“Don’t worry master, I am ready.” I reassure my father one last time. “Don’t worry, nobody is making anyone do anything, I want to do this.” My smile feels a little forced, but my heart feels warm. “Don’t worry father, I’ll be safe, I remember what you said about wilderness survival and hiding your trail. I remember what you taught me about avoiding predators and the elements. I remember the emphasis on deception from the art of war mentality you say pervades tactical games in our world. I’ll be fine, I’ll be careful, I’ll priorities my life.” This is dragging on, but I don’t hate it. “Yes, I have everything I need, some coins and one of the robes. I’ll make you proud master.” I run my hands over the makeshift purse around my waist just to make sure. “No, no, you don’t need to say it, I know you already are.”

On my way out I see Vance practicing with his own skeletons, named One and Two. Vance is a poetic soul who wants nothing more than to follow the example of our father and give life unto others, to crate and fill the world with animus. I think he said it best when he said he strives to be a true echo within the shadows, to embody and project the resounding call to life that our father unleashed. Truly I wish him the best in this pursuit. Already he has worked a rough proximally into shape and continues to study devoutly at his task to hone his creations even more. In some ways you could say he strives to make real the zombie viruses of earth, but in truth I think he has little interest in turning the living, his craft far too honed on breathing life into the dead to ever take interest in reaping lives to do so. As I say, truly a tender and poetic soul.

Father has never seen the surface. I cannot say that he’s missing much, just the same darkness the cave holds, but at the same time I fear he may never once live to see these sights, which is truly a saddening thought. The membrane bounds at the edge of where his manna meet with the existence of the world is perhaps not so robust as its aggressiveness tenacity suggests. Most notably it’s resilience to the grabbing flow of currents and eddies be they in air or water suggest that it lacks the physical immutability to truly survive outside of his enclosed den. Nevertheless it is undue to lament too thoroughly that which he himself has not concerned himself with, rather perhaps the best I can do is simply to impart my companionship unto him that while he may in darkness dwell. Never may his soul be lost to solitude, untouched by those of this world.

I have not traveled far but already I hear the quiet hum of their song. Master terms them as a choir and perhaps it is a fitting term, though not necessarily precise. It is an unhallowed haunting chant that they do sing unto the night. In quiet hum it speaks to the stillness of the dead and in harsh syllabic rhythm mirrors an untiring gait. Its quiet notes hint at longings and dreams unfulfilled, and within it lay harsh hissing segments that remind me of battle, but there is a sad hint to them. Words filled with pain and grief as if all has long been lost. I cannot say I have a musical ear, so perhaps master said it better, leaving it intentionally vague and obfuscated to protect both privacy and dignity of the singer. A choir is one that serenades us on every third week, giving vent to their emotions but all to join in the joy and merriment that comes with simple human interaction and understanding. Perhaps it echoes through the air as an offered kinship that floats through and pervades the dark and quiet night.

Above our home is a rich carpet of grass bespeckled with trees of myriad shapes and foliage. Meandering through the trees as I am, I silently avoid the gathering; a circle of figures all garbed in clocks very much like our own. Some have joined hands in song; others wrap their arms firmly about themselves as if terrified of the encroachment of the night. A cool breeze whispers past them soaking in their melody and carrying it off to share with any who might lack the kinship it offers.

Off into the night I alight. I wish I could say I recognize the trees, the foliage, the grasses, alas I don’t recall a single one. Perhaps I’ve been negligent in my studies, or perhaps this world simply lacks familiarity.

I walk away from the song into a solitude all my own with only the faint tug on my soul as companionship, a promise that even in death I will be able to return home, a promise that no matter how I wander I bring my father with me in my vary soul. The hill is steep and slippery, but the grass is soft beneath my toes, very different from smooth and slippery rock. I walk untiring, but the forest is calm and tranquil. I find that I have a direction, I will go up. I walk up the hill for perhaps an hour or two before I reach the top. Where the hill is too steep I walk around it seeking a path, there the forestry grows too dense I do much the same, sometimes working my way through it, but being careful that I do not break the peaceful silence that surrounds me, the music naught but a faint hum this far out.

