The trip back let Davin watch as the cities nightlife was beginning to stir, the radiant glows that haloed every surface of the city took on an eerie glow, making it all reminiscent of an aurora borealis, the light fog that seemed to start rolling in changed the prismatic light show that the was during the day into shifting dance of rainbow rivers. Davin slowed as he tried to take it all in, all of the colors of a fireworks show, but with the elegance of a symphony, all that was missing was the music.

"Wow, in my world, this would only be able to be achieved by a team of artists and none of it would be real…" Davin took a deep breath and slowly let it out as he committed the sight to memory.

"It is a sight to behold, I don’t think any could do this without the aid of magic, mine had magic and I still don't think I saw anything that came anywhere close to the majesty that this city is. We shouldn’t dawdle though, while comparatively, the city is safer than the Wilds, it is by no means safe, especially at night." She looped her arm into his and nodded her head in the direction that she wanted them to go.

The path that they took was far more straightforward than it was on the way out, but they did make use of their roguish skills to move around the city. When they made it back to the rogue training hall, they went their separate ways for the night, not before Jes planted a light kiss on his cheek and whispered in his ear, they both blushed and Davin made his way to his room, practically asleep before he hit his pillow.

"The city is a beautiful place, I am glad you finally got a chance to see it, and she was a fantastic guide to choose, I'm sure your other friends would have just tried to get you drunk and likely have not gotten a chance to see the beauty of it all." The voice of Compass sounded proud.

"I honestly don't think I would have ever found those without her help. There is a lot more to this city than I was really giving it credit for."

"There is still plenty more to experience in the city, but it is a lot to take in all at once, do not rush it."

"And I don't intend to, although, I do have a question."

"Feel free to ask me anything."

"Jes had said that it wasn't safe in the city, I thought you patrons controlled the city."

"We don’t control the city, we are purely the conduits for the belief, the city is almost an entity of its own, and with that, we can't control it."

"Oh, what kinds of dangers are in the city? Since wouldn't everyone be one of your group's followers?"

"One would think, but we don't force anyone to choose one of us, there are cases of individuals opting to not choose, and there are other instances where a patron or protégé has opted to sever ties, but there are far more factions than could easily be tracked. Were all of your worlds people of the same beliefs?"

"Fair point, comparatively it was rarer to find people that were of all the same belief than not, and I'm sure you have some of the same problems that we had in just about any city."

"Indeed."

"Have monsters ever made it into the city?"

"See, now you seem to be the one setting us up for doom…"

"Yeah, yeah, but I'm doing it as a history lesson and not saying things like 'A monster could never make it into the city'."

"A fair point, and also not funny. The city is set up the way it is out of necessity, when the first patron appeared here, there was very little, mainly a few souls that had called them into being, asking them for protection, many years and many patrons later, the city is what is now."

"The patrons are a response to belief? You know, that makes a lot of sense, since you all need belief to maintain things, but then what caused the creation of this afterlife?"

"And that is where the belief in an afterlife or some alternative comes into play, this place is constructed from the other worlds people of what the afterlife could be, it just eventually gained enough power to maintain itself."

"They were the spark and now this is the fire?"

"I do not like that analogy, but I cannot argue against it. We are no longer reliant on the other worlds, but they still provide for us, as your existence can back up."

"Huh, this should be interesting then, my world was full of all kinds of nonsense and full of vastly different beliefs." The equivalent of a shiver ran through Davin, thinking of what people had belief in.

"Based on what I have learned from you, I can say that the feeling is shared, I am curious what will come, you'll wake soon, and I will talk to you again soon…"

With the darkness engulfing his senses once again, his eyes slowly fluttered open, reflecting on the conversation, a shiver ran up his spine, and the sensation faded far too slowly for Davin's liking. Hoping not to have to deal with anything from a horror movie. As he pulled himself together thoughts of Jes intruded his mind, making him smile, distractedly entering the hallway…The crash that his steps in the hall quickly reminded him of what he was doing, and he got back into the proper mindset. After making his way down the hall he found a new challenge awaiting him, the door was locked. Not having a lot of direct practice picking older style locks, Davin felt largely unprepared, luckily some of the mechanisms that it had were some of the same that Jes had used in her puzzle box, eventually cracking it.

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When Davin found Gale in the main hall he was working over the same lock, quickly popping the lock and relocking it. "This one is one of the simpler ones if you ask me, what took you so long?"

Eying him with a good amount of disdain, "We didn't have this style of lock, ours were smaller and only had so many options with them, I'd not really seen anything that wasn’t a five to seven pin brass keyed lock.

"Seven pins?" Sounding incredulous, "That seems excessive, and what do you mean smaller? This is as small as they come" Holding up the fist-sized lock.

"That’s a small lock? That thing is giant, my world's locks for most things weren't any bigger than a pair of fingers." Holding out his hand out to emphasize the size. "I've picked my worlds locks, I had far less trouble learning how to do that than what I've had to learn here."

"What about shackles? How did your prisoners not break them?" Holding out his wrists.

"Shackles? No idea, we had handcuffs, shackles weren't really a thing that I'm aware of."

"I will say it again, your world is weird…" Tossing the lock aside and continuing with his breakfast.

"Wait till I tell you about the device I kept in my pocket that held all of the information in the world…" Whispering that last part to himself, Davin having already grabbed his food started to eat in earnest.

The training with Grim had gotten a lot more intense than it was the first day Davin met him, but he did feel a lot better about the training by midday, mainly because he hadn't been knocked unconscious. Now that he was getting used to moving around in the leathers he felt a lot better about fighting in them, but knowing you're not a meat shield to just power through the blows and actually fighting like that were vastly different things.

