The camp was abuzz with activity. Some of them were energized by the speech, finding the new, or perhaps reacquired, goal as a drive to push forward. Others took a more pensive approach to the speech, considering the words spoken and all the implications they held. I saw quite a few of them look over at me every now and then, but when I made eye contact with them, they would shift their gaze elsewhere.

Durdan remained on the elevated land for a moment more, admiring his work with some slight nods and a pleased smile. After he had a moment to bask in his success, he turned away from the majority of the camp and back to the other members of the council, who did not look nearly as impressed.

“Durdan, you overstep.” The satyr representative stated coldly. “This should have been a decision that the council voted on.” He made an offhand gesture towards me. Apparently, the speech was acceptable but letting me exist without a collar was not. Evidently, they did not learn anything from it.

Durdan remained confident and did not bow out to their displeased looks. “He is not a Thrainian. You would have us hold him in chains when he is not involved in this conflict and has thus far shown an extraordinary level of patience?”

The representative shook his head. “Him being an unidentified race only makes what you did more unacceptable. We still have no idea what the anomaly inside of him is capable of, and now he is an unknown species with unknown capabilities on top of that? What will you do if he suddenly goes berserk in the camp? How many would die just to stop him should all that magical energy he has be released against us?”

“There is nothing to suggest that would ever happen, and if it is a conscious decision that must be made by him to attack, then wouldn’t it be better if we treat him as an equal instead of something that should be feared?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Durdan sighed. “If it turns out I was wrong, then I will personally correct my error. Happy?” This was turning out to be a very morbid conversation for me to be listening to.

“No, and this is not the end of this conversation. You will answer for this in full during our next meeting.” The grumpy old goat turned on the spot and left, followed by most of the other representatives. The Droln lingered for a second and gave Durdan a shrug before leaving as well. I kind of felt bad for Durdan having to deal with this bureaucratic fallout, but it seemed he had at least one friend on the council that would help, unless I seriously misinterpreted that shrug.

With the rest of the council out of sight, Durdan sighed heavily and let his posture slip, showing his exhaustion with the scenario. I felt like I should do something, or at the very least thank him for sticking his neck out for me and possibly making my life here a whole lot easier. I stepped up a little closer to him, he did not notice me until I started talking.

“Durdan.” He broke out of the trance he had fallen into. “I... I want to thank you, for doing all that. I can see that you took a risk and circumvented the others, so thank you for that.”

He huffed lightly with a thin smile on his face. “It was as much for us as it was for you. I should thank you as well. It was what you said that made me seriously think about the direction that this war was heading. If you hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we just continued to fall further into that dark pit until we started committing just as many atrocities as the Thrainians. Even if we won the war against Alathos, we would still have lost, simply changing the face of the tyrant that sits on the throne.”

“Well, then I commend you for doing what was right, no matter the consequences.” I gained a lot of respect for Durdan. While he is a general and wants to win the war, he also wants to do it the right way.

“Thank you, but there is still much to be done. I will need to make some new rules about how we conduct ourselves in the future and make sure everyone obeys them.”

“I don’t envy you that job.”

“Then you are a wise man indeed. Now, I must sort out the aftermath of this situation, so if you’ll excuse me.”

Before he left, I offered one last thing, a handshake and some parting words. “Good luck, Durdan.”

He regarded the offered hand for a second before giving a slight smile and grasping my hand, almost completely enveloping it due to the size. “To you as well. May you find happiness.” With the conversation officially ended, Durdan went back to sort through the mess that he had created for himself. Now it was just me and Kala as she stood slightly behind me.

The rest of the camp slowly trickled back to their own tasks, all of them in various states of contemplation. Durdan certainly kicked up a lot of dirt with that speech, and now everyone can see just how messy things had gotten for them. One could only hope that they each come to their own realization of what needs to change.

For us, we would continue with our day, maybe give some consideration to expanding the circle of people I knew. I guess that would depend on how they started treating me after all these revelations. But before all that, I had my regular appointments and acquaintances to meet up with.

Sert let us into the lab, and he greeted us with a rather large smile. “Well, James, that was certainly an interesting speech the good general gave, wouldn’t you say?”

I huffed a little in amusement. “Yeah, in more ways than one.”

“Certainly. It must be a relief to no longer have that collar, but I must ask, what do you intend to do now?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“There is no more coercion forcing you to do anything. If you find these tests to be troublesome or otherwise uncomfortable for you, then you could simply not show up anymore. I suppose I wish to know if there will be a change in our schedule.”

He did have a point. I could probably not show up if I wanted to, but some of the other representatives would most likely find that a tad bit objectionable, and it’s not like Sert has been doing anything disagreeable. “Well, I still made an agreement to do this, and quite frankly, I'm just as curious as you are to find out how this thing works.”

