George entered Dossul as a nameless immigrant of a foreign land that was also left nameless. There were no expectations for him to fulfill and no guidance to be given. He was just lost in a new land with no means to support himself. Or rather, no means he had the will to use.

He took time to briefly marvel at the state of the medieval city. He thought it would be a terrible sight to behold with mud streets and broken houses everywhere, but his preconceived notions were proven terribly wrong. It was much better than any castletown he expected. Better than any he’d seen in fiction.

It was a town, very simple and well put together, like any town would be. One main, large river bisected the town and had many bridges that ran across it like stitches, and two wide roads traveled parallel to it all the way up to the mountain of a castle.

On either side of the wide river were the major trading and financial sectors of the township. Markets and vendors held sway over the riverside economy. At the entrance of the city he saw a few stables with their own yards for trotting and outdoor grooming of the horses. Beside those, along the outer limit that ran parallel to the outer walls, were inns and taverns.

The city seemed to be arranged initially along the river, controlling and commanding it with the mountainous Dossulacrum Castle in the distance. The roads were straight and segmented, grids like the river crossings outside, until they weren’t. That was where the true residential side started.

The houses of the common folk weren’t dirty or run down, they looked nice. Much like the antiquated villages in France of the old towns of Britan, they were simple but relaxing looking places with chimneys and yards. Nearly every yard had a henhouse. Some had duck pens. Some had dogs. Remarkably, even out into what George thought were the slums, people were still afforded the space to have yards of their own.

There was little at fault in the way of living he saw but for the lack of technology and convenience. It was a true medieval world. Nothing was lit, no lamp posts or poles. A few houses had holders for torchers beside their doors. Every other street corner, in an alternating fashion from one block to the next, had a brazier as well. The roads were lined with stone and flattened gravel, not quite traditional cobblestone but close enough, until he reached the outer limits away from the castle.

The great Castle acted like a middling beacon where all proper civilization had to crowd around. The monolith’s shadow seemed to sweep across the whole of the city, from wall to wall, with the sun rotating behind it. George could only see parts of it from a distance, but within the city limits the details were more astonishing than without.

The castle itself was just part of the pillar. It wasn’t so much a mountain as the remains of one. Like the flesh of the land had been stripped away leaving nothing but a rigid spine stuck out of the ground. There, in that pillar of bone, was a solid fortress.

Battlements were carved around the base, like rows of Roman columns, with tall windows from the middle up. Above that were more detailed jutting barricades, like houses that were just growing out of the rock face, foundation and all. Further up was a great arch of a castle gate that was flanked by two narrow towers with parapets that jutted out and over the base of the mound.

Whatever lied within was likely even more impressive. It was an unassailable fortress from every angle but the front. From his entry into the city, the river ran directly up to it and formed a ring around it. He could see a mist of rapids far away that obscured the base of the mountain in a fog, making it seem like it penetrated through a sea foam and was a giant limestone tower standing in the middle of the sea.

It was incredible enough that he forgot his own plight and worries as he beheld it. It took the braying of a horse behind him to get him to move off the main road and onto the softened grass walkways. It also distracted him from his more subtle desperation to hide his gun. His hand slipped out of his pocket, and the gun with it, still fixed to his clutched fingers.

The driver of the horse-drawn carriage looked out over George without concern. George scrambled to hide his gun, afraid of the reaction it would draw, but the man just ambled away, horse and all. He got a good look at it, too. There was no mistaking from that distance what George held was a gun.

He didn’t know, George realized. No one but him knew that they should be afraid of it. Hiding it didn’t make much sense, except that it was undoubtedly strange and very firm. Even unloaded it was still a viable weapon, just less of one than normal. Which gave him pause to think.

He looked at the gun again, doing his best to hide it from the procession of street traffic just behind him. He wanted to figure out how it worked. It was attached to his body and wouldn’t go away any time soon, it seemed.

George wasn’t familiar at all with guns. The most he knew was pulling the trigger made the bullet go out, and in movies people were always perfectly accurate all the time. How they worked in reality was a slight mystery. He wasn’t so dumb to think it was magic. It was, in all technicality, a machine. It had moving parts that worked in tandem to perform a function. Every part of it was useful towards that function. He just had to learn which parts did what and how to make them do it again.

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And he decided that he had to do it indoors, just in case. Explaining away an accidental gunshot was much easier if no one saw him do it. No one would even know what a gunshot was. They might assume a chicken coop collapsed, or someone dropped a metal sword on the ground.

George decided to start trying his luck. He pocketed the gun and made his way to the nearest shed to see if they had some hay to sleep on - or something. Anything would do. It was mid-day and time was passing. He had to find a place to sleep for whatever labor one hand could bring.

