A smell. A very unhygienic smell comes wafting from the entrance to the cave before them. It is a mix of body odour, rotten food, rusty iron but luckily no urine or excrement.

Shaula places the tortoiseshell away from the entrance. She’ll get it back later after she’s done here.

Shaula experiments with her abilities and consciously adds more vitality to her senses of hearing and smell.

Does she hear anyone from inside the cave? Shaula listens for anything. Any movement. Any clattering. Any footsteps. Any breathing or heartbeats.

Not even bugs or mice... Wait… have I seen any bugs in this world yet? Not many small creatures besides the horned rabbits… No worms even… no little critters at all. Huh.

With her hearing improved to this degree, Shaula can hear the sound of a pin drop at least half a kilometre away.

Her sense of smell is now like a bloodhound’s.

Shaula tries to sense any fresh smells such as sweat or new body odour. Fresh food. Anything burning or cooking. Nothing can be smelled.

There is food inside that isn’t rotting, but it isn’t fresh either.

“So what do you think? Anyone in there?”

“No. No one currently. We should head inside to see if this place has anything useful.”

“Hmm… are you sure we should do that? It’s basically breaking and entering, right?”

“Well, desperate times… But Ajax, this isn’t a discussion, I’m going to enter and you can wait out here if you want.”

Ajax wears a sour expression with a tinge of exasperation. But now he has no choice but to enter this cave with her.

There is another smell hitting Shaula’s nose that prompted her to wish to enter this place. Something she didn’t want to tell Ajax about. It is a light scent of... dried blood mixed into the fabric.

Someone’s blood-stained clothes have been left here. In pure curiosity, Shaula wishes to know what’s being done in this place.

Ajax is reluctant to enter but he knows that he can’t stop her from entering.

“Should I freeze it open?”

Ajax knows his power allows him to shatter metal as if it were glass. Perhaps that would be the best option to pass the gate.

“Wait, you can do that too? How does that work exactly?”

“I think if I absorb heat quickly enough and to a low enough temperature, the metal turns so cold that it goes from ductile to brittle. It seems like those videos of how locks can be frozen and shattered after being dipped in liquid nitrogen.”

“Hm… that’s pretty awesome… but… no, no, that would be very annoying here, there’d be shards of metal on the ground... Let me try something this time.”

Shaula walks forward towards the entrance to the cave, the thick metal barred portcullis. She touches the bars, attempting to feel their coldness… but there is none for her to feel.

She grips the bars in her hands in a stance to pick them up and push the portcullis up to open the entrance.

But then she notices. The portcullis cannot be pushed upwards.

“Huh? How do people open this thing?”

“What’s wrong?”

“This thing can’t be pushed up to open it. It's literally just a wall of bars that prevent entry...”

“Does it need something like… a key or...”

“I don’t see a lock or a keyhole anywhere. But… whoa, wait, the bars have some kind of carving...”

“A carving. Can you read them, Shaula? We should be able to read this world’s language.”

“No… it’s not exactly a language but some kind of pattern...”

“Let me see.”

Ajax walks towards the bars next to Shaula. He sees the pattern, an odd geometric formation carved into the cylindrical bars’ surface.

This reminds me of… Kinser’s war hammer? It lit up with a similar kind of pattern… I haven’t told her about those two yet. So, this must be some kind of… magic.

“I don’t think we can open this without magic.”

Ajax has discussed magic with Shaula during their trip to this point. He never liked going into too much detail because it reminded him too much of the men he killed; especially Kinser who used a magical weapon to try to harm him.

“What makes you say that?”

“There was someone… who used a magic weapon with a similar carving. It lit up and I’m guessing that’s when he put magic power into it.”

“Huh, so they have that kind of magical technology. The gate won’t open if it doesn’t receive the right magic spell or something...”

“So... should we move on?”

“No. Let me try something else. Stand back.”

Shaula raises her right hand and points her index finger. Her fingers have long, sharp nails.

She touches one of the bars with the tip of her index finger’s nail. In a matter of seconds, the metal bar turns bright red and melts, falling away into a molten clump on the ground.

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“Whoa!”

“Yeah, pretty cool, right?”

Shaula touches a few other horizontal and vertical bars of the portcullis and opens up a large hole. Molten metal is on the ground but no shards of anything.

“Alright, let’s head in now. Wait, actually, could you absorb the heat in that molten pile. No need to accidentally burn our clothes.”

“...Sure.”

Ajax touches the pile of still cooling molten metal with his left foot. He cannot feel its heat at all but he can feel the energy enter his body as he absorbs it.

The molten metal comes to a proper coldness, completely solid on the ground now.

“Hey, you see that branch at your feet there? Hand it to me.”

Around the cave entrance and the edge of this cliff, there are some loose branches and rocks. One of those will fit Shaula’s purposes well.

“Alright, what for?”

“Just a makeshift torch, it’ll be dark as shit in there, right?”

Shaula lights one end of the branch, creating light for them to properly explore this place.

Ajax and Shaula walk through the newly made opening into the cave, torch in Shaula’s right hand. The path before them is curved to the left. Shaula thinks there should be a large room full of stuff up ahead.

The smell gets stronger the deeper they enter the place. Shaula consciously downgrades her sense of smell as a result, moving the excess energy to her eyes, ears and reflexes.

There should be no one here, but just in case there is, she’ll be able to see them, hear them and defend against them.

Ajax and Shaula come across the main room where all of the cave occupier’s possessions are. It is more or less a rectangular room, roughly cleared of debris and carved out by human influence.

