I could feel the wind on my neck as we took the not-quite-quick walk to the inner walls, visible from everywhere in and outside of the city, above all, the buildings peeked over. You could make out the crumbly ancient wall looming over the city like the eyesore it was.

All thought, eyesore or not, it was a useful landmark for making your way through the city. It was the only notable landmark, in fact, but that was beside the point.

My neck and head, despite the low weight of hair in general, it felt ten times lighter than it had before I had gotten a mild trim. It wasn’t a tangible weight, not compared to the heft of a shovel or a bucket of water, but an intangible lightening. An emotional weight.

The same could not be said for the feeling of the air against my neck.

For all that I had a connection to the land, the grit and earth beneath my feet, I also had a connection to the sky, and the air, and my natural senses that so easily gave me feedback were suddenly causing me annoyance as my neck was opened to it for the first time in a long time.

I knew it would go away with time, fading into the background in the same way the feel of the air against my arms and face did, but man, was it annoying. It felt like my neck was tumbling around constantly. What filtered through my skill was like an invisible rumble of churning water, only that water was now billowing around the nape of my neck like a ship on a river.

The fact that I could sense it continuously brought it to my attention, and with my attention came my other senses, and with that came my sense for mana, which mirrored it, but in light and colour instead of the outlines and ripples of my natural senses.

Thankfully, I couldn’t stay stuck in my head forever. A quick jaunt down one of the high streets and around the curve of the wall before I headed down the last road before the temple district. I could see the alien places of worship as I passed, their foreign gods unnerving me enough to wince but not slowing my stride in the least.

I did not like that place, and that tore me up inside.

Whenever I had gone to church, I had felt like it was a place where I belonged, a place where I had a community. However, considering that the church I had gone to was currently underground and everyone that made that community community was also dead.

Maybe I could have that again, just walk in and find a church to pray in, or maybe it was a bit too hopeful an idea that I could have walked into some church and been welcomed like one of them.

But for now, I had neither the nerve nor the feeling that it would work out. For now, I didn’t feel like I belonged there. Somewhat ironically, becoming a Saint had put me on a path where a wedge had formed between me and prayer.

if I ever had the nerve to actively enter the district and set aside my fear of these new gods, would it be a minor bit of heresy to pray to other gods? Become one of their faithful and turn my back on Death? Did I need to pray to Death at all, or was it more of a voluntary thing?

I was thinking myself in circles, unready even now on what I was supposed to do beyond sending people to the afterlife.

“I suppose she was right… Maybe I do need community,” I said reflexively.

“What are you going on about now?” Selly asked, holding onto my short hair like the reins of a horse as I turned away from the distant churches and down the road, slowing down and carefully looking for a tavern or in with the right sign.

“It’s just something someone told me, they told me I have a need for community,” I murmured.

She snorted derisively, “Everyone does you dumb arse. Honestly. What have you philosophizing about your needs so thoroughly that you mumbled it out loud?”

I puckered in a wince as I thought about it.

My whole shtick would be a lot to unpack on Selly, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to bring it up, and I wasn’t sure it was the type of thing to unpack on anyone, let alone someone new.

“I don’t know that it would make sense to tell you. It’s a bit of a long story, and I don’t know where to start. Hells, I don’t even understand enough to fully explain myself because it just brings up more questions I don’t have any answers to,” I told her, thinking on the related topic of gods and their apparent ability to get replaced, die, or otherwise change over time so drastically that they might as well be a different being.

“What on earth is so complicated about community that you are incapable of explaining it? It's basic stuff, Saphine, not a political clusterfuck of epic proportions! Its not hard, just use your big head, and move your mouth, and spit it out, instead of letting it get stuck in the hollow between your ears!” she complained.

I winced at her volume and words. My emotions, lurking beneath the recent wound, welled and receded like the pounding of a tide, and with my oldest companion, I walled up, away from them, and indulged in a bit of self-shit talking.

“Hey, volume down, you know me by now. I’m not good with words or using my head. I’m just not good at being smart. I’m a grunt, I’m good at grunt work. I do not think I do,” I told her wanly.

Selly didn’t answer for a moment, but I could practically feel the impatience as she muttered, “One day, I’m going to cave your stupid head in and find cobwebs and all that sand you make me pound in there and tidy up before I bury you.”

I had no idea what she meant by that, but I decided to do what I was good at and ignore the things I often didn’t get.

I was good at that. If nothing else, it was the greatest mental feat I could do. I could shed details off my smooth brain, like water off a duck’s back.

We walked in silence from there, a bubble of awkwardness in the relatively crowded sea of the street, packed with a flow of the young and old, people and carts and the smell of everything in between.

I noted a lack of gutters and a need for maintenance in the silence, and the idea of maybe asking Anna's brother about it drifted through my head. Assuming I remembered the fleeting thought, it might shed some light on this backward city. It would do a lot of good to keep the streets clean, there was no way people didn’t get sick, and considering it was a simple thing to just make a drainage gutter, I was a bit surprised the street wasn’t dirtier or in worse shape than it was.

