Kestra woke some hours later. It was hard to tell inside the cave, but she thought the sun might just be up already. She yawned, stretched, and climbed out of the bed roll. Sleeping in her travel clothes didn't make her feel great, but it was better than waking up naked amongst strangers.

The sleeping area was segregated by sex, which made it quite obvious that there was near a four to one ratio of men to women. That raised warning flags for Kestra. Back in the nation of Druerjan, such a disparity in the sexes happened in bandit and slaver camps.

She wasn't sure if she could believe her hosts about the curses attached to violating oaths to the Heavens, but she wasn't about to test the theory herself. She hadn't found any oath bindings during her psychic probing, but she also hadn't been feeling her best.

And she still needed to figure out how to get a class again. Playing back the last evening's conversation, she realized she had volunteered too much, and gained next to nothing.

She straightened out the bedroll in which she had slept and went looking for water, and a place to relieve her bladder.

Tami popped up as if out of nowhere. She handed Kestra a cup of tea. Kestra looked at the decoction, then back up at Tami. The tall woman seemed amused as she took the cup back, sipped the tea, and returned the cup to Kestra's hands. "Not drugged or poisoned, I promise."

Kestra nodded. "That would be acting without integrity," she agreed. She took a small sip, attempting to analyze the flavors and effects. She had had a fairly high Cooking skill and found the synergy between it and Alchemy let her detect the subtle effects that good food could have on a body, which had led her to finding more harmonious formulas for her ingestible potions.

This decoction had a bit of bite that opened up the sinuses and left a chilled sensation along the mouth. The diluted taste of a sweet berry juice offset the mild stimulant of a bitter leaf.

"Hm. Three ingredients? Not counting the water." She asked.

"A mint the locals call Xonzi's Breath, some mashed strawberries, and a green tea base," Tami confirmed. "You got all that from a single sip?"

"Which is the bitter, this 'mint' or 'tea'?" Kestra asked. "And, yeah, a good Alchemist and a good Cook both can parse the flavors of a recipe."

"Tea's the bitter one. Mint's the, well, the minty one," Tami answered, looking like she was storing away her comment.

"So, you never did say what classes the Myriad Realms have, or how to get them," Kestra said while taking another analytical sip of the morning beverage.

"That's because there aren't any, near as we can tell. You get experience by raising skill ranks and killing things, plug your boosts into your stats, and cultivate. That's the path to power here."

"Cultivate, as in gardening?" Kestra asked.

Tami shook her head. "As in open your mana foramina and temper your body. Cultivate your personal power."

Kestra took that in. "Well. That's different. This E.X.P. is it a special kind of quantifiable experience, then? And, ah, why are there so few women compared to men here?"

"Yes, E.X.P. is experience, and it turns out that it's not uncommon for the strong to take what they want in this realm. We haven't seen others, but the common knowledge agrees that Might is Right around here. Most families try to hide their girls from the local lords because the lords like to sweep them up, stick 'em in a seraglio, and dole them out as rewards to their loyal officers. Naturally, the lords keep the prettiest girls for themselves. Older women are usually safe enough, but enough families have lost their daughters that we're gathering a bit of a rebellion force here. The disparity is only worse outside of our camp."

Kestra frowned. "That's not sustainable."

Tami huffed. "Yeah, well, maybe that's why there're so many transmigrators right now."

Kestra turned up a palm. "Well, I need to reach a 'jie' gate for my quest, but it looks like doing so isn't going to be all that easy. What even is a jie? Oh, and I'd like my blade back."

Tami treated her jie question as if it were rhetorical and said, "I don't see a sheath for it. How do you carry it?"

"Same way you carried whatever you used to bind me up, I'd guess," she said, her eyes watchful.

Tami blinked, then looked at Kestra's fingers again. She frowned and looked Kestra over, obviously pausing at different parts of her garment that might have been enchanted with runes of Holding.

"Personal domain," Kestra said, giving out a misleading truth since the big woman seemed to not even see Kestra's soul-bound ring of Minor Holding. Better to lead her to thinking it was the result of a skill rather than something that could be taken away. She frowned. "Aren't you a transmigrator, too?"

"Yeah, from Earth," Tami agreed with hooded lids, looking wary now. "Does being a domain mean it's a spell, not an item?"

"Pretty much. And Earth? The Compound Master said one of the twice born he met called their first life home that. Said that there wasn't any mana so people did strange things with machines. Sound about right?" Kestra asked.

Tami sucked in a breath. "Yeah, only I wouldn't say strange. Industrialization only really took off in the last three hundred years, so we've gone from barely dipping our toes in the ocean to flying across the globe."

Kestra scrunched up her nose. "How did you have any soul-bound items to bring with you without mana?"

"We didn't. When we were brought over, anything that wasn't nailed down in a two meter radius came with us."