"C'mon, yur puttin' yurself too close, in and out, use that hit and run, I can't hit ya if I can't reach ya" Grim offered this supportive comment as he put his foot to Davin's chest and launched him back ten feet.

The groan that Davin let out as he landed was loud, but he was still awake, so it had to count for something. "You say that, and I understand what you mean, but I don't think that my body is really picking up on the lesson and I don’t think that hitting me in the exact same spot over and over is the best way to teach that…" Letting out a cough as he pulled himself up off the ground.

"Then come at me diffrent, you keep puttin' yurself in the same spot ery time. You ain't givin me many options on where I can hit ya." Grim was tossing a small wooden knife into the air and catching it by the handle. "You almost got it, I can feel it, c'mon, let's do it again."

With that Grim tossed the wooden knife straight at Davin's face, luckily Davin dodged the throw, and he sprinted towards the goliath closing the gap in a moment, throwing himself to the ground right as Grim swung his arm, sliding between his legs. Davin grabbed Grim's ankles to stop himself, then kicked his legs up, catching Grim in the back, and throwing him forward, the crash that rang out as he hit the wall was satisfying. He knew he didn't have long, so Davin went in for the kidney shot, the punch Davin through wasn't very strong, and fighting with his fists wasn't his forte, but he wasn't trying to hurt Grim, just finish the training, and this is just what he had to do.

"I yield!" the thing that caught Davin off the most about that statement was the lack of any and all accent, "I yield, that was a good one, I did not see that coming." As he stood up Grim dusted himself off and wiped a small trace of blood from his lip.

Davin was confused, to say the least, he was still trying to catch up on what exactly was going on, he just eyed Grim dumbly, "Huh? What the heck was that?" Davin slumped breathing hard, "We were allowed to yield?"

"Heh, no I am, you gotta keep goin till I yield, and you did it." The smile on Grim's face was wide.

"Does that mean I won?" Davin started to smile. "Hey, where did your accent go before?"

"No, you didn't win, I just yielded, which means that I feel you have a good enough grasp on combat that I don’t think you'll instantly die, and the accent is an act, but it is also how I like to talk, people don’t take me as seriously that way."

[Congratulations, you have unlocked saves, you gain a bonus on your dexterity and intelligence saving throws, and you’ve also learned how to sneak attack.]

"Oh! Wait? Why did it give me an Intelligence saving throw bonus? And when did I practice sneak attacks?" Davin sat confused as he looked over his new pop-up.

"Well, my trainin' ain't bout teachin' you ta fight, its bout teachin' ya to see opportunities and exploiting them. As to the saves, ya been dodgin' me and most of it is psychological warfare, it’s a bit of a mixed bag of things, easier to jus accept it." He stood there with his armed crossed as he watched over Davin. "Jus be glad, this use ta be worse, they would toss explodin' bottles at us while we ran, then make us sit through the mos' borin' lectures.."

The shiver that ran down Davin's spine was not subtle… He could only imagine how bad things could have been. So he was willing to accept that he got off easy. "So, what's next? Am I still in basics?"

"Finishin' yer expertise, and then doing a job." Grim was holding out his fingers counting them down as if the list was supposed to be longer.

"A job? Do I have to rob someone? Or something like that?" Davin was mildly horrified at that prospect.

"Ha, no, we have a special challenge set up, but we call it a job cause it used to be a real job yu'd have to pull, but that usually ended poorly if they got caught, so now we use a special building that is set up and you get a task at random." Grim looked as though he was remembering some unpleasant memories.

Davin stood up, and dusted himself off, "Jes said for my expertise, I just keep working on them?"

"That's the long and short of it, but now you'll have extra stuff going on around you, which two you plannin' to start with?" The excitement in his voice was clear.

"Insight and investigation, they have always been things that I've enjoyed doing, I was always 'good with people' so it seemed like a reasonable start, as for the investigation, I can be pretty good at selective focus when needed." Shrugging deeply. "I'm still not fully sure what I want to go with, I just know I want to be an explorer, and this seemed like a good start."

"Explorer? What is there to explore?" sounding as though there was nothing he didn’t know about the world.

"Everything, to me, this is a brand new world, and I know nothing about it, and from what my patron has said, the world may be changing, so that makes even more reason to get out there and explore." Taking a swig from his water, "Plus, how can I not want to get out there and see what's out there?"

Grim thought about what Davin said for a few moments. "Things are gonna change?" The way Grim asked suggested that the information wasn't publicly available. "Your patron still talks to you? Most grow bored after the first day unless it's something significant that they need you to do."

"Except for a day or so yeah, Compass has talked to me just about every day. I think he's fascinated about my world." Standing up and stretching.

"Compass? That isn't one that I'm familiar with, whose he?" Seeing Davin stretching he followed suit.

"He's the patron of wonder, adventure, and willingness for hard work. From what I understand, he's one of the patrons for humanity." Taking a fighting stance, "One more?"

Grim smiled as he also took up his fighting stance. "Humanity?" Shrugging, "Don't know nothin' bout that." He closed the distance faster than Davin could blink, throwing his punch low.

Davin dodged the blow but was caught by the follow-through, the flurry of blows staggered him, and leaping back throwing himself into a roll and making some space Davin dove in again, this time grabbing the leg that was lifted into the charge, causing Grim to slam into the ground, the gasp that he let out only winded him for a moment. Davin rolled away, making some space, Grim jumped up, easily moving from prone into a sprint. Just as they were about to clash again, Grim slapped his hands together and a dark cloud of smoke surrounded them, the next thing Davin knew he ran through where Grim should have been. Trying to wave away the smoke and get his barring the next thing Davin knew, he was waking up on the floor.