A wooden table and multiple wooden chairs in the centre of the room, a bunch of rusty weapons against the left wall and a wooden desk with several glass jars on it. Beside the desk is a large, closed wooden box on the ground where Ajax can smell both rotten and edible food.

At the far wall of the room, there is also a second pathway further into the cave. Neither of them can see to the other end of this pathway from there.

Shaula listens intently. She can hear something. Wind. Wind flowing through the tall grass.

“Ajax, I think that’s a second entrance to this place. I can hear the outside in that direction...”

“Oh. Maybe where we entered was like an emergency exit or something… huh.”

“We’ll leave this place through there. It’ll be easier than jumping past that cliff.”

“Alright, don’t forget your tortoiseshell.”

There is a ceramic jug on the wooden table. Shaula places her torch into it so she can move hands-free.

There are multiple piles of clothes on the ground near the right wall, some in one large pile which Ajax assumes to be the dirty clothes.

Some of the clothes are covered in shed fur.

“Does a dog or cat live here or something?”

“I don’t really know… but hey, I think you should look through the clean clothes in that pile over there for something. You just don’t look right walking around in that torn half-skirt. It’ll be easier to explain your appearance to people in normal clothes.”

“...stealing clothes?”

“They got plenty of shit… but all of it’s for men. I’d take something too if there was anything for me.”

“You think it’s multiple people?”

“Yeah, the sizes are too different to be for just one person. Just look at that shirt there versus that other brown shirt.”

“Right, makes sense. Sigh… Fine. Just this once, I’ll steal their shit.”

Ajax looks through a pile of recently cleaned shirts and pants on the ground while Shaula explores the weapons cache.

The weapons are all short swords in leathery sheaths. Shaula takes out one of the short swords. It’s somewhat rusted with traces of blood on the blade. Shaula puts it away before Ajax can see it.

I should take one for self-defence… Ajax definitely needs one of these too.

Shaula examines the other weapons. Out of seven short swords, she finds the least rusty and blood-covered two and places them separately for her to take later.

Shaula moves on to examine the food in the wooden box. A lot of it is rotten; mostly fruits and vegetables but also some stale buns and dried meat.

She isn’t particularly hungry and her appetite went further down after seeing the mixture of edible with rotten.

She moves onto the desk with the glass jars. The glass jars have carvings; these carvings aren’t magical inscriptions but labels for what’s inside.

“Hey Shaula, I found something to wear, you mind not looking here so I can put it on?”

“Alright… but it’s not anything I haven’t seen before...”

“J-Just do it please!”

Shaula turns away from Ajax and looks at the glass jar in her hand. In this glass jar is a bunch of crushed leaves that resembles rosemary or perhaps oregano.

It reads… ‘Viran’? This is… a food additive for dried meat, I think. Wait… how do I know that?

Shaula knows what this is even though she’s never heard of it before. She knows what the substance called Viran is because meanings of new, untranslatable words have been instilled into her through the language crystal.

She picks up three more jars, each of them with the name of a herb or plant that she has some preliminary understanding of.

But nothing she would want. She wouldn’t just take seasoning items that don’t belong to her.

The people who live here… don’t seem to have much as it is...

Then she picks up a jar with a snow-white, fine powder in it. She reads the label but she cannot identify the item based on the words.

This seems like something different... what’s it say… ‘Dead Snow’? That doesn’t seem like an herb and I don’t seem to have an idea of what it is in the back of my head… What is this? Meds of some kind?

Shaula opens this jar, which is sealed with a metal clasp, and smells it.

Hm. A bit strong there. What is this?

She closes the jar and finds another jar, this one with a red powder in it.

‘Moon burn’. This… this sounds familiar. I seem to know some idioms and items of this world but I guess my understanding will still be incomplete in the end. But… moon… oh, so that’s it...

“So what is that?”

Ajax calls Shaula a few feet away. Shaula looks towards him. Currently, he’s wearing a long-sleeved beige shirt with odd black trousers.

“The pants, right? Yeah, these really remind me of medieval pants I’ve seen in fantasy movies.”

“Hm. Well, it looks good on you. Looking sharp, Ajax. Much better.”

Shaula gives him a thumbs up with a smile.

“Th-Thank you... So… what is that?”

“It says ‘moon burn’. I think… I think it’s some kind of drug.”

“Like meds?”

“No… like smack, angel dust, you know that kind of shit. In this world, the word for ‘moon’ refers to the moon itself and a plant with a red flower that can be ground up into a hallucinogenic. This is probably something like... mushrooms… I’m guessing the same with that ‘dead snow’ over there. That has a real drug slang feel to it. I’ve had a lot of guys try to sell me pot, speed and yayo where I used to live...”

Oh, wait… Interesting, if there’s a word for ‘moon’ here on Omicron, then there must be a moon here... I just can’t picture it.

Shaula tries to picture the moon of this world to herself but… to no avail.

“Hmm. You certain that’s what it is?”

“Yeah, certain. I doubt it’s something to make you well again, at least not in the ‘health’ sense...”

“So… who do you think lives here?”

“My guess… is like criminals or gang members… I didn’t want to tell you but… their weapons have some blood on them. Most of it’s dried and old blood but… my guess... it’s human.”

“So… these are bandits? Like fantasy shit?”

“Come on, don’t simplify it like… wait...”

“What is it?”

Shaula perks up her ears.

The sound of moving metal. Footsteps. It’s coming from the second exit.