The strangest thing about District 109, besides the smell, was the people. Elves lived a long time, an average of three thousand five hundred years nowadays. Various deities had blessed them over the years, and there were numerous subspecies, from dark elves to high elves and even wood elves.

But minus the holy extended lifespan, we all capped at around four thousand. That meant I’d seen some pretty old people throughout my days, but not as old as the people who lived here.

Here there were liches and death knights, people who had lived from the end of the fifth age and had fought through the Dark Lord’s army. That was well over fifty thousand years ago.

That meant they were older than some of the new gods that had risen to power.

I didn’t talk to any of them. But they wore uniforms and spoke in old dead languages like it was nothing. And one of the liches had a mana pool that could compare to a dragon's. I wasn’t anywhere near the person but I felt his presence from ten miles away, Ryt the Dead and Victorious.

He was a necromancer who had turned the Dark Lord’s army inside out at the end of the fifth age, and he was here in this district.

I gulped. Now that was terrifying.

But I wouldn’t be seeing him, probably.

“Ooooooh, that looks goooood,” Niff mumbled, staring at a glass window and watching as a steak was being served to a delighted customer.

She couldn’t smell it through the window, I guessed. That or they cooked it so well that you couldn’t even tell it was sentient meat.

“I’m pretty sure that’s minotaur steak,” I commented.

“What?!?!?” She exclaimed. “Why? And how do you know?”

“Maybe it tastes like beef? And because they're called Taur Meat and their logo is a hoof,” I replied while pointing at the sign.

“That’s- that could just be a name! It’s not Minotaur Meat! It’s Taur Meat, Taur!” The mouse-kin exclaimed.

“Right lass, mino-” Darvind paused for a second. “Tuar.”

“Cen,” I paused for a second. “Tuar.”

“Cervitaur,” Darvind added.

“Felitaur,” I added.

“I don’t think those exist,” Darvind commented. “Dracotaur?”

“Now that definitely doesn’t exist,” I replied.

“ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT!” Niff yelled. “I get it, they’re eating people,” she said with sad slumped shoulders.

“Well, people meat, not people. That’s illegal unless previously consented to,” I replied.

The small mouse glared at me.

“What about vegetables? I saw that zombie eating vegetables in there! Couldn’t we eat those?” She asked.

“Dryad hair,” I replied.

“What,” she whispered.

“Dryad hair or dryad skin or some plant sapient being,” I replied. “Zombies need to feast on sentient flesh. It’s part of the magic that keeps them alive.”

Her ears drooped along with her shoulders

“We’re gonna starve,” she mumbled.

“Don’t worry. They have animal and plant-based food here. It’s just harder to find,” I said, trying to comfort her.

And surprisingly, it worked.

“Oh, okay!”

Her ears flew high and her bushy tail rose a little. Both me and Darvind chuckled.

“How old are ya lass?”

“Twenty-five!” She said with a smile.

“I’da thought you were ten with how chirpy you are,” the dwarf responded.

“I’m a young soul,” she replied, holding her hands over her heart endearingly. “Or at least that’s what my mother says.”

“And you lad?”

“Seventy-eight,” I replied.

“That makes me the old man of the group,” he mumbled.

“You’re a dwarf. You were practically born an old man,” I replied.

“True! True! I was born with stubble and came out walking ya know!”

Niff and I let out a laugh and the dwarf smiled until we passed by a restaurant that served undoubtabley rotten food. If the smell had been subtle before, it outright yelled now. The stench hit our noses with a battering ram and once it was in there, it decided to set up camp.

Niff clutched her nose and Darvind frowned.

“I don’t get why they have to eat dead people! Why not just animals?” Niff questioned.

“What they eat isn’t so much the corpse as it is the mana networks within them,” I answered.

“Zombies are basically in stasis corpses. They’re dead but preserved from rotting and unable to produce a strong enough lifeforce of their own. We living are able to make that lifeforce ourselves, given some raw materials. But zombies aren’t.”

“Don’t animals and other creatures make that lifeforce as well?” Darvind asked.

He was pinching his nose along with Niff now.

“Nope. All sentient humanoids are a derivative of the archetypal ancestors. They need mana networks and lifeforce of that nature to stay alive.”

