Guild Credit is awesome. They offer double the payment in Guild Credit and the guild has practically everything I could need. One rat tail equals two ten sided copper coins if you take the credit. A bunk is twenty copper rounds, two copper deks, or two of the little wooden Guild Credit coins with tens carved into them. And due to nobody else using the bunks, I've got the whole room to myself. A meal is also a dek and you can't get food this good anywhere for only a dek.

First thing I did after getting paid for my first rat was buy some leg hold traps. Dealing with giant rats would be a lot easier if they couldn't reach me. I had to carry a couple giant fucking rocks to tie the traps to, but it very quickly paid off. Caught fucking four more rats and just poked them with a sharp stick from a distance. It worked so well. Got three the next day. And then I got sick. Apparently the rats carry some disease that makes you stupid weak, feverish, and unable to eat. So yeah, I spent the next four days in the infirmary. On the bright side, the care is free and acolyte is cute.

I reentered the sewers to find only one trap. The disembodied limb stuck in its jaws. Apparently the rats are willing to chew off their own legs. Yuck. I reset my trap and went to my appointment.

Emily was tall and pretty with long blonde hair, vibrant blue eyes, and very pale skin. Her sort was common on these isles, but she had the additional paleness of someone who didn't spend much time outdoors and the soft roundness of her arms said she ate well and didn't do much in the way of physical labor. She had a sweet smile and a patience that I think my lack of vocabulary was starting to wear away. She sat at her desk flipping through several books and taking notes as I sat with another fiddly and expensive looking device. Again, the bits and bobs were mounted on a copper plate. This one had ten clear crystals, each with a rune next to them that I recognized as the numbers one through ten. My understanding was that I was supposed to push my… Self? Energy? Something into it. I wasn't getting very far, but Emily's obliviousness to my presence as she worked said this usually took a while. I tore myself away from the tangent of how many languages I could count to ten in and focused back on the device. I've tried staring at it, willing it to do something, imagining an aura that I could push at it, but nothing. I considered the blood moving in my veins like water. That was life force, but I doubted bleeding on the thing would work, or be appreciated. I thought of the sea. The tide moving in and out. The waters moving from the ocean, me, to the fjords of my fingertips. Back and forth, in and out. I jumped a little when the number one crystal lit up for a brief second.

"Did you get it?" Emily asked. "Try again."

I stared at her, having no idea what she just said. She just sighed and made a "carry on" gesture with her hand, returning her attention back to her notes.

I tried again, visualizing myself as an ocean and my will as the tide. Again the crystal lit up. Brighter and brighter with each influx of my tide.

Rolling magical aptitude… 6.

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Six crystals lit up. I tried pushing harder, but all that it accomplished was to make the six already glowing crystals brighter. Now that I had some idea of how to visualize the flow, I could maintain the light. Visualizing my energy more like a river out one hand, through the device, and into the other.

"Six of ten." Emily said as she noted it down. "You've got a good Stat spread. You could go Dex based Fighter, Ranger, Rouge, Druid, Witch, and you have no idea what I'm saying do you?" Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. "Okay Jak."

"Injung." I corrected.

"Right. You need better language skills. Do you understand?"

"Language." I parrot-ed. Assuming she was saying I needed more knowledge of this particular tongue.

"Yeah, right. You. Here. At dark. Understand?"

Shit, now she was mad or annoyed, or something. "Me, here, sun down." I gave her a thumbs up when she nodded. I liked my advisor. More than that, I liked that I had an advisor. Now if only we could understand each other.

With only one trap, I still scored two of the giant rats. Which ment there must have been a lot down there. After dinner Igot to meet my tutor. An older balding man with thin sticks for legs and a round middle. I had always thought that Imperials acted like they were better than everyone else. Listening to this guy, I was getting the idea that it might have just been the way the dialect worked.

"You shall elaborate to me how it is possible that you are incapable of fathoming your own linguistics."

"I don't speak Imperial."

He glared at me. "Then elaborate onto which linguistic you believe it is you parley."

"Na'atau."

“What?”

“I speak Na’atau.”

“You vibrate like a fool. I was informed that you parley Ityean. Is that not accurate?”

“Yes.” I replied exasperated. “But Ityean and Imperial are not the same.”

“Oh? And how are these worms not inter-changeable?”

I threw my hands up. “Right there. A worm is a small creature that lives in the ground and eats dirt.”

He stared at me perplexed. “A worm is indeed an organ of the mouth.”

“That’s a tongue.”

“I see. Still this in no way shall prevent us from transferring the knowledge of the local worm, erm, tongue.”

The next hour was spent memorizing the local runes. How to draw them and what sounds they made. Basically I was supposed to work on this myself on my own time, which to be fair, I had a reasonable amount of. Oh and apparently this one hour was costing me twenty copper. Got to love guild credit.

I set out with two new traps the next morning after breakfast and studying. Despite having three traps set, I only caught two rats the whole day. If I went lower than two, I would be running negative on money. I’d have to think of something else.

My attention was brought to the woman at the new registration booth while I was eating breakfast. Which was eggs and sausage, again. She had practically been yelling, but I was busy with my language studying and not paying attention until I heard my name, well, not my name, but the name people keep calling me for some reason. You’d think a port town would understand that “Jak” was just a low ranking sailor.

“Go talk to her if you don’t want to die!” The receptionist said before shuttering her station with a slam. I looked blankly at the person, who was staring blankly back at me.