That made Kestra pout. Why didn't she get that luxury? Eh, no matter. She arrived with a lot more than she would have been able to carry if not for her ring of Holding.

Tami asked, "Your clothes are soul bound?"

"No, but my personal domain is part of me," she said.

Tami's eyebrows lifted. "That's interesting." Then she took on a more parental expression. "So, don't say that you have a personal storage space around strangers here. In camp, you should be fine, but, like I said, most people we've met in the Realms are used to the strong taking whatever they want. Getting x.p. for killing just seems to make it easier to justify atrocities against our fellow man."

"And me having a skill is dangerous?" Kestra asked.

Tami said, "Thieves can steal a ring, but they have to go through you to get anything they can't just take off you."

Kestra hadn't had to consider bandits trying to beat her property out of her for many, many levels. The reminder of being a stranger among quite different strangers brought with it a chagrined feeling she did not like. "I'll hold the lesson. You mentioned the boosts. How do they work?" she asked.

Tami shrugged. "You can do things, training mostly, to increase your Force and Reaction and what have you. That's your base, the first number. The plus number, that's how many boosts you've applied with your leveling. Your body goes numb for a while as you apply the boosts. How long depends on how big an overall change you're pushing. Most humans start between 3 and 5 points, and they don't get to start leveling until they're prepubescent, around 10 years old here. So far, it looks like you need at least 1 point of Reaction to control every 2 or 3 points of Force, and the higher your Recovery, the longer you can push on. If you can cultivate, that and your open foramina give you mana, with Attunement playing into mana recovery. Stamina pools come from your tempering and Recovery for the most part. Oh, and more Stamina also means more healing you can take at any given time."

"And you just, what, will the boosts to be applied?" she asked.

"Yeah, about that," Tami agreed. "I recommend at least sitting down first, if not lying down. There's supposed to be a cap, only being able to put a hundred boosts to any of the stats or pools, and so far as this realm's common knowledge goes, getting past level 80 is a legendary feat. Says the woman who hasn't met anyone above level 15."

"What about opening these foramina and tempering?" Kestra asked.

Tami pursed her lips. "That's tied up in your cultivation style. Most of all that's a mental struggle, and if you don't have a safe place to sit around, you're not going to make much progress."

"Are the foramina physical or metaphysical, then?" Kestra asked. If the foramina were physical, then they would be unequivocal aids provided by the same entity behind the world's screens or the voice of the world. If they were metaphysical then they were as likely an expression of the mana of this world or universe as they might be an aid provided by the world's gods.

Tami shrugged. "I was a paramedic before I became a cop, and Puck was a bullet sponge-- infantry in the Army before trading his rifle in for a badge. Magic is something we're learning as we go, so hell if I know."

Kestra arched her eyebrow, catching something weird there. "This word, 'rifle', is it from your world? I don't think the universal translation switched in a local word for it."

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Tami glanced over at someone coming up behind them, and guided Kestra over to a more comfortable place to continue their conversation. "What's this about universal translation?"

"The words coming out of my mouth are not the words of my native Druerjan. The glyphs used for written language are not the script I learned to write with. I tried to write in my native language and it took a great deal of sweating concentration to do so, only for me to watch my script turn into this world's glyphs. Did you not notice a similar effect when you first arrived?"

Tami leaned back, her gaze turning introspective. "No, but it makes sense of some of the things that felt like they should have rhymed, but didn't."

Kestra shrugged. "No mana on Earth, right? Or at least, none anyone can manipulate? It would make the people and creatures of Earth very easy to integrate into another world. Well, at least those of you who aren't soulless. Heh. I doubt I would have noticed the imprinting if not for feeling my connection break to the voice of the world I came from, and this new, different connection thrust upon me."

Tami's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, soulless?"

Kestra blinked at Tami. "A person's soul is the stabilized spark of mana that carries their personality."

Tami looked like she had loads more questions, but Kestra wasn't interested in answering them. To cut those questions off, she asked, "So, my sword? Oh, and a place to relieve my bladder. That would be good, too."

That got a twitch of amusement, and Tami showed her to a crevice in the caves they were using for sanitation deposits. She waited outside the privacy section, then escorted Kestra over to get breakfast and then to reclaim her sword from Puck.

"It's a nice toothpick," the burly man said, and it did resemble more of a knife than a sword on his proportions.

Kestra took it back and equipped her back sheath between her shirt and jacket from her Holding ring. She used the act of sheathing the short sword to cover up the small wiggles she needed to go through to settle the sheath rig comfortably.

As Tami had said, it served her no use advertising that she had a Holding ring. She didn't like directly equipping gear from a Holding container because even with hours of practice, she still felt the need to twist and wiggle to get her gear to sit just right. Dualla had told her often enough that it was just a trick of her mind.