Atop the hill I found the tallest three trees, it was hard to tell for sure which was the tallest. As an undead my vision in darkness is far superior to a human’s, but at the same time my eyes are effectually human, not those of an eagle, nor do I have any omniscience, at most he had a vague sense for where the living were, lesser life sense as the notification put it. That snake for example, I will walk around it.

I find myself walking circles through the lush greenery, carefully not knocking down bushes nor carving a true path through it. Finally I settle on my target, a tree that I couldn’t even hope to wrap my hands around, rough strips of bark peel outwards around its base, course and weathered like wrinkled skin. They flex slightly as I grab hold of them and begin pulling myself up. My foot finds hold in the space between the peeling bark and the trunk, and I begin to climb.

I begin to pant with exertion, and I wonder if I am truly exerting myself, or if this is the visage of life that adorns me? Is the flush in my cheeks genuine; the rough ache of my palms as they grasp at uneven strips of bark? The lightness and exhilaration burns in my chest as I breathe in the damp air; cold and refreshing in my lungs but vaguely sticky and uncomfortable on my skin. How high up am I?

I look down, and the world spins, my grip tightens, the canopy above is replaced with the ground below, similarly far away, perhaps a few hundred feet. Were trees meant to be so tall? Perhaps it is just how this world works. Climbing higher, my handholds are becoming sparse, the bark smoother as it approaches the branches above. Almost there, almost, and then the world rushed away from me faster than I’ve ever seen anything move in my short life. My breath caught in my throat, and then in a moment the world stopped with a sickening crack. I lay there on the ground staring blankly at the dark canopy above. What happened?

I try to lift my head to see, but my head isn’t moving. I try to sit up, and that works, my body rises, my head leaning faintly back, and then with a soft sound of crunching, or perhaps grinding, my head suddenly falls from leaning backwards to leaning forwards against my chest. Reaching out with my hand I stabilize it and hold it in the correct position while I check myself for injuries. My arms are fine, my torso does not feel wrong, my legs move right too, but my neck seems broken, absorbing most of the impact. What did father say about such situations? Oh yes, don’t move it. Broken bones, particularly the spine tends to break more when you move it around, namely the small nervous system loops within it which are responsible for reflexes as well as the longer nerves which reach from brain to muscle through it. Alas I cannot simply lie here forever; this is not my home, so I should build a brace. Searching around for about an hour I find two sturdy sticks and several flexible long branches from a bush. I use the flexible branches to tie the sturdy ones to my back, coming up behind where my head should be, and then I tie another set around my forehead to the two sturdy branches. I have to admit, it’s inconvenient not being able to turn my head or look up and down without leaning backwards and forwards, but it will do until I can return home to heal it properly.

The tree stands tall and proud, apathetic to my failure and monolithic as it was when I first saw it. The sparse handholds as you approach the branches were what gave me trouble, I wonder, how can I scale it? Gathering almost a full bush worth of those flexible branches I begin coiling them around each other, joining them into a long and tangled cord. I was told that once upon a time people used to make rope by rolling blades of grass between their fingers to make it more pliable, than wrapping blades of grass around each other half-length to half-length until they formed a longer string, than several of these strings would be wound about each other in a spiral to reinforce each other. I tried applying the same principle to the already somewhat pliable branches, weaving a length of wooden rope several times my height. Father said that people sometimes climb trees like this, using a strap that wraps around the trunk as a harness to make sure they don’t fall.

I take my first step onto the tree I lean forwards, pulling the rope upwards, than lean backwards as the rope rises allowing it to catch against the trunk and hold my weight. I pause for a moment, flexing the rope to see if it can really hold my weight before I begin to climb. The handholds gradually become sparse, but the tension of the wooden rope pressing almost horizontally against the bark of the trunk manage to keep me aloft as I continue to climb. I wonder how long has passed, the air tastes faintly sweet with moisture as my breath grows ragged again. Interestingly I can still work my mouth or move my eyes despite my severed spine;, or maybe it's my legs that I should be marveling are still mobile. Maybe it’s not as bad an injury as I thought?