Sert gave a little dip of the head. “Glad to hear it. Shall we discover more together then?”

With a nod of agreement, we got back to work. The experiments today were directed towards trying to find the function of the snake. While I knew, Sert was still in the dark, and even with the recent events making things seem less grim than normal, I still wanted to keep it that way.

There were a couple of different things he tried. One was to see if the snake could have more than one specialization, which involved me attempting to make some stones levitate. It ended in failure, but we went through the entire spectrum of magic and then some before it was determined that I did not have another aptitude available.

During the various experiments, Kala decided that she was bored and sat on my lap, effectively serving to distract us both. Sert was not nearly as amused as the two of us were, making a few complaints about her being a distraction to the work he was doing. She didn’t really care, and Sert was forced to work around her antics for the time being.

In the middle of the experiments, I had a question come to mind that I decided to ask. “Hey Doc, is there such a thing as summoning magic?”

Sert raised an eyebrow at me. “Summoning magic? What do you mean?”

“Like, it is possible to pull something, or someone, from a faraway place to where you are now?”

Sert adopted a slightly probing gaze, and I tried my best to remain impassive. “I have no knowledge of such magic, but in order to do something like that, I would imagine it would require a massive amount of power to achieve such an effect.”

Like the power of a god. “Well, thanks anyway, just curious if that was possible.” Sert was looking at me like he had a question on his tongue that he wanted to let out yet didn’t. Eventually, he just got back to his experiments, but I had the feeling that this might be brought up again sometime in the future.

As the research session ended, Sert gave a few parting words. “Thank you for your cooperation again, James. I hope that you will have a significantly easier time in the camp now.”

“Thanks, Sert, things might get better soon, but we’ll have to wait and see how everyone else reacts to that speech.”

Kala poked me in the cheek. “Come on, this has been a good thing all around, I think you can be a little happy about it.”

“I’ll be happy if they decide to treat me like an actual person from now on.”

“I think their attitudes will change.” She said very confidently. I gave a little shrug but decided it was best not to argue with her. We would see what would happen soon enough.

Leaving Sert’s lab to head over to Velshi, we were interrupted en route. “Champi- err, James.”

Turning towards the sound, we saw Holdrem approaching. It had been a while since I last talked to him, but considering I had not been questioned about my regenerative abilities nor heard any rumors about it, I assumed he had been quiet as requested.

“Holdrem, it’s been a while.”

“Indeed, I was sent out scouting for a few days and only returned last night. It was certainly surprising to see the general take such a vocal stance for change. Tell me, did you... ‘inform’ him about yourself?”

“No, I'm still of the mind that the fewer people who know the better, especially when it comes to people in power.”

“A shame, but understandable. I would like to vouch for the general’s integrity though, he is a good leader and a man of honor. If you were to ask him to keep a secret such as this, I believe he would do so.”

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“While the glowing praise does ease some of my worries, I will have to remain firm in this until something else changes.”

“I see. Very well, I will continue to keep your secret, but hope that one day you will trust others with it.”

“Maybe one day, but I don’t think I'm in the right position, nor am I in the right state of mind to let that happen.”

Holdrem nodded a little. “I shall respect your decision. May the rest of your day be pleasant.”

We exchanged farewells and then got back to our schedule for the day. The camp felt different than before. The stares were not filled with their regular disdain or hatred, instead they seemed to be filled with contemplation, hesitation, and maybe some level of shame. It was an odd and abrupt change for me who only a couple hours ago was shunned by most of them. It seemed like they didn’t want to talk to me for another reason now. As long as they weren’t going to be openly hostile towards me anymore, I considered that a win.

We made it to Velshi’s place, which made me happy to be out of that awkward spotlight. Velshi was sitting at her desk and had another grin on her face when she saw us. “I bet that felt good ehh James?”

I chuckled a little. “Yeah, I guess it did.”

“How do you feel about a celebratory drink, I got a small stash that I keep around for special occasions.”

“Hmm, you know what, why not.” This seemed like as good an excuse as any and celebrating a major turning point sounded like it could be fun. Velshi got up and moved over to her bed, from there she reached behind the back corner and pulled out a bottle and two wooden cups.

“I’m afraid you two will have to share a cup, do you mind that?”

“I don’t really mind.” I said with a shrug.

“Me neither.” Kala replied.

Velshi nodded and poured a cup of the alcohol before handing it to me. She did the same with her cup and then put the bottle down on the table. She held her cup up in a cheers manner.

“Well, let’s make Durdan proud, to a better world.”

Despite me having very minimal vested interest in this world, mostly in the form of Kala, I felt it an appropriate enough toast to make. “A better world.” I raised my cup with hers and then we both took a drink. I got the liquid down and almost immediately started coughing as it burned all the way.

Velshi laughed and gave me a clap on the shoulder. “Pretty good right? Puts a little hair on the chest, doesn’t it?”

