There are no bandits to be seen or frightening dungeons along the coast. About the only thing noteworthy to be found on the ocean's edge were the distant shadows of water-types floating along The Sea. The only thing dangerous about their walk back was the possibility of falling asleep and being swept into the waters by a renegade wave. Though with this Prinn fellow at his side, the chances of that happening had been thrown out the window. The boy obviously wants his badge, and falling asleep just gives him the prime chance to swipe it.
Nobody asks complete strangers for help unless they are desperate or want something of theirs, this boy is both.
Warning him about guilds won't work: the kid had wanted to make the mistake of being roped into a guildmaster's schemes, then by all means let him learn from it. And then he could move on with this life in a year or two after he'd been hung out to dry by his scarf.
They travel up a slope near the ridge to a place called Scoria Town - a hobble not too far from the guild Prinn keeps talking about. They cross onto a road cobbled together by porous black stones. The town glistens above them like a beacon.
"You want me to show you around?"
Were he to say "Yes, Prinn, I would love to" they might be stuck here all night. Braviary just wants this over with.
"This is Scoria Town, right?" Braviary looks at the water type who promptly smiles back.\
"Yessir."
"Never heard of it."
"That's what most people say when they first hear the name. Followed up by 'Scoria's where that guild is, ain't it?' Prinn traipses further into town, dragging Braviary with him. "They usually stop asking about Scoria after that. They probably think we're just the same as every other guild town."
"What's so different about it?" Braviary asks.
"Well, I start with saying it's a Scholar's guild, not an adventuring guild. It's a fascinating place, attracting the smartest people to come together and unravel the world's mysteries."
Prinn threw up his flippers as if scattering a pound of confetti. He is grinning from ear to ear.
"And I take it they are never interested, ain't they?"
"Yep. Every time." he huffs, defeated. "I can never get people to go check it out. Maybe Scoria town isn't interesting enough."
Soon they find themselves in the cobbled streets of Scoria Town. Their road continues through the thick of it, where two other roads converge on the scare. Most of the buildings were built from dark wood. As if risen from the earth, every single one of them had their pointy rooftops covered in a layer of grassy dirt. Due to the work of some persistent gardening pokemon, these roofs remain evergreen.
The atmosphere was thick with the scent of crisp firewood, cedar resin, and ocean air creeping up from the cliffside and over the entire town. Banners decorated with dark green and gold flags hung above the streets. In the walls of each abode, driftwood from Scoria's shores were carved to depict aquatic pokemon sleeping, looking quite pleased to beach near this cozy little town.
It was nearing nightfall. The town's windows glow orange with roaring fireplaces, smoke stacks billow and lanterns cast many shadows onto Scoria's dusty roads. Scoria's glowing streets are the only light for miles around. Guild town or not, if Scoria had lasted long enough to have grown to this size in the middle of nowhere then it was remarkable in at least one aspect. Braviary felt home in the company of its defiance against the elements.
They make it into town an hour before nightfall, stopping at a lamppost. After a moment or two of just standing there, Prinn speaks up
"If they already got the lamps up, then sheesh, we might've been walking for longer than I thought." Prinn chuckles. "Maybe an hour or two off? Maybe three? I don't know, but I'd hate it if we got lost in the dark out there."
He pauses, then looks at him.
"Are you doing okay?" Prinn asks.
"I'm doing as good as any pokemon whose very first thing they had to do after being booted out of their bed was walk a marathon. " Braviary breathes a deep sigh. "Suffice it to say I feel like my back's out for my blood, and my talons want to join my wing in being torn off. I don't feel well, Prinn, not at all."
Prinn raises a flipper and Braviary cuts him off.
"Oh, and I just thought I'd let you know I could really go for a bed right now. Maybe some chow on top of that, oh, a drink as well – you know, anything to make me feel like I'm not going to keel over all of a sudden."
"I know a few places..." Prinn speaks up, "There's Garl's – everyone just calls him Golduck, though – his place usually has a few beds open year round. As I said, Scoria doesn't get many visitors. You're kinda an exception, you know."
