“A dunkle! An ancient fish from Earth! Very ancient! And very dead! All of them! Wait a minute why is it here then?” I circled around the now dead fish, violating every inch of it with my eyes. Get your minds out of the gutter, readers, for I was in analysis mode.

Sanon seemed confused, though not in the ‘I’ve never heard of that’ sense. More like the ‘what is this guy even talking about’ sense. “Max, that’s a choçplatszyb.”

record_scratch.mp3

“A what?”

“...oh right,” Sanon put a hand to her face, chuckling to herself. “A jawblade fish.”

“What was the other name?”

“It was just the Lontish name…” Sanon sighed. “I forgot the Common name.”

Ohhhh… cool! Anyway. Fish.

“I uh… I see. So about the dunkle… wanna eat it? I did say I caught us dinner.”

Sanon’s face lit up, though it was quickly tempered. “Do you even know how to cook one? I’ve never prepared one of these before.”

Rather than use my words, I instead retrieved Stabby from the fish’s neck area place thing. I knelt down in front of the belly, and made an incision. The skin was actually pretty thick, but I made it through with enough effort.

I should probably find a way to sharpen Stabby soon.

I used a nearby branch to hold the cut I made open long enough to reach my hands in. “Sanon, do you know how to set up a spit roast?”

“I think we could use the head of the tree you knocked over to support the central shaft…” she mused. She then wordlessly picked up one end of the tree and dragged it away, before she began her business.

While Sanon carefully spelled off the top of the tree, I continued cleaning the dunkle. It was certainly an experience. Gutting it was easy enough, if tedious considering that I hadn’t cleaned a fish of it’s size before, but I made do.

The real trouble was the armor. While it didn’t extend any further back than what I remembered seeing in fossils back home, it was attached in such a way that I couldn’t just pry it off. Some of the plates near the back of the head had fused with the spine of the creature, making for quite the challenge.

Eventually I did manage to remove the armor, though only after deboning the rest of the fish. From what I could tell, the meat was still relatively soft. I didn’t know much about cooking… but if I had to guess, then it might be a good idea to get it cooking ASAP. I didn’t want the meat to stiffen from rigor mortis.

I used Stabby to cut the meat into fillets, and used some of the smaller branches that Sanon had sheared off the makeshift boat to impale the meat. I stuck the fishy sticks into the ground so I could focus on other matters, namely the now mostly meatless carcass of a literal living fossil.

The jaws on it really were impressive, and I had my own thoughts about what I could do with them. They weren’t long enough to make into a new spearhead or anything, but they might make for a good knife. Some parts of the jaw blade were too small for even that, though. Perhaps arrowheads?

Either way, it wasn’t something I dwelled on for very long. Stabby’s head was good enough for me, and Sanon had a knife already. I wasn’t really certain of the value though, so I opted to just leave it be for now. I’d ask Sanon her thoughts later after we had eaten.

In the meantime, Sanon had finished constructing a spitroast, though a bit strange if you asked me. It was probably pretty heavy, but she at least had it oriented upright.

She approached me looking ever so slightly winded. “A knife wasn’t the best thing to make such a large cut with, and your spear’s spell would have taken too long. If we use any more verbal magic, you’re up this time.”

“Yeah I guess that’s fair. Did it really take that much out of you?”

“I’m not very good at using magic yet. If you remember, I mentioned that I destroyed the forge I had been an apprentice at.”

I nodded.

“Well, part of my apprenticeship there involved learning to cast effectively and efficiently, but I was naïve and thought I could accelerate the process. I have a condition that makes it hard to control my manaflow, so the forgemaster was pretty quick to throw me out. And now I’m out here on a fool’s errand.”

“Wait wait wait. They can’t just basically banish you over something like that! I thought you were there to get better control?” I reasoned.

Sanon sighed. “You’re right, that was a part of the apprenticeship, but most apprentices don’t destroy entire forges when they make stupid mistakes. They normally just burn themselves or have a small discharge. Nothing serious. I literally blew up the entire forge.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

She seemed pretty cross about the whole exchange, and to be honest, even at time of writing I’m still cross right there with her. I really should head down to those tribes and give ‘em a piece of Maximillian Williardson.

[I thought you hated that name?]

It sends a message, okay?!

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After our small conversation on discrimination and its consequences, I picked Sanon’s brain on whether or not she knew of any edible plants that might go well with the unseasoned dunkle meat.

“I never learned to cook, and I’m not from this region. What do you think?” was her answer.

And so that’s how Sanon and I ended up eating an extinct fish without any seasoning or really any real preparation at all!

“Wow this is terrible.” I said, stuffing my face with terrible meat.

“It isn’t that bad.” said Sanon, also stuffing her face with meat that apparently wasn’t that bad.

For those of you readers on Earth, it tasted kinda like shark. Do with that what you will. The meat was pretty gamey, but in all honesty with a bit of seasoning it might have been pretty palatable.

