Once again I found myself looking up at the ornate Church, wondering about the wealth on display, concerned about whether or not this was a trustworthy organization. It sounded like I would be seeing a lot of this place over the next five years. Horg and Sharma held my hands as we walked up the stairs.
“Every morning, until you’re positive you know the route, your father or I will walk you here before we go to work,” my mother told me as we walked over. “I’ll be going back to the institute now, so if you need me, that’s where you can find me. Later, we’ll walk to the town gate and we’ll show you where you can find your father if you need him.”
That was interesting, at least. I didn’t really know anything about the town’s borders or what my father’s work looked like. It had sounded like he just had regular guard duty, and I never really asked about it. As powerful as my father seemed to be, I was much more interested in acquiring proficiency with magic, and my physical training had much more to do with grinding experience and increasing my general constitution than a desire to learn combat skills. I couldn’t afford the skill points for that.
“The Church also offers soup at midday for children under ten. We’ll give you something to eat each morning and give you a pack so you can take it with you, but if you want something warm in the cooler season or want to spend time with the other children, this is where you’ll do it,” my father explained. “Don’t trouble the priests, and don’t trouble the other adults around town, but as you get older and approach ten you’ll want to have a good idea what the adults around town do so you can ask about apprenticeships and training.”
It certainly sounded like the Church was a decent place with a decent group of people. Healing, feeding, and taking care of children were all worthwhile endeavors. “Does the Church teach children how to read?” I asked my mother. She had said that she had learned to read in this pre-apprenticeship age range.
“They can,” my mother answered. “Some priests will offer to teach, on occasion, but mostly older kids, and it isn’t obligatory.”
“Is that how you learned?”
“Yes, I learned from one of the priests,” she answered.
“And Papa?”
Horg laughed. “No, I didn’t learn until I was much older. Your mother taught me. That’s how we met,” he said, smiling at Sharma.
That was also interesting. I wanted to ask more about that story, but a priest had finally approached us. He greeted us and asked the purpose of our visit, and my father told him that I had just turned five.
“Congratulations,” the priest said, leaning down and smiling. “We’ll record your identification now and tell you more about our services.”
In the end, all my worries about identification were for naught. I had been concerned with magical testing, or tracking, or something that might interfere with my plans, but it was basically just paperwork. They had a town registry, which I was added to, and I had a separate parchment filled out with my and my parents’ information, a description of me to verify who I was, and some other details. I gathered that there were enough instances of children under five not surviving that a child didn’t become a citizen until this age. Thinking back to my mother’s concern last year, and the gold coin she had spent to get me a cure here, that started to make sense with some context. If people couldn’t afford a cure, a sick kid in this world might not have great odds. It was a shame the Church’s policies didn’t extend to full healthcare coverage. Since healthcare would only cost priests some MP, I again felt myself souring at this organization. That said, I recognized that if no children died, in a world without birth control, the population would get out of hand and without industry, food would become a problem. Was it just a purely utilitarian choice? I also didn’t know for sure that there wasn’t some form of birth control. After all, I was already five and didn’t have a younger sibling yet. Horg and Sharma certainly didn’t seem to have a dead bedroom.
After thanking the priests, my parents and I walked around town a bit. From the Church, we walked to the magical research institute, and then we doubled back home. Once home, my parents revealed my new day pack, one of the only true birthday gifts I’d been given in this life, at least that I could recall. I didn’t have many possessions prior to this, besides a bunch of things I made with magic out of rocks, and also a bunch of dead animal parts in my inventory. My mother gave me a small loaf of bread to put in my pack to carry around today. I got the impression that my provided lunches weren’t going to be much more interesting than that. Fortunately, I had my cooking skill.
I was told I can come home during the day, and spend time in the yard, but that the house would be locked up when they were away at work. I spent much of my day in the yard anyway, so that wasn’t that different. My father encouraged me to get out and meet the other town kids and learn about the world. I suspected his early years were incredibly formative for the direction his life went in.
From the house, we walked in the other direction, away from the town. It occurred to me I had never gone this way before. The Church and institute were towards the center of the town, and then the pier and beach were beyond that. The whole town grew from the waterfront of this sea cove. As we head further away from the water, the housing slowly started to shift more towards visible poverty. It wasn’t so bad as to be a slum, but clearly the houses closer to the Church and waterfront were where the wealthier people lived. It seemed like we lived towards the edge of where the housing started to turn simpler and less well-kept. I wondered how much of that was because my father worked as a town guard or how much of it was finances. Sharma hadn’t really shrugged at spending the coin at the Church last year, and I had no idea what the bigger economic picture looked like.
