Location: Trader's Market->Larry's Dead Languages
Apprentice? Atkin looked around for anyone the customer could have been talking about. There didn't seem to be any apprentices walking around the area. Wait, why was every walking towards him? Hey, hey back off, hands off! Wait, furry beast? What does he think he can do? And suddenly he was thrust in front of the front door of the storefront, with everyone staring at him expectantly.
Originally he was going to pass and let somebody who was more qualified handle this whole situation, but since he was here now, he had to do
something. He supposed that if he ever ended up becoming the ExtraOrdinary Wizard people would be expecting him to drop everything and do all kinds of things for no reason, so he might as well get used to it now. Or something. Atkin took a deep breath and opened up the door, expecting the worst.
However, what he found was a store that looked mostly fine. The whole place smelled like musty books, but that was to be expected. The morning light filtered through clearly, warming the place up to a cozy temperature without becoming a sauna. The place was a bit disheveled with books lying open here and there, with pages ripped out and tossed onto the floor. Atkin glanced over at one of the opened books and was greeted with a page full of gibberish. Well mostly gibberish. There was a single word that he could pick out on there. 祝贺. Congratulations. He'd forgotten where he learned that particular bit of information, but glancing across the various pages gave him more or less the same feeling. He could read a word every now and then, but for the most part none of it made any sense.
Most curiously, on the other side of the store, behind the counter there was a frightful thumping and wheezing noise. Doing his best to avoid stepping on the pages as possible, Atkin walked over to the counter and peeked over the top towards the source of the noise behind. What was there was a person. Kind of. They were covered from head to toe in long fur, like one might see on a well groomed shepherding dog and on their neck was a fancy bow tie. It just laid there, flailing desperately.
"Oi," he called out perhaps too casually for the situation,
"what're you doing there?" When he spoke, the thing froze for just an instant, the way a rat would when it smelled a cat. When the thing realized from where the voice was come it sprang up to its feet and scrabbled behind the door that lead to the back of the store.
Atkin scratched his head, unsure of what to make of the whole situation. Whatever that thing was was clearly terrified at any human, but didn't seem like it was dangerous at all. Let alone enough to make everyone in the store run screaming. Then again, noble types didn't seem like they ran into much that was actually jealous to where they'd have to confront them directly. But if he was going to make any progress, he'd have to do his best to make sure not to frighten the thing more. He stepped with light feet, but when he tried to open the door:
SCREECH
Seriously? First the floor, and now the door's so neglected that the hinge decides to personally greet everyone that opens it. It was so loud, the hairy oaf knocked over a bookshelf that almost fell on top of his head. Atkin jumped back himself at the sudden loud crash, but after a moment poked his head in again and saw that settling dust and scattered tomes aside, there wasn't much different in there from out in the main store.
So far both attempts to interact with the thing had been horrendous failures, but Atkin wasn't the type to just go and give up so easily. If he recalled correctly, when you wanted to approach an animal you had to work slowly, making no sudden movements. So that's what he tried to do. Being a city rat however, he wasn't really good at acting in a manner non-threatening to animals.
Suddenly it opened its mouth wide, wider than he'd seen any creature open its maws. It was like a great serpent yawning, but rather than simply opening and shutting its mouth, it stayed open and from the depths of its bowels sprang a stream of dress robes that his the apprentice square in the chest, knocking him over. Off in the back of his head, he recalled something that happened a few days prior:
"Finally, they've arrived," Arya said, carrying a couple of boxes into the 20
th floor of the Wizard Tower. She placed them on the table and smoothed out her robes. She turned to face Atkin, who at the time was practicing writing out
Charms; there must have been three dozen of them lying around the floor in various states of completion. Many of them were correct, but far more were incorrect in some manner: he accidentally messed up the order of the words, or his hand wrote out an A when he had wanted an E. In any case he found it easier to just start again rather than try to correct his mistakes.
"Your dress robes for the coronation have come in. It's a good thing too. The original store I was trying to purchase your robe from was visited by a thief." Arya handed one of the boxes to him with pursed lips. Slowly, her frown shifted into a smile as she really looked at him.
"You're getting better at making Charms, although you're still away from being able to properly make one that would be Magykal. Keep up the work and you'll get there in no time. By the way Atkin, you're looking much more handsome recently. I wouldn't be surprised if you became a strapping young man in a few years."
At least that was pretty sure how that had happened.
His memory might have fudged some things.
That said, the force of the Dress clothes stream was enough to knock him a couple steps backwards but didn't deal any damage to anything but the apprentice's sense of patience. That was it. He tried doing things the gentle way. Now he did things the street way. Atkin took a step back and shifted his weight to his rear, building up pressure before diving forward. He rammed into the thing shoulder first and knocked it, along with himself onto the ground. A brief scramble later and he had the thing in Byron's favorite hold, the head lock. Atkin had the willpower to avoid adding the requisite noogie, but nevertheless, it was stuck in his submission hold.
"Stop! Stop! Have mercy on me, powerful one!" it squeaked, finally speaking up. Well that was unexpected, but the wizard apprentice didn't let it go free just yet. Who knew what trick it might try to pull if he just did as it asked. No, he'd keep it here until he was more sure that it wouldn't cause more trouble.
"Have you calmed down yet? Made quite a mess of the store, you did. Don't wanna have to wrangle you again because you saw a shadow and wet yourself. Rude yes, but more or less the truth to the matter. He'd need to feel the wee beastie relax along with its words, but if they could have any kind of conversation, it'd be a start.