Max Jr. had even joined us after disappearing into the marsh for an indeterminate amount of time. I have no clue what kind of adventure he had been on, but something in his eyes told me I didn’t want to know.

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After we finished eating our fill, the sky had begun to darken, the moons breaching the heavens. I hadn’t been paying as much attention to the sky the last few days, which was quite unfortunate. I seemed to have missed a pretty important arc in the story of these moons. The smaller of the two had managed to completely break apart, and was now doing considerable damage to the surface of the larger one. Surely this would have no consequences for Helsa at all.

Sanon, for some reason, seemed unbothered by it, instead choosing to sleep. In contrast, despite the tone I used to describe it, the actual event shook me to my very core, and a background of fear would tinge my dreams for the next few weeks. I never did ask Sanon why she didn’t care. I’m willing to believe that she simply didn’t notice, or so I tell myself. Maybe she knew something I didn’t.

Another thing to note was that my internal clock had begun to adapt to the 30-hour cycles of day and night. It felt really weird, and I’m not really sure if something like that is supposed to even happen. Like I’ve said before, I’m no biologist, nor am I a doctor.

Sanon and I had once again chosen to sleep in a dried out chalice tree, though there was only one around this time. I could have dried one out with a fire spell, but I really didn’t want to exhaust myself even more. Instead, we simply chose to share the tree. And no, don’t start thinking anything weird. We were, and still are entirely platonic. Besides, I’m pretty sure dwarven relationships are way different from human ones. Sanon was entirely comfortable sleeping in the same place, so just chalked it up to modern humans being weird. I know that early humans had no problems doing this either, so I just went with it.

Behavioural differences aside, dwarves produce a lot of heat, for some reason. It made sleeping quite a bit easier, since there was a bit of a chill that night. I hadn’t really been expecting a chill, since the current region we were in had been pretty consistently warm up to that point.

Certainly a beautiful sight it was, though. The way the alien sky lit up, accented by the bioluminescence and mana of the various nocturnal lifeforms going about their lives. All sorts of creatures emerge at night in this region, some feathered, some furry. Many could emit light, and a few others were noisy. Max Jr. had been letting out the occasional chirping noise, presumably to attract a mate.

Go for it buddy. Spread those genes… or something. Ohhh wait nope nevermind I stand corrected.

It turned out that he was luring in another creature by mimicking its calls. Fascinating.

I continued observing the local fauna for a while longer before drifting off to sleep, the Helsan sky watching over me.

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It was warm. Warm and inviting is how it felt. I could breathe too. There was air.

I opened my eyes and sat up. I had been sleeping on a plush leather couch of some kind. It was quite ornate.

My location had certainly changed. That… or I was having another god dream. This felt way too lucid to just be a normal dream, so I assumed it was the latter. People don’t just get kidnapped without noticing, usually.

I looked around my current location. The warm, inviting feeling persisted, with the style of decor in the room only amplifying it. There was a fireplace situated in front of the couch, with a coffee table between the two. Off to the left of the fireplace was a desk with a number of strange apparatus strewn atop it. There was a chair, albeit with no one occupying it. The apparatus were of a bronze coloration, amongst them I spotted what looked to be rune brands, though I recognized none of the runes. I wasn’t an expert on language, but even I could tell they were different from the ones I had seen so far.

Before I had a chance to get up, though, a cup manifested in front of me. Within it was a black liquid, smelling distinctly of coffee.

For the record, I want to find a way to synthesize coffee with magic, because this was just cruel. Helsa doesn’t even have coffee!

Complaints aside though, I eyed the coffee for a number of moments, before thinking what’s the worst that could happen?

I brought the cup to my lips, and sipped. Lo and behold, coffee indeed. It was rich, bitter, but not too bitter. This coffee was an anomaly. It was perfect. Too perfect, even. It certainly energized me, but not to the point that I got the jitters.

“Hm. Not bad. Not bad at all.” I said to no one.

“Why thank you, young human. Your praise does not go unnoticed.”

“Oh? This is already leagues better than my two previous encounters with the gods, so to whom do I owe the pleasure? My name is Max, by the way. But I’m sure you already know that.”

I heard a distinctly feminine giggle, though it had a mature, dignified air to it. “Oh yes indeed, you are quite the perceptive one, Maximillian. You may simply refer to me as Kotsyanty… or would it be the Goddess of Magic in your language? Yes yes I do believe so. Sometimes I do miss Language, that fellow.”

Well she’s definitely more accommodating, if nothing else.

“I seem to be popular among the gods, for some reason… may I ask why you’ve chosen to hijack my dreams tonight?”

“Oh! Right to business then? I like it!” she purred. “Well! Let’s just say that I’ve heard about your lack of presence from a little… ah… birdie? I do believe that’s what Evolution calls them. Anyway, Knowledge doesn’t know you’re here yet, and so I’ve decided to take this opportunity to offer you a… business proposal. Yes let’s call it that, shall we?”