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Then, suddenly, we were at a massive stone wall. I stretched my neck as I peered up, then glanced to each side and saw the wall ran in both directions. To the north, the town was closed in by a sheer cliff face which enclosed one end of the cove. The wall appeared to run right up to the cliff. To the south, I would later see that the wall ran all the way to the waterfront and the beach. It was built all the way into the water, closing in the rest of the town. Where we stood in the wall was a massive gate.
“This is where I work, most of the time,” Horg said, gesturing to the gate. “This is the main gate of Mirut, and where the guard offices are.”
“Mirut?” I asked.
“Did you forget?” Sharma asked, patting my head. “That’s the name of our town.”
Several of the guards saluted my father, a chest-level open handed gesture. My father returned the gesture, and they went back to business. Huh.
“Are you in charge here?” I asked, looking around.
My father grinned and rubbed the back of his head. “Well, I’m not at the bottom of the ladder, at least. I still have to answer to the higher-ups.”
I was introduced to some soldiers, who I noticed were calling him “chief,” and he showed off some of the features of the town’s defenses. I was more interested in what was on the other side of the gates.
“So what’s out there?” I asked, pointing at the gate.
“Mirut is sandwiched between the sea and the jungle,” my mother explained. “There’s a land route from here to Roko, which is a hub that leads to Fespen, Gurt, and Taraponi.”
I suddenly realized how silly the names of places are when you have no context and are first hearing about them. I shook the feeling off and tried to commit the names to memory to build up my mental world map.
“The jungle covers most of the land from here to Roko, and then some,” my father told me. “It runs right up to the beach outside of Mirut’s cove. Since it’s full of beasts, Mirut needed a strong wall to keep the town at peace. The town guard spends more time keeping beasts away than anything else,” he confessed.
I wondered if that’s how he got so strong. I had gained a lot of my experience from killing small animals. What kind of animals could be out there in the jungle?
I looked at the guards who were hanging around. I copied the salute I had seen earlier. “Good work, men,” I said. My father and the guards laughed.
“Come see us if you’re ever bored!” some of the guards said as we left, heading back towards town.
My mother shook her head as we walked away. “Don’t spend too much time by the wall, Pilus,” she said as we walked away. “Your father will start trying to train you and you’ll end up in a guard apprenticeship when you’re ten.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with being a guard?” Horg asked, with a smile to say he was kidding around.
Sorry, Horg. I had better things to do with my time.
* * *
My first day of freedom was a breath of fresh air. My mother walked me to the Church as promised, greeted the priest, and then headed off to the institute. I told her to say hi to Vorel for me before she left, and she seemed surprised I remembered him, but said she would. Eventually I would start trying to get some more face time with him at the institute, but for now it was time to grind.
I was told to be home by dinnertime, and if I wasn’t, she’d come to the Church and expect to find me there. It was implied that I would be in trouble if I was out and about too late in the day.
Despite some warnings about the waterfront from my parents, I immediately headed through town and to the beach. I had already developed a decent mental map of the routes we had taken over the last year and a half, and the town wasn’t that hard to navigate, being small compared to the cities I had lived in on Earth. The main issue in navigating was that my perspective was terrible, being a short five year old child.
The pier was busy, but as I moved down the beach away from the fishmongers and ships, the beach emptied out quickly. I walked past the area we would go for picnics, and past the rocky area I had previously trained at. I saw some jumpcrabs, but no rocky shieldbacks. Worst case, I would come back here, but I was hoping to find something new.
I walked the entirety of the waterfront, building my mental map on my way, looking for blind spots away from the eyes of townspeople who might be passing by, and finally found myself at the wall. I had a new appreciation for how large this thing was. It was built several meters out into the water, well past the shallows. Swimming around it would be a challenge, and too risky for now. I studied the stones of the wall themselves.
I could probably get through this. Between earth magic and my inventory, there was a way to make a path. I would need more MP, particularly if I needed to defend myself on the other side, which I would if there were plenty of beasts out there. That would have to wait until level 6.
I followed the wall back, curious where the first gate from the waterfront was. If it was too close, I might run into guards outside, and that would be a problem. Fortunately, it was more than distant enough to alleviate that concern, as there wasn’t another road heading south from Mirut. Travelers heading south went by sea. This gate was sparsely guarded, more of a backup access point than anything. There were some guards who walked the top of the wall, I saw, but it seemed like the guard rotations were sparse. When I got closer to level 6 I would have to try and time the shifts, but I was getting ahead of myself. I headed back to the beach. I hadn’t seen much else to hunt, so I started spiking crabs.