The cold air of Iei glided across the trio's skin as the morning sun shone at the horizon. The people around chattered inaudibly.
"Who would buy a raw gem stone?" Peter asked, as they were walking along the road.
"Blacksmiths I guess?" Ariel answered. "There's one right there." He pointed to their side.
As they approached to the blacksmith's workshop, the clanking of the hammer sharpened and the heat from the forge hit their face. They looked around, an old man sat on a chair while his apprentice worked on a metal.
"Hey!" Peter said.
The old man shifted his gaze to the trio.
"What do you want?"
"Do you buy gemstones?" Ariel asked.
The old man raised an eyebrow. "Depends on the stone. Let me see."
Peter pulled out three raw fire stones from his backpack. Then handed the turquoise colored crystals over.
"Never saw something like this..." The old man muttered, the crystal faintly shone as he rotated it in his palm. "It's a bit hot too."
He turned to the trio. "Where did you find this?"
"In the..."
Peter raised his hand before Amy could talk.
"We found it in the depths of an ancient Eranic tower. Do you know what it is?"
The blacksmith's eyes shone. "O-of course I do! This is.. uh... Ethar, that's what it is." He puffed.
"It sounds expensive, how much would you give?"
The old blacksmith's eyes shifted to Ariel's armor. "The Eranic empire you say. Their nobles are still alive right? How can I make sure you didn't steal them?"
Peter sighed under his breath. "The tower was abandoned for at least a millennia."
"That armor, nomad steel right?"
"Yes, though, I don't see the correlation." Ariel said.
"It seems like the armor saw stuff, It should be fixed soon. The nomad's are hard to find you know?"
"It's irrelevant, name a price first." Peter scoffed.
The old man raised his hands "Why so aggressive? I'm trying to help, let's say five silver and a full fix on that young man's armor."
"Mere five silvers? We had to walk through a looping maze while fighting beasts to get that! At least twelve silver and a fix, no less."
"Young man, you realize that fixing an armor like that is no easy job right? Especially when it's nomad steel." The old man leaned back. "And these stones can lose shine the very next day for all I know! Nine silver and that's final."
Peter sighed. "Fine! Deal, let's see the silvers first." He extended his hand.
"Alex! Fetch me the coin bag." He shouted to the apprentice.
A second later the kid came back with a moderate sized bag. The old man reached in and pulled nine silver coins. He extended both of his hands. Peter put the fire stones in one and grabbed the money in the other. Ariel removed his armor piece by piece and handed to the old man.
Peter weighed the silver for a moment, then walked away.
"What was that about?" Amy asked.
"Haggling, have you never seen one?" Peter sighed. "I should've pushed back more." He muttered.
"Anyways, let's gather provisions." Ariel moved towards the food stand.
"We will buy these... that and..." Ariel blinked.
Peter is still handling the money.
He turned around, Peter and Amy were nowhere to be seen.
Of course. He sighed.
Walking amongst the crowd, Ariel glanced at shops, spices, armor, jewelry...
Antique shop... again.
Peter and Amy were inspecting items in front of the stand.
"We will buy provisions first. No debate."
"Come on you're no fun." Peter dropped the book he was holding.
Amy held a pen that had a jade tip.
"This is important Ariel." She turned to him with a shine in her eyes.
"You said the same thing for the botany book and we still don't have a use for it." Ariel rolled his eyes.
"We did use it, remember when we had to gather food in the caverns?"
"If we had bought more provisions we wouldn't need to eat grass." He sighed.
"But this is important!" Amy pushed back.
"Okay, just this once."
Peter handed one silver to the shopkeeper and got fifty copper in return. They went back to the food stalls.
"These are expensive..." Peter muttered.
"That's why I want to buy the food first." Ariel spoke as he put squash in his backpack.
"Amy, what are these spices?" Peter pointed at a mixture of white, red and golden colored ground spices.
She leaned forward.
"These should be Crimson Forest spices... the flowers we saw are dried and ground."
"Why didn't we collect some then?" Peter raised an eyebrow.
Amy ran her hand through the spices. "The wild ones are nearly worthless."
"I got everything we need." Ariel put his backpack on.
The trio went back to the old man's blacksmith shop. Ariel wore his armor back. As he was putting the gauntlets, the city coughed again then the world started to offset.