Even without all the subroutines and sensory enhancements I had, it would’ve been easy for me to tell that the guards at the gate were uneasy. This apprehension radiated off them, with perspiration on their faces, pupils that were slightly more dilated than the norm, and nervous twitches which occasionally subtly shuddered across them in waves. I wasn’t the cause of this though. If anything, they grew slightly more relaxed when I saw their gazes lock on me and take in my overtly armed appearance.

“Ho, Woodswalker.” One of them said, as I approached and finally stopped a comfortable conversational distance away from them. It seems my disguise is working.

“Good Afternoon.” I replied and assumed the pose I’d thought up beforehand to hopefully sell my role: My right thumb hooked through my belt near my dagger, but not resting on it, and feet planted solidly and steadily on the ground. With this, I hoped to subconsciously guide the two men’s assumptions. For example, my hand resting close to an obvious weapon would draw their attention to it and would hopefully convey the message that I wasn’t a pushover. Still, I wasn’t resting my hand on the grip directly—I didn’t want to accidentally threaten them or come across as overly hostile.

“You’ve arrived at a most auspicious time, Woodswalker.” The older guard said in a rumbling and aged voice before continuing, “Another archer for the ranks is never a bad thing.”

I raised my eyebrow, which of course remained hidden by my helmet, and asked the obvious question, “Are you expecting trouble?”

“Well, you see—” the old man started to say, before he was cut off by his compatriot, who was much younger and now clearly trying to put on a carefree and charming expression to mask his nervous mien.

“Sorry, ma’am, don’t let the old man here vent his paranoia on you, I already have to put up with it all day.” he said, clearly tired of his senior.

The older guard turned and in the tone of a well-trodden argument said, “And Kirkman’s Fleet? That’s nothing? Just ‘paranoia’?”

Rolling his eyes, the younger guard gave a quick glare to older man before looking back to me and saying, “Alright, alright, a few days ago the fleet came back, and it doesn’t look good. They’ve lost a lot of men. Albert here—” he gave the other guard a quick nudge, “—is convinced that since half the ships in the bay are empty, we’re just days away from some form of major ‘enemy’ assault.”

“Kid, if you’d seen—” Albert was once again cut off by the other guard who waved his hand as if he were warding off an insect, “And since you’re from out of town?” I nodded “The entry fee will be two coppers.” He said, seemingly satisfied that he’d derailed his partner.

Dakla had given me a quick primer on coinage, and when combined with Tabris’ somewhat out-of-practice financial skills, I was reasonably sure that I wasn’t overpaying or being ripped off. Wordlessly, I picked two of the lowest denomination of coin I had from my pouch and put them in the guards outstretched hand. If anything, two coppers was cheap.

“Thank you.” I said, and quickly left the two guardsmen behind me as I walked through the tall archway which was flanked by two massive wooden doors. Behind me, the men quickly fell back into a nervous back-and-forth about fleets, attacks, and “the enemy”—whoever they were.

In front of me lay one of the main thoroughfares of Iprebert. The cobbled road I’d approached the gate on continued and assumed a slightly convex shape while widening out a bit. Along the road, structures sprouted, tightly packed, and irregularly held apart by an alleyway or a smaller road which led between them. The construction of these dwellings itself was simple: a heavy use of wooden trusswork sitting atop stonework and topped with the red tiles that I’d seen from afar earlier. It was a lot to take in compared to the rather monotonous forests and fields I’d seen up to this point.

My more exotic senses—and systems—were experiencing the highest load yet since my arrival here on Roiturn. In nature, or in the company of one other person, there wasn’t too much to process. Now though, there was a lot of data to manage because there were a lot of people: vast multitudes of them milling around and hurrying in every which way. Riot control subroutines which had been asleep woke up and started analyzing crowd patterns and evaluating general sentiment. Urban combat systems were similarly routed from their slumbers and started counting people in windows and generating probability clouds for possible threat vectors along with prospective interior building layouts and the tactical advantages they could provide.

