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Chapter 4 - Welcome to Iadica

HYPERION

After a week of family living,it was time to leave. "Please,quit with that already!,I yelled at my mother with an annoyed face after she gave me a kiss on the cheek. "You're my only child Hyperion,if I can't coddle you, who will I coddle?",she replied with a smiling face that had a tinge of sadness."What about me mom",Ida said as she came out of the room we had prepared for her during her stay here."Mom",I said as I looked at them both, slightly puzzled. "I didn't expect you two to get that close",I stated. "Of course you won't,when you don't pay attention to us",Ida replied as she gave me mother a tight hug and a peck on the cheek. "Well,I hope to see you two again soon",my mother said as she waved at us from the front door. "Nice lady,I don't know why you don't go back home often when you have such a caring mother", Ida said as we got out of earshot."I hate coddling",I replied curtly. "Yeah, and a teenager feels he should learn all about magic rather than stay with his family",Ida added. "Don't misread me Ida; My purpose for existing is to learn and unlock all the secrets there are to magic. If my mother was a frail woman,I might have stayed to keep her company,but she's independent,and way stronger than you might think. She was the first person to ever teach me combative magic". "So even if she was a delicate woman,there was still a probability you would abandon her. You know what, nevermind", she said loudly before opting to change the subject."Please don't tell me we're using the typhoon",she said with a grim expression."Of course not, I'm sure if we walk long enough and take carriages, it's sure to get us over thousands of kilometres and over the sea to Iadica in no time",I replied sarcastically."Well hearty har har,who knew my companion was such a jester",she snorted". Ready for a bit of walking?",I asked Ida,"huh, what do you mean a bit of wal...",she stopped halfway realising what I meant.;"No normal typhoon could conjure a sphere that could traverse the vast distance from our location to Iadica without dissipating,we have to get to a mainport"."Ugh,i don't want to go to a mainport,the nearest one is a lot of walks away,and I don't want to have to deal with these salty receptionists",she mourned. "I bet you would be way saltier than those receptionist if you had to attend to thousands of people daily, and mostly the snooty rich ones too",I replied.

 After two hours of sprinting through the forest,because I didn't feel like moving through the main road,we got to Antiya,the capital of this state.I always found it crazy how custom security was only for the eight cities and you could pass any border in the states without any hassle. After finding our way into the port and wiggling through hundreds of people,we finally got to one of the reception desks."Express typhoon to Serbik please",I asked courtly. After fiddling with the screen in front of her,the receptionist gave us two tickets,"We have a bit of a queue today for Iadica,but if you could please wait on one of the waiting seats available, I'm sure you could get a turn today",she replied with a genuine looking smile. We found our way to one of the benches, where I took out a particular tool I had purchase. It was a bunch of rods made of borium,a very magically conductive metal. The goal was to stack as many rods on each other in the most absurd ways possible while using your magical energy as a sort of adhesive to hold the rods together to improve your magical augmentation abilities.

 After hours of fiddling with the borium rods and Ida paying close attention to what I was doing almost as if she wanted to learn,. I happened to see the receptionist also paying close attention."My apologies, I'm here to tell you we're ready for you now",she said after she saw that I had noticed her. I quickly disassembled the rods and stashed them in my backpack."Lead the way",I said,then followed behind the receptionist.I got to the launch room which looked nearly like the last one I had been to but wider,and the launcher here was way more advanced. After I gave the operator my ticket,he turned a lever,and the globe appeared and we got into two separate spheres."The same location?",the operator asked, which I affirmed with a nod. And with a push of a button,we were launched into the night sky.

In just above ten seconds,we had landed at the outskirts of Iadica. If I had to guess, probably because they didn't have permission to launch just anyone into one of the eight cities."Look,I admit the typhoon is immeasurably faster than normal transport, but it is unwomanly and horrible",Ida complained. "Quit bellyaching, it's already over,and no one even saw you lose your 'dignity',I said with air quotes. Anyway,we should probably find an inn somewhere around here, because no miracle is taking us into the city at this time of night".

"One ivory, how can an inn charge this much" ,Ida complained. "Firstly, you should be thankful we even got an inn nearly twenty three hours into the day,and secondly what did you expect,we aren't in the states anymore, prices here are definitely going to be higher, probably moreso when we get into the actual city. Just try and get some sleep,all this is a tomorrow problem".

The next morning,we got up and freshened up.i put on my grey shirt,a black trouser with boots,and I opted for no cloak today to prevent suspicion. Ida chose a white trouser and black heeled boots. She also wore a tight fitting white cropped shirt and a loose black sweater over it.I ignored her dressing, not in the mood for banter,and we left the inn for the gate.

It was an eight hundred meter tall gate with a fence of equal height made of mystic steel,a metal produced by the greatest masters of installment magic and used only for fortifying the eight cities. The magical energy emitting from the wall foreshadowed the amount of traps the fence and the gate were probably riddled with.i stared at the gate in an awe inspired trance. A wonder of the modern world. "Rion,Rion",Ida called out,but I ignored her until I felt a powerful hand on my shoulder,"Who the hell are you boy".

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