I had to leave the sword behind, it would have drawn too much attention. The same went for the armor with the exception of my boots, though that was an easier decision because of how broken it was. I stuffed everything I wasn’t going to take with me into a storage closet on the first floor, sheathed the kitchen knife into my pants behind my back, then opened the front door of the building about a quarter of the way before snapping it shut. Right, the sun was still rising when I got here, I thought, peeking out the door again at the foot traffic for a visibility gap I could use to slip away. Even though nobody seemed to pay much attention to me before, I wasn’t about to take chances.
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If he can see far enough back that he knows what I did on Earth, then he could have extrapolated almost all of my actions until now, I thought, pacing around two blocks from the bathhouse. A brain is ultimately a deterministic machine, at least as far as I know. That message could have been intended to cause any number of effects. Even thinking about it has a risk involved, what if it was meant to keep me standing here so that someone could kill me? A flash of panic went through me and I looked around, making sure I wasn’t being watched. The only person looking in my direction was a tired-looking man whose expression told me that he thought I might be insane.
Why didn’t the operator tell me about this? I considered. Did he not know? Or, did he know, but telling me would have impacted the mission? Trying to trace out exactly how planning and counterplanning would work when done by entities who could predict the future months or even years in advance to an extreme level of accuracy was enough to make my forehead start to hurt. I can’t stand this, I sighed in frustration, an operator should provide instructions and commands. When it was just me and the humans, it was workable, but now… The fist that I didn’t notice I was making cracked from how tight I had balled it up. What if someone else can read that information? What else is in there?
As I took deep breaths and listened to my heart pounding in my chest, another thought came to the forefront: Why am I so affected by this? Emotions were raging in my mind as though I had no control over them whatsoever, I was sweating, hyperventilating, and acting completely irrationally. As though closing a mental hand over the noise in my brain, I stuffed all of the feelings in my head and chest down, feeling a cool calm return again. I haven’t been that emotional since… Yaavtey, I realized. I felt my heart rate slow down, but the lingering effects of panic remained for a few more minutes.
The operator did something to me, I realized, wiping my forehead and looking at the damp sweat on my palm. He practically idolizes humans, it makes sense that he would want me to be more like one. He even told me to aspire to it. Instead of disgust, the thought made me frown, and I let it do so because the expression was harmless. I need to keep a tighter hold on this, I concluded, I don’t know how making my emotional responses stronger could give me a better chance of success, but he knows enough to know I would resist it, so that’s the appropriate course of action. The man who was looking at me like I was insane was joined by another, and both met my eyes when I looked over at them. Time to leave, I decided, Crazy or not, the old woman was right. I need to get to Awrehrehzha, but I need to do it the smart way.
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There’s something, I thought as I rounded a corner to see two armed men harassing a much larger man near one of the makeshift wooden houses. All three of them had long, unkempt, blonde hair and looked filthy. I had spent a little over an hour wandering around looking for someone that I would be able to ask for information without drawing too much attention to myself but found nobody. The people in the settlement didn’t trust each other, and even though my darker complexion didn’t draw as many eyes as expected, my size made people assume hostile intent, or so my new human senses told me. This group, however, looked to be in a situation I could intervene in to the benefit of either side, depending on who helped me first.
“I know you have money hidden away,” one of the normal-sized aggressors said, glaring up at the large but timid victim. “No way you aren’t starving on the slop at that size and you haven’t worked in weeks, that I’m sure of.”
“I just sleep more,” the large man replied quietly. “Please, it’s nearly noon, we’ll all have nothing to eat if we don’t go now.”
“Just tell us-” the other aggressor started, but then I walked up to them and everyone turned to look at me.
“This place is some kind of prison, right?” I asked, opening with a question that would hopefully lower their guards. The old woman had told me that I already knew the answers to where I was and how to get out, so I decided to trust her on the former at least. Insane as the very idea was, the only explanation for the strange settlement I was in was some kind of open-air prison. That meant that the way out was to just jump the wall, most likely, but considering that the prisoners were kept moderately fed and well I had questions.
“What gave you that idea, doymztoyl?” the first aggressor laughed. “You must be a pretty stupid npoyt to end up here as a mercenary and not even know that.”
