Chapter 6: Thandesia

The trees grew less dense as we walked until they finally stopped altogether. We had made it to town. If one could even call it a town. I could see from end to end and there looked to be maybe a few dozen houses that were spread out, connected by dirt roads with one large building in the middle. The buildings were all made out of wood and stones as if they were made during the Dark Ages.

I looked for a sign that would've said the town's name but didn't see any, which made sense as we had come from the side of the town and there wasn't a road that came to the tree line here. On one side of town, though, I could see dirt paths going out of the town, first thick and maintained before quickly dropping down in quality.

Finn flipped around and spread his arms out wide as if embracing the place, “Welcome to Thandesia, where everyone knows everyone else and they all look creepily similar.”

Hazel nudged him with her shoulder.

“What? It's true,” He said with a shrug. “Let's go to the inn, we can hit the guard station tomorrow. I wanna get washed up.”

No one argued against that request. I surely didn't have a problem with it since I looked like a manly version of Carrie.

Carrie?

An image of a girl with blood drenched all over her came to my mind and a shiver ran down my back.

What happened to her?

Pigs blood. A movie.

A movie.

“You okay?” Gronan asked.

I looked up at his big, bushy-bearded face. “Yeah, yeah I'm fine. Just been a long day.”

He nodded but didn't comment any further. We continued toward the big building in the middle where a sign was placed at the top of the door that read: Thandesia Inn.

Simple and straight to the point I suppose.

Finn opened the door, holding it for all of us as we went single file inside. The inside felt more like a bar than an inn, with a bar in front of us and wooden booths lining the walls to the side. The place was filled with people, most of them at the bar but a few families at the booths too. Everyone had drinks, even some of the children, and the room was filled with voices as everyone talked over each other. I made the guess that the actual rooms were in the two hallways that were on the opposite sides of each by the bar.

Gronan took the lead and nudged between the people standing at the bar. He said something I couldn't hear to the bartender and held out four fingers. He then fished out four silver coins from his pocket and handed them to the bartender. He turned around toward us and waved over toward the door in the right corner of the room before going toward it. We followed him and as we all went inside we were greeted with a hallway with a double door to one side that was labeled as the kitchen and several single wooden doors to the right each labeled as bath.

“A premium bath, huh?” Finn asked Gronan as he opened the first door.

Gronan nodded.

Finn smiled, “Don't mind if I do.”

What does that mean?

“Thanks,” Hazel said, going into the second bathing room.

Gronan took the third.

I assumed I would find out what a premium bath was as soon as I took one so I went inside the fourth room. Inside, the bath was already full and steam rolled off of the water from the shiny, iron bathtub inlaid into the wooden floor.

How did they already fill the tub?

I caught a whiff of my reaking smell and suddenly realized how stiff my shirt was from all of the dried blood staining it. Suddenly, I found I no longer cared how they filled it. I practically ripped my clothes off, throwing even the robe onto the ground.

I bent down and tried to take one of my shoes off. It didn't budge. I pulled harder. It still didn't budge even though it felt like it was loosely clinging to my foot.

What the hell is this thing made of?

I got down onto the smoothed-out wooden ground, pulling as hard as I possibly could. Even still, the shoe didn't move an inch. It was stuck on my foot. No matter how hard I pulled, the damn thing just wouldn't come off!

Shit! What is this thing?

A notification came up: Item ability discovered. With a thought, a text box appeared:

Items:

Mage's Robes:

Acquired from the first man you met...and the first man you killed. You now own your very own mage's robes. Though they don't seem to do anything other than be a stylish look.

Effects - nothing.

Sticky Mage's Shoes:

Less interesting to look at than the robes but a much more interesting item it seems as they always stick with you, no matter how much you may wish otherwise...

Effects - Cannot unequip.

“Shit!”

I felt my body slump and I let out a long, defeated sigh.

Whatever, I'll just bathe with them on!

I got up from the ground and went over to the tub, dipping a shoe-equipped foot into the steaming water. The water was just on the edge of being too hot, exactly how I liked it. I pulled my foot out of the water and felt it become icy cold as the air hit it. To my amazement, my foot began to come back up to room temperature as the water-logged shoe began to dry almost immediately.