I reach the first branch and notice the problem. My rope winds around the tree and the branch is in the way preventing me from raising the rope any higher. Father never told me too clearly how this worked, I think he only understood the general principle. I begin to take a few steps to the side before loosening and reorienting my rope, soon I’m beneath the branch, my rope above it on the other side of the trunk. I climb under it. I wrap my arm around the branch which is nearly as wide around as my head, and pass the rope from that hand into my mouth, biting down hard on it with my jaws as I twist my arm the other way back around the branch to retrieve the rope. This works for the first few branches, but they’re getting thicker. The branches had a sort of fused-branch structure with rivets and protrusions running across their length. I begin climbing onto the bottom edge of the branches, loosening my harness from the trunk, and swinging it around the branch to climb up it. Than once I reach the top I swing it over the next if one is in reach, or I swing it around the trunk a few times until I can catch the other end and secure myself to climb higher. The climb is long and difficult, but when I reach the top where branches are sparser the sky is still dark overhead.

I take the chance to reflect on my climb. It was perhaps reckless and a little foolish, every time I remove the harness from the trunk I risk falling again, but I don’t really know a better way offhand. Perhaps if I had other tools, I recall father mentioning that mountain climbers use a different sort of harness. I sit carefully on one of the larger upper branches while keeping my harness in hand. The branches are getting thinner again up here, I think I could reach the top, but I decided to wait until the morning light before I take my first good look at this world.

The hours tick by and the gentle mist builds into a heavy morning fog. A faint luminescence builds within the fog before it begins to move and flow faster, the light cutting at it like a knife, or perhaps more like a dog herding sheep. The light always seemed to linger behind the fog, evaporating holes in its swirling form, but never truly flooding its densest regions. I climb higher, above the fog, and now I feel the warmth of the morning sun on my skin, hints of glare catching my eyes between the leaves of the little remaining foliage above. I’ve crested the forest canopy while ago, but only now do I reach above the flow of fog. Like a river of clouds it flows through over the trees mirroring the flow of water over the bed of a creek.

I stop to appreciate the view, like turbid waves of water the fog obscures the trees below from sight. It flows slowly almost at a crawl as if I were watching the swirls and eddies of water in slow motion. The red and violet rays of the morning sun shine down into the fog below lacing it with their hues. Over the span of a half hour I watch the flowing pale but faintly colored fog flow as it slowly melts away. Treetops begin to emerge like stones in a drying riverbed as birds begin to sing. Their chirping is rhythmic, but scattered, like a musician who doesn't yet know what he wants to play, just trying out notes, sometimes repetitive, other times new. It wasn’t a song, not really, just noise to fill the quiet of the forest below. I watched the river of fog slowly slither elsewhere, deeper into the valleys where it could hide from the morning rays, until there were only sparse veins of it left; wafting out through the canopy only to be worn away by the sunlight like an eternal boarder conflict, the two sides stubbornly fighting for claim over territory.

I have to admit, it is awe inspiring. Perhaps father was right; maybe it is good to see more of the world once in a while.

I climbed higher, reaching the highest branch I trusted to bear my weight, and I looked out on the world. Below me forested hills cascaded unending in every direction. Towards the sun the hills grow shorter, like a rumpled carpet that flattens out as it stretches out into the distance, perhaps it is a flat planes beyond, but the sky’s just cloudy enough that my gaze ends before it ever becomes truly flat. All the hills and valleys are carpeted in lush forestry, though those which I can only barely see have forestry that seems shaped; unnatural. Unfortunately it’s too far for me to really make out. Away from the sun more hills loom, each ever higher than the next so that I can barely see the crest of them over the one before. Counting I count fifteen distinct hill crests, or perhaps I should call them mountain crests as the latter five are brown and grey silhouettes instead of green. Looking perpendicular to the sun’s path I see a not quite uniform leveling of the hills as they simply range outwards from the stepped slope of the inclining hills, spanning into the distance in either direction without change.

