No one had any objections, so Vultressant croaked a few words to Galuk, and they all started following the three remaining frogs—Anurans—to their village. They traveled for several miles, leaving the path after about an hour. Vultressant had asked about what they would find if they had continued along the path, and Galuk told him that it would eventually lead out of the wooded area and towards some rocky hills.

Vanya and Taloc were working with Maroftis to help him increase his ability with the Common language, but he barely understood them. Isla tried to stick by the Anurans so that she could listen to them in the hopes that she would pick up on their language. She quickly determined that she would need actual instruction to learn the basics of the language. Vultressant had understood the frogs because of his language sense ability, but her adeptness ability worked differently than that. The ability will allow her to learn skills more easily than others, but there was probably some process that was required to actually learn a skill. In the description, it said that she would learn skills more quickly than others, so if there was a long training process, she hoped that hers would be very short in comparison.

They began to pass other Anurans going about their daily lives. There were many that had green and brown coloring similar to the three herbalists that they had encountered, but others had spectacular coloring such as bright blue, neon green striped with dark black, yellow, orange, and even one that looked like a rainbow with some black dots mixed in. She asked about the coloring, and Vultressant said that the plain color indicated that the Anuran was female, while the brightly colored ones were male. Isla had always liked frogs, which she found cute; these creatures were certainly not as cute as the animals they resembled, but she found that she liked the Anurans also.

They passed many small huts and even a large building, but there didn’t seem to be any order to this village. The tree cover was thinner here, and Isla was able to catch a glimpse of a large lake in the direction that they were headed. The two females that had been traveling with them went off with four other females that were dressed similarly to them, while their group continued to follow Galuk towards the lake. The lake itself was not terribly wide, and she could see other structures on the opposite side. The other directions showed only water, so it looked like it was very long; she might have thought that it was a river, but the water didn’t really seem to be flowing. They made their way to a dock that had four rafts tied to it. Galuk called to a group of males who wore nothing but cloth pants, and four of them hopped into the water and swam to one of the rafts.

“We need to get on this raft,” Vultressant said.

“Where’re we going?” Ewtain asked.

“To the other side of the lake,” Vultressant replied. “The town elders or whoever is in charge of this place are over there.”

Galuk was already on the raft, and the rest followed suit. Galuk untied the raft, and the four Anurans grabbed the back of the raft and began swimming. They pushed the raft across the lake faster than Isla had thought was possible. This race was built for swimming, though; they had enormous webbed feet that looked even larger given their small size, so their speed in the water shouldn’t have been that surprising. “If they can swim this well, why do they need rafts at all?” Isla asked Vultressant.

Instead of asking, he suggested, “Probably to transport things across the water that they don’t want to get wet, supplies maybe. I suppose that the important people, or frogs, I guess…hmm, maybe ‘people’ is the right thing for the races, and ‘monsters’ should be used for, well, the baddies. At any rate, the leaders might be the ones who use them. I’m not sure if there is any sort of caste system here, but that could explain it.”

Isla thought that either or both could be legitimate reasons—certainly his first suggestion had to be correct. She was not sure why he didn’t simply ask for the answer, but she didn’t feel like pressing the issue. If their roles were reversed, she knew for a fact that Vultressant would have questioned her since he had done that all the time online. He, however, could get a bit touchy if his actions were ever questioned. There were a few occasions, back when they were playing together online, when he had become very annoyed at a group member questioning his tactics when facing a new boss encounter. Typically, strategies for the more difficult encounters were posted online, along with class and gear recommendations for said encounters. When a new zone was added to a game, there was a rush for players to kill the new legendary encounters, and tempers could run pretty hot after hours of dying to the same encounter. On these occasions in particular, Vultressant tended to snap back at anyone complaining about his ideas.

“Where are they taking us?” she asked.

This time he did speak with Galuk, who replied and pointed towards three larger buildings. “It looks like we’re heading to that first two-story structure to the left of those docks.”

The raft made it to the open space of the centermost dock, where they tied down the raft before deboarding. They then made their way to the indicated building. The inside of the building was illuminated by several wall sconces. The floor and nearly everything else inside were made of wood, and while the floor was nothing special, the staircase that led upstairs was very intricate, and its balusters appeared to be handcrafted. The entry room looked like an office, complete with a beautiful desk made of some sort of dark wood. Behind the desk sat a female Anuran who was writing in a ledger. Galuk and the woman spoke briefly, and then she addressed them all in Common. “Hello. I take you up to see Svelta. Galuk goes to bring Gelum and Cynila. You follow.”

The female’s Common was a bit rough, but it was better than what Maroftis could muster at this point. They followed her upstairs and into a large room, in the center of which was a long table that could service a small production meeting in any office back home. “You sit,” the secretary instructed them, but then she looked at Maroftis, and pointed at him. “You wait.” The group looked at each other warily until she retrieved a stool from an adjoining room and offered it to Maroftis, who would not have been able to use any of the highbacked chairs that surrounded the table—mostly due to his tail getting in the way. They relaxed, and the group sat down while the secretary presumably went to get Svelta.

Stolen novel; please report.

She came back with an Anuran dressed in robes that covered every part of her except for her head, which was yellowish green in color. Isla could not determine the gender of this Anuran from the coloring; it was close to that of the females but different enough to make it unclear to her. “Greetings travelers! I am Svelta, the chamberlain of this community. How may I be of service?” That was definitely a female voice, and her grasp of Common was immensely better than the woman who had brought them upstairs.