"Tell that to the Golduck fellow then. Maybe then he'd think this stranger you found washed up on a beach is someone special enough to consider having him loitering in his inn for a month or two." He was being incredulous of course. "Bed or no bed, if you can sit me down somewhere with a fresh glass of something I'll be fine."
"But don't go spending all your pennies on this strange bird you found on the beach just because he had a funny badge, alright?" He glowers at the boy. "That's called being terrible with your money."
"I thought it was called not wanting to see someone pass out."
"I guess you can call it that too."
Prinn looks towards the heart of the town. There, a mossy fountainplace rests at the center of a market. Although the fountain is a majority of the year, it looks to be a better place to sit than the cold ground beneath a lamppost.
"Let's keep going." Prinn says as he waddles further into town, and the old bird follows.
The road thus far had been cobbled with varying levels of craftsmanship, but the three highways pales in comparison to the craft of the town's square. Each stone brick in the square was wholly unique, all of which were hand placed. The image of a crescent moon encircles an old fountain overgrown with autumn-colored vines. From berry stalls to adventuring equipment, several venues dot the market square, the majority of which are serving their last few customers for the night.
Braviary sits at the fountain's edge as he watches the little guy go up to a stall with a wall of barrels stacked on it. There were two pokemon behind it: a bright yellow psyduck who seemed to be the face of the whole stall – and dressed in the finest golden cloths a pokemon could afford to get smeared in berry juice, and a mienfoo who was there to move all those giant barrels for him and who frankly looks to be having the time of their life boredly kicking one repeatedly.. He watches as Prinn pulls up to the counter, and being too far to hear what they were rambling about, he turns his eyes to his surroundings.
He saw the three main highways which cut through the streets and slither into the wilderness beyond, recognizing the aforementioned "Garl's Place" as a tavern whose second story looks as if it were about to spill out into the streets and was actually named "Golduck's Good Tidings". Yet he didn't see anything pointing towards this Scholar's Guild Prinn had been blabbering about. Maybe it is out of town?
When he looks back at the market he catches someone staring at him.. Although smaller than him, their glare made it feel as though they tower over him. Bird-like in appearance, it has a long beak-like mask which curves like a scythe and long white feathers which drape across the ground. As quickly as his eyes meet with the pink figure, hers back away as Prinn scurries into frame with bottle in toe.
He uncorks it and fills a wooden cup he had brought with him.
"What I have here isn't the first thing I'd turn to for a drink, though given the fountain's dryness, I'd say it's the next best thing." Prinn says. "Here you go!"
Braviary takes the cup into his wing. He takes one look at the odourless black fluid and hesitates. "I appreciate it." He shows the Prinplup the strange substance. "Are you sure this is safe?"
Prinn reads the label of the bottle, gives it a good shake, then lifts it up as he takes a very quick drink. After a moment, he speaks up.
"Um, yeah it tastes pretty safe. It's just not supposed to stay black, maybe try stirring it or something?"
Braviary carefully swirls it up, then takes a look. It is still black. Assuming it was just going to stay the bland colour, Braviary chugged his cup like a plant soaked up water and handed it back.
"Tastes like caramel," Braviary mutters.
"When you drink it from the bottle it often tastes that way, but I don't think it's supposed to. " Prinn explains, pointing to the bottle. "This stuff's made from Enigma Berries. They only really grow once in a blue moon."
"Point being?"
"Well the guild around here found a way to grow them outside where you usually find them, and when mixed into a wine and exposed to the air – erm, lemme just show you."
Prinn fills himself half a cup of the wine, sloshes it around, and then swigs it down. Prinn flashes the bottom of his cup to Braviary who sees that the wooden cup is now stained a slick cobalt blue.
"See that color in there?" Prinn said, confidently. "It means I'm smart, or a Mariner. I took it as meaning I'd chart The Sea one day, maybe see what's out there other than colonies of water pokemon. As you can see, I haven't gotten that far yet."
"Ah, I think I get it. I reckon map-making is bound to do a fellow good if they're lost at sea."
"It's accurate enough for the guild to use it to introduce new people," the fringes of his smiling, confident face twitch with uncertaintity. "That's what this one explorer said when he came to town and showed everyone who was at Garl's at the festival Last Summer. I mean, I might be wrong about it being accurate, but like you said it's still a cool trick. Right?"
