Ren and I turned our heads away from the village and shared a look, both of us finding no help in the eyes of the other, before turning back to the village in silence.
“Should…we go meet them?” I asked finally as we watched the people of the village move around. We were still in the early hours of the morning, but it seemed business was in full swing already. The men and women of the village all walked about with purpose, not a single one of them lazing about. Each seemed to have a job to do, and they went about them with more efficiency than I expected from villagers.
In fact, the longer I studied the place, the more strangely un-village-like things I began to notice. And Ren seemed to notice the same.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Something about the place doesn’t seem right. I feel like there’s more to it than we think right now.”
I nodded in agreement. He’d put in words my gut feeling exactly. I studied them in silence for a moment longer, before the thing that didn’t quite seem right finally clicked. “They’re too disciplined,” I exclaimed as the epiphany hit me.
Ren nodded from beside me. “Yeah, that’s it. It’s way too quiet for a village, right?”
“Exactly. And there are no street vendors, or kids. Actually, now that I focus on the people a little more, they seem too strong to be simple villagers. I can’t see a single person who looks like they can’t fight, and they’re all armed, too.” The village was nestled in a cleared valley, so our vantage point gave me a good view of the entire thing. Granted, it wasn’t a very large village, but it was still big enough to house at least a hundred people. So, I was pretty confident in my judgment that there wasn’t a single person in the place who would be a liability in a fight.
“I mean, I guess that makes sense,” Ren said. “They are in a monster-infested forest, after all. I imagine it would be hard for people who couldn’t fight to survive in a place like this. Their walls don’t seem secure enough for any of them to avoid having to fight if they were attacked.”
I nodded, agreeing with his assessment, before a thought suddenly hit me. “By the way, how can you see the village? I thought your range was like three-ish meters.”
“It’s about three meters in a fight, yeah. But that’s only because I need to focus on the most minute changes in my Sense,” Ren explained. “The less detail I need to see something with, the further I can see. I’ve never really tested it, but I think about fifty meters is my max, but things are super blurry at that distance.”
“Wow. That’s…” I trailed off there, unsure of what to say. I wanted to say that it was incredibly impressive, but I didn’t think that was a good idea. It was impressive from my perspective, but considering both the reason why Ren had to develop the Sense to the level he had, and the fact that it was still far inferior to actual sight made me think Ren wouldn’t see it the way I did.
Ren smiled at my reaction, a sad look on his face. “I miss color,” he said simply. “But what I have works for my purposes, so it’s not all bad.”
I stayed silent at that, once again unsure of how to respond. The fact that he’d said he missed color implied a lot, and I wanted to ask about it, but I didn’t want to push too far. And since the many years of having no friends in Toronto had left me with no idea how to comfort people, I resorted to the only method I knew: changing the subject.
“So, should we go meet them, or do we go around and forget about them?” I asked.
Ren smiled at me, no doubt catching the obvious attempt, but mercifully did not bring attention to it. “I dunno,” he answered with a shrug. “You’re the boss.”
I groaned. “Oh, come on.”
Ren chuckled. “Ok, ok.” He thought about my question for a second longer before answering. “I mean, there’s a chance that they could turn out hostile and that they are too powerful for us, and they either kill or capture us. That’s about the worst-case scenario I can imagine. On the other hand, if we can figure out a way to communicate with them, they could help us get our bearings here and maybe make it to proper civilization. That’s probably the best-case scenario.”
I considered his words. “Yeah, that makes sense to me. And if they are hostile, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be able to kill us. I’m confident enough in our ability to escape if we need to, or at least bring quite a few of them down with us before we die. I mean, if they were strong enough to kill us on the spot, they would’ve noticed us by now, right?”
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Ren nodded. “Makes sense. But what about communication? Without that translation rune or whatever from the ship, there’s no way we’ll be able to understand them.”
“That’s a good point, but I say we deal with that when we get to it. I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.”
Ren laughed. “Fair enough. Sounds good to me.”
I let out a breath. “Alright then, let’s go make some friends, shall we?”
