[https://i.imgur.com/VGCFMQy.png]

Refenial had barely made it back to his room when a smartly dressed woman knocked on the door, bringing a plate of food and a mug of drink.

He looked down at the food. It was a mix of cold meats and cheese with a side of bread and butter. He ripped into the feast hungrily, sipping at the drink. It tasted yeasty and had a slightly tart hint of alcohol to the taste, but much less than would have any effect on even his young body.

A metal bath was brought to his room and hot water. He relaxed in the luxury of the water. In the village, washing mainly had been using rags and cold water as he stood outside. He'd hated it, especially when it had got colder, and he had to do it in the snow.

This was, by comparison, heaven.

While he was in the bath, his clothes were taken away to be disposed of, and he was lent a simple set of clothes by the establishment. By his request, they had found clothes that were a mixture of brown and green, which he hoped was enough to count as pied.

He dressed, and soon after, a tailor appeared and took his measurements. Refenial explained that he was titled and needed pied clothes, which surprised the elderly tailor, but he agreed to make the clothes as well as a bag to go with them.

[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]

Soon Refenial was left once more in his room, lying on his bed as he watched the sky. Angry clouds threatened trials ahead, but they were distant. Where he looked, the sky was still a beautiful blue, with the occasional fluffy cloud that floated calmly by.

He saw a cloud that reminded him of a dragon, then a cloud that reminded him of a car, then another that looked all too much like a crow, and his mind soured as he started to think back on the events of the day before.

He sat up irritably and walked to the window, looking out. The street was full of the bustle of life. A pair of sailors staggered drunkenly down the road. A well-dressed young woman looked at them with a mixture of fear and disgust. A young girl of maybe five, dressed in dirty clothes, not more than rags, stared at the fancy woman with a whistful expression on her face that looked tired despite her youth. A man dressed in worker's clothes with a face weathered and craggy pushed a wheelbarrow of coal expertly navigating the piles of filth, excrement and discarded debris that was scattered across the street.

He decided first to look back at his systemic magic status.

[

Name: Refenial Crowchild

Age: 10/??/#non-interger error#

Title: Pied Piper

Rank: 1

Stats

Fate: 0

Charm: 0

Mana: 0

Reason: 0

Cunning: 0

Resilience: 0

Agility: 0

Power: 0

Free points: 1

Skills:

N/A

Powers:

Entrancing sound (0)

]

He looked at his stats and the free point he still had remaining and felt conflicted.

On the one hand, he needed to spend that point eventually. On the other, he had no idea how much of a difference it would make and which stat to spend it on.

A wrong choice here could be disastrous down the line. He knew taking no risks would stunt his growth, and until he'd experienced what the system offered, he'd have no hope of learning how best to spend the points.

He didn't feel ready to make the choice, though.

He stared ahead for long moments, angry at his own indecision. He closed the status and stepped away from the window, taking the items he'd stashed around the room and placing them in a bag provided by the establishment sitting at his hip.

[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]

He walked out of his room, down the stairs and across the foyer, intending to leave. As he did so, the old gentleman from behind the counter hurried over to him.

Refenial looked across at the man.

"Might I be correct in assuming this is the young master's first time in town?"

Refenial nodded.

"Then I would advise caution, avoid deserted roads and alleyways. Always keep one hand on your bag in case of thieves. Don't follow strangers offering gifts, and return before nightfall.

The town is relatively safe, but it isn't without those who would prey on a young boy."

"Thank you, I'll remember that," Refenial said with a respectful nod before stepping out into the cold sunny air.

[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]

He blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted. It took his nose longer to adjust to the stench as he looked around. The roads were cobbled, and Patches of brown ice remained where the snow not yet melted by human footfall had met the street's squalor.

In his wide-eyed examination of the street, he didn't notice the young man, barely out of his twenties, who staggered into Refenial. The young man muttered something incoherent that sounded cross between an apology and an insult. For one brief moment, the smell of booze on the young man drowned out the city's pungent odour.

Refenial instinctively reached for his bag, relieved to find it unmolested.

He walked through the town, taking in the sights and sounds while trying not to take in the smells.

It was a bustling port town. Many of the people wore clothes similar to those worn by the villagers. The streets, at times, felt claustrophobic to walk through. They were often narrow and always winding. The buildings eves hung far into the streets. Their weathered facades had a lived-in crookedness of things repaired and refurbished many times, not always by the most skilled of hands.

