Terry found himself almost glaring at the gates of the town they were approaching. He didn’t mean to do it. He’d just had such crappy experiences in cities and towns so far that he was not excited about spending more time than absolutely necessary in another one. He definitely wanted to get farther south before he even considered stopping anywhere for any length of time. Plus, getting farther south came with the delightful benefit of putting a lot of miles between him and his assorted enemies. Well, some of them at any rate. He didn’t think he’d ever really be out of the grasp of the Church. They seemed to be everywhere. But he could make an effort not to draw too much attention to himself wherever he did decide to try to make a new life far, far away from that pesky war up north and the stupidly pretty people.

“Have you been here before?” asked Ekori.

He glanced her way and said, “No. Why?”

“You’re scowling at the gates like you hate this place,” she observed.

He winced a little and tried to smooth his expression.

“I don’t care about this place one way or the other,” he admitted. “I just want to be quick about getting on my way. Visit the guild. Visit a market. Go.”

That drew looks from the other three. It wasn’t exactly surprise or displeasure, but some bastard hybrid of the two. He supposed that they saw towns as refuges, not the big stupid traps that they actually were. If his luck held, Terry was going to find angry Church people, annoyed nobles, and probably a whole legion of stupidly pretty people who all just happened to have gathered in this one spot. They’ll be like a swarm of big, aggravating locusts that came to feast on my limited tolerance. I’ll probably have to cut my way out of this damn town. He did notice a little part of him that tried to suggest that he was, maybe, being just a little too pessimistic. It sounded good, except for the part when he thought he sounded like a Pollyanna moron. He told that part of himself to shut the fuck up. He’d stop being pessimistic when terrible shit stopped happening to him all the time.

“You’re scowling again,” said Ekori.

Terry sighed.

“I don’t like towns,” he said.

“Why?”

“They’re full of people.”

“That’s usually the draw. There are people gathered there. People who do things like rent rooms and provide hot baths.”

“True. I just don’t like people very much.”

Hell, thought Terry. It’s not even a lie.

“Shocking,” said Ekori in a dry tone.

Terry shrugged and said, “I never claimed to be complicated.”

He did make a point to hang back at the gate and let Haresh do the talking. Not that it proved at all necessary. The guards were not, even in Terry’s limited experience, what one might describe as top-shelf examples. They asked a few rudimentary questions, accepted it all at face value, and waved them through. If anything, they seemed excited that adventurers were visiting the town. Given that there was a guild hall there, he wasn’t sure what to make of that reaction. It seemed as though adventurers ought to be coming through on at least a semi-regular basis. What do I know? Maybe this is just one of those places that doesn’t get a lot of visitors from anywhere. Despite the fact that the town was on a road, it didn’t mean it was a well-traveled road. There might be other roads that led to more popular destinations.

He did his best not to give the guards the side-eye as he walked past. It was ultimately to his advantage if they were incompetent. It was difficult not to stare. They lived into the stereotype of the lazy cop if any two people ever had. Overweight. Mustaches. Put them in a police car, give them some coffee and doughnuts, and those two could have been found in any small town back in his world. If either of them said, respect my authoratah, he was going to lose it. He would be physically incapable of restraining the laughter. He knew that would be bad and totally counterproductive, but facts were facts. His control had limits. Fortunately, neither of them seemed interested in asserting their authoritah. So, disaster was averted.

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Terry did end up parting ways with the other adventurers for part of the day. One of the lessons he’d learned the hard way was that he needed to go and do his shopping before he did anything else. Haresh, Ekori, and Jaban seemed fixated on getting rooms. He found out where they were staying, checked his aversion to all strangers, and got some directions. Visiting the local market was a trial, even if it wasn’t a particularly unique trial. It just proved as tedious and patience testing as his previous visits to markets had been. He had paid attention to how the haggling worked and remembered that vendors got a lot less aggressive when he gave out subtle signs of his unhappiness. Things like drumming his fingers on the hilt of his jian and scowling like he meant to murder people.