I watch the hues of red fade from the sky and am again surprised. The sky is not blue, but rather green. Not the vibrant green of the forest below, but a somewhat more muddied green with hints of brown, like the darkened waters of a stagnant pond, dotted with white clouds. That was not all it was dotted with however, there were dots. Peculiar shapes that I couldn’t quite make out n the distance. Large monolithic structures suspended in the air as if held by nothing at all; inverted mountains, boxy shapes that might have been fortresses, long lines that rose in any given direction up to an unimaginable height.

Somehow it made the vast and open sky above feel vaguely cluttered. Anywhere I look there will be specks in my vision, like a swarm of bugs filling the air. Not enough to obscure my sight or prevent the light from shining through, but enough that that the sky seemed to lack the boundless sense of freedom that father described it as having. With some surprise I note that these specks did not cast shadows, or at least not over me. I wonder how many there truly are, how far away they must be. I resolve myself to wait until noon and count the shadows they cast around my own vicinity.

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so I will use the arc of the sun as my compass. Five hills to the north and one and a half to the east I spy faint trails of smoke rising from a valley. Well, they’re probably coming from a few valleys, but they seem clumped in that area. The nearest sign of civilization to home, I cannot see my home from here but it should be between here and there. The next nearest streams of smoke are from far to the east, It is hard to count hilltops at such distances since they blend into each other or hide behind one another, but I would guess probably around twenty hilltops away, perhaps thirty. I recall the hill I’m atop now took me perhaps an hour or two to climb, so at a tireless gait the nearest civilization should be perhaps a daytime of travel away, and the further one a full half week’s travel. I cannot easily see any roads, but there’s a chance they’re hidden in the greenery.

The day passes slowly with the occasional calls of animals below the most exciting part of it. Around noon I begin counting shadows, there were five of note. The closest was the inverted floating island that had previously caught my eye. From its shadow I could tell it was five islands connected by some relatively thin connection, each was smaller than the last like a set of Russian dolls. The remaining four must be obstructed from my line of sight by the largest of them. The next closest would be a rectangular shadow, which seems to be cast by a moving object that’s heading south, but it is hard to determine size or scale of an airborne object from its shadow without knowing its flight elevation. In any case the speed of travel implied this one at least was not a local fixture. The third was an illogically tall tower near the smoke to the distant east. How many hundreds of stories does a tower need to be for its shadow to be seen arcing across the ground a half week to a week of travel away near noon? I hate to justify father’s paranoia, but perhaps this is his level 5000 lordling. The fourth object of note was a circular shadow, which remained perfectly still. Rather the shadow moved with the sun but the object didn’t seem to be moving, more to the point, I cannot spot the faintest hint of what might be casting this shadow

The fifth shadow of note was not a shadow in the traditional sense, rather it was an odd cloud of fog that refused to dissipate under the sun’s rays. It is far enough to the south that I can barely make it out, but it looks vaguely like a giant spiders egg. There is a large central rounded cloud with many misty lines of fog tying it to the surrounding dozen mountains. This was also the furthest of the nearby shadows being more mountain ranges than I can count from here. If fact I might have missed it were it not simply so big.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

While I’m uncertain of this world’s travel technologies the abundance of wooded overgrown lands and how sparsely populated the area is implies we’re likely in some rural backwater. Father would be relieved to know that much. I’m not sure what people will think of us, but there being less control and more places to slip away to certainly boosts our survival odds if things go wrong. Unfortunately while this is his optimistic scenario, this is my pessimistic scenario. I had honestly thought he was being paranoid imagining dangers all around us, but now I’m starting to actually worry about the future. Still, it’s far too early to get worked up about it, we’ve survived for years, decades even, without any disruption we didn’t bring upon ourselves. I sincerely doubt that flying islands and endlessly tall towers changes any of that.

So then, what should I do next? First would be to climb down this tree before I fall and die for real, but that can wait, I’m sitting rather securely and a fire breathing bear would probably spot me more easily on the ground. I’ll admit I’ve only seen the one, but it certainly did make an impression. No, the first thing we need is information. Scratch that, the first thing I need is my neck healed, the second thing we need is information. I couldn’t even understand what words I’d heard when people came to investigate the commotion so the first step would be to initiate contact and learn the language. I sigh to myself, I know firsthand how hard it is to learn languages and that was with the advantage of a soul connection, I can only imagine how hard this will be, but a good butler isn’t afraid of work, I can do this. There would probably be less surveillance or notice of travelers in the nearer and presumably more remote settlement, so I should try there.

