Tripton was much more of a town than Branchkeep was. Oakley could tell that as soon as he stepped foot within its walls. There was more money in this town, though it still felt so isolated. Perhaps all towns and cities felt isolated in comparison to the modern ones he knew?

The streets were made of cobblestone and the buildings a mix of stone and wooden beams. The style was similar to that of Branchkeep’s, but clearly more funds had been put into maintaining this town and more stone had been used in place of Branchkeep’s abundance of wood.

Unlike Branchkeep, which felt like it had mainly empty streets, Tripton had a little more business about it. Oakley also noticed the sheer variety in kinds of people. He didn’t think this was a huge town, but it was a busy one.

The homes were less spread out than in Branchkeep, making more out of the land in the town. On different street corners, various shops sold different sorts of wares. Oakley saw a bookshop, a clothing store, even something else that looked like it sold random objects- but he could tell that they were more than they seemed.

Oakley wanted to keep following Rigdraz, but it became apparent quickly that they were really just following each other and going down wherever the next street led. They were both just as new to this town as each other.

It was easy enough to find a tavern as they walked through the streets. A hanging sign depicting a stone sitting in a stream guided them to its doors. Its name was ‘The Drained Rock’. Hopefully they could find somewhere to rest up and then figure out their next leg of the journey from there.

Oakley walked into the tavern first, holding the door open for Rigdraz to duck slightly under to walk through after him.

It was late afternoon, so the tavern had yet to begin to fill up in earnest. The streets had been filled with people returning home from their various jobs and businesses, so Oakley wouldn’t have been surprised if the tavern began to get packed quickly.

It was as he’d expected on the inside. Lots of wooden tables and chairs. A bar to order drinks from and what looked like a smaller area to one corner- specifically for card and dice games. He wondered for a moment if this world had the same kinds of games, which led him to thinking about sports and if there were any here. He would need to quiz someone about it without drawing attention to himself.

“Two rooms, please.”

Rigdraz had walked up to the bar as Oakley had been taking in the scenery. His companion appeared to have paid for their rooms. Oakley approached just as Rigdraz was finishing up the polite greeting with the bartender. Oakley noticed this bartender looked similar in appearance to Vitaros, from Branchkeep. Not identical, but they had a similar rock-like aesthetic to their… exterior? It wasn’t as if they had actual skin.

“This way,” Rigdraz nodded, steering Oakley toward the staircase just to the side of the bar area. There was an open doorway with the stairs tucked in behind it, leading up to where the tavern’s rooms for lodgers were. “You really need to stop staring at everything like you’re a baby ozgulliz.”

“A baby what?” Oakley asked, half thinking Rigdraz had coughed during the sentence.

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot you don’t know… well, much at all, really.” Rigdraz snapped his fingers and stopped, right before the two of them reached the top of the stairs. “We’ll head to that bookshop, ‘Pick-A-Page Books’. Might find some good books for you to read up on. You can read, right?”

“Yes, I can-” Oakley’s sigh caught in his throat. He was suddenly struck with a worrisome thought. “What language are you speaking?”

“Charruni, why?” Rigdraz asked. “Most people speak Charruni, thankfully, along with their own nation’s language.”

“I’m speaking English,” Oakley said slowly, very confused.

“I can assure you you’re not,” Rigdraz laughed, patting him on the shoulder and beginning to walk up the stairs again.

“I am. How would I know Charruni if I had just arrived here?”

“Don’t ask me,” Rigdraz shrugged. “I only know what my ears tell me to know.”

“Thanks, real helpful,” Oakley said sarcastically. “Also, that’s been happening with words too. I’ve just been reading English the whole time.”

“Look, I don’t know what an English is,” Rigdraz shrugged again.

“Do you perhaps know what that bartender is?” Oakley asked, switching the topic as he could already see it was going nowhere, but it was an interesting thought to keep an eye on.

“A bartender, most likely,” Rigdraz chuckled.

“I mean-”

“I know, I know. I’m pulling your leg.” Rigdraz stopped walking. They had taken themselves down a thin corridor on the upper floor of the tavern, which was lined with doors. Rigdraz stood by one of the doors with a key. He passed another key to Oakley and nodded to the door just down from his. “He’s a sapiad. A rock person. If I need to tell you that much, then we really do need to get to that bookstore. I’ll see you downstairs in the bar in the morning?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Oakley nodded, remembering that it was getting later by the minute and he’d been walking all day. He needed to put his feet up and get some rest.

Oakley waved goodbye to his ally as Rigdraz disappeared into his own room. He then unlocked his door and walked in to find the room he would be sleeping in that night. It had a small bed, pushed up to the wall. No mirror. No ensuite- though Oakley had to remind himself this wasn’t like a normal hotel. Just a bed, a chair, a rug and a small table. There was a small window at the opposite wall, too.

He closed his door and went to look out of the window, at the street below and across, to see if he could make out any distinctive features of the town from this perspective. He couldn’t make out much, but he could see the roofs of at least two larger buildings, tucked into the busy skyline of what he’d expected to be just a small village along the way to his true destination.

It took him no time at all to bed down for the night. The bed was scratchy, but it beat sleeping outside. Sleep took him swiftly and silently into the morning.