My more mundane senses weren’t understimulated either. My sense of smell and the attached subroutines were waging war against the sheer impossibility of identifying the exact chemical compositions of what was being served up by the four different street food vendors who were in my immediate proximity. Complicating the matter even more, the fragrant food-smells were only an overbearing mask, failing to cover the easy-to-identify smells like sweat, human refuse, and the ubiquitous smoke smell coming from the thousands of contained cookfires all around me.

I stood there, a bit to the side of the main entrance, just looking at the bustling masses, and realized that, once again, I had no immediate idea of what to do. I didn’t honestly expect some wizard or something to jump out and greet me, right? No, finding a higher population density was only the first step. Now what? Since I wasn’t in a hurry and I didn’t have any concrete destination in mind, I started to head deeper into the city, absorbing every byte my senses were feeding me and going wherever my feet took me.

I found myself in a large plaza as the last rays of evening light crept over the rooftops and people who I’d identified as lamplighters scurried around with long lighting poles. I’d been mentally expecting the same darkness that consumed South-Tenstone at night—only broken by occasionally glowing windows or torch-wielding peasants—but apparently, this city was far more modern. Looking back at all the major streets I’d taken through Iprebert on my wanderings, I realized that many of the larger ones had been liberally sewn with streetlamps.

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I watched one of these lamplighters, who were easily identifiable with their long poles, light a lamp near me—or attempt to. When the small flame at the tip of his pole touched the glass cup at the center of the elevated lamp assembly, nothing happened. The man mumbled something, bumped the stick forwards again, and watched as the flame at the end of his pole sputtered. Muttering something which I identified as heavily accented cursing, the man pulled the pole back, leaned the still-lit stick against a nearby fence, and then in an unexpected feat of dexterity, scampered up the pole until he was eye-level with the wrought-iron cage of the lamp. There, he one-handedly retrieved a flask from his hip, unstoppered it with his mouth, and poured the contents into the glass cup. After jumping back down, and retrieving his lighting stick, a quick prod of the refilled glass cup made it burst into a flameless but warm radiance almost immediately. More magic.

Wandering through the streets of Iprebert had been highly educational. For one thing, Tabris had seemingly warmed up to me a bit because she seemed to have a comment or an anecdote about almost everything. I didn’t know exactly where she’d spent her time before being hosted in my VR, but wherever it was, it clearly lacked street food, lamplighters, and many other of the mundanities that she’d soliloquized about at length since I’d entered Iprebert.

It wasn’t all mundanities though: among the mundane, magic was hidden; like in the streetlamps I was observing. Enchantment—that’s what Tabris called it when a spell-pattern was fixed to an object and independent of a spellcaster—seemingly made up for Roiturns lack of technology. Now, it wasn’t common by any means, but it was present: for example, besides the lamps, there was a high-end shop with well-dressed clientele which served frozen foods prepared on magically cooled stones.

Still, it didn’t take me long to “peer past the veil” so to speak. The unease I’d noticed among the guards was reflected in the people of the city. I’d observed many different groups of people, and all of them—from the poorest to the richest—showed signs of being nervous. On the poor and the working-class individuals, it was more pronounced. Nervous eyes flickered about, people walked in a slight hurry, and occasionally, they held impromptu whisper-conversations. The rich, easily identifiable by their high-quality garments and human accoutrement in the form of guards and servants, hid it better. Only occasionally would the mask slip, and an honest expression of unease would sneak out.

I’d, of course, tried to figure out what had people on edge, but from casually listening in on conversations, I didn’t learn markedly more than what I’d learned from the guards at the gate. From what I could piece together, “Kirkman’s Fleet” had recently returned victorious, but having suffered massive losses. This fleet, led by an Admiral Kirkman, was the way that Iprebert projected its naval power. Now, having returned with some riches but only half the seamen it set out with, some—like the guard Albert—were worried about hostile retaliation. These were facts as far as I could tell, but among what I’d heard, there were rumors too.