“Is there a way out?” I asked, playing up my ignorance and accent.
“Climb the wall,” the second aggressor mocked.
“We have to go,” the larger man whined. “We need to get to where they’re giving out the food.” He tried to slink away while the other two were distracted by me, but the second man grabbed him on the shoulder and began to shock him to keep him still.
“We aren’t done talking,” the second man growled. “We can miss a few meals to get your money.”
“Doymztoyl, they’re giving out animal feed that way,” the first man said, gesturing northward in the direction that the foot traffic was gradually shuffling towards. “So go get your fill and seyt off unless you’ve got some money.” The large man groaned in pain, and the second man released him, trusting him not to run.
“How do you get money in this place, exactly?” I asked, and due to my new mental sensitivity I could practically feel the swirling mass of emotions coming out of the three humans. Indignation, frustration, murderous intent, and anger from the aggressors; Fear, shock, hope, and most importantly a desire to speak from the larger man. There’s no way this is a closed economy, I thought, I think I know exactly what’s going on here.
“I’ll give you a ngeyt to seyt off,” the first man spat. For a brief moment, my eyes met the large man, and he gave me a look. I wasn’t entirely sure if I was interpreting it correctly, but the situation had probably degraded enough that what he wanted was going to happen anyway.
“Sure, sounds good,” I shrugged, holding out a hand expectantly.
“The nerve-” the second man seethed, shoving past his partner and moving to shove his knife into my face. Before he could touch me with the weapon, my right hand struck him in the jaw and crumpled him to the ground. Then my left followed up on the other aggressor, striking him in the temple with just a twinge of force magic and knocking him out too. The entire encounter happened so fast that almost nobody noticed, the promise of food to the north being more compelling.
“You,” I said to the larger man, getting his attention. “You look like you have a lot to say.” It took another second for the shock of seeing his attackers beaten to wear off before the larger man hastily wiped his hair out of his face and stood up straight.
“Th-thank you,” the man stuttered. “I’m Aaljh.”
“Not that,” I replied. “Money, can I make some?”
“Uh, um, er,” Aaljh mumbled as one of his attackers groaned on the ground. Must not have hit him hard enough, I thought, I’ll keep the electric magic secret for now.
“Answer quickly,” I advised, gesturing to the two dazed men. “I have less patience than they do.”
“There are- work assignments!” Aaljh blurted, perhaps a bit too loud. “You need to go to the entry and exit station and ask about them.”
“What kind of work?” I pressured.
“I usually do latrine duty,” Aaljh said quickly. Technically the word he used was kihzmsherv which literally meant “waste hole”, but I mentally translated it to latrine based on the context. “They give you a bath afterwards, and… well, for someone like you the slop won’t be enough to fill you so you don’t want to waste money on water.”
“Are there jobs outside the walls?” I asked, finally getting to the real goal of the conversation.
“Yes but… well, you won’t be getting one for a while if that’s what you’re hoping,” Aaljh replied, breaking eye contact. The second aggressor, who had been the one to groan, tried to sit up before being sent back to the ground by a swift kick from my left foot. Aaljh flinched at the sound of bone on bone and looked at me nervously.
“Why not?” I demanded, glaring at him angrily. I wasn’t actually angry, but he seemed to respond best when intimidated.
“It’s first come, first serve,” Aaljh whimpered. “Latrine duty is always open so-”
“How do they keep track?” I pressed.
“I don’t know!” Aaljh replied shakily, glancing at his unconscious attackers again. “Don’t hurt me.” These prisoners don’t have identification numbers, I thought, I might be able to use that.
“How did someone like you end up in here?” I asked.
“Like me?” Aaljh echoed.
“Are you even a Rehvite?” I asked.
“Well, actually I-” Aaljh began, but then he shut his mouth abruptly.
“So you won’t fight two men you could easily brutalize with your fists, but you’ll keep something so obvious a secret?” I scoffed. “If you could use force magic these idiots wouldn’t be any threat to you.”
