As we walked under the arch of the gateway, I looked around in astonishment. This place was nothing like Sanctuary Valley.

The buildings were all constructed in neat and orderly rows. Their style of construction was completely unlike what was once found in my village. Most were made of wood with cloth coverings for windows. Some of the more important looking buildings were built with sturdy looking stone walls.

Even as I watched, one of the wooden buildings was being replaced with stone. Large men were pushing bricks and other materials in one-wheeled carts to the half finished construction.

I marveled at the workers and the other villagers. With the exception of Robert, I had thought that Martin’s group had been formed of unusually tall people. Looking at the people of this village, I found that almost everyone was significantly taller than the average person of sanctuary valley. Norbert was still an imposing outlier though.

As we walked along many people stopped what they were doing to stare at me. They looked more curious than hostile, but all the attention left me feeling uneasy.

It was still preferable to being completely ignored though.

A few people greeted members of our group before returning to what they were doing. None of the builders offered greetings and only stopped staring when someone else told them to get back to work.

Looking around, I noticed two unexpected things. The first was just how small this village was. The place was less than a quarter of the size Sanctuary Valley had been.

The second oddity was that there were no children. No matter where I looked, I didn’t spot anyone younger than myself. Liam seemed to be the youngest person in the village despite likely being at least a couple years older than me.

Taking another look around, I realized that most of the buildings didn’t look much more weathered than the half complete wall the builders were working on. Either the buildings were impeccably well maintained or they had only been constructed recently.

“Is there another village?” I asked Mathew after taking a moment to find the words.

“Another… Oh! Yes, this is just a little camp.” He replied, speaking slowly so that I could pick out each word with my translation boon. “The villages and cities of the empire are across the ocean.”

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I looked out at the enormous lake he pointed at. I was rather surprised that they would choose to travel so far from their home. Considering that I couldn’t even see the other side of this ‘ocean’, their village must be quite far indeed.

We passed by the construction site on our way towards one of the larger stone buildings. As we walked by, one of the workers started staring at me again.

The large, bald worker had a collection of black marks etched into his pale skin. Nine parallel lines marked his left arm and a drawing of a coiled serpent marked his left shoulder. He leered at me with an insidious grin that made me shudder and shrink back towards my traveling companions.

The last time I had seen a look like that had been on the face of the worst man I had ever had the misfortune of meeting. Even years later, that vile hunter’s face still appeared in my worst nightmares.

Martin stepped in front of me protectively. “Look away, Nero.” He told the man threateningly.

The worker, Nero, immediately looked downward. The sinister grin never left his face though.

“A man can dream, can’t he?” He asked in a gravelly voice. “It’s been long enough that even damaged goods like this would be a delicious treat.”

“That’s enough. Stop talking and get back to work.” Martin retorted coldly.

Nero’s mouth immediately snapped shut. Jerking oddly, as though fighting against his own body, the man resumed stacking bricks.

The sight was strange, but I was already too unnerved by the man to think about it for long. I was just glad he wasn’t leering at me any longer.

I made sure to keep Martin between me and the frightening builder as we hurried past.

Unfortunately, I was so distracted that I didn’t notice the pole sticking out of the ground until I ran into it. To my embarrassment, everyone was once again looking at me.

I rubbed at the bruise forming on the side of my face as I tried to figure out why the pole was there. Now that I was looking for them, I could see several more set at equal distances along the road. They were much too far apart to be any use for construction or any other use I could think of.

Taking a closer look, I noticed an almost cubic stone with slanted sides set on the top of the pole. Carved into each side of the cube was a rune I recognized. I had carved dozens of these runes of light when crafting my array to kill the titan. The runes weren’t glowing at that moment, but I could sense mana being drawn into the top of each pole.

I wasn’t sure, but I figured that it was fairly likely that these poles would be able to keep the camp as bright as day even on the darkest nights.

I didn’t have time to ask about the objects that I assumed to be magical lighting as I was shuffled into one of the stone buildings. We walked through a surprisingly cool and well lit hallway before heading through a wooden doorway.

Seated behind a desk was a severe looking woman holding an object made from metal and red crystal. At our arrival, she put down the item to regard us coldly.

“So, you’re the native that Martin’s been telling me so much about.”