Item ability discovered.

Effects - cannot be unequipped and waterproof.

Seems a lot more than waterproof, but I'll take it.

I put my feet back into the tub before sitting down, my back against the hot metal of the tub. I closed my eyes and sucked in a large breath, embracing the steamy, hot air. Despite everything I had gone through today, I felt my body loosen up. This was excellent. More than excellent, perfection.

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It seemed there were bonuses to these new lands, like really good baths. But how'd they keep the water so hot?

Maybe it's heated underneath the tub?

Sure, it sounded convincing enough. I lay there, enjoying the hot, clean water touching my skin.

Clean water.

There wasn't a faucet, maybe there wasn't even plumbing. Yet, the water was crystal clear. Hell, how did they empty the tub?

Maybe a drainage system?

And then there were the lands of Gandria themselves. And my healing powers. And these text boxes.

There has to be a logical explanation.

But I felt doubtful.

There is a scientific reason behind it all, there has to be. Gandria is just some remote place in Puerto Rico or some island no modern civilization has found. I can't remember anything because of the shipwreck. And someone implanted technology into me, that's how I can see the text boxes and can heal like...like magic. No, magic isn't real.

I forced all of those thoughts away from me. In my blank mind, all I could feel was bliss. I allowed myself to sit like that for a long time until a thought finally broke through my defenses. I hadn't done anything to truly clean myself.

I looked around for a bottle of shampoo but didn't find anything. I sniffed my armpits to see if they stunk and found they smelled like nothing. I looked at my body through the crystal clear water. All of the blood and grime that had been on me before had all disappeared.

They must put cleaning agents into the water.

Yet, I couldn’t help but think about how I didn’t smell. Not even like the scent of a cleaning product.

Whatever they are using, it must be hightech.

It made sense, apparently this place had enough tech to mess with my head. And perhaps their cultures just made up the whole Dark Age esthetic too...there was a reason I just didn’t know what it was. Nonetheless, It was an interesting way to cleanse oneself. No hassle of scrubbing my body or hair, just simply soaking in water that cleaned itself.

Everything had a logical explanation.

I dunked my head into the water and opened my eyes. I watched as a nasty mixture of gunk flaked off of me and went into the water. I pulled my head out, wiped my eyes, and looked back down at the water to find it clear once again. Whatever chemicals they were putting in here, they were very strong.

Finally, I got out of the bath, feeling more than satisfied by how clean my body felt. In fact, it felt like I hadn't ever been this clean before. Not only that, but I felt more relaxed than I had been in a long time, even before I had arrived here. But I wasn’t allowed to be relaxed for long as I remembered I had arrived in only one set of clothes and to make it worse, the clothes I had weren’t where I had thrown them off.

I looked around and saw a towel rack with clothes on them and felt myself relax before tensing right back up. I walked over to the yellow-trimmed, purple robe hanging there. It was clearly the robe I had been wearing. There were more clothes next to it, a white button-up shirt and brown pants. They both looked exactly like the ones I had been wearing. Yet, these clothes weren't the same, they couldn't have been. In all the spots I had gotten tears, it was now repaired, nearly identical to a new piece of clothing. But there was a difference, it was slight but it was there. Small bits of patchwork, finely crafted.

But that can't be possible, it would take a week to fix these clothes!

There had to be a logical solution to this, surely.

The inn must just give out clothes with the premium package.

That had to be it. Inns ran off profit, it would be entirely reasonable for them to give me used clothes that have just been patched. These just happened to be patched exactly where the places I got tears in mine.

But how'd the robe get here?

A cleaner came in, saw the cloak, and moved it here. They had to come anyway to get me new clothes. I just didn't realize because I was so engrossed in my bath

That had to be it. There was a logical explanation for everything.

I slipped on the new, long-sleeve button-up shirt and pants before beginning to put on my robe. Just like when I put it on before, it felt like it pulled itself over my arms, wanting to be on. It was just my mind playing tricks on me again, it had to be.