“My brother was captured at the third battle of Kuhtehsh,” Aaljh said quietly. “He was a defector, nobody in the family knew, so they… I’m here because it was the condition to not have him executed. All my siblings are in other prisons.” So there is, or was, a war going on, I frowned.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Half a year,” Aaljh replied, and my frown deepened. That means I was in the noypeyyoyjh for at least an entire year, probably more like a year and a half if it was still summer during the assault, I thought. “Sir?” Aaljh prompted me after about half a minute of silence.
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“If these two died, would anyone notice in the next few weeks or so?” I asked, gesturing to the two unconscious bodies.
“They’re part of a local gang-” Aaljh began, and I groaned aloud in frustration. I should have expected as much, I thought, allowing prisoners to socialize always causes problems. Long-term warbreed prisoners were frequently shuffled between storage sites and kept in single cells to prevent organization. I had assumed that these people would at least be half as diligent in keeping the peace, but apparently I expected too much.
“So if I kill them, their gang is going to come after you and torture you, then you’re going to set them after me,” I said. “But I keep them alive, they’re still going to come after me, just maybe not with the intent to kill.”
“I would never!” Aaljh insisted. Yes you would, I thought, reaching down to each man’s head and shocking them to keep them unconscious. “What did you do?” Aaljh asked warily.
“They’ll be out for a few more hours now,” I told him. “I don’t care what else you tell them when they wake up, but tell them I’ll beat them far worse than this if they come after me.” Which won’t dissuade them in the least, not that I want it to, I thought, if I can’t get out of here quickly I’m sure I can use them somehow.
“I, uh, um, uh,” Aaljh stuttered.
“I’d also advise you to take their weapons away and put them somewhere,” I added. “And wherever you’re hiding your money, move it.”
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The “slop” lived up to the image I had of it in my mind. Following the direction that the other humans had been moving in, I came to find a small crowd centered around a cart that was guarded by twenty heavily-armored and armed soldiers. In the back of the cart were seven closed barrels, and on the ground nearby were eleven open barrels, with eight of those already being empty. From what I could tell of their contents, it was primarily composed of some kind of grain that had been boiled and mashed to the point of being a slimy paste. It didn’t smell like much from a distance, and I doubted it tasted any better, but the humans were so ravenous for it that the guards had to maim several people even in the short time I watched from nearby to keep the peace.
“He already got some!” one woman yelled, pointing at a man who was holding a full bowl of the paste from the barrel.
“Did not!” the accused yelled back.
“QUIET!” the armored guard nearest to both of them ordered. With a few hand gestures, he summoned two more of his allies, and both of the squabblers were arrested.
“I didn’t do anything!” the accused protested, only to be silenced by an obviously magic-enhanced punch to the gut that made him spit up blood.
“I’ve had quite about enough of you scum today,” another guard, probably the captain judging by how he wore a red cape but the others didn’t, announced. “Next person to make trouble is being executed.” As if to provoke him, someone in the crowd threw a bowl of food at him, then all hell broke loose as everyone including the thrower tried to scatter before the armed guards could catch them. Thankfully I was standing nearby but not in the crowd, so I took advantage of the chaos to approach peacefully from a different direction.
“Hold it,” one of the side guards said, stepping in my way. “You weren’t in the line.”
“There wasn’t any line as far as I saw” I replied.
“Don’t test me,” the guard warned, reaching for his sword. Though I could only see his eyes through his closed visor, his expression was severe.
“Okay, fine,” I relented. “I wasn’t here for the food anyway. Can you point me to the entry and exit station?” There was a moment of tense silence, then the guard relaxed.
“It’s on the southern edge of the wall, that way,” he said, pointing roughly south. “Are you looking for work?”
“Yes,” I confirmed with a nod.
“Go on then, get out of here unless you’re looking to watch an execution,” the guard huffed, gesturing dismissively. As we both looked back to the crowd, I saw the man who had thrown the food being beaten by three armored guards while a fourth stood nearby with a sword drawn.
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The walls were made of the same material as the bedrock: some kind of incredibly durable nano-engineered material. I would have suspected that it was hyperdiamond if I was on Earth, but the quantity was utterly massive, it was one solid piece, and it more resembled a ceramic upon further examination rather than a carbon allotrope. Considering it was made with magic it could have been anything, even something conventionally impossible to produce, or even another kind of “non-material” like whatever the noypeyyoyjh was made of.