Someone was knocking on his door. The knocking wouldn’t stop, despite his protests of asking for a few more minutes. Oakley hadn’t drawn his curtains the entire way and the sun was aiming straight for his eyes as he blinked them open.

“Get up,” Rigdraz groaned from the other side of the door. “It’s urgent, come on.”

Oakley understood urgent, though he was still waking up. He scrambled around to put on his clothes and, once he was half-decent, he opened the door to let Rigdraz in, so that he could finish getting dressed.

“What is it?” Oakley asked. “Did I sleep in?”

“No,” Rigdraz said, “but, we have no money.”

“What do you mean?”

“Unless you stashed some away, we are out of funds,” Rigdraz said.

“It was one night,” Oakley protested. “Did we just not have much to begin with?”

“I thought I had more,” Rigdraz shrugged, “I thought wrong. Someone must have pickpocketed it on our way into the town.”

“So, what do we do? How do we get more money?” Oakley asked. It wasn’t as if he could just apply for a job. He barely knew a thing about this world, let alone its tax system.

“Entirely depends on if anyone is looking for help, really. What do you feel capable of doing?”

“If it means we get money to buy food and a room for the night, then anything I need to,” Oakley said.

“Let’s ask around, then,” Rigdraz said, “there are always people asking for help for things. Odd jobs usually.”

“Let’s hope we find one,” Oakley muttered, suppressing the urge to moan at the idea of having to work so quickly after waking up.

As luck would have it, they didn’t need to look far. The bartender, a sapiad called Isgkard, gave them directions to where he had heard someone was looking for help with a task.

“Be careful,” Isgkard warned them as they turned to leave the tavern. “The Essenso family does not take lightly to… inefficiency.”

“Good to know,” Oakley mumbled to himself, nodding and following Rigdraz out of the tavern after the awkwardly intense warning. Once they were outside, standing in the street before the day had really begun for much of the town, he turned to his ally. “So, we aren’t taking him up on that offer, then.”

“Why not?” Rigdraz said, already beginning to walk in the direction that they were pointed.

“He implied they would kill us if we failed. Why would we risk that for a task we don’t even know yet?” Oakley did a little skip to hurry up and keep pace with Rigdraz.

“The whole world is filled with dangers. You’ll find that out soon enough. Why do you think these towns have walls in the middle of nowhere?”

“I’m not going to think about answering that,” Oakley said, “because I like to sleep without nightmares, thank you.”

“You whine a lot.”

“And you don’t whine enough,” Oakley protested. “If we die at the hands of whoever these people are, I’m blaming you.”

“Better than dying at your hand,” Rigdraz chuckled.

“Funny,” Oakley laughed sarcastically. “How about we cut it down on those jokes already?”

“Look,” Rigdraz said, opening his arms out a little to take in the sun, “we need money. These people are apparently rich. If we can help, we should be able to make some decent coin.”

“You’ll have to show me how to count that coin, by the way,” Oakley said, remembering the odd assortment of change he’d had from the dragon hoard.

“Is there anything you do know about this place?”

“Only that I don’t know things,” Oakley smirked.

“Best let me do the talking when we meet these people then,” Rigdraz said and Oakley agreed wholeheartedly.

They wove through the streets, eventually finding the building by the description that Isgkard had given. It was an unimpressive building. Painted dark green at the front and only stood at two floors tall. The ground floor and the first floor. In golden writing, the name of the building glinted in the sunlight: ‘Essenso Mining Company’.

“After you,” Oakley said, waving to the front door and allowing Rigdraz in first.

The interior of the building was dull and dark, yet neat and well-cleaned. Oakley wouldn’t have been surprised if he struggled to find a speck of dust anywhere in the main room that they were in. There was a small desk with an even smaller person sitting behind it. By Oakley’s estimation, the person couldn’t have been more than a foot tall, and had ears that were twice as long as her head, pointing up like small swords. She had pinched features and tightly tied back brown hair. She looked very official and Oakley was glad he wasn’t doing the talking.

“Hello,” Rigdraz said, speaking in a tone that sounded ever so slightly fancier than his usual voice. “We have come to enquire about a task the company needs fulfilling?”

“You are aware of the fact the mine has been out of action for the past week?” The lady at the desk asked.

“We were not,” Rigdraz said, “but we were told that your company was seeking people out for some kind of job. Would it be to do with that mine, then?”

“Indeed,” the lady said, each consonant crisper than the last. “I’ll go and notify the supervisor of your arrival. Please wait here and… good luck.”

Oakley saw how the lady’s expression shifted as she turned in her chair to leave the room. She appeared to look almost… pitiful at the pair of them. He didn’t know what he was getting himself into, but if this problem with the mine had been going on for a week and it was still an issue- perhaps they were in over their heads.

The lady popped her head out of the door at the other end of the room, not two minutes after leaving them.

“Follow me, please,” she said, “Mr. Dilsemm will see you now.”

Oakley followed the others through the door to the backroom of the business, which was simply a door into the office of who he had to assume was Mr. Dilsemm.

The portly man was sitting at his desk and looked up at the two of them as they walked in.

“How are you at handling yourselves in combat?” Was the first thing he asked, before even bothering with any greetings.

Damn, Oakley thought, I’ve definitely gotten in over my head with this one.