The few times in my life I’ve woken in a place I did not know I didn’t panic. I sat up, looked around and tried to figure out how I got there.
When I woke up in a room with an oil lamp instead of a never-dark torch and thick furs covering the bed I had perhaps ten seconds of sanity, then my mind latched onto the idea that I had died again. For real this time, and once again switched universes.
Panic overwhelmed me and I found myself hyperventilating.
The door opened and Mrs. Kine dropped the clothing she was carrying in a chair and rushed over repeating calming phrasing like, “It’s okay now.”
“Are you thirsty?”
As soon as she asked I was.
She had a stoneware pitcher on the table and a big wooden mug. She handed me the mug. It was sized like one of those German steins at Oktoberfest. I drank half of it without breathing and then had to suck down air again.
“What was that?”
“Your awakening,” she said with a smile, “hurray,” she added with a small clap.
Then she frowned and tried to sit on the edge of the bed but I was too close. So she snorted in a cute way and stood back up.
“Normally you have family and friends around you and are prepared for the- awkwardness.”
“And where are we?”
She blushed and then went to deal with the clothing.
“The marriage-room at an inn in town,” she said with her back to me.
It didn’t translate as honeymoon suite exactly but my mind told me that wasn’t far off the mark.
“Oh,” I said. The stupid grin was still on my face when she turned around and I grinned all that much harder.
“Don’t be smiling like that,” she said with a grin of her own, “you couldn’t even stand yesterday.”
“Does it-” I was going to ask, Does it require standing, when I understood what she said.
“Yesterday?”
“The priest carried you here himself. He apologize by the way, but he didn’t think it would work. He thought you were playing some sort of odd joke.”
She paused as she took a breath and let it out.
“To be honest,” she said slowly, “a small part of me thought you were too. This is not possible, and I’m your wife and even if you don’t wish to tell the priest what happened I should be told.”
She sounded somewhat stern at the end, but she was serious.
“Mr.-” I held up a hand and she cut off.
“I will tell you,” I said as I thought about it, “some of it. If I tell you all of it it could shatter- if you believed me- I will tell you about me, but not about some of it. Not about things that might cause problems-”
She moved the chair close to the bed, refilled the mug I was sipping from and then sat and waited.
“I’m not Mr. Kine. This is his body but he died. He was in fact murdered by Mr. Wellworth. Poisoned. The day before the ambush I- that is Mr. Kine felt sick, you and he got into an argument that morning and he told you that you spoke too much or something of that nature.
She didn’t nod when I paused or react at all, simply waited.
“I’m from another universe. I was given his body. I’m not a god or anything special. Just a man. I was thirty-eight years old when my universe- that is, when I died. Those are our years it would be like nineteen in your years. Our planet didn’t have planetary rings, what you call the belt. It didn’t have monster or magic or mana. We had technology that could be considered magical. I could look at a device and literally have the world’s knowledge at my fingertips at any point. We could fly around the planet, go under the oceans, we even went to the moon.”
She didn’t seem excited at all so I took a long drink and set about ordering my thoughts.
“My taking possession of his body was not planned, and with it came complications. Namely that I died very quickly. I believe Mr. Wellworth killed me again, though at the time I thought you did it by accidentally giving me the wrong medicine. I was told the others in the same position as me, that is on other worlds, other people took over other lives- We were dying because we didn’t know how the worlds worked, so we were given a chance to learn.
“I found myself on the wagon’s driver’s bench, next to you, who was angry with me for something a dead man had done. I was killed in the ambush, and found myself on the bench again.”
She reacted a bit here, shifting her shoulders and changing how she hand her hands.
“I know it’s fantastical, but I believe I can prove it, but I’ll get to that. Over many loops I learned how to kill the ambushers and the men at the camp and second ambush point. It took hundreds of loops, but eventually I did it.
“At first I knew nothing about your world. Not a thing. You were very helpful in answering questions that even a child should know. We grew close a few times. You spoke of your father and your mother and your home life. I believe you told me things in the loops you likely haven’t told me in this one. I think that’s how I can prove I was at least in multiple loops.
“What’s something you haven’t told me, that you might have told me?”
“How would I know?” she said.
“Did you tell me about your father? Your mother? Your first slave Elle? Your dog Drake and your cat Mouser?”