Worst case all that happens is I die right? Not really, father’s hypothesized that there have to be others who can see and interact with soul motes too, chances are that I could find true death or a fate worse than death, but hiding won’t prevent that either. I think back to the children. In truth they haven’t been children anymore for a long time, but having helped to raise them I cannot help but care for them as such.

Climbing down the tree was allot harder than climbing up, most notably because the peeling bark peeled downwards from the trunk, sticking up vertically. This made it easier to swing the harness up and over them than down and around them, but with only three close calls I managed to survive the experience. Stepping lightly and waving a stick back and forth through the grass behind me to better hide my trail I make my way back to father, who heals my neck, but the mood of our reunion is somewhat somber, probably because we both know this is only the beginning.

I leave rather swiftly afterwards, heading north and slightly west while covering my trails, since the nearest civilization is north and slightly to the east, this will hopefully allow me to better obfuscate my direction of origin, or at worst I’ll lose a few hours of walking. The sun gradually set in the sky, and now I can’t help but wonder, how does the sky look at night? Are there stars; a moon? Above me the frustratingly dense canopy is hiding these answers from me. Wait, aren’t I really getting into this? Thinking back it wasn’t even a day ago that I was forced out of the house, and already I’m finding myself wanting to explore new and exciting things, things that I don’t strictly need to know for safety or survival.

That thought sits in my stomach like a heavy rock for a while, while I chew it over. I could make an excuse to myself, I could say that the nighttime sky is of the same strategic relevance as this morning’s daytime sky findings. I could say that what we can extrapolate from a vision of the sky could easily have wide reaching applications to any future consideration. I recall the lessons of my father, lying tends to just sow more problems to harvest down the line. It can seem easy, convenient, but is a short sighted proposition in most cases, and to lie to yourself is the seed that sprouts most bountifully. Father always said I had a scholar’s hunger to know. Maybe this is what he meant.

I spend much of the trip reflecting internally, but I still count the mountains, one, two, three four, five, now I should turn east. Night has long since fallen, humans are not nocturnal, or at least not in the absence of a city of lights to entertain them through the night. Out of habit I turn to ask my father, but notice it’s a decision I’ll have to make on my own. Crouching in the nook of a tree’s roots I resolve to wait out the night before completing the last few hours of my travel.

I marvel at how peaceful the forest is, how quiet, how safe. I had expected a field full of confrontational snakes, wolves, and fire breathing bears, but the former two seem rather sparse, spread out across their own hunting grounds, and the latter seems fully absent. I change trees once when a snake approaches, but otherwise remain unmolested in all my time outside. Perhaps the world is a safe place for the undead to live after all, perhaps we will truly find another place to belong. One where we could live peaceful happy lives, exposed to the world but not aligned against it, not hiding from enemies imagined or otherwise, just living. I imagined what that would be like and it filled my sleepless night like a pleasant dream.

As luminescence traveled through the fog, before the sun had properly risen, I began my travels. I found the road before the village, but only just barely. It seems the road through the village travels straight east-west. Groves of untamed wilderness entwine throughout the village allowing it to retain the tree cover while still sprawling across an entire valley. I vaguely wonder how the long rows of fields that stretch between the trees manage to get enough sunlight to grow. I suppose it’s not exactly dark under the tree cover, but it’s far from full sunlight.

I walk into the village like I belong there, and nobody seems to question that. I note that there aren’t actually walls around it, but there seem to be several fortified defensive structures scattered around amidst the other buildings. Plucking up my courage I approach a local and ask them in English where I am. Okay, that was stupid, but in all fairness, everyone I normally see speaks it and it’s somewhat of a habit to use it. There shouldn’t really be any harm right? I have to establish myself as someone who wishes to learn the local dialect first right?