I pulled on my long hair with my hands, straightening it out the best I could but I still couldn't get the waves out. I didn't remember having waves. Though, I didn't remember not having a beard, or having such cut abs either. Just another part of my broken memory.

I went through the door back into the hallway. The other three doors the rest of the group went into were wide open and vacant.

Surely, they wouldn't have left me and went up to their room.

I hoped so, I desperately didn't want to be left alone on this strange island by myself with their weird wildlife like goblins and hedrens.

I went back through the bar door and through the crowd and felt relief when I noticed my group sitting at a booth, ordering food from a waiter. I made my way through a crowd of guys drinking from mugs and talking about something called the Crow Games.

“Hey, just in time!” Gronan yelled over the people. He sat on the end of one side of the booth with Finn squished in beside him while Hazel sat alone on the other side.

I sat down next to Hazel as the waiter asked what I wanted.

Gronan ordered for me, “He'll take a double stack of waffles with syrup and a side of musleig.”

“Got it,” The waiter said before going through the door I had come from. Just as he left, another waiter came to our table with four wooden mugs in hand and smacked them onto the table before running off back to the bar.

The other three took a mug each and began to sip from them. “Go on,” Hazel said and suggested toward the lone mug on the table, “That one is yours.”

I took it by the handle and looked into the mug to see a golden brown liquid inside. “What is it?”

“Ale,” Gronan replied.

“Hemsbred, to be exact,” Hazel said.

“Ale?” I asked, confused. “Like, actual ale?”

“No, it's dirty water,” Finn said with a judging look. “Of course it's ale.”

He acted like it was completely normal to drink ale at a bar even though I hadn't ever even actually seen ale in person before. This place was so weird.

I took a sip of my ale. It tasted almost sweet, like honey at first, before taking on a slightly more bitter tone of alcohol. It was nice, not my favorite, but pretty good nonetheless. I nodded in approval and took another drink. “So, how did the three of you meet up?” I tried to make it seem nonchalant, but I was actually on the edge of my seat to know their answers. The siblings and Gronan just didn't seem like they'd normally know each other at all.

Gronan smiled. “Well, these two actually tried to kill me at first.”

My eyes went wide, “Huh?”

“It was one dagger,” Finn said. “It would've taken two more to kill you at least.”

“You still tried to kill me!” Gronan laughed before taking a large sip.

Hazel leaned onto the table before talking, “Gronan tried to sneak up on us during the night. Tried. My brother here, never asking the important questions, decided it better to throw a dagger at him.”

Finn shrugged. “I'd rather take them out before they take us out.”

“I just saw them sleeping by a tree and they seemed like Adventurers like me,” Gronan chimed in. “I went to say hi and got a dagger in the arm. Luckily, I could heal the wound.”

“That was, what, three weeks ago?” Hazel asked.

“About that much time,” Finn said.

Gronan spoke, “We went around the countryside looking for a town for contracts. These goblins were the first contract we've done. It was sporadic when they came to steal the jewelry so we had to sit around and just wait for them to act first.”

“So that was your first contract?” I asked.

“Yup,” Finn said. “What's yours?”

I shrugged. “This one too.”

“So you haven't been an Adventurer long?”

“Don't think so.”

“Don't think so?”

Shit, was that a wrong answer?

“The whole shipwreck, it's really messed with my memory.” Might as well come clean about my history now. “The last thing I remember was being crushed by a building in Dallas.”

Everyone's brows furrowed at that. Finn continued his interrogation. “Dallas?”

I shrugged, feeling my stomach churn. “Yeah, Dallas. Dallas, Texas.”

“Where's that?”

“Um, North America,” I said with a slight chuckle, like it was obvious. It wasn't obvious to them.

“Where's North America?”

“Uh, well, where is Gandria?”

The table went quiet. The entire group stared at me for several moments before - thank god - Hazel spoke up, “It's...our planet.”

“Where are you from?” Finn asked as a dagger suddenly materialized in his hand.

At that moment, I felt reality shatter.