The streets waxed and waned. Their size was determined by whatever gap happened to be between two buildings. The city was full of tight choke points that squeezed people in tightly only to a few dozen feet later spread out into wide, well-lit roads.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Most notable, at least to him, were the foreigners. Everyone he'd seen before had pale skin, at most tanned by the sun, but here and there, he saw men and women, mostly sailors with slightly darker skins or facial structures that clearly marked them apart from the natives of this land. Many wore clothes of odd cuts and colours that also clearly felt out of place.

As a group passed wearing long robes that covered them from head to toe, leaving only their eyes visible, he overheard them speaking in what he guessed was their native tongue. He was surprised he could understand every word they said as they joked about the local women.

[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]

As he wandered through the town, he soon found himself by the docks. They were full of the noise of busy men and a few women, the kind that would work day in and out at backbreaking labour for a pittance and still laugh and banter with one another. Burly figures, a few even topless despite the cold air as they worked hard moving around heavy crates and barrels. At the centre of this hive of labour sat a large three-masted ship, its goods being unloaded.

Refenial leaned against a stone-walled building as he watched them work with casual curiosity.

He noticed movement at the back of the ship and someone prowled cautiously along its aft deck. The figure kept low as they moved slowly, sneaking forwards.

"Who the bloody hell is that?" A dockhand called out, pointing at the skulking figure.

A sailor, an older, slightly portly man with once white clothes stained brownish-yellow with grime, came out from below deck at the noise. His eyes followed the dockhand's pointing. The sailor shouted back down below deck, "I fucking told you we had a stowaway, but oh no. Old Hiln is just going senile and eating all the fucking food."

Sailors began to pile out from below decks as the figure looked around desperately, a crowd of dockhands blocking their escape route on land.

The figure took a long stick slung around their back and held it up in the air, pointing towards the sea. There was a loud splash as something fired from the stick hit the dock's water.

"It's a titled!" one of the sailors called out in alarm.

The figure called out in a loud voice, "Let me go, and you'll come to no harm."

There were looks of confusion on the faces of both the sailors and dockhands. It took a moment for Refenial to realize it was because the figure was speaking a different language.

One of the sailors began inching towards the figure, who quickly pointed the stick towards the sailor. There was another crack and the sound of splintering wood as something hit the deck near the sailor.

This was turning bad fast. Refenial decided to act before anyone died.

He stepped forwards pulling his metal whistle from its pouch and played a shrill note on his whistle. The dock had already grown silent as everyone stopped to watch the scene on board the ship unfold. The whistle sounded louder than he'd expected, the gusting sea air taking the sound right across the dock as every set of eyes, from sailor, to dockhand, to passerby, to skulking figure, all turned to look at him.

He suddenly felt very exposed as the crowd all watched him with evident confusion.

He took a deep breath before speaking, knowing it was too late to worry about stage fright. "They want to leave. I can understand their language and negotiate." He yelled towards the sailors.

"They can't understand you. I can negotiate." He called out to the figure in its language.

"Oh? And how do you know the tongue?" the figure called back, in a voice he was sure was female, but they were too obscured for him to tell visually.

One of the sailors called back to Refenial, "They're not getting off this ship til we get payment for passage and for the damage that thing of theirs did to the deck."

"I'll tell her." He said before repeating the message to the woman.

"Do you think I'd stowaway if I had money?" The woman called back incredulously.

"What do you want me to say to them?" Refenial asked, wondering if getting involved had been a mistake.

There was a long pause, and the woman called back less certainly, "Tell them I can't pay now, but I'll earn the money and pay them back when I can." Refenial translated her.

"no fuckin way. If she can't pay, then well take that staff of hers as well as anything else she has of value, and she can work off the rest on the ship."

This wasn't going how Refenial hoped it would, so he tried a different tactic "How much does she owe?"

"Six bastard sons ought to cover it." the man called back.

It took Refenial a moment to remember that 'bastard sons' was a common nickname of a coin usually called a 'lesser prince'. That was a lot of money, just over half the value of the money in his coin purse. He was extremely sceptical of the price, but this didn't seem like the right time to haggle.