The man seems entirely unperturbed and just points me in a direction before turning around and walking away. That’s a decidedly odd reaction, or at least I think it is one. Perhaps father’s rubbing off on me because I immediately feel a need to do it again just to see if the same thing happens. I approach a woman scrubbing cloths in a basin outside a house in the pointed direction, and she too points me in the same direction. Aimlessly I wander that way, periodically talking to people until someone points to a building. I stop in front of it. On the outside wall above the entrance a large sign penned with foreign script sits tucked only slightly behind the edge of the roof. Slowly I tug on the broach I’m wearing and turn it so that I can see it without actually bothering to remove it. My eyes travel from the broach to the sign and back. The exact same symbol is carved in wood on the sign, a cloaked figure clutching his cloak tightly around himself. In each the figure is crouched down as if ready for combat, or perhaps they’re just sneaking around. Did I just get mistaken as a member of the thieves’ guild? Who donated three thieves’ guild outfits to a presumed garbage pit?

With more questions than I had when I entered the town and no particular better option, I enter the thieves’ guild. I could try communicating with someone on the street, sure, but I could just as easily do the same inside presuming they don’t murder me on sight for impersonating one of their members. Maybe it’s an assassin’s guild? I wonder if I’m playing fast and loose with my life here. I mean entering the village at all was a risk, sure, perhaps there’s an undead detection enchantment that would point me out for them to all try to kill me. Father certainly expects that and lie detection magic to exist for some reason.

I enter the well built but sparsely furnished room. There’s a wooden board covered in stray carvings that takes up the entire wall to my left, the entranceway is undecorated. To the right there are two tables with no chairs, and on the opposite end of the room is a crude bar counter with a cloaked and hooded figure sitting behind it, the only person in the entire room, and from the size of it there may only the one room in the entire building. The figure behind the counter is not half as muscular as the figure on the icon, rather the figure is approaching father’s spherical shape, or at least giving it their best go. Judging by the breasts they’re probably female. I approach and ask “Hello, can you understand me?”

I braced myself to dodge a dagger, but the cloaked figure merely spoke some words and waved her hands around. I paused to decipher the meaning, only for a glow to catch me in the face. Dammit, it’s no a thieves guild or an assassin’s guild, it’s a bloody mage’s guild and I just took spell casting as a harmless communicative action. I know father sometimes thinks of me as stupid, but I think I just proved that point. I’m frozen in place, no, wait, I'm only held in place by my own shock, what did the spell do? I twitch my fingers, they work, I tilt my head, neck still fine, blink my eyes, vision unaffected. “What was it you were saying?” The figure asks, and the meanings of those phonetic annunciations become suddenly clear to me.

“What is this place?” I ask, marveling at how my words aren’t coming out in English anymore. It’s weird, the knowledge of the language didn’t download into my brain, at least not really, it’s more like my brain got remotely connected to the knowledge. I could understand it, I could speak it, but I didn’t understand it, as if I were just using a translator.

“Oh, a newcomer? Good good! Probably Ha-Na-Na’s recruitment again, most everyone else at least knows who we are first. Welcome to the Mysterious Cloaked Wanderer’s Association!” The man sounds excited and proud to announce his group, and the deeper voice confirms the figure to indeed be male, with male mammaries. Yes, perhaps I should have expected that. He continues to explain. “We prioritize secrecy and discretion first and foremost, if you’re new you have to know, using a detection or identification skill on one of the Mysterious Cloaked wanderers is sufficient grounds in these parts for them to try to kill you, so be extra mindful.”

“So, what do ‘Mysterious Cloaked Wanderers’ do exactly?” I ask, still digesting the rapid shift in expectation from thieves to assassins to mages to whatever kind of shady business this is.

The man however just shrugs dismissively. “Anything I guess. We’re kind of an odd jobs guild for the most part.” He waves dismissively at the carved wall which I find I can now read. It has listings like Babysitting 3C or roof repair 7S, or Garden weeding 18I.

“Wait, but if you just do odd jobs why all the cloaks and mysteries? Isn’t it entirely unnecessary?”

