the violet book she had been reading. Anthony gladly took it – he hadn't been able to unload that one for months. It wasn't a combat tome, which meant that most folks that even took an interest in dark magic ignored it. Rather, it was a treatise on hexes and curses with language that, while being incomprehensible to him, was described as having devastating effects if properly utilized. Something about mind control, if he remembered correctly…
"Thanks. Anything else?"
"No. This is enough." Tharja said, putting away the curse tome.
"I've got plenty to do now between this and the Risen mist!" Henry rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
"And you all? Are you sure there's nothing else I can interest you in?"
"I don't think so. We already had a lot with us to begin with. We ought to get going while it's still light out. Come on, everyone." Hale got up on Morgan's horse, and led the group away from Anthony's stall and out towards the Gate. The merchant watched them leave, thinking about Xenosoul Morgan's shrouded past and then about what he would sell to the younger Morgan's realm.
"Hey! What are you doing here?" A familiar voice broke his train of thought, and he came face-to-face with an upset-looking Anna.
"Oh, come on, did you really have to ask me that? What's it look like I'm doing?" He rolled his eyes.
"Not that! You show up here and you don't even have the decency to let me know you're in town? You know you can't hold all your trade secrets from me." She poked him in the shoulder with her index finger. He didn't recognize the way she spoke – yet another relative of his that he wasn't aware of until now. Not terribly surprising, but this one… she seemed like a pain compared to the others.
"I'm sorry I made a sale where you didn't. Our family knows me as Valentine. What about you? It seems that we've never met before."
"Juliana. Listen, you can't stay here. This town's mine. Go find your own. You know the rules, don't you?"
"Of course! I didn't know you were here. Besides, I was planning on leaving anyway. My latest customers tipped me off to a primo delecto place where I'll be making a killing!" Anna Juliana frowned momentarily, but then winked at her male counterpart and returned her index finger to her chin.
"Sounds great. Where were they going, anyway? There's nothing out that way but fields and forests." Anthony returned the rest of the dark magic tomes to his tent.
"Oh, you didn't know either, huh. There's a secluded gate out there that leads to Kalsoba. Have you heard of it? It's called the Realm of the Sky." She looked surprised. A way to the Sky World? Here?
"No. Kalsoba's really that close to us, huh? I hear it's the only place where we don't have any luck selling anything. Its goods are reputed to be top notch, completely above and beyond what most realms are capable of producing. Is that why they were headed there?" Valentine had managed to sell stuff to those people even though he knew they were going to Kalsoba. He must not have told them how good the items there were in order to make a profit off of them – which was exactly what she would've done.
"They were looking for someone living there. Come on, Juliana. Give me some credit. I wasn't about to spoil my chances of selling something by telling them what it was like. Of course, there's that other thing I didn't tell them that'll probably stick in their minds for far longer… but hey, surprises are fun, right?"
A/N: I don't quite think the accelerated update schedule worked out as well as I had hoped. So, in the interest of producing better-quality content for you all, I'm going back to the regular weekly schedule starting tomorrow (to clarify, the next update will be on July 7). There is still the possibility of there being more than one update during the week, but you can always count on there being one on Sunday from now on. Want to review? I think you know the drill by now. Let me hear it. I can take it, lol.