I found myself laughing a little bit as the cup was handed over to Kala. She looked at the cup with skepticism but in the end just sighed. “A better world.” She said before taking a drink. She didn’t have a much better reaction than I did, immediately setting into some heavy coughing and retching.

Velshi and I laughed as she sputtered and tried to look angry. In the end she just shoved the drink back into my hands. Velshi bumped cups with me as we took the second hit. It burned still, but I didn’t go into a fit of coughing this time as I knew what to expect.

“Yeah, the first sip is the one that paralyzes, after that you get to enjoy the effects.” Velshi commented while taking her sip, having a visible reaction to hard liquor.

“Fuck me if it doesn’t burn though.” I said with a hoarse voice which sent Velshi into another fit of laughter.

We talked, drank, and generally had a pretty good time for a while before trying to learn something. After a few minutes, however, the effects of the alcohol started to impair our ability to pay attention. Velshi decided that this was a reasonable excuse to cut the magic lessons short and get to sword fighting. Her logic was that if you can’t use your brain and your body is numb, best to beat up the body while you still could.

Drunken sword fighting is actually a lot more fun than sober sword fighting, less strict and more “hey, let’s hit each other with sticks for shits and giggles.” Not to say she didn’t try to teach me something, showing me a variety of close-range grapples that you could do even while drunk. Kala got in on it with Velshi as well, giving her some basic pointers for fighting barehanded. I can honestly say that I had a good time.

The physical activity and getting knocked on my ass a couple of time helped me sober up as well. By the end of the lessons, I was feeling pretty buzzed but not really drunk anymore. While I couldn’t really say if the knowledge she shared would be retained or not, I would at least remember this fondly.

“Alright you two, I think that will do for today. Oh, and James, I’m afraid I don’t have any books on the subject of your condition, so we will have to make our own. We can save that for another time though, don’t want to dampen the mood.”

“Fair enough, just make sure that there’s some time set aside for tomorrow. I think putting it off any longer won’t be all that healthy.”

“I concur, we will most definitely start tomorrow.”

With that bit of planning done, Kala and I went to go get lunch, saying one last goodbye to Velshi as we left. Still receiving a much larger variety of stares from the people we passed now; we made it to the line and took up position in it. I did not feel the threatening gazes burrowing into the back of my head anymore, but I was still being stared at by those behind me with a different kind of intensity.

We arrived at the front of the line and the chef was also giving me a look. He seemed to be going through an internal struggle of some sort, it was even delaying his normal workflow. After a moment that was starting to turn awkward, he sighed, folded his arms, and decided to speak his mind.

“Alright, I'm a big enough man to admit it, I did you wrong. Don’t even know what I was thinking, acting like one of those ‘noble’ Thrainians.” He spat on the ground. “It disgusts me now that I am thinking about it.” He shook his head.

While he didn’t actually say the words, I figured that was about as close to an apology as I would get. I gave him a slight knowing smile and a nod of the head in recognition at what he was trying to do.

He scoffed a bit as he looked at me. “You still need to work on handling a knife though, you’re shit with one.”

I let slip a little chuckle. That was the kind of reply you would expect from someone who took upon themselves the role of hard ass. Amusing, in a stereotypical kind of way.

“I’ll try to improve on that.” I said in an offhand manner.

He grunted and grabbed a bowl, handing it over to me. “Better learn fast then, don’t want you slowing us down.”

I decided to play into his version of banter a little, smirking and rolling my eyes. He gave me a half-lidded gaze with a slightly curled smile as we parted ways and he got back to serving everyone else. This was nice though, having a somewhat normal interaction with someone.

I waited for Kala to get her portions and meet up with me before we started to head back to our spot to eat. Along the way, yet another distraction came about in the form of someone addressing me.

“Hey, uhm, err...” I turned towards the voice and saw a Droln unintentionally lurking over me. “I uhm, actually don’t know what you are anymore.”

“It’s human, or James if you’re feeling generous, can I help you?” I asked while feeling slightly nervous being in front of this large individual.

“Well, uhm, I was actually here to extend an invitation of a sort. Would you care to sit with me and some others while we eat?”

“Uhm, could I ask why?”

He started scratching the back of his head. “We just were kind of curious I suppose, wanted to know more about you, how you are different from everyone else.” He started doing an awkward shuffle. It was strange seeing such an imposing figure act like he was uncomfortable.

“Oh, I don’t know.”

I got punched in the arm by Kala. “James! They’re trying, so you better give them a chance.”

I did realize that they were trying to find an excuse to talk to me, but it seemed like the entire situation would be extremely awkward given everything that’s happened. Still, Kala had a point, it was an opportunity that I shouldn’t let pass, creating a more ‘normal’ relationship between myself and the camp. Strike while the iron’s hot I suppose.

