Chapter 21:

I followed the momentum of my fellow inductees out of the classroom. We milled about in the hall briefly in confusion.

"Where do we go?" asked one of the less thug-like warriors. No one had any answers. Eventually, I spoke up.

"We aren't going to find anything standing here. I'm going to find out where our free housing is." I declared as I started for the stairs. A few people trailed after me. The group then reached critical mass, and soon, almost all were following along. From the front of the group, no one could see my smile. It might seem like a small thing now, but stepping up when decisions were to be made was something people remembered. It wouldn't do to push too hard now, but making these connections and good impressions could pay off big time.

I walked outside and stared up at the sky. The stars that shined above were somehow different than they were in Lesser Hall. They were still the multi-colored tapestry that I saw on my first night here, but they seemed less oppressive. As if they were smiling down on me.

Looking around, I saw people in the rough stone streets moving around doing ordinary things. The buildings somewhat matched each other. None had anything like electricity that was obvious from the outside. However, that didn't mean they looked like the rough longhouses that I had expected. Most of the buildings were made of a mixture of granite and wood. Some were painted, and others were not. Most had the appearance of magic.

For every building that had its front lit with torches, there were four that had glowing crystals in brackets or glowing glass clouds hovering above. The magic caught my eye, and I wanted to stop and stare, but I had the pressure of my mind to walk down the stairs. Just being here had made it obvious that there was more to the world than I had understood in life, but seeing magic like this felt different. It was out in the open and used for everyday things, which made it feel accessible. Less like it was only for the gods.

Luckily, I wasn't the only one who felt this way. There were a few curses from behind me as others had stopped in the entryway and been shoved aside.

There were a few murmured protests, but they all followed me down the steps without more hesitation. With us moving again, I returned my attention to the people coming out of the buildings instead of the buildings themselves. The people looked as ordinary as the things they were doing. If I ignored the copious amounts of melee weapons, that was.

The one thing that surprised me about them was that they were almost half women. They didn't look out of place in the slightest. They wore the same leather and fur the men did, though it did look much better on them. Most of them carried some sort of weapon, but I did notice that they varied a lot more in type.

Daggers were on everyone's belt, so they could hardly be counted. No, that wasn't what I meant. Almost half had bows slung over one shoulder or a hand crossbow and their waist. A few had long walking sticks with gnarled balls of roots at the top. They looked suspiciously like magical staves.

All that wasn't to say none of the women wore the same weapons that the men did, but it was less common. Again, if I ignored the weapons and the odd clothes, there wasn't anything to put this out of place from back in life. I didn't even notice a distinct split in the groups. Sure, women were slightly more likely to be in groups with other women, but no more than I would expect in any larger modern city. Plenty of pairs of men and women walked around, as well as larger groups. Overall, it seemed like they were just ordinary people.

Well, somewhat ordinary people carrying things and materials showed that the laws of reality applied in some way. The introduction and the room token implied that food wouldn't just be magically on my table each night anymore.

I looked down the street and tried to categorize each of the buildings. One looked to be a bathhouse made with marble, and another appeared to be a tavern. In fact, roughly two-thirds of all the buildings on ground height seemed to be some sort of establishment that served drinks, whether they were inns, taverns, armories, or shops that had a bar in the back. Drinking was just as popular here as it was in the Lesser Hall.

Across the street, I could see a large stone building that stuck up from behind the buildings along the street. It looked to be a large arena like the one we had appeared in, except it was made of a much darker granite.

A group of young women walked out of a building that mirrored the one behind us. They were clustered around each other, much like we were, holding up similar coins, talking. It wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine that they were the other new arrivals of the day. It seemed they were given as little escort as we had been.

But unlike us, they immediately started to march out through the crowd. They were headed in the same direction we were, so I angled through the flow of traffic.

It was a long shot, but I had a question for them. Well, many questions. I wanted to know a lot more about Valhalla, and it would be smart to learn about what they had been through. But that wasn't my main concern. No, I wanted to know if there was a chance I would ever see Helen again.