There was an appreciative light in Puck's gaze, as well as more than a few of the men in the cave, as they watched her wiggle the rig into its proper place. Mentally, Kestra sighed. Hopefully, she didn't need to poison too many tea pots to cool the masculine ardor down. Then again, she hadn't had an excuse to salt itching powders in sleep rolls for ages.

"So, ah, you want me to introduce you around?" Puck asked.

Tami sighed. She probably wasn't trying to be obvious about it, but the long suffering patience she expressed had Kestra laughing.

"No," Kestra cheerfully declined. "The less I know, the less I have to worry about revealing by accident. And one thing I'm quite sure of is that I don't want to be anywhere near a fief that's devolved to rebellion. That's messy. You clobbered me hard enough to concuss me, then healed me, so I'm inclined to let that be, and then we've had an interesting exchange of information. I'm willing to swear silence about your camp and our acquaintance up to the point where my life is credibly threatened.

"Are there other gates than in Sortalheim? And what do they look like? What are they?"

Puck now wore a worried frown. "Ma'am, you might be resourceful as all git, but if you go out there with just a pig sticker you're gonna get yourself in trouble."

Kestra shrugged. "Probably, but that's what makes life interesting."

Tami said, "Aw, we needed to make a run to Caispberg soon. We can at least escort you there, help you get some local currency and clothes. People around here will assume you've begun tempering your body; skin tone goes darker the more tempered you are, and you're about as dark as someone with one, maybe two steps along that cultivation path. That should at least bluff the guards and most of the common folk from picking fights with you."

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Tami, Puck, Kestra, and two other men headed out of the camp in a north-easterly direction. During that time, Kestra learned more about the world she now walked through.

Both of the men accompanying them were locals. The more talkative one introduced himself as Hondi Roudin. He had a rough look: pale skin burnt under the sun, brown eyes, reddish brown hair, and he stood a few fingers taller than Kestra. The quiet one answered to Loubou, and shared the same general features, but moved with more grace.

"Ramakith inherited control of Sortalheim, like most of Oste's nobles. There hasn't been a new city in generations. Them fancy city sitters say it's all because no one's growing the villages, but if they'd just stop taking everything from us, we could be so much more! But, no! They take nearly everything we grow and claim it's to feed the soldiers so they can keep the monsters off of us. We wouldn't need soldiers if they didn't string up anyone who tried to learn weapons skills without being a soldier! Then, when we're starving, they come along and take our daughters! It's evil is what it is!"

Kestra asked, "And this is the way it is everywhere?"

Loubou grunted. "In this jie, yeah."

"Jie? Is that like a nation? A province?" Kestra asked.

Tami said, "This place, the Myriad Realms, it's different. There are a bunch of, like, floating continents? Big chunks of land. The maps we've picked up show that they're anywhere from 10 thousand square kilometers to 500 million square kilometers in size. Those are each called realms. The bigger ones are globes, and the smaller ones are just like islands or something. Flat. The jie are groups of realms all connected through a Realm Sea, and the jie gates are easy ways to jump around and between the realms in each jie. We're not sure what acts like the sun and gives the realms day and night."

Roudin jumped in. "Those are sleeping elementals. They live in the Realm Seas because that's where the mana comes from. The Realm Sea of the Mortal Realms is pretty thin because the higher realms are always stealing from it. It makes it hard to get skill ranks and thins out the E.X.P."

Kestra glanced to Loubou for confirmation, but he just shrugged. "Got to be level 10 to use the jie gates, and most of us won't live to see that high a level."

Roudin took over again. "Yeah, you got to kill monsters to get enough E.X.P. to level, but it's hard to kill 'em when they're stronger than you are. Can't get enough E.X.P. from skill ranks when you got to always be doing new things to get the ranks to go up, but you're never allowed to do things that's new."

"You're not restricted like that now, are you? Are you doing better?" Kestra asked.

Roudin puffed up. "Got to level four just the other day! That's just a level below my old man!"

Kestra nodded in acknowledgment, then asked, "I saw a notice thing about Low Mortal Realms and Divine Seeds. You know anything about that?"

"So, we're in the Mortal Realms jie," Roudin explained. "and we're in the Low jie. There's Mid and High jie, too, realms that are closer to the center of the Realm Sea and the passage to the Transcendental Realms. They have more mana to harvest E.X.P. with. But you got to use the jie gates to get there!"

Tami and Puck glanced at each other, but held their silence. Kestra wondered what that was about, but didn't press. Right or wrong, she had the feeling they wouldn't say what they were really thinking. Instead, she asked, "Are the gates the only way to get around the realms?"

Roudin shrugged. "Not if you can survive the Realm Sea, but when you go into the Realm Sea without a vessel, you provoke the First Tribulation early. If you're not already strong, you die."