“You could have learned all that from someone else,” she said easily.
I nodded.
“What do you want to know?”
“Do you love me?” she asked directly.
“I believe so,” I said and winced internally. I should have just said yes.
“I believe I love you as well,” she said seriously, “and most of that happened after the ambush. You were- he was a bit standoffish for most of the trip but I was committed to marriage and starting a new life with someone. I will admit that at my age and with the banker before me, I prayed for literally anyone else. My prayers were answered and I will work to make this marriage a bond we may both be proud of.”
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“I will, um, work for that too,” I said quickly.
I drank more of the water as she sat there.
“Did you have any questions?”
“What classes did you earn on your world?” she asked.
“We didn’t have classes like you have them. We didn’t have skills or classes or spells. We were all like the purist you have here I guess you could say.”
She was shaking her head slightly.
“How did you better yourself?”
“Well, we had school and education do you have that here for children.”
She nodded.
“Each generation of people built on the generation before. Surely in your own history you didn’t always have stone or wood buildings. At some point in your history you lived in caves or huts or something like that?”
She opened her mouth then nodded instead.
“And someone learned how to stack stone and they made a better building and the next generation learned it and they all used it. Then some time later they learned how to make roofs and doors and windows and the world got a little bit more complex but also better. We did that as well, for everything from medicine to, well everything.”
“And the gods did not help you?” she asked.
I opened my mouth and then closed it. What if I told her there were no gods?
“That’s one of those things I’m not going to speak on.”
“The nightmares you have, they are from this world or your own?”
“Here,” I said slowly, “It took me a long time to find a path forward in the loops. In some of them we were captured, tortured.”
“What is your happiest memory from before, and your happiest memory since you arrived?”
“From before? That’s sort of difficult. I guess it would have been when I was in school. I was in-” boy scouts didn’t translate.
“I was in a class for young men. There were various challenges and tasks and when you completed the tasks you earned a small cloth patch. A badge. If you earned enough, and then did a big project that benefited the community, you could earn a different patch and a title. Eagle Scout. I didn’t have a lot in my life to be proud of but I had that. My parents were- they were no longer married and my brother was always sick so everyone had to take care of him- It doesn’t matter,” I said not wanting to talk about my younger brother or his death when I was only fifteen.
“On this world? Honestly it was near a river with a girl I liked and we watched a spider in the hopes he would catch a fish, and even though he didn’t it was a pretty great day.”
There was a knock on the door.
Mrs. Kine looked started as if someone had whispered in her ear.
She stood and looked around the room making sure of something before she opened the door.
“Yes?”
“The mayor wishes to speak with you.”
“I will be done in a moment,” she said.
“Both,” the woman said, “if you are able.”
“In a moment.”
“Of course.”
We were two blocks away from the tavern where the Mayor had been when we first arrived and where he was again.
It didn’t seem like I’d slept for a day but-
I slowed to a stop a frown on my face.
“What?” Mrs. Kine asked when she noticed I wasn’t beside her.
“I’m awakened now?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“So I can earn skills and what not?”
“Yes,” she said with a smile.
“How? If I walk do I just earn a walking skill? Is it based on distance? How do I see my stats- Can I do magic!” I all but shouted the last.
She took two steps back to me and pulled me along.
“No magic without a card. All spells are from cards, scrolls, wands, or Class bonuses for almost everyone. There are academies where they can teach you to shape mana into crude spells. Those spells become Class Skills if you are lucky, which grant a Caster Class if you are even luckier. Those let you make your own spells, and if you get really lucky with class bonuses or class skills record them onto scrolls or wands.
“As to skills, you’ll first have to learn how to learn,” she said with a smile.
“This is serious,” I said.
She stopped walking and faced me, the tavern in sight just thirty paces away.
“This is new to you, but everyone you see has gone through this. You want to learn skills right, but not just some, all the skills. You’ll practice and work hard and better yourself no matter what it takes.”
I blinked at her, then nodded.
“It is a phase,” she said slowly, “I will not deny you the joy of earning skills like you earned your cloth patches as a boy, but it will have to wait until later. I requested permission to live here, and this may be that discussion.”
“Live here?”
She shifted a bit and then looked at me.