He considered what to do. If Obit was here, he'd tell him to pay since it was the right thing to do. Hecate, though, that old crone would probably tell him to keep the money. Thinking in those terms made the decision easy.

"I'll pay." He said definitively.

The sailor looked surprised, and people around the dock started talking to each other. He heard several dockhands muttering, shocked that a child had that kind of money on hand.

He called out to the woman, "I've agreed to pay." Having to yell louder than before as the wind had picked up noticeably since the start of the conversation. The clouds that had seemed distant when he'd first set out were rapidly approaching.

"Ah, thanks?" the woman called back in a suspicious and uncertain tone.

The sailor met him on the dock, and he carefully counted out his money, the purse now feeling much lighter as he placed it back around his neck. The sailor took the money gleefully. "She's free to go."

As he said those words, a system message appeared.

[Rank up]

"You can come down now," Refenial called out.

[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]

The woman, no, a teenage girl of maybe 16, came down the gangplank, and he got a good look at her for the first time.

She was dressed in a black and blue dress with a matching headscarf that completely hid her hair. Her clothes looked almost as threadbare as Refenial's old clothes. A weapon in the grey area between a large dagger and a small sword was strapped to her hip. She wore a small rucksack on her back, with the stick she'd used as a weapon slung on her back with a strap.

She was significantly taller than Refenial, Her warm brown skin several shades darker than anyone he'd seen so far. Her face was drawn tight as her expression wavered between a look of fear and defiance, her dark eyes' rapid movements giving away her distrust of those around her.

She came to a stop in front of him and uncomfortably looked at the ground as she spoke. "Thanks, I guess."

"I'm Refenial, you are?" He asked, but before she could respond, one of the dockhands cleared his throat aggressively, making clear that the pair were blocking his work.

"Oh, sorry," Refenial said as the pair walked over to one side.

"I want to be clear," the girl began nervously. "I don't know the traditions of this land, I am grateful for your help, but I am my own person. If you want paying back, that is fine, but I will do so on my own terms."

"That's fine. You still haven't told me your name?"

"Nia. I have to ask, though, how do you speak my language?" She looked him up and down. "You clearly aren't from my country."

"Yeah, apparently, I can speak a lot of different languages." He paused for a moment. "It's a long story," he hastily added, not wanting to explain further.

"I see. Are there many others like you here that speak my language?"

Refenial shrugged. "I don't know, I'm new in town. I was living in a remote village before that, and today was the first time I heard another language."

She gave him a dubious look.

"What will you do now?" He asked.

"I don't know. When I came here, I didn't consider that people wouldn't speak my language. I know it is widely spoken in the neighbouring countries. What of you? That seemed a lot of money for a boy by the docks. Your clothes are cleaner than most here too."

"It's complicated. I'm... Well, to be honest, I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I've got options. I've also got responsibilities..." He thought back to the promise he'd made to Alton to look after his son and tensed in frustration.

"Responsibilities, you're a child. Did your mommy tell you to clean your room?" She said with a chuckle. She stopped laughing when she saw the angry look on Refenial's face.

"I'm sorry, you helped me, and I was rude. Leave responsibilities to the old and the boring. You're a child; live without worry." She paused, looking worried. "You are a child, right? Not some kind of dwarf that looks like a child?"

Refenial couldn't help but laugh at her concern. "I'm a child, sort of. It's complicated."

She gave him a knowing look. "It sounds like you live a very complicated life that involves many long stories, and I'm sure things you don't want to talk about. A younger boy in my village would always talk like that. The thing was, he thought being cryptic would make him sound more special than he was. He'd go to the shed to milk a cow and come back so tight-lipped you'd have thought he'd been on a grand quest. You don't have to impress me."

As they talked, the sky had grown heavier and heavier, the first flakes of snow painting the ground a fresh white. She looked up, "snow? I've heard of it but never seen it fall from the sky before." She shivered.

Refenial looked at the girl. Her dress was thin, clearly designed for warm weather. She had no money, spoke a language that, for all he knew, no one else in the town did besides him and was standing outside with no experience of winter.

He sighed. "Come on, I'm staying at a place. Perhaps we can get you a room there too." He began to walk back home.

"How much do you want me to owe you?" she grumped, but he could hear the gratitude in her voice.

As they walked back, the snow fell, heavier and heavier as the wind began to gust then howl.

[https://i.imgur.com/3vZaHAB.png]