The village had its main entrance at the point furthest from us, which meant that we had to circle the entire thing to get there. We could have just broken through the wall, as Ren astutely pointed out, but I figured that wouldn’t make the greatest first impression on the people.
As we made our way around the circular palisade, I couldn’t help but think that the wall was a little too makeshift for a village in the middle of such dangerous territory. It looked like they’d set the thing up only recently, and only spent a day or two on building it, max.
Eventually, we made it around to the front entrance, which looked exactly like the rest of the wall except that the logs were a little taller. The path leading up to it was cleared out, probably artificially, and Ren and I had only stepped on it for a few moments when the people on watch spotted us.
Immediately, three men jumped up onto the tips of the logs that made up the door, their bows nocked and drawn, ready to be unleashed upon us. Ren and I had anticipated something like this, though, and reacted by calmly raising our open palms in what we hoped was the universal sign for ‘we mean you no harm.’
The watchmen, understandably, had no clue what to do with us. After all, they were likely on guard for the monsters that would surely attack, not two barely adult humans with tattered clothing.
The clothing that the Grand Order people had given us was all that we’d had, and they’d taken quite the beating over the past few months. Mercifully, staying clean wasn’t too difficult as there were streams and rivers aplenty scattered throughout the forest, but there was little we could do about the rips and tears that accumulated over the countless fights we’d been through.
After studying us for a moment, and taking in our apparent lack of weapons – aside from the steel pole tied to my back – the men finally decided that we didn’t pose an immediate threat and shouted down to us.
“*&$#%!” the man in the middle yelled what sounded to us like literal gibberish. Much less a word, I could hardly recognize a sound the man made, which made it more than clear that the language wasn’t like any Earthen language I’d ever heard of. Earthen languages differed wildly, but for the most part, they were still built on the same sounds.
“#$%# %^$#!” the man shouted again at our confused faces.
“We don’t understand what you’re saying!” I yelled back at the man, making sure to keep my voice and pose as non-confrontational as possible.
There was a beat of confusion as the guards looked at each other, clearly going through the same shock we’d just been through. Eventually, the one to the right tried his luck with it.
“#$%!! %^&^%$# #$%%$# #$#!” he shouted down. Again, his words sounded like nothing more than a jumble of alien noises.
I looked to Ren then, but I knew better than to expect help. And unsurprisingly, Ren seemed to be enjoying the scene far more than any of the other parties involved. He responded to my look with nothing more than a cheeky I-told-you-so face.
With no help from his corner, I turned back to the men and opted for the mime route, since language was clearly getting us nowhere. However, a second after I pointed at them and followed up by spinning my index in a circle beside my head in the universal mime for ‘crazy,’ I realized that telling them that they were crazy was perhaps not the most constructive way to say ‘I don’t know what you’re saying.’
The men, somehow understanding the gestures, were insulted. Or at least, the one on the left was, as he responded by jabbing his gloved finger in our direction before miming the same ‘crazy’ motion. The other two simply laughed, which I took to be a good sign. It was clear to both sides by that point that we wouldn’t be able to understand each other anytime soon, so the one in the middle said a few words to the man on the right before jumping back down behind the wall. The man on the left went with him, so Ren and I were left staring at the single man remaining on the wall in awkward silence.
I had no idea where the other men had gone, but I hoped that they hadn’t just decided to ignore us. The guard who stayed behind to watch us hadn’t raised his bow again, which I took to be a sign that they weren’t completely hostile.
Turning to Ren, I gave him a little smug smile. “Well, looks like that went well.”
Ren raised an eyebrow. “For all we know, they could have just decided to ignore the crazies on the other side of the wall and hope we leave.”
“Just can’t admit that I’m a genius, can you?” I responded. He had a fair point, but I chose to ignore that possibility.
“Let’s see how smug you are when we’ve been waiting outside for a whole day-” Ren began, but the groaning of the left door as it shifted and opened up cut him off. The sight sent unimaginable satisfaction running through my veins, and I turned to give Ren the most smug smile I could possibly muster up.
Ren, for once, had no response, giving me a conceding smile and a shrug that made my win all the more sweet.