@Burger
“Well, folk music’s a nice change from what everyone else remembers, after all.” Nano laughed with Clyde. “Seriously though, I’ve got ‘Despacito’ scorched into my brain and it isn’t even one of my own memories.”
Despite all this, however, his graphite pencil still danced over fresh pages, keeping up with the old man as he sang his song, with all its variations and repetitions, all its humor and sorrow committed onto a tidy rectangle of bleached and flattened tree pulp. With a different notation that he used for observing intonations, Nano recorded the shifting pitch of the song as well, using an almost nonsensically erratic squiggly line. Once it was finished, he went on to take notes of Clyde’s abstract, but worthy opinion on adventuring as well. It certainly was a pretty sentiment, wasn’t it, that adventures were something that were had at a pace comfortable to the individual, and that they shouldn’t get swept along the flow of their peers.
Sage, if simplistic, advice. It’d be easy enough to remember even without recording it, but Nano did so anyways, for the world was wide and dangerous, and familiar faces became lost with distance and time. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and then nodded, “Yeah, I’ve held you up long enough. One last question though…skeletons, what’s the best way to deal with ‘em?”
It was another response that was simple, expected, but useful. "Crackin' their skulls usually the best. They ain't too affected by other things."
“Got it, got it,” Nano replied in a sing-song tone, “I’ll see you around then, Clyde! If you ever arrive at the City of Brass in…three months from now, ask for me and we can hang out again, yeah?”
"Maybe. I ain't the best at making plans," he said, followed by a laugh.
Nano simply grinned in response, before heading off on his own. His boot knife was a cute weapon, but there was definitely no way in hell he was going to be able to crack open a skull with its pointy end. No, for skeleton-smashing, one would require something blunt and heavy. Something like…
The markets carried many goods, from spices to potions to tasty little treats to big hunks of meat to fancy clothing to cutesy ornaments, but Nano ignored them all in favor of a woodcutter famed for the ‘quality’ of the trees he fell. With the few spare coins he had left, he purchased the densest log the man had to offer and headed to the fountains again, sitting down by the edge.
Keep it fast, keep it clean, keep it smooth.
In one hand, Nano held the wooden log. In another hand, he pulled at the ether that was invisible to all but himself and manifested an oval ring of stardust, glowing like a miniature galaxy. Already, it was beginning to efface his soul, chipping away at his essence, but the celestial weapon didn’t need to last long at all. With a swipe of his hand, he drove the immensely hot ring three-fourths the way through the log, white smoke hissing dramatically. He widened the ring-blade afterwards, and it hissed out, celestial energy slicing out from the log, leaving only a stout, oval handle intact.
Fast and clean and smooth. The residual ash was easily wiped off in the fountain, and the excess of the log was slid off like a sheath, leaving him with the sort of top-heavy wooden club that he expected would be easy to use and easier to maintain. Drawing his boot knife, the coal-eyed youth made some finishing touches on the handle, cutting in ridges to improve grip and scraped away some sections that had been particularly badly-burnt, before giving the new weapon a couple test swings.
It had a greater heft than a baseball bat, and he could totally see how fighting someone with finesse was going to fuck him over, but he could swing it with one hand and it had much better range than his little dinky knife so really, it was totally a win, right? Yup, a mega win.
Ignoring the looks he got from others, Nano baptized his wooden club in the slightly-sooty fountain waters, before swinging off the droplets dramatically.
His destination? Southeast.
His mission? Crack skeleton skulls.