When the brain fog was on me, I had forgotten to even think about her like I had with all women. But when it was lifted, and there were no women, I hadn't let myself hope. If I wanted her here or not was still a question. Sure, I wanted to be with her again, but I didn't want her in this violent place.

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I fell into step beside a woman before reaching over and tapping her on the shoulder. "Excuse me."

She turned and glared at me with a surprising amount of anger.

"I'm not interested," she said in a rough voice.

"Whoa, whoa. Do you mind just answering a question?" I held up my hands. What was that all about? They must have received some warning from their welcoming party that we didn't. "Did you just get out of the Lesser Hall?"

I was surprised by the tact of the men behind me. Seeing my reception, they paused their approach and watched. It reminded me that just because many were brutes, I had to stop thinking of them as dumb. The cloud over their minds wasn't there anymore, and I needed to break that habit before I was surprised at the worst time.

The woman glared at me before walking again. I kept pace with her, and she tried to just look ahead and ignore me.

"Listen, listen, I'm not trying to be weird or anything. I just want to know if there's any way you can tell me if someone was in the Lesser Hall with you. Are there any records kept or anything like that?" My words were rushed, but I tried to make placating gestures with my hands that she didn't see. But as I asked my question, I saw tension fade from her shoulders.

She looked at me strangely. "Records? What?"

"Listen, I don't know how the Lesser Hall works for you, but... is it possible to find someone?" I asked.

She looked at me, and her gaze softened slightly as if she understood why I asked my question. There was a flick of braids as she shook her head.

"No, I don't think there are records. Maybe Freya would be able to let you know. How did she die?"

"Cancer," I said simply.

"Sorry. I don't think you are going to find her. Maybe check with Freya," she said and continued on. I paused in the road and watched the group walk away. Freya. She was one of the Norse gods, one of the Vanir if I remembered correctly. I wondered if that old war had actually happened or if it was just a human invention. Maybe Loki would tell me more about the goddess. Or maybe he could help me ask her a question. Or maybe I could talk to her myself. Not sure how that worked here.

I looked around and found a cohort of my cohort staring at me. I considered just leaving, but I walked back to them. I shook my head and shrugged.

"Damn, man," A Jamaican man said. "Take that part out. Got shot down hard."

Interesting, they hadn't actually heard my conversation. I shook my head. "Nah. I wanted to know if... if... a woman I knew who had also come here and if I could find her."

That killed the mood of the group.

"Sorry, man," the same guy said with accompanied nods from the half dozen or so men that had tagged along. I noticed more than half had already gone their own way. No matter.

I shrugged. "I just wanted to know. You know?"

"Well, they seem like they knew what they were doing," another man said. "We should just follow them."

We could still see where the wake of women's passing was rippling through the crowd. Shrugging, I nodded, and we jogged after, not trying to catch up so much but rather just keeping up.

Sure enough, one of them probably had been smart enough to ask their guide for directions. A few minutes later, they presented their tokens to a woman sitting out front of an inn. She looked at each one closely before nodding, and they went into a hall.

When we tried to go in, we were barred, but the guard laughingly pointed us in the right direction, and a little ways over, we found the male dormitories. Soon enough, we each were let in and guided to our rooms upstairs.

I walked into my bare room and looked around. There was nothing more than an empty bucket for water and a small canvas bed in the corner. Still, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. This was the first time I had a bit of privacy or any personal space in over six months. Also, I wasn't about to complain about the free meals offered in the common room below.

Sitting at the edge of my bed, I rubbed my head. Eating did sound nice, but it was getting late, and I was wiped out. Normally, after the challenge, we ate and drank, but that only lasted for a few hours before sleeping. And already in my bed, it was calling to me to just sleep and take care of it tomorrow. All this new information had been overwhelming, and I needed to process it.

However, there was one thing I needed to do first. Leveraging myself off the bed, I knelt down on the wooden floor and pulled out my dagger.

With practiced motions, I carved the status ritual runes on the floor before filling them with my blood. A surprising amount of runes scrawled out on the ground in front of me. They shimmered as they formed into words I could read. But I was stuck at the first line.

Level: 1