It didn’t take long to find the sign I was looking for.

There was no name on the front, like most of the commoner establishment, it was more in the sign than any text, a common enough thing that I was suspecting that there was a serious issue with literacy. Another thing I filed away for later.

I walked up, and found the latch and entered into a moment straight out of fiction.

Upon entering, I was struck by the feel of the place. There was a feel for places like public houses, especially those that showed off the mark of hospitality. Hospitality was one of the good ones, and Hearth was too, and the patron and protecter of guest and host right and the patron of hearths and [Firekeepers] went together hand in hand to make a place feel like it was home. This place had both, and I could feel the memorable tangle of some minor blessing in the large common room common for those who practiced what the gods preached.

The room itself was all old, rugged half logs, stone pony walls, timber beams overhead, and round tables. It wasn’t packed, but there were people with mugs, and I could smell the familiar smell of bread and some kind of short drink mixed between the food and familiarity. And then, the hefty door caught a breeze and swung shut just loud enough to draw attention.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

All at once, the murmur of the people hushed.

I caught quite a few eyes, and the atmosphere dropped a few notches as the patrons saw me and there was a sudden bit of tension that grew in the crowd. My instinct picked up small whiffs of fear and suspicion, and while I was surprised that this hadn’t happened sooner and more surprised that no one had reached for their belts, I was surprised enough that I froze, remembering a time, not all that long ago that I stared into the eyes of someone and got killed for it.

I could see some of them with the heat haze of mana that told me there were passive skills going off, though I didn’t know the what and why of them.

“Say something, you silly git,” my passenger whispered.

“Uh, sorry,” I called, awkward, clear, and with my best, ‘I’m not undead, please don’t stone me voice,’ but I could still see it in their eyes, the calculation running through their head.

I swear to any gods that can hear me if I get jumped in an inn, I will visit Death personally and get obliterated when I do her the major slight of breaking my foot off in her ass.

I looked up at the bar and saw the older, homely woman behind the counter, looking at me not with fear but confusion, a telltale rippling of what I was sure was an active skill of some kind going off, and it was enough for me to be a bit worried when she opened her mouth.

“Hello there, stranger. Don’t worry about the door, it's common enough. And don’t let these lot or their stares put you off. You’re welcome here so long as you don’t start trouble.”

She said it with practice and weight as she accepted me as her guest. Her words caused a few of the patrons to turn to her, and some others shrug and get back to their food or drink. Quite a lot of the tension, suddenly and unexpectedly let go.

I took a careful step, and nothing exploded, so I started to carefully walk towards the counter to meet the hostess. On the second step, a door banged open, and I tensed for a moment, along with half of the crowd, as we all turned to look at the noise. But what walked out was a familiar face. She walked out and drew a second round of glances from the rest of the room before getting a round of acknowledgements, and even more of the tension bled out of the room.

It was Joan, and something about the familiarity of her face and the smile on it let me let go of the tension I didn’t know I was carrying in my shoulders and neck. I continued on through the tables as the room started to return to normal.

I got close enough to hear murmuring on her helping out for a bit and I came up to the bar, only for her to leave and start making rounds. I watched her go and felt a moment of being lost, but the [Barwoman] called me over, and I pulled myself from flatfoot and focused back on the moment.

“Hello, young missis, welcome to the Copper Pot. Don’t be a stranger, pull up a stool,” she told me, waving me over with a quick gesture that got me to pull up a seat.

“I’m sorry for the door, really, it caught a bit of wind, I didn’t mean for it to slam like that, um, missus…” I told her, pausing before trying to remember Joan's last name.

Fortunately for me, the missus in question answered me before I addressed her by the wrong last name.

“Oh dear, how rude of me. My name is Katherine Miller, though everyone just calls me Kathy. The door was no problem; it's rugged enough, and I’m sorry about the rude welcome; we don’t get many people with… well, eyes like that in these parts. What can I get for you? Drink? Some food? I’m sorry to say we don’t have any rooms available, but if you need a bed, I know another place that keeps their sheets clean…”

She had a gift for gabbing, and she seemed very polite. It took me off-road, getting the whole thing at once, which she got out with the kind of rote speech that came with a lifetime of practice and a boatload of charisma, hitting me like a brick to my lacking social grace.

I fumbled, and Joan called out from a table over, “Saphine’s here for food, ma. She lives with Strause's sister.”

Thank you, Joan… You beautiful, magnificent, psychic, mindreading woman you.

“That’s me,” I told her, “Saphine, that is... Thanks for the offer, but I don’t need a room or anything, I’m just here for some food. I’m heading for a picnic, and Strause brought some food yesterday that knocked everyone’s socks off. I was also here for Strause, but he doesn’t seem to be here, so I’ll just have to settle for great food.”

And she got me talking with a little help from Joan, slowly easing me into talking with her mom. Joan wrapped up at some point after the talking had returned, and the atmosphere got better. Katherine, or Kathy, had one hell of a set of lungs on her and she called back to her husband after I put in my order with her, and Joan had come to sit beside me.