Vult responded first. “Thank you for seeing us. I am Vultressant, and we are in need of supplies and knowledge of this area of the world.”

“Where did you come from?”

“I assume that you know where the stream is that is just west of here?” Vultressant asked. When she nodded, he continued, “Well, we followed that stream north until we met Galuk and the herbalists.”

Svelta tilted her head, and Isla got the impression that she found his explanation to be out of the ordinary. “So, you came from the south? Did you come from Cairnth or Jestilla?”

Vultressant looked at the others in the group; Ewtain shrugged, but that was the only feedback that he received from them. “Neither,” he said.

“I think that we should wait until the others arrive,” she said. “They should be here shortly.” She didn’t appear angry, but she lacked the outward friendliness that she exhibited just a moment previously. They waited in silence, and after a few minutes, they heard others coming up the stairs.

Two Anurans entered the room. One had yellow skin and what looked to be a horn located above each eye. These were more like spikey protuberances that stuck out a couple of inches and were attached to the top of the eyelids. He was dressed in a tunic of fine quality and carried a sword in a scabbard on his belt. The other had green and brown coloring and wore a robe that was similar to the one worn by Svelta. “I am Gelum,” said the yellow Anuran. “This is Cynila,” he said, motioning to the robed Anuran he arrived with. “I am told that you seek to trade with us.”

“I am Vultressant, and we are looking to trade for supplies.”

“They came from the south, but not from Cairnth or Jestilla,” Svelta informed the two newcomers.

There was a moment of silence before Gelum said, “Then where did you originally come from?”

Vultressant now looked unsure, and he looked at the others for guidance. Isla wanted to tell them about how they actually arrived in this world, but before she could do so, Maroftis spoke something in his language. He could barely speak Common, and he had been quiet thus far, but he must have picked up the change of mood in the room.

Cynila spoke with a mixture of anger and fear in her voice. “What is the meaning of this?” The other two Anurans looked at her and tensed, but they both seemed as unsure of her alarm as Isla did, and everyone else, for that matter. “Speak and answer the question! Also, why do you have a Korak in our village?”

It was clear that at least some of the others had decided not to share the information about their origins in this world, but Isla felt that they needed to share fast or this thing could go sideways. “We’re not from this world,” she blurted.

When all eyes were fixed firmly on her, she continued. “We’ve only been here for about two days, and we don’t know anything about the geography other than where we’ve already traveled, and none of us have heard of those two kingdoms that you mentioned. Our idiot friend decided to play Press Your Luck with his race, and he basically can’t understand us unless we have Vult translate for us, but then we have to talk to Vult, and nobody wants that.” She gave Vultressant a small smile. There was a notification light that flashed on her HUD, but she ignored it for now and continued. “I for one am scared of this world, and I really just want to go home, but we appear to be stranded here for the time being, and so we need help. Supplies would be great, but really, we need information about this world. Can you help us?”

All three of the frogs stood there staring at her, and Isla was beginning to feel as if she had made a huge mistake. Svelta was the one who finally spoke. “We will help you however we can.” Gelum turned to face her, but she put up a hand and continued. “They mean us no harm, and unless these two have elite deception skills, they are both telling us the truth,” indicating Vultressant and Isla.

“How could they have just appeared two days ago?” Gelum asked, exasperated.

“Either it happened or they believe that it happened. Regardless, we will help them however we can.” She looked at Vultressant. “What is the name of the Korak?”

“Maroftis,” he replied.

“Please tell Maroftis that it is impolite to speak in a language that others cannot understand. We do not speak this language, so I am unable to check the veracity of what is said in it.”

Vultressant turned and spoke to Maroftis in Koraken, and then in Common he said: “Apologies. How long will it take to get him up to speed in Common?”

Svelta looked confused. “You want him to speak rapidly? He should be able to say the words that he knows very fast now if he wanted to.”

Ewtain laughed. “He means how long does it take for people to master a language from rank one.”

Svelta looked over at Vultressant as if she thought that he had been making a joke at her expense, but if she had those feelings, it didn’t show in her voice. “Everyone is different, and the higher a person’s Intellect, the easier it should be, but it could take years to fully master a language. If he has the basics, then it might just be a matter of weeks for him to be a functional speaker, again depending upon practice and Intellect. Also, Common is the most basic of the languages, so time is decreased for the learning of it.”

“Well, he’s pretty dumb, so we’ll have to work with him more to speed the process as much as we can,” Vultressant said, “but I’m already rank five in Anuran, and I just learned it today.”

“That is…” Svelta hesitated for a moment. “Well, it clearly is not impossible, since you are telling the truth. I would think that possibly the beings of your world were much better at learning languages, but it appears that this is localized to you alone.” Then she asked, “Has anyone else increased any language skill since you arrived?”

They all shook their heads, except for Maroftis, who had stopped paying attention and actually appeared to be viewing his HUD. Svelta nodded as if she had expected as much. “Languages work differently from other skills. While you do need to practice a given language to have it increase, you also need a large amount of instruction; this can be circumvented if you use a skill book to learn the language. Also, rank ten is the highest rank for a language, and the other skills are measured in levels. Frankly, I am not sure why languages are considered skills at all. Now, I apologize in advance, and please do not feel pressure to answer, but do you happen to know why you were able to learn our language with such ease and miraculous quickness?”

“Svelta!” Cynila exclaimed. “You go too far. We are not interrogators.”