Because the humans were just as incapable of damaging the walls as I expected, they also weren’t able to do any meaningful modifications to them. The top of the wall was wide enough to allow people to walk on it, but any sort of additional fortifications were held in place with, and often made entirely of, wood. I couldn’t see outside, of course, but the stability of the structures indicated that they were braced against the ground on the outside to keep them in place. When I reached the entry and exit station I even got a view of what those bracings probably looked like, because the station was braced on both sides.
Instead of a traditional gate, the human jailors had created a wooden bridge over the wall and then a small fort on the inside to prevent it from being overrun. It looked like someone had tried to burn it down at least once, and the beams used in its portcullis had recently been swapped out. Atop two battlements guards in armor stared down at me, weapons out of view. A few meters to the left of the portcullis, a conspicuous woman sat behind a desk underneath a leather overhang, writing in a book. I hadn’t seen any Uwrish military uniforms before, but I knew I was looking at one.
On her head, the woman wore a brimmed leather hat with a medallion resembling a bird attached to the front. Her torso was covered with a thick fabric shirt, a decorative red leather vest with a deep neck, then a darker brown leather overcoat with an ornate design and deep red trimmings. When she noticed me the woman stood up, showing me that she had a saber on her hip as well as black woolen pants. Green eyes, I noticed, she’s some kind of noble, probably. The expression on the woman’s face was one of barely-concealed disdain.
“Is there a problem?” she asked curtly. “You aren’t wasting an officer’s time, are you?”
“I wanted to ask about work,” I replied, drawing out a sigh from the woman who put both of her gloved hands on the table in some kind of reflexive gesture.
“We need people to clean latrines today,” she said. “Northwest quarter. One ngoywngeyt, and a meal and bath at the end.”
“I was more interested in taking work that would bring me outside the walls,” I said, and I got another sigh, then a sharp glare back.
“Do you realize how many of you geniuses I have to deal with every week?” she spat.
“No,” I answered.
“Too many,” she growled. “You’re new, I can tell by the way you’re holding yourself, so let me be the one to break it to you: You are not going to escape. I don’t care if you think you’re pretty strong or your magic is better than ours, you wouldn’t be here if we didn’t know how to handle you. Best case, you get caught and surrender and we throw you back in here and bar you from working with a brand. More likely you just die. If you really piss us off though, we make an example of you, and you don’t want that.”
“What about a… temporary release of some kind?” I asked. I didn’t know the Uwrish word for “parole”, so I hoped she would know what I meant. It’s worth a try, I thought, technically I don’t think I’m supposed to be imprisoned.
“Don’t push your luck, foreigner,” the officer warned. “You fought for the wrong side, that’s the risk of doing business as a mercenary. Just be glad we’re civilized here, if you had been caught doing this shit in Dahmpiyah they would have released you naked into the woods for nobles to hunt for sport. Instead, you get to wait out your release in here and we even feed you.”
“What if I said I wasn’t a mercenary?” I proposed. “What if I’m not supposed to be here?”
“Oh this’ll be good,” the officer sighed. “Please, do avail me of the tragic story that led you to be wrongly imprisoned here. Maybe you’ll be the first person to move my heart and secure your freedom.”
“I’m Yuwniht Lihyveyz, I killed R’vaajh Tahyn here when it was still a Rehvite fortress,” I said. The officer looked at me for a moment, then laughed, rubbing her eyes with one hand and shaking her head derisively.
“Gods, you have a sense of humor, I’ll give you that,” she scoffed. “I have to know though, who told you that story? You don’t look Dahmpiyahn, and I don’t think it’s very well known abroad.”
“Nobody, I was there, or rather over there,” I said, pointing towards the noypeyyoyjh. “I cut his head off with force magic.”
“You can’t cut people with force magic, but good try,” the officer rebuked. “Let’s be serious now, do you want the latrine job or not? We still need five more people for it.” At least she took it as a joke, I sighed.
“Do you have any jobs outside?” I repeated.
