How long had it been since I’d had such a simple mystery to spend my attention on? There was no imminent apocalyptic threat. There was no threat at all. It was just personal curiosity about a tiny town and its name. A little bit of graverobbing, maybe, but it was at best a barrow, not some trap-laced enchanter’s lair. And as much as I would deny it out loud, even those weren’t too bad if you had time to prepare properly. Whatever this ended up being, it should be fine.

I got off the bed and stretched out my legs, making sure everything worked right. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the woman’s healing – I realized then that I never got her name – as much as I just didn’t know whether I could trust it. Healing was delicate. Lots of things could go wrong. I remembered watching one go horrifically wrong and the patient began growing lumps under his skin.

It had looked and sounded incredibly painful. I very much wanted to avoid having the same thing happen to me at all costs.

Thankfully, everything moved around smoothly and neither of my legs screamed in pain or gave out under me. I seemed to be entirely lump-free, as well, aside from the ones that were supposed to be there. Unfortunately, I also seemed to be naked. Because of course I was and of course the clothes this body had been wearing when I took it were gone.

I walked over to the cabinets and began rifling through in hopes of finding something. Herbs, more herbs, backless robes were an absolute last resort, some more herbs, bandages that I hoped were either scribed for freshness or would be boiled again before they were actually used, and shockingly: even more herbs.

The time of last resort had come. I pulled out the top two robes and, after some fiddling, got one on backwards on top of the other. I may have looked stupid, but at least I was completely covered. Maybe I could pass it off as a makeshift cloak. It was probably cold enough for that. There was a fire burning in the hearth, after all.

Enough time-wasting. I had a barrow to investigate.

*

Drakebarrow was a very nice little town. It may have been the only place I’d ever been across any of the eight archipelagos where every building was made of copper. Most people steered away from the stuff for permanent construction, keeping it mostly for weapon linings, but it looked like they’d made an art out of carving the verdigris off the walls into patterns. Even the titanic mound at one end of the town (presumably the town’s namesake) was coated in copper that had the green patina shaped into scales.

A suspicion dawned on me and I took a quick look up. Sure enough, every roof I could see was entirely green. It didn’t pass for anything grass-like this close, but from above it would probably form a passable imitation of natural growth.

No wonder I hadn’t seen it. How many others had flown right overhead by means magical or mundane and completely missed this place’s existence?

There was a clear path to the mound through what was probably the middle of the town. Convenient, but it left me free to be stared at by the locals. It was mostly ursine and humans, though there were a smattering of others scattered throughout as well. I saw one of the strix-whatever, the owl people, and a few hybrid races that I didn’t even have names for. Did that one have gills? Since when were the ocean races peaceful enough for interbreeding?

Something wasn’t right. She looked a lot older than thirteen years, unless one of her heritages aged far quicker than average. Had I spent longer than I thought in chains? Had Solgilan pulled a loophole out of what should have been the simplest contract ever? Was I even actually on Nisichi?

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

That last question was ridiculous, unless Vaz Andax somehow existed on multiple worlds. I needed to find a calendar. A true standard calendar, not one of the rural seasonal ones that tended to go by seasons since the current village leader was appointed or whatever other marker of time they’d chosen.

I was at the barrow by this point, but was also seriously considering abandoning my plans to investigate for the more pressing issue of what-year-is-it. I studied the verdigris art on the copper slope as I debated it. Up close, the scales were as big as my head, and carved into remarkably detailed patterns on an individual level, no two the same that I could see. Spirals, swirls, brick-like patterns, and labyrinths intermingled. What was the purpose of that? Just to dazzle the eye? There had to be something more to it based on the sheer amount of work it would take to make them all so intricate.

Maybe they all became a larger pattern with some cultural significance. Maybe it was some kind of record keeping system. I remembered visiting, briefly, one village where the entire population’s history was kept in a single titanic tapestry that was larger by itself than any house there. What if each of the patterns was a family? Or something similar?

I so badly wanted to know.

That want was what made the choice for me. If it had been more time than I thought, the time it took me to find out the answers I wanted wouldn’t cost me much. The time had already passed. There was no going back, not that I knew. Space could be bent for teleportation, but in all my experimentation, time had never ceased to flow, much less reversed.

I circled the barrow a few times, the entrance not being polite enough to have been right in line with the main road through town. It didn’t have the decency to be on the ground at all, unfortunately, unless I was missing it somehow. Lacking better options, I began scrambling up it, using the scale-like panels that formed the sides of the copper hill as hand- and foot-holds.

I had expected it to be slick for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on, but it wasn’t. It actually wasn’t that hard to work my way up the slope, though I did occasionally misplace a foot and have to catch myself. At least it wasn’t raining.

At the top, once I’d reached it, sat three people in coppery armor, shoulder-to-shoulder. Unlike the rest of the town, there was no decorative verdigris on it, and I had no idea if there was some symbolism behind that or if it was something to do with rank. They were the first people I'd seen in armor in the town, since most everyone else was in fairly standard homespun-looking clothes. There was a wooden surface underneath them, standing out from the patterned copper of the rest of the barrow.

They grunted at me in unison as I came fully into sight. I could feel the disdain, the judgment, the already-applied label of outsider. Not my problem. They could act haughty all they wanted, I only needed into the tomb itself, and I was fairly confident that the wooden surface they were on was a trapdoor of some sort.

I walked toward them, stopping barely in front of the edge of the wood, right as their glares turned truly sharp. “I’m going in the barrow.”

As one, they grunted again, this one ringing with derision. The middle one spoke in a grinding, raspy tone. “Two kinds of people are not allowed: Classless and outsiders. You are both, homebrewer. You do not need in here. You would not come back out.”

“That’s the second time someone’s called me a homebrewer. I still don’t know what it means. Regardless, I’m going in. You can try to stop me if you want. I am going in there. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

The three began to laugh, their amusement sounding like swords crashing against shields, and stood.

*

I woke to a deluge of cold water becoming abruptly acquainted with my face.

“You are an idiot, homebrewer,” the healer said, voice full to bursting with barely controlled anger. “They will not be so merciful as to leave you alive again and you will rot without rites or peace.” I heard her leave, shoes squelching in the puddle of mud that forming around me.

Bold of her to assume I’d learned my lesson. I was going straight back there. This time they would let me in.