“Alright, I'll sit down with you.”

He perked up a little bit. “Great! Uhm, we’re sitting over there by a firepit.” He thumbed in the general direction he was referring to. I nodded and he led the way back to his group. Kala stayed close to me to provide some support.

The group that we met up with was sitting around an inactive firepit, talking and eating their meals. When we approached everyone became rather quiet. There were two Ulgor, a Valus, and a Nactren in this group, each looked to be in various stages of discomfort at my presence.

The Droln took to doing introductions for everyone. “Well, everyone, this is James and his friend...”

“Kala.” She answered.

“Kala, right.” He started listing names, starting with the Nactren then going through the Ulgors and the Valus last. “That’s Velian, then there’s Jorn and Otar, they’re brothers, the scaly little sneak over there is Ulthises...”

“Hey, why do I get the negative introduction?” Ulthises protested.

“Because you cheat whenever we bet on a game.” Ulthises folded his arms but didn’t deny the accusation. “Anyway, I'm Hargon, and uhm, yeah, feel free to sit where you like.” He sat down around the pit, and I chose a spot on a rock that was around the circle, Kala sitting right next to me.

Everyone continued to eat for a minute in deafening silence, just staring at one another. Yeah, this is awkward as hell. We really needed an icebreaker in this situation, but I had no idea what passed for regular conversation in this world. I figured since they were soldiers maybe asking about something related to fighting might be an easy way to start.

“So, uhm, I'm kind of getting my ass kicked in training. Do any of you have any pointers for swordplay?”

After a second, one of the Ulgor brothers, Otar, decided to answer me. “Well, I guess a general tip would be to try and force your opponent off balance, or into a situation where they are at a disadvantage. Out of curiosity, who's teaching you?”

“Velshi is teaching me.”

A couple of brows went up. “Oh, well in that case I think you’re basically screwed. If she has any weaknesses in a straight up fight, I don’t think anyone knows them.” There were some dry chuckles around the pit.

“Speaking from personal experience I take it?” I asked with a slight smile.

“Oh yeah, before she went all clerical on everything, she was in charge of teaching new recruits how to hold a sword right. I’m almost positive that most of the camp has had their asses kicked by her at one point or another. You got your finger broken when she cracked you on the knuckle during practice once, right Jorn?”

The brother nodded. “Yeah, was bruised and swollen all over the place that day.”

We paused for another moment to eat again. Kala decided she was going to lean on me while she did so. I noticed a few odd looks when she did that, and finally, Velian decided to ask what was probably on everyone’s mind.

“So, what’s the deal with you two?” He had a slightly nasally voice that sounded all too like what someone pretending to be a goblin would choose. “You’ve been seen holding hands and practically hanging off one another.”

I was a little embarrassed, but Kala apparently had no issue talking about us. “We’re dating.” She stated plainly with a smile.

“Dating?” Velian asked with a tilt of the head.

“It’s his word for courting.”

Velian’s eyes went a bit wider. “Oh, so you’re actually a... couple?”

“Yep, kissed me then confessed to me, a little out of order, but I couldn’t say no.” She chuckled a little bit. “He was so concerned that he might have pushed me away with that, it was cute looking back on it how worried he was.” She grinned at me.

The others had a couple of sly grins being shot my way and I was sure that I was turning a couple shades of red while avoiding their gaze. Ulthises snickered a little. “Hey, good on you, can’t all be lucky enough to find someone special in a place like this.”

I looked at Kala who was still grinning at me and took her hand. “Yeah, maybe I do still have some luck if I could meet her.”

After that, the ice was officially broken. They asked a lot of questions about me, where I came from, what it was like there, what I did for a living. They seemed very interested to learn that I was going to be a teacher, as that was a very rare profession to find in this world.

I took some time to ask them a few questions as well. Some general things about their cultures, a few questions about how they formed this group, how difficult it is for different species to communicate with one another, etc. Turns out that Ulgrish is the most common language spoken and most people in the army knew it along with their native tongue.

I ended up learning quite a bit about their various cultures during the time that we were eating. After everyone had finished their food, the group had to get back to whatever work they had assigned to them. Before everyone split up, Hargon gave some parting words.

“Well, you two are free to join us again if you like. We usually sit around here somewhere, so if you want to, we’ll keep a seat open for you.”

I gave them a polite smile and a nod. “Yeah, if we see you around, we’ll drop in again.” He gave me a nod in return and then everyone exchanged goodbyes.

Walking back to our room after the first actual conversation I've had with someone other than Kala, I was feeling pretty good. We stopped part way back on the side of the volcano wall overlooking the camp. My life over the last month and a half has been dramatic to say the least. There was a time when I was so ready to just give up and die despite me not being allowed to, and now I have someone who I can live for, people who would talk to me, a chance. Maybe, just maybe, I could survive this world.