The first stop was the first carriage stable, Dossul Porting Guild. The interior of the business section, where the people were corralled while their horses were penned, was a very old-fashioned lobby of sorts. The kind a historic hotel would have, but not one that would be in function. More like a side room with a few chairs and tables and one bigger countertop that led to a room in the back.

There was a short queue to wait for, and most of its members were sitting to wait for their turns. Each time one of the men got up to speak to the clerk they were led into the back and were there for ten minutes or more. After the third person got up and did their business, George decided to press himself and test his luck a bit more.

He went up to the counter and tapped on it to get the attention of the clerk, a young man with very short bowl-cut hair in a two-piece tunic with a hide vest overtop.

“Excuse me,” George said, quietly, “I’m not here on business, per say, but I -.”

“What can I help you with, sir?” the guildmate asked in a light voice.

“Well, I’d like to help,” George said. “Somehow. For lodging. I’m passing through - I’m not from here, you see. I was sent here on business but my carriage was - a wheel broke and we had to abandon it. My friends, or my partners, they’re carrying next to nothing.” He shrugged his fake bum arm. “And I broke this one, or sprained it. Can’t use it. But I’m trying to arrange lodging for us, and if you have anything -.”

“What company are you with, sir?” the clerk asked.

George froze up. His eyes darted around. His fingers flexed against the solid, metal grip of his gun.

“Ironworks,” he answered.

“Ironworkers from Murton?” the man asked.

“We came through there, yes,” George quickly confirmed.

The guilder tapped his hand on the counter and looked at the door to the back room, where all the clients disappeared into. “Are your partners far behind you?”

“They should be up here by nightfall,” George answered. “They wanted to salvage what they could, no wasted effort. And so they’re trying to mend the cart. Failing that they may convert it into a pulley - a, a pulling cart and bring it here. So they sent me to….find a place….”

“Will they be arriving through the main gate?” he asked.

“Yes,” George answered.

“I shall make an arrangement for a distressed carriage retrieval down the road,” he said, “and send a scout out. Would you go with him and guide -?”

“Uh, well,” George stammered. “That’s not what I was sent to….uhhh -.”

“If there is such an important company,” the guilder said, “stranded on our roads nearby we must assess the value of their goods and the worth of sending a distress carriage down to collect it for them.”

George leaned away and looked at the room. The proper businessmen whose time he was taking up were starting to glare at him. And his stowed arm. George leaned in close and waited for the guilder to lean in as well.

“Is there a place where beggars can stay the night?” he whispered.

The guilder squinted his eyes suspiciously. George was beat. His lie tripped him flat onto his own face. He just hoped there was no legal ramification for wasting the clerk’s, and the guild’s time.

“The Church of Ward,” the clerk whispered, “in the mid-town, down the street, facing the Red Bridge, may take you. If you are honest.”

“Thank you,” George whispered. He turned and nearly ran out of the hall and didn’t look back. He walked the path along the river and quickly lost his shameful slump. His lies had to stop working eventually. His own natural instincts to try and wit and wile his way out of trouble were more apt for a more distraction-oriented society. A place and time where people had all the information and proof in the world at their fingertips, chose social media which affirmed his half-truths and excuses.

He was truly out of his element. No phone, no internet, no electricity. As he passed the many food vendors that were preparing to close up their shops for the day he saw there was also a slight lack of basic hygienics. There was a wet market for meat, whole cuts and chunks of various animal parts hung on hooks in the open air. Vendors chopped cuts with the same hand they greeted their friends and customers with.

George kept his eyes close to the buildings along the river road to see if one looked like a church. What he missed out on was the other significant tell, the bridge it sat in front of. Each of the main, wide bridges that arched across the river were colored with different kinds of stone. He reached one that had a red hue, not unlike classic brickwork, except the stones themselves were wide and flat.

Across the bridge, he saw a building with a towering steeple and a sort of windchime made of long, heavy looking metal pipes at the top. Behind him, also facing the bridge, was another apparent church. That one had a gong in the steeple, wide and flat, and not a bell at all. He wasn’t sure which one was the right place and felt he would be in real danger if he picked the wrong one. The clerk said the Ward church might take him in. He could have just said a church, any church, or named two churches if both were hospitable.

Taking a risk seemed like a bad idea. George waited for someone to pass by and reached out to them. An older lady, carrying a wide basket full of cloth on her head, turned to him cautiously.

“Which is the Ward Church?” he asked, pointing back and forth to either.

“This one,” she said, pointing with her head under the heavy wicker to the gong-church.

“Thank you,” George bowed. She glared at him for a moment and then continued on her way. George went his way up the steps and quietly entered. As his leg passed the threshold into the entryway he felt his gun resist - like it was being pulled away. The magnetic force stopped once he was fully inside.

He looked down at his sidearm in worry. He was already scared of it being a gun. He never accounted for magic existing, too.