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

“I don’t know what you’ve just said,” Niff said in a naselly voice. “But it’s no excuse to eat people!”

“If they eat anything else it’ll just get clogged in their stomach. They can eat liquids, but unless it’s magical in nature, they’ll just pee it out later. And they can’t digest food either. If they eat something non-sentient it might even clog up their system. Regular food is like rocks to them.”

“Oh,” Niff noted. “That must be awful.”

“Well clearly, they make do,” Darvind commented.

I nodded as we closed up on our inn. It was a nice and large place and filled with living breathing people. There was a faint smell of pie and meat in the air, along with good ale.

“Finally,” Darvind spoke as we walked into the place. “It smells right clean and wonderful in here! It’s heavenly compared to those rotten streets!”

We gathered and made our way to a small and empty table. I looked around and saw adventurers of all kinds, mostly living and breathing. And though there was one dryad drunk in the corner with his party, he was not familiar to me.

I didn’t expect them to bunk here. This place would be too cheap for someone of noble blood, but still, I had to make sure. A few clerics glared at me and one paladin grabbed his sword.

I took out my license and flashed it.

A wave of authentication spells hit me. Again.

Then they frowned and turned away. I guess all the church acolytes knew the rules regarding half-demons and such. That was good. They could hate me. As long as I was left alone I’d be happy.

I wondered what setup I should use. Normally I summoned a spirit or two before I slept to keep an eye out, even in inns. It was a drain on my mana but it would go a long way in giving me peace of mind during the night.

Probably something loud, something that would alert the whole place and not just me if-

Darvind yanked me by the arm, pulling me towards his seat with a laugh.

“Come on lad! Get outta yer head and into the food now!”

Apparently, they had already ordered. A whole stuffed pig was brought to our table and they had already started tearing off some of its belly and dumping it onto my plate.

“Right proper pork this! Raised by the centaurs in the planes above!” He said while chewing.

“Tastes almost as good as cave rats,” Niff mumbled next to an incredible amount of bones.

It was all the bones in one of the pig's legs, laid out in order from the femur to the hoof.

“Did you eat all that?” I asked the small mouse-kin.

“Yup!” She replied, reaching for a loaf of bread that looked like it was half her body weight.

“We rodent-kin eat a lot!”

And then the bread was gone. Instantly.

Both Darvind and I stared as the little mousekin put away three times her body mass in five minutes.

“What in the gods…” Darvind mumbled.

I was impressed too. I’d never met a roden-kin before, but from what little I had picked up on, they were one of the few interbreeding groups of beast-kin that you’d find outside of the wilds. That meant that they bred with one another pretty consistently and shared traits.

Niff, for example, was half mouse-kin and half squirrel-kin. There were probably more of her kind within her colony along with other rodent types. Rabbit, skunk, hamster, whatever.

Normally colonies were established for two reasons.

One of those was needed. Certain races had certain needs. District 109 was sort of an example of that. This wasn’t a zombie colony but there were a lot of zombies here because this district was one of the best suited for their needs.

It was the same for dwarf colonies or dryad colonies. In colonial districts, they only tried to accommodate one race. And I guess all rodent folk had similar enough needs that they often ended up mixing and living together in general.

The second reason colonies were established was because of culture. Different groups of species had different cultures and norms, but maybe that wasn’t the case with rodent-folks.

Either way, they all ate a lot, according to Niff, they ate more than orcs.

“We eat a lot of food and do a lot of things!” She chirped. “We dig for miles underground and run for a long time too! My grandpa says that’s how we survived in the Wilds back before we came to Asrin. Though he wouldn’t know, we’ve been here for millennia!”

“Is this… an everyday thing lass?”

“Oh no!” Niff squeaked with a mouth full of food. “We only eat like this once every couple of weeks, normally right before a big day! Sometimes it’s a digging project or a harvest project, so we all eat our fill before moving out and then we work for weeks!”

“Niff, where exactly is your district?” I asked.

“Oh, it's everywhere! The prairie-kin do most of the digging and squirrel-kin travel up and down the Asrin Tree. We do have a town center, but all of our bases are connected and accessible to each other!”