“We have very little by way of coin or clothing. The priest gave me this dress, thank you for noticing by the way,” I opened my mouth but she continued, “but we need a place to stay, jobs to earn coin until we can plant or learn to hunt or harvest. And we need that before winter arrives. As it is we will survive this winter on the charity of others already.”
“So we need to make a good impression,” I said.
“We do,” she said seeing I understood the importance of the meeting.
There was no line outside but the Mayor was still holding meetings at the tables in the tavern.
Martha was there and waved us over, indicating we should sit at a table.
“I’ll get you a bowl,” she said.
“The priest didn’t want to say,” Mrs. Kine said, “but this is Martha’s old dress.”
“May I join you?” the Mayor asked moments after Martha set three bowls of stew on the table.
“Of course,” Mrs. Kine said while I nodded.
“Thank you Martha,” the Mayor said.
He began eating so we did as well.
He ate like one of those army recruits in boot camp where they have exactly two minutes to eat whatever they can get down.
He was done while I was having issues with the heat. Both the spice and the temperature. Though it was odd. I didn’t like spicy food from Earth. But here it was good, just still spicy.
“A couple of the trappers in town have some running classes. They verified your accounts of Nightfyre, even found one of the mass graves. No one wants to leave, not before winter. They talk about being able to withstand an attack because we have a choke point in Splitrock but any silver rank team could make into town a hundred different ways. They me to defend it.”
He let out a long sigh.
“I’m sending the runners, the ones who saw the graves first hand and you Mr. Kine who killed some of the gang already to talk to a gold ranked adventurer by the name of Red Lightning. He’s got his own personal outpost over near Lark. Shows up once ever two years to unload a bunch of condensate items and buy a bunch of meals and supplies. I’m going to get anyone who will join me and check out Nightfyre properly. If we can we will kill everyone there and liberate the captives. If we can’t we’ll burn what we can and try to kill anyone that comes after us.”
“Burn it?” I asked.
“Yup. I promise you the men and women that built those buildings would rather have then razed to the ground than occupied by their killers.”
“How deep is the outpost?” Mrs. Kine asked.
“Standard,” he said and I saw her face change. It didn’t get white like a human face would but I know it was the same cause. She was disturbed by that answer.
“You won’t have to go that deep,” he said seriously, “I doubt you could survive the trip. And it wouldn’t even be the monsters that get you. I’m sure he has the Hole trapped so no one can come behind him.
“He’ll have something though, an enchanted bell or the like in the surface camp. That being said it’s in the shallows. Sits at level three. Good news is it’s not to far from a border. Just an hour’s run. Trick is finding the place. My brother used to do the run and I’ve checked the map he made but I don’t see it marked on there. Likely Mr. Lightning requested it not show up on any map. I’ve got a description though so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
I didn’t knock on wood but I wondered if I should.
“And we need to go why?” Mrs. Kine asked.
“Word is,” he said leaning partially across the table, “that he’s got a tier four combat class of some sort. Shoots lightning if I had to guess. He’s also got some sort of tier two merchant class he switches over to to do his trading. Can read the others and tell if they are lying. Likely he knows this gang as well, as they were from out East as he was. Might know some of the people you killed and who they ran with that you didn’t kill. And in truth he’s the only option for fighting. I’m the best this town has and while technically silver ranked I’m a tier two support class who sold most of his gear and cards to fund my trip west.”
“We will need two healing potions a piece,” Mrs. Kine said in a way that sounded strongly of bartering.
“To be returned if not used,” she added.
“It’s the shallows with no fliers,” he said slowly, “and you are running to a safe-stay.”
“That we have to find. Built by a man who sets traps and likely doesn’t want visitors,” she countered.
He considered for a moment then nodded slowly.
“Anything else?”
“My husband has a hunting bow and a few arrows, but I’ll take a light shield for the imps and club for the henkals. We have two blankets, good boots, but lack clothing and time to patch what we have.”
“I can do a leather jacket each, it’ll give you some protection-”
“With hoods,” she added.
“With hoods,” he agreed.
“I can’t get you a proper mace but if you come with me I have several walking staffs. You pick one out and I’ll get it cut down to size and see if we can get a few horse shoes attached to the end before you leave.”
I waited, eating another bowl of stew when Martha brought it out to me.
I’d have to learn how to learn. I wonder what that meant.