The big rumor was that Kirkman, public hero of Iprebert, was in poor health for some reason. Usually, upon returning victoriously from some naval action, Iprebert would host parades and festivities to celebrate the victoriously returning mariners and their valiant leader Kirkman would at the front-and-center of the event. This hadn’t happened yet though: many of those I’d overheard grumbled about being denied the chance for some fun.

Then, there were the stranger rumors: those only whispered about, and which required me to bring my considerable eavesdropping capabilities to bear. One of those came from a midshipman who claimed that during their recent naval engagements, he and his crewmates had been attacked by “invisible fire magic”—whatever that meant. Apparently, his crewmates suffered burns without ever being exposed to flame. Another rumor from another sailor spoke of how their beloved Admiral had been “cursed” by enemy magic. I didn’t quite know what to make of all of this.

“Say, Tabris, what can you tell me about magical curses?” I asked my live-in Saint.

“…well, remember what I told you about enchantments?” she said after a short pause.

“Yes.”

“Curses are similar. An enchantment can be placed on an object but also woven into a living creature with the right stable spell pattern. When such an enchantment has a positive effect, we call it a ‘boon’ or a ‘gift’. A ‘curse’ is simply the opposite—an enchantment on a living creature placed with malevolent intent.”

“So, if someone—say this Admiral Kirkman—were suffering under a curse, how would they get rid of it?”

“Visit a temple of any local church of course.” Tabris replied without hesitation, “Fighting malevolent magic is one of the core callings of most Gods, especially those oriented towards healing.”

I was curious, so I asked, “Could you remove such a curse?”

At this, Tabris sighed before responding, “Normally, yes. Curses are one of the many weapons that the Infernals have crafted in their ceaseless war against civilization. My ability to counteract those is pronounced compared to other servants of Tasmian and normally, I’d be quite proficient.”

“But you can’t do so now because you can’t use magic?” I asked.

Sourly, she replied, “Yes, yes, yes. For some reason, this space in your skull that I reside in is magically inert.” She sighed. “It’s really quite strange, but I’m sure that with your help we can figure it out eventually—after all, it’s not possible that you are completely devoid of mana.”

“Well, it’s in both of our best interests to figure out this magic-thing soon…” I said, trailing off as my focus drifted to one of the food vendors. My energy supply was still comfortably in the green but sampling some cuisine wouldn’t hurt. As I walked over towards the vendor, I thought about how I could contact shadowy and hidden underground wizards. Really there are two basic options: Find them or have them find me. I could, for example, forget all notions of subtlety and go out blatantly asking everyone where I can find a capable magic user, but that would most definitely get me the wrong sort of attention.

Still, there might be a good idea in there somewhere. Criminals or other hidden groups likely have their own access to magical talent. Should I try to get accosted by thieves, and then tell them to “take me to your leader”? I chuckled. Sure, I could work my way up the criminal hierarchy that doubtlessly existed in a city as big as this one until I reached someone who could direct me to a practitioner, but while I had some coin, I didn’t think I had enough to bribe that many people. Something to think about.

I approached the food vendor who was selling something which smelled delicious on a stick.

“How much for two?” I asked.

“Three a piece, so six please.”

I handed over one of the smaller iron pieces I had to be on the safe side—I still wasn’t quite sure on the exact denominations—and the man handed me two sticks of food and then scrounged in a coin purse to retrieve four of the small copper coins. Then, the man dumped the change in my outstretched hand, and just as I began to walk away, I noticed something was wrong.

Food momentarily forgotten, I stopped, rooted in place. I closed my eyes and focused specifically on an internal sensor network that I didn’t use all too often. There it is! The feeling was like tiny, hot needles poking into the flesh of my right hand. It could only mean one thing. I opened my hand and looked at the four coins suspiciously and somewhat incredulously.

Why is one of these coins heavily radioactive?