“Everywhere?” Darvind asked with a mouthful of bread.

“Yup! We have tunnels and settlements throughout all of Asrin City!”

“And you’re all counted as one district?”

“Yup! District 112!”

“Oh! You’re one of the hidden species! The eyes of Asrin City!” I exclaimed.

Niff nodded proudly, then proceeded to drink down a cup of ale.

“Hidden Species?” Darvind asked while watching the little mouse girl clear out a cup she could fit in.

“Yeah, they’re species that are hard to find or verify by scholars. You could catalog them with some effort, but Asrin City has so many more interesting things that scholars just end up researching other topics and forgetting about them instead.”

“We’re great!” Niff exclaimed. “And we’re proud of it, even if no one knows about it.”

She had finally finished eating, leaving half of the pig and a jug full of juice on the table.

I started eating, glancing at her swollen belly now and then. It seemed to be getting smaller, somehow storing the crazy amount of food that Niff had shoved into it.

“How much do you weigh Niff?”

“Around fifty pounds starving, two hundred if I’m full.”

Darvind choked on his drink.

“Two hundred?” He spat out, not letting the mead ruin his beard.

Niff nodded. She was slumped back into the chair and let a surprisingly deep and long burp. She wiped her lips with a napkin.

“Excuse me,” she squeaked.

“How in the hell do you weigh two hundred pounds?” Darvind asked.

“I just do,” she shrugged. “All rodent folk weigh more than they look. It’s a part of our natural enhancements.”

“I don’t believe this,” he replied.

Darvind got up and went to Niff’s side of the table.

“What are you doing-”

He hefted up her chair, seemingly struggling more than he’d expected.

“By myth and legend,” he breathed as he brought her down. “Ya really do weigh that much.”

“Of course I do!” Niff squeaked. “Why would I lie about that?”

“Dunno,” Darvind replied, returning to his own chair and filling his mouth with pork. “Just had to check.”

Niff snorted.

“You called her colony the eyes of Asrin City?” He asked me.

“Oh yeah, Asrin City is large and splayed out. Monster spawns and man-made dangers can be found almost everywhere. There’s a rumor that a small-sized race wanders through the city and catalogs those dangers for the Asrin government, but no one has ever met them. Most people thought it was pixies or some type of tames fey. I believed it was done via high-level divination.”

“Nope, just us,” Niff replied.

“That sounds pretty important then, and you're saying nobody knows about it?

“We don’t like strangers!” Niff replied. “Or at least my people don’t.”

“Why not?” Darvind asked.

“Accommodations and culture, I would guess. They were probably hunted back in the wilds and held some kind of resentment towards larger folks who pushed them around. Plus, their homes are designed for them. Unless you can fit in their tunnels, you won’t be meeting them.”

They both stared at me. Niff with wide surprise and Darvind with curiosity.

“Or… at least that’s my guess,” I mumbled. “I don’t know.”

“That’s spot on,” Niff whispered. “How’d ya know?”

“Just a guess,” I replied.

“It was fairly obvious,” a voice intruded. “Culture and needs are the two most prominent reasons as to why colonies exist in the first place. The needs are quite obvious and add on the size difference and the primitive lifestyles of the Beastly Wilds, then you can make a good guess about the culture as well.”

Darvind and I turned to see a centaur behind us. He was tall, about eight feet in height, and he wore a cleric's robe that draped all the way to his hooves. His face was sharp and he wore a pair of round-framed glasses that seemed to catch the light perfectly, reflecting the white glare of the glowing crystals directly at me.

“Well well well, if it isn’t the smart ass himself,” Darvind spoke.

“I’m half horse, not half donkey,” the man replied.

“Ya look the same and ya smell the same the same.”

“I don’t smell Darvind,” the centaur commented.

“Of course ya do, ya just don’t know it. It’s not like you centaurs can reach past your tails anyway. Crustier than a troll shit I’d wager.”

“I’ll be taking my leave then-”

“Oh come on and have a seat you damn donkey. I asked you to meet me here for a reason.”

The centaur glanced around the table, his eyes drifting from the food to Niff, then me. His brow creased for an instant, then he turned to Darvind.

“Very well.”