He was pretty sure that he still overpaid a few times. On the other hand, he wasn’t desperately searching for survival items on that trip. The only thing that remotely fell into that category was food, which was readily available if nothing special. He even picked up a few spices that he’d seen Ekori and Jaban using in their food. He’d never intentionally make his food as spicy as they did, but he did like a bit of kick now and then. The biggest disappointment of the day was his failure to find anyone selling the stuff they’d used to make that curry stand-in, which frustrated him. That almost-curry had been like finding a little piece of home in Chinese Period Drama Hell. He was almost as frustrated, if far less surprised, to discover that no one had ever even heard of anything like coffee. He tried describing the beans and just ended up confusing people.

“Beans?” asked one vendor. “No, you want Vallens. He’s a farmer. He sells beans.”

“No. No. That isn’t what I—” Terry had drifted to a stop and remembered that dried beans kept well. “Where’s Vallens’s stall?”

With his coffee fantasy shattered to fragments, he’d finally settled on some tea that had been described as extremely dark and bitter. He was certain it wouldn’t taste anything like coffee, but even a sad coffee substitute was better than nothing at all. I’d still murder someone for an espresso. He wasn’t even sure that he was being hyperbolic. If there was a place to get an espresso and someone tried to keep him from it, he might actually murder them. He couldn’t even convince himself he’d feel bad about it afterward. A fact that made him wonder if being in this world had already damaged him beyond repair. It’s not like I’ve got a lead on going home anyway. Not unless I can find Truck-kun and extort the damnable thing.

It was another idea that put a smile on his face but also suffered from a serious problem in execution. How does one summon a death-dealing horseless carriage? What does one use to extort such a thing? Did Truck-kun have weak points where he could apply pressure? Were there tiny-toy-car-sized children out there that he could find and hold hostage? That possibility made him feel more than a little icky. Holding kids hostage was definitely a bridge too far, even if they did have internal combustion engines instead of hearts. Terry tucked that notion away for later examination. Once he understood this world a little better, maybe he could figure out a way to summon the homicidal automobile.

In the meantime, though, he might as well go in for a bit of that decadent shelter and get a bath. The town was smaller than the last one, and he managed to find the inn without much trouble. He didn’t even need to wait for a bath. It seemed the place was set up with several rooms that contained the big metal tubs. As he soaked in the tub, he concluded that he needed to figure out some kind of shower substitute that he could use on the road. The world was full of magic. How hard could it be to get warm water and pressure connected in one device? Granted, he didn’t know anything about plumbing and water heating, but he didn’t need to make it himself. He just needed to find someone who could throw together a solution for him. Even a kludge solution that only worked sometimes would be enough to satisfy him. There was simply something about being clean that made him like the world wasn’t as hostile.

He resisted the urge to reach out and pet Dusk, who was curled up nearby on the thick, folded towel he meant to use to dry off. He doubted she would appreciate it if he got her wet. She’d certainly looked askance at the full tub. Apparently, that thing about cats and water held true across dimensions. He had been surprised that the inn owner hadn’t complained at all. He supposed that it was just the power of cuteness at work again. She’d looked at the man with her big eyes and any resistance had melted away like an ice cream cone on hot pavement. When she’d leapt from his shoulder down to the counter and pounced after a loose string on the man’s sleeve, she’d earned a big grin. Even if Terry managed to get himself kicked out of the place, he was pretty sure that Dusk could come back whenever she wanted. After the water had started to transition from warm to cool, he’d reluctantly gotten out and found his way downstairs to where the others were waiting.

“Are you ready to go to the Adventurer’s Guild?” demanded Jaban.

Terry eyed the young man and decided that there must be a tavern nearby that he wanted to visit. He was a little too eager. An intuition supported by Ekori’s eye-roll.

“Sure,” said Terry. “Just let me go grab my pack.”

“What makes you think you’ll need your pack?” asked Ekori.

“Experience,” said Terry in a tired voice as he headed for his room.