Similar to the other night, she held her hand out into the open air. I couldn’t see, hear, smell or sense anything there, but I was willing to bet that there was, and I couldn’t sense it.

Whatever it was, it didn’t trigger anything I could sense, not even with my soul senses. Joan had no plumes of mana coming off of her, and she had very little in her body. Almost all of it was in patches along her skin, and that was it. It was like she had a baby’s worth of mana in the body of a fully grown woman; it was as if she repelled it, and I could sense through her.

I filed it away as something weird about her and probably Strause and got to casually conversing with her.

Apparently, Strause was out ‘Clause wrangling,’ and I had just missed him. Selly greeted her, and she spoke around the gap as well as she could, though it was sketchy at best.

She stopped smiling when her mom went into the back, and it was like I had blinked without blinking. one moment, she was smiling, and the next moment, she was rather neutral, just like at dinner. Her face changed so quickly that it caught me off guard, and with the loss of the smile, she also started talking business.

“So, you wanted to talk to Strause? I can tell you want to ask a few things, but I’m guessing there’s something specific?”

“I… I, uh…” I responded stupidly while I tried to dig through my memory for what I was going for.

“It's about my people, I bet,” Selly said confidently and with a note that I couldn’t place but sounded bad.

“Okay-,” “Yes, tha-” we said at the same time to her social nudge. We both stopped to not cut the other one off.

“You first,” she told me.

“I know Strause has contacts with the guard, but I was betting he could also tell Clause about the Gremlins and maybe get a patrol out. I never really made any steps to tell anyone about the possible threat or about the Sprite village. I figure they pay taxes for protection, so Strause would know who to tell about it,” I explained, “I don’t know much of anything about Gremlins, but there was a Monster and what I believe are two lairs nearby, so I figured I should tell someone… And I mean… I don’t have a good record with the guard…” I told her.

The memory of the [Guard Captain] slamming the table multiple times for intimidation while I could barely string together three words in broken common came to mind.

I would rather not go through that again.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but the first thing out of her mouth wasn’t a response to the multiple lairs or a possible threat, but a faint furrowing of her brow and a simple “They pay taxes?”

Selly sighed, “Aye. Weve paid tax in honey and fine thread year on year for generations. A queen of old struck a deal with the lord for protection from tall threats, and they’ve failed to hold up their end of the bargain.”

“Honey?” she asked, “That is just so… Do you keep bees?” she asked.

“Aye, for food and companionship. They are social creatures and loyal companions if you mark them young. I remember mine, died a few years ago… Damn birds.”

She said bird in the same way Gunther had said ‘twig.’ As if birds were a slur instead of what they were, and neither of us had a reply to her for a good long moment, and while I parsed it faster and could have spoken up, this was between her and Selly, and I was purely a translator at this point.

“I don’t know what you said, but wow… Okay, then… Well, I’ll make sure to tell Strause, so he can worry Clause… But I would recommend not expecting much. Not while [Baron] Mynes has the army out on campaign. He might be able to send a group of [Hunters] past, but I doubt they can do all that much, they don’t patrol, they mostly fight Beasts, and sometimes a pack of kin will kill a Monster on this side of the river,” she told Selly, who grumbled fumingly.

Joan, placatingly for her, continued.

“The [Lords] are gathering soon… If they don’t push it back again, so the [Huntsmaster] and [Huntsmistress] will be around, and they could do it, but they're basically [Nobles], no way they would… Unless it's strong, and even then, it would be for the Monster, not the Gremlins, and not for the Sprites. But they will probably be bringing a few packs with them. I’ll pass it along, just… temper your expectations. Everything is spread thin right now.”

Selly was pissy, but it just meant I would check it out every day. It wasn’t so far away... Or it wasn’t until I left for the south.

“So…” I asked, “There's a war on?”

“Hmm? No, not a war, the [Baron] is out securing funds again, it happens every few years, just some conflict between some [Nobles] over land, I think, happens all the time.”

“Same difference,” I told her, “Thank you for being willing to bring the information to Strause. I can hold it down for a few days, but only for a few days,” I told her.

“I’ll do my best to pass on the severity,” she told me, “Though why only a few days?”

“Anna has something planned, and she invited me down south. She’s been keeping it a surprise, but whatever it is must be somewhat important.”

Joan, cool and unflinching, said, “Cute,” before asking Selly, “So is it a honeymoon, or are they eloping?”

“My money is on didn’t ask, don’t care. But considering they’re not married, they're probably eloping,” she said sourly.

“Scandalous,” she said, though I couldn’t tell how much she understood of Selly's reviled statement.

“I’m right here… And we're not at that point yet,” I told her.

“You sleep in her bed, and she smells of you. You two close enough, you just can’t bring yourself to admit you love her,” she said, disdain heavy and cynical.

“That’s just not right,” Joan said, a look of concentration on her face, “If you love her, you need to tell her it’s not right to play with someone’s heart like that.”

Great. Just what I needed. I was outnumbered.