A small stack of coins sat on the table in front of Thomas; he stood, favoring one leg. Sitting hurt, and rising again hurt, so he tried to avoid doing it as much as possible; granted, standing also hurt, and laying down hurt. Everything hurt, in subtly different ways that gave every minute its own unique flavor of pain. He eyed the coins.

“This is more than you agreed to.”

“You dealt with more than you agreed to.” Balier shrugged lightly, leaning back a little. “Besides which, I try to make it a policy to pay people for reasonably incurred expenses. Your possessions were a total loss, I'm afraid.”

Thomas just nodded, at that. He'd be able to afford to replace his clothes, and make a good contribution to paying back Anne's group for the clothing that he'd already wrecked. He was making about three coppers a day doing menial labor, which hadn't seemed like very much at all. He looked at the coins, thinking it through.

Fifty copper coins; at three coppers a day doing the dirty, manual labor he had previously been engaged in, this was, what, two and a half weeks of work? Less thirty two to replace shirt, pants, and hat, so eighteen. Six days work. And he'd been recovering for three already. Thomas slowly breathed out. Once he finished recovering, he'd be behind, if anything, compared to just doing manual labor. And he'd been paid extra, probably on account of coming back in such a terrible state.

On the flip side of that, he'd leveled up again. If he saw this as a paid internship sort of deal, he was getting valuable experience which could earn him more income as he got better at it. Except with a paid internship, part of the deal generally wasn't horrifying experiences. He was pretty sure a cushy job at a bank didn't result in nightmares of dog-shaped men biting your dick off. The nightmares of teeth falling out, at least, had lost some of their punch for him; he'd been there and done that, the hollow feeling on one side of his face something he became frequently and uncomfortably aware of.

Thomas was … aware, of the misery-fueled existential crises he'd been through, but it felt more like a nightmare now, rather than reality. He remembered a distinct sensation, an undercurrent, that his story had ended, that his life was over – that memory was perhaps more disturbing to him than anything else, because it still resonated a little bit. Mostly, he found himself avoiding thinking about it, as after another day he got up and started on manual labor again. He still hurt, he was still recovering, but he could help wind string for the fishing nets; it was tedious work, twisting grass with some kind of oily sticky substance. It made him reflect on fishing line – this string was sturdy enough, but thick, and surely obvious in the water in the way the clear plastic fishing line he was accustomed to was not. How was primitive fishing line even made? Did such a thing exist, or was his idea of primitive cultures fishing with a rod and reel entirely anachronistic? Certainly nets seemed more efficient; why would anybody use a rod and reel at all?

Then again, Thomas reflected, he was basically making rope; he examined one of the sleeves of his shirt for a few seconds. The threads used there were much finer. Perhaps thinner thread was available, just too expensive to be used for something like a simple net?

His next job for the day was helping a group of farmers load what was, essentially, an oversized hand wagon, which was when something finally struck Thomas: He hadn't seen any draft animals, nor mounts. He thought back. No mules, no horses, no donkeys, no nothing; there had been pigs, but they had been, he guessed, for food rather than for work. Then, considering what the deer here were like, maybe that wasn't a surprise.

Instead, people dragged things around themselves. Which, considering how strong people here were – and how easily such strength was apparently achieved – ended up being more effective. There was a traveling barbarian – a strength-oriented class, not an uncivilized person - named Cenilin, who apparently did much of the plowing each spring. From the stories Thomas had heard, Cenilin used an eight-furrow plow; Thomas had no point of reference for this except his own difficulty plowing using a single furrow plow, which had been some of the most exhausting work he'd done so far.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

His job in loading the wagon was one of several men standing in a line; two men were unloading a small shack, handing large brown oilcloth bags to the woman at the front of the line. She passed it to the person behind her, who did the same thing, until a man and a woman at the wagon itself alternated between loading the bags being passed back onto the wagon itself. Only the four who were doing the loading and unloading moved at all.

For all that it required minimal motion, the bags were quite heavy. He didn't even need to lift; the process of exchange involved one party simply reaching under the bag, and the other relaxing the weight. He didn't need to lift, but he still kept lifting the bags anyways; he lacked the practiced ease with which the bags were passed amongst the other members of the line, the bags staying almost perfectly level in the air as they moved. He swayed as he moved, his arms lowered and raised, and overall, he exhausted himself quickly. And kept going, because this was coin for the day.

His back ached, his wounds felt stretched by the motions and the weight – he felt one of the larger cuts on his forearm, where one of the scimitars had embedded in his flesh, pull open a little bit – but he kept moving. He was getting paid for this, and he was earning a little over three coins a day now, compared to the average of a couple a day when he'd gotten started; he'd developed a reputation for getting his work done, and it would be expensive to lose some of that reputation.

But also, the work helped. Even as it hurt, the pain felt … healthy. He felt better, his time filled with work, as opposed to laying around all day 'recovering' – he'd recovered more over the last couple of days than in the three days he'd spent recovering prior.

They were nearly done when a shout came from downriver; he kept moving, the motions of transfer nearly automatic, as his attention shifted to a small group of people coming in. They carried axes, which were heavy with blood; his next turn halted, as he realized that the loading had ceased, people moving out of line to go see what was going on. Thomas followed.

There were four people coming into two; two carried axes, with bundles of red-stained wood tied to their backs. Two more carried – no, five people, that was a fifth person they were carrying between them. A broad man with long blonde hair, he was apparently unconscious between the two, leaving a trail of blood from … his left leg ended at the knee, and both arms ended at the wrists. The wounds were wrapped up, but still bleeding.

Thomas started to move forward, but the Piketown healer, whose name was Trenton, moved forward with surprising speed for his girth, murmuring something, his hands starting to bind the wounds with tourniquets even while Trenton started glancing around at the crowd. His voice, normally light and calming, boomed out over the chatter that had erupted among villagers sharing horrified glances and quiet conversations.

“I need volunteers. We're taking him to Rockfall.”

Thomas considered, and then raised a hand, then lowered it and shouted his assent – he wasn't in school. He'd need to stop by the inn to grab his things, but he'd benefited from Trenton's aid already, and this would be a kind of repayment in kind.

There was magical healing in this world – his teeth could be fixed, surprisingly, if he got to a large enough town, of which Rockfall was one. It apparently wasn't even particularly expensive; magic was almost mundane, here. The healer of Piketown had worked in a larger town for a time; as a pair of expert polers shoved their boat upriver at a jogging pace, in a separate direction from the stream that Thomas had followed here, Thomas had struck up a conversation with the rotund man.

Trenton had apparently worked for a magical healer in Rockfall as a cutter – a kind of surgeon who specialized in cutting out things that couldn't be directly healed, while a magical healer corrected the damage. Apparently healing magic did nothing for either infections or cancers, and the treatment for these things was a combination of aggressive cutting, and aggressive healing.

Trenton had left because, to Thomas' horror as he listened, this world lacked any kind of useful anesthetic; illusion magic generally fulfilled the purpose, and some people were resistant. It had gotten to be too much.