The cloaked man however simply shakes his head in disappointment “You don’t understand at all.” He sounds decidedly disappointed at that, but ready to explain nevertheless. “The mysterious cloaked wanderer who appears out of nowhere to save the day yet nobody knows who he is, he wanders from town to town solving problems that lesser men would balk before. When he walks into a tavern and drinks a beer all the ladies gawk and say ‘Oh my, who is that mysterious stranger, he’s so mysterious, I couldn’t even guess how he looks, he could actually be a really cool guy, I should talk to him instead of turning my back to him and avoiding all contact!’. Sure, part of it is that we live on the outskirts of the empire near the border with the sand people so we tend to get allot of folks who would rather not reveal their past, but it’s really all about ambiance, you know? I mean take you for example; you’re perfect, just what we’re looking for. A stranger wanders into town, not even speaking the empire’s common tongue. Short on coins he looks for work, slays the terrifying monster, than leaves as if nothing had ever happened at all. Just imagine!”

I think my confidence in this guild just dropped through rock bottom and shows no signs of stopping. I try to talk it up in my mind, hey, that guy knew translation magic! Look at this place, it’s full of talents! Ok, that’s helping; concentrating on that I begin talking to myself. “The tiger is blue.” I say experimentally, finding the words entirely foreign to my tongue, but it traces them with a muscular memory that is not my own, the misplaced word for cat does not miss my attention. “The wolf is green, the cow is pink.” No dogs, but they have cows? I see him tilt his head consideringly as the words and grammatical nuances chase each other about in my mind. Alas I cannot dally. “It is an interesting piece of spellwork, I admit I feel I could learn much from it given the time.”

“See, you’re perfect! To think you’d try to deconstruct and learn a language purely from its memory roots! Moreover, you don’t know this spell? It is among the most widespread spells in the empire!”

I shake my head dimly. “I am not a mage, nor have I even touched on performing any true working. I am simply my master’s topmost-servant-“I pause and repeat “topmost-servant”, frustrated that the word is not coming out correctly. Nevertheless I shake my head faintly. “I look after his estates and concerns to free him to pursue greater matters.”

“Oh, cool, cool, already creating a compelling backstory for it, I like it! See, I told you you’d fit right in! So, does anything look to your liking?”

I slowly look through the lengthy list of employment opportunities. I’m mildly surprised that hunting monsters in the region is indeed one of them; additionally there is a list of services that can be bought such as an extra robe, translation services, or wood carving, which seems like an exceedingly odd lineup of services. They also offer to act as a middle man, neutral ground for negotiating through disagreements, or a repository for items of up to a limited value. “What do I owe you for the translation spell?” I ask.

“Don’t worry about it, this time’s on the house, just make a good name for us out there will ya?”

I reach out to point at one of the jobs; daytime farm laborer, 10I.

“Oh, um, sure, you could do that, but, uh…” He trails off awkwardly. “Ha-Fa-Ma-Ka-Yo isn’t particularly easy on new workers if you catch my meaning, you sure you’re up to it?”

“I should be alright, but what’s that?” I ask pointing at the 10I at the end.

“Oh, that’s the daily wage, one zero irons. I'll also need a name or alias from you.”

“That translated oddly, one zero, not ten?”

“Ten? No, it’s one zero.” That one stopped me and made me think, and then it clicked. Base ten, not base ten. If someone had a base four number system they would count zero, one, two, three, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, twenty, because a base ten system is base one zero which is entirely useless for checking if it’s base ten or not.

So I began counting. “Zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.” There it was, twelve was one zero thirteen was one one, so the number system was base twelve. My mind would have to work a bit harder to keep up, but I could account for it, subtly the numbers on the board seem to shift to what they should be. “Okay, twelve iron, could you walk me through coin conversions?”

