Top Hat: A Humorous High Fantasy (Hat Trick Book 3) by Luke Chmilenko & G. D. Penman

Author:Luke Chmilenko & G. D. Penman [Chmilenko, Luke & Penman, G. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Published: 2024-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Concerning Curses

Arpanpholigon was a vast city. A gorgeous city. With layers upon layers of houses and shops and taverns and churches and anything else that you might have wanted out of a city. Beautiful canals lined with tree-shaded walkways. Indoor plumbing as far as the eye could see. Filled to the brim with denizens from all corners of the world, drawn to this beacon of civilization and progress. Even those other city-states nearby would never have considered waging war upon her, not with the college hanging overhead like a bird of doom, ready to swoop down at the first sign of trouble. It was a prosperous place, at the nexus of a hundred different trade routes by land and river. An architectural marvel, blending styles from cultures and civilizations that had been separated not just by continents of distance but millennia of time.

There is nowhere like it in the world, it is unique, a treasure that in all honesty, I have never treasured so much as I should have. Always I had been up in the college looking down on it both literally and figuratively, when I should have been down in it, amongst the many people living their many lives, every one of them as fascinating to me now as my books and study had been to me before. As I walked the byways of the city, I saw children chasing a conjured illusion of a goat, mimicking its brays. I saw cooks on carts lining the streets, producing culinary wonders for which I did not even know the name, let alone comprehend how to describe the colors and scents and … I actually was quite sure that one of them was selling grilled troll fingers in gigantic buns, but without venturing over to examine the surprisingly pleasant smell further, I would never know with certainty.

And even beyond the people and the buildings, the place had a personality of its own. The umbrella quarters where everyone jogged from one awning to the next out of fear that a bird should splatter upon the college above and come tumbling down to land on them. The regions of the city where the roofs were all flat, as no rain ever fell there thanks to the source of the looming shadow that covered them instead. The giant acid pit. No other city on the planet had a giant acid pit.

It bubbled over with industry. It was a shining beacon of invention and wonders that had naught to do with the magic we wizards wielded and everything to do with the relentless desire to make the world better that had found its place in the hearts of the common men.

Yet for all of that, it was too a city of magic. Enchantments were bound all across the buildings, crackling at the periphery of my arcane senses, and laid long before even I had begun my tenure at the college. Little gifts from the academics to the world below. I marveled to see

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