“Not if you want to work today,” the officer mumbled, opening the book in front of her and flipping through the pages. “If you want to go out on a work assignment… Do you have any skills? Besides fighting, of course.”
“Manual labor of all kinds,” I replied. “I’m quite strong and I don’t tire easily. Back in Vehrehr, I used to do the majority of the work at five-man jobs for Steelheart.”
“Hm,” the officer muttered, flipping a few more pages. “If you want the most money you can cut wood, but there’s a year’s waiting list for that one. Considering your… attitude I’m guessing you’re just a bit stir-crazy, so there’s a cleaning servant assignment in Awrehrehzha in fifty-eight days. Only thirty ngeyt, but it’s an overnighter so you get four meals and a bath.”
“Fifty-eight days?” I grumbled.
“It’s the best option you have if you want out soon,” the officer replied dismissively. “Basic tasks are listening to orders, scrubbing objects with brushes, cleaning up after a meal, and so on. Typical servant stuff. If I had to guess, you’ll be cleaning up before and after a feast. I can give you a ticket for it now if you want, just be aware that failing to show up will give you a temporary ban on all work.”
“Ticket?” I asked.
“Right, new,” the officer said, apparently to herself. She opened a drawer on the desk and took out a box, then removed a strip of copper with a number stamped on it from the box. “If you have to wait for work, you get one of these. I note it down here and tell you how many days you have to wait once again just for clarity. You show up, present the ticket, and we act like you signed up that day.”
“Seems simple enough, give me the ticket,” I said, holding out my hand as my mind figured out at least three ways to game the system. The moment the strip of copper was in my hand, I took a breath to begin asking another question but was beaten to the punch.
“I already know what you’re about to ask, so let me answer you,” the officer said. “You can trade this ticket away if you want to, but don’t try to forge a fake one or change the number. If we get two people with the same ticket who show up they both get flayed as punishment, got it? Same if we find a fake ticket later, we keep records. Oh, and whoever you give it to had better show up and agree to work, or I’m going to ban you from working. Finally, if they can’t do the job, you’re banned and so are they.”
“Seems like it’s easy to get banned from work,” I noted.
“You do anything to try to seyt us, we will seyt you back, do not forget it,” the officer warned. “You are still a prisoner here, work is a privilege, especially work outside the walls.”
“Is trading tickets common?” I asked.
“Do you think we would have rules for it if it wasn’t?” the officer replied. “You’re also supposed to tell us if you trade it but somehow I doubt you will. If I had it my way we’d just burn the numbers into you instead of doing all this nonsense. What name are we calling when it’s your turn?”
“Yuwniht Lihyveyz,” I repeated, getting a raised eyebrow and a doubtful expression.
“You don’t even look like him, using his name is just stupid,” the officer sighed. “But fine, if that’s what you want, just make sure you or whoever you trade that ticket to comes up when ‘your’ name is called.”
“I wasn’t planning on trading it,” I replied.
“Worst lie yet,” the officer muttered. “Just to reiterate: Do not try anything stupid and do not think you are smarter than us. We always get a few idiots every year that attempt an escape and it never turns out well.”
“So if someone did try to, say, fight their way out of here-” I proposed, making sure my tone communicated that I was being facetious. Even though I was obviously joking, I found a saber pointed at me in the blink of an eye. I could have grabbed it with magic, but I didn’t want to give anything away. “They’ll lose their head,” I finished.
“Only if they’re lucky,” the officer said, gesturing with her eyes to the battlements. I had seen the men atop them move to draw weapons, but it wasn’t until I actually looked up that I realized they weren’t holding crossbows. Even though the things in their hands were bulky and crude, missing the machinery of their Earth-made counterparts, and apparently designed to shoot large harpoon-like projectiles instead of lead balls, I still recognized them on sight. The decision to not attempt escape right away is looking better and better with time, I thought, I’m not sure I could withstand those with magic alone.
“I wasn’t aware your people had firearms,” I said gently, taking a step back and raising my hands to show that they were empty, save for the ticket.
“Nothing like a Zae’ey’yaob rayfahl or two to humble a warrior in need of humbling,” the officer bantered back with a vicious grin. Those look more like muskets, actually, I wanted to reply, but I decided to keep quiet.