The man scratches his chin under the robe as if deciding if he wanted to, but soon enough he shrugs and pulls a few coins out onto the bar top. “Bone, iron, copper or brass, silver or pyrite, gold, there are some others but they’re rarer and don’t fit the system as well.” I note that the pyrite coin is notably larger than the silver one and that the copper is similarly larger than the brass. “Each step increases value by twelvefold. After gold it circles back around to twelve gold for a magic bone, magic iron and so on, the shape of the coins allows for ease of enchantment so that mages can easily put some magic into them. On a bad hunting season or harvest you’ll see people carving out bone coins, blacksmiths tend to keep molds for the metal ones, of course any you make have to be exchanged through a mage to make sure the shape is right; else someone will get screwed when the coin’s found to be fake.”

I scrunch up my brow in confusion. “How do you keep the value in the magical currencies when any odd coin can be enchanted than sold for a veritable treasury?”

“Don’t know allot about mages do you?” The man asked noncommittally. “Unlike regular fighter types mages gain levels by casting spells, and spells cost manna. Magic coins are just a store of manna. Sure, your manna will recover on its own given time, but if you rely on that you’ll never get anywhere. Sure you can recover some of the manna from your spells, for example most of what I used on that translation spell is returning to me as it comes loose from the spell, on the other hand had you walked out after I might not be able to and I’d have taken quite a loss.”

“If you can recover the manna can’t you just cast it again and level up infinitely?” I ask skeptically. There’s no way it’s that easy.

“Nah, there are minor losses to inefficiency in every step, even a perfectly cast spell will lose some, so the more you have or the more you can buy, the higher the level you can climb to. That’s kind of the point of a mage tower. Everyone’s got at least one or two points of manna, and if they don’t use it it will flow out of them as their manna pool refills past full. A tower serves to gather that manna across a city for a mage to use. Any mage without a tower has to barter for coins to get extra to advance with. Towers are expensive to build too so it’s not like there’s an easy answer.” Tapping on a block of wood he reminds me "So, what should we call you?"

"Jo-Ha-Na-Ah-Th-On", my name comes out oddly syllabic in this tongue.

"Ah, my condolences, it must have been rough growing up with such a name." The man nods consolingly.

"What's wrong with my name?" I ask, perhaps a touch more irately than I intended. "It's a perfectly decent name."

"No, I just mean, it's long, I didn't mean anything by it."

"Long? Sure, I could see that, but it's not like I have to write it every day."

"Wow, you don't even know that? Okay, okay, hold up, you might be pulling my leg here, but I can appreciate a man who puts his heart and soul into his mysterious persona." The man takes a few deep breaths to calm himself before speaking in a perhaps melodramatically serious tone. "You see wanderer, long long ago, in a rime before mortal man can recall, the god Ro ascended into the heavenly realm. Wielding the powers of light, birds, and home, he waged war against the greatest of gods and felled him, taking his place. When Ro ascended and became the greatest god in all the ocean's edge, he gave a divine commandment, changing naming convention forever. Ro decreed that names themselves will identify the station of a man. He decreed that only a god could be given a monosyllabic name, that only one aspiring to divinity could be given a disyllabic name, and only those of noble line could hold a trisyllabic name. Often common folk who don't want any part in such power opt for four or five syllabic names, but you've got six, which is often given only to scorned children that their name itself can be an insult they forever wear. There are similarly situations in which one can change their name, for example my name was shortened to Fe La Fo only when Ra Lo took me in as an apprentice, and even though he kicked me out, I still get to keep the name. So, despite the grandiosity behind the initial declaration, trisyllabic names tend to be for former mayors or the like, and disyllabic names tend to just go to anyone strong or connected enough to have had such hopes placed on them at any point in their life." He started strong, but the seriousness seemed to wane back into his normal casual tone by the end.

“Hmm, okay." I say, setting that aside to digest later. There are gods, there are powerful mages who could become gods, the guild clerk himself is the former apprentice of one such person. No, it's an odd story, but it won't help me with waht I need first. I need to learn this language. "How much would a translation spell cost if I stay here when it’s active?”

“A silver.” He replies without much hesitation, and I pull out my purse.

As it happens the translation spell lasts about an hour, so a gold coin earns me a twelve hour shift of desperately trying to learn a foreign language as fast as I can. I wish I had something to write a translation dictionary with, but the abilities I’ve gained seem to help. As I studied I observe the people passing through the guild.