When deliberating an important life decision it's important to base it off something more than a curious trick. If it didn't work for him, then who knows how many fools have been suckered into believing the nonsense this bottle trick's told them?
"It might sucker a few people into joining your guild, but I fail to see the point."
Braviary must have hit a nerve because Prinn was stricken silent for all of a good minute.
"I did buy it for you." Prinn bluntly replies.
The pokemon's sour mood didn't last for long. After being handed the bottle, Braviary stares at it, thinking for a moment.
"Gotta say now that I think of it, this stuff's pretty good. More of a spicy pokemon but I've yet to see spicy berry wine which doesn't taste like chalk, so I'd say your parlour-trick drink here gets a passing grade." Braviary messily jams the cork back into the bottle. "But just because I've only now gotten a drink don't think for a moment I've forgotten what you said before. What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to come with me to the guild and when they ask, or when I ask – I honestly haven't rehearsed it enough to know which would come first," Prinn said. "Just show them your badge when prompted, okay?"
"Is that it?"
Prinn nods.
"Well I'll be! You should've just said so!"
For a merchant, she hasn't travelled outside of this continent. She had gone on a round trip or two when she was much younger, but had she known her trip to Scoria Town would be her last, she would have picked somewhere less miserable.
Miserable was too harsh of a word to describe the seaside town. It sure beats being in a village out in the middle of nowhere, but given how far it is down the coat it may as well be. . For a town to be established by a whole guild of self-proclaimed scholars there has to be something different about Scoria she was missing.
Many of the bigger merchant clans have yet to set up shop in this nowhere-land, so her family decided to take advantage of this untapped potential. Perhaps they were foolish to make the investment in the first place, but when they left her here to leave for greener pastures the onus had been on her - the second youngest at the time - to keep their store here afloat.
After years of living here on her lonesome only occasionally seeing the lone sibling drop off product for the shop and collect their share of the income, the Aromatisse has slowly come to develop an affection for this miserable hobble
It was by the sea, close enough to an abundant forest where she could forage to supplement her shop's inventory, but somehow too far for any bandits to have to waste their time coming all the way here. They likely didn't want to mosey with a guild of any size. What a guild cannot deter are odd strangers and entrepreneurs looking to make their names in this town just like her family had so many years ago. Strangers like that rambling old seer who appeared on the night of last summer's fair.
The Xatu is strange. For a self-professed wanderer, he had only the clothes on his back, many of which looking much to pristine for a a man who walks the land; and a satchel which was borderline empty save for a couple coins and a set of dice he claimed were carved from a very elusive dragon-type. Something about his uniquely blue-green feathers seemed to make him stand out, and on his chest was an unusual, diamond-shaped badge.
At the time she didn't see him as anyone important, simply another weird pokemon attracted by the sounds of the festival. After harassing one too many fair goers that day, he would eventually wander up to her stall.
He introduced himself as a traveler, calling himself Xatu while never giving her his real name. He had said he was a psychic, sure enough his whole species was but he had claimed to be an especially talented soothsayer who possessed the ability to commune with the beyond. She hadn't believed him in the slightest, what proof did he even have? She had, however, invested the measly fare he had asked for to get him to do his little show infront of her and keep well away from her customers.
After paying him, for a short time he stares into the sky, beak agape.
She remembers him rambling, but she's retained none of it. His claims ranged from mundane to beyond, corroborating them by much smaller predictions about the following days. Little said things like how she'd leave a yellow incense to burn too long in her chambers one night, how on another day she'd come to see five bottles – no more, no less, arranged around the fountain.
In truth she had not cared for his talk of the stars, her family's wealth, or his dire soothsaying about the stars one day vanishing. What she had really wanted was to know if his prophetic abilities held so much as a pinch of merit.
She would get her answer one day, as a new stranger rolled into town. She keeps a stern eye on him, watching as the pokemon he had been travelling with – a wannabe guildie who seemed to have plucked this bum from off the road – left to buy the fellow a drink from Golduck's stall.
Yet there is something wrong about him, something she was warned about:
A mark, an explorer's badge made entirely of brass with wings emblazoning a featureless diamond.