"Tribulation? What kind of Tribulation?" Kestra asked.

Roudin mimed punching. "The First Tribulation is Force. You got to defeat the monsters that live in the Realm Sea. In the Mortal Realms, they're mostly in the mid level 30s, and they don't have a lot of magic to them, just toughness. The Second Tribulation belongs to the Transcendental Realm Sea, and their monsters are up in the 60s and 70s, and they use magic, so it's called the Tribulation of Magic. There are even some elementals! The Third Tribulation, the one that happens in the Immortals Realm Sea, and it's been tamed by the Immortals, but they only want skilled craftsmen, so if you can't impress the Immortals, they'll suppress you. I'm already a Mid Novice in Woodworking, so as soon as I'm strong enough to face the Realm Sea, I'll be amazing!"

Kestra looked at Roudin again and again failed to see the signs of a child. Maybe the people of the Myriad Realms grew their bodies faster than their minds? He did look like he had only just attained his full growth, but that was still years of an adult's responsibilities -- in Druerjan. She bit her cheek to keep from cussing her assumptions, and instead changed the subject. "So, you have cities. Do you have money? Or is it all barter?"

"In the villages, it's mostly barter. In the cities, they want coppers and silvers. A hundred coppers to a silver, a hundred silvers to a gold. In the higher realms, they use spirit stones for money, that's how rich they are -- from stealing from us!" Roudin grumped.

"And how big is this realm? How long would it take a person to cross it?" Kestra asked. Kilometers didn't really mean much to her. The island she had lived on was sizable enough that the merchant consortiums took between forty and fifty days to make a full circuit of their rounds, depending on the weather and monster migrations. They mostly avoided using dire beasts due to the increased costs for fodder and higher-skilled handlers, though. A Free Lancer team using Stamina potions and movement skills could cross the island in five days.

"We're on one of the flat realms, and it's about the size of Alaba--. Ah, 50,000 square kilometers, so maybe nine days of rough hiking," Puck said, scratching at his chin. "Got five different nations, but they got some unclaimed lands in between 'em."

They talked some more, and the more the locals spoke of their problems leveling, the more Kestra had to wonder if something else wasn't at play.

When Kestra circled back to what other ways than the jie gates there were to get around the realms, Roudin went off on a tangential rant about the higher realms always stealing their realm sea vessels. She didn't know what those were, but it apparently annoyed Tami enough that she stopped them all and changed the subject rather decisively.

"Alright, RouRou, you're preaching to the choir," she said. "Now that we're far enough out, here's the real plan: we're heading for the village of Song. I think we have a spy at camp, which is why I said Caispberg. We'll be looking for signs of an intercept squad leaving the city."

She turned to Kestra and said, "Finishing the Welcome quest is worth it for the tutorial guidebook alone. For us, it went over the major differences from Earth, and I'm guessing yours will do the same for wherever you came from. If your map has Sortalheim marked, then that's the gate you have to go to. They're some kind of magic circle thing inlaid in the central plazas. Sortalheim's is about ten meters across."

Kestra tipped her head to the side. "I thought your silence vow protects you from the problems of spies?"

"But not you," Puck replied, his expression reserved.

Kestra nodded. "Ah. If that's the case, why don't I just leave you now and find my own way?"

Tami said, "These woods have more than a few mid level monsters roaming, and getting to the second level may be quick, but like you've heard from Roudin, most people in the Low Mortal Realms don't make it past level 8 in their lifetimes. It's not safe to travel alone. Also, we have a trustworthy contact in Song that can at least get you native garb. That way you won't stick out as an interesting foreigner."

Kestra looked over the people around her. While she had Tami's vow not to harm her, she didn't have the other's. "You're asking me to place a lot of trust in your group, one which you've just told me you suspect has been infiltrated by your enemies."

Roudin frowned, the sense of his offense palpable. For her part, Tami said, "Ma'am, I'm trying to do the right thing."

Kestra shook her head, reminded of her recent assumptions. "What's the age of adulthood amongst your people?"

Tami pulled her head back a little at the non-sequitur. "Eighteen, why?"

"And how old are you?" she asked.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

Kestra shrugged. "I've been held to adult responsibilities for about half of my life, and that changes how you think about things. Your first responsibility needs to be to your community, and I am not among them. Even if your purpose is to stop the lords from enslaving everyone, you have to put your people first or you have no one to stand with you in your opposition. I have already told you I'm not joining your fight.

"A common saying among my people is, 'Words are whispers before the shouts of actions, and results speak loudest of all, while it is intention that separates man from monstrosity.' Your intentions may be good, but you need to think about how best to achieve your results."

So saying, Kestra waved. "I'll leave you here." She slipped into the woods, not giving them time to react.

She heard Puck say, "Let her be. We each have to live and die by our choices."