Li found himself taking an evening walk through the docks.

The sun had recently set, leaving a little smattering of natural remaining, but by now, most of the buildings around the docks comprising of taverns for rowdy sailors, had put lit and put up lanterns to fight against the encroaching dark. 

A dark that seemed much deeper and darker than other nights. Not to mention that today was also eerily quiet. 

Riviera usually had a nice breeze flowing through it that supposedly turned into harsh and whipping winds in winter, but for now, during the golden heights of summer, the breeze was tame, flowing in little lulls that soothed the scorching sun.

But there was absolutely no breeze today, making all the little barges and boats seem to float above the dockside water in suspended animation, their sails completely still. Clouds thronged overhead, dark and heavy, filled to the brim with rain. 

Li knew that Riviera had a thriving fishing market as Perle, the name of the lake that bordered Riviera, teemed with fish whilst having few monstrous threats. As its name indicated, there were also deposits of oysters holding pearls at the bottom of the lake, but many did not venture into these deepest depths as the few monsters that did swim around Perle tended to congregate there. 

It would not have been odd to see fishermen drawing in their nets around this time, but they had all retired, likely because they felt the clouds overhead to be signs of an incoming storm. Though, a storm should have heralded stronger winds. Or perhaps its was this unnatural combo of still winds and dark clouds that drove them away even further.

Regardless, Li pushed forwards, rather enjoying this solitude. Like this, with nobody around to drum up an urban clatter, Riviera was far more tolerable, though he figured this thinking was somewhat spoiled considering even the tiniest of cities back in his old world would have blown this tiny little medieval city out of the water with noise and pollution.

Within a few minutes, Li found where Iona lived.

Li saw that she lived at the very end of the docks, isolated from the fishing activity. She lived in a first floor flat, a small housing unit inside a larger building, but he could tell this building was on its last legs. It was a nondescript, rundown old two story building of yellowed plaster, rot-infested wood, and faded brick with holes covered with cloth acting as windows.

Not too surprising, considering he was in the shadier parts of middle Riviera. 

Riviera was split into three parts, lower, middle, and upper, with increasing verticality generally indicating higher wealth. The noble estates stood above all three parts, acting like the absolute pinnacle of wealth, built atop a veritable mountainside and shining with luxuries. 

The docks were nestled right between its lower and middle sections. This area, though, Li noted, must have been just as cheap and bad as some of the worst lower residences. 

Since the city, by virtue of it being built upon elevated land, sloped downwards, sewage was dealt with by dumping it into deep gutters that allowed it to flow down into a sewage network with underground treatment centers placed in lower Riviera to deal with the waste. 

However, this was a new innovation on part of the duchess's rule, apparently taking inspiration from Elven architecture, and Riviera had stood as a city for centuries, long before the elves themselves had progressed from woodland tree dwellings to urban megacities.

Before the duchess's innovative rule, sewage took a more unhygienic and barbaric route by flowing directly out into the lake, and this building stood right beside one of these ancient gutters that funneled accumulated sewage from all of middle and upper Riviera out into Perle. 

Li could smell the foul stench of refuse curling up from the ground and into his nose, but he could easily tune it out. Like how he could tune out the sight of bloody and beaten corpses – he could also tune out biological reactions of disgust. He stepped into the building, taking crisp and unfazed steps through a creaking, moldy door. 

The inside of the building was musty, and as he closed the door behind him, he could hear the scurrying of scared rats and cockroaches and other vermin. Li walked through a small hallway with flanked by little doors that led into large rooms that people lived in. 

According to Alexei, Iona lived in the farthest unit down, and as he made his way there, he noticed just how quiet it was even in here.

A little too quiet. He focused his hearing, and he realized nobody lived here aside from Iona herself, whose footsteps he could hear pattering atop flimsy floorboards. 

"And who might you be?" came a croaky voice brimming with caution. 

Li stopped in front of a woman standing in front of Iona's door, her arms crossed. She looked the definition of haggard, bone thin with frayed, chin length blonde hair and sunken in black eyes. She looked like she could have been anywhere from twenty to forty, and as he sensed her life force, he did not feel anything off about her.

She was just human.

"I'm here on some business," said Li, his tone firm, clearly indicating he was in no mood to engage with a random tenant in this building.

"The good lady's not in tonight," said the woman as she stood over the door, blocking. Her accent was thick, much like Old Thane's. In other words, she was not educated, which was not much of a surprise considering this was one of the poorer parts of Riviera.

"Yer' gonna have to tell me why a strange foreigner's rearin' his head up in this abandoned place."

"The lady's my assistant, and I don't really have time for this nonsense, so-," Li stepped forwards, but the woman would not budge.

Li shrugged, preparing to subdue her with a [Sleep Spore], but the door opened in time, inwards so that it did not hit the woman, and out came a girl not much older than five. By the way she hugged at the woman's legs, it was evident she was her daughter.

Iona poked her head through the door, and when she spotted Li, her eyes widened.

Immediately, Iona waved to the other end of the hallway, motioning the mother daughter duo to leave with an urgent pressure. 

"Are you sure?" said the woman as she eyed Li. "He's foreign, ain't around here, neither elf nor beastman, never seen the likes o' him before."

"It is fine, Ada. Your daughter is well, too. Take her and leave," said Iona, her tone calm and didactic, as if she were talking to a pair of children. 

Ada nodded before leaving, continuing to give Li a suspicious eye as she stepped around him in the narrow hallway, like he was irradiated or something. 

"Now, what was that about?" said Li as he heard Ada and her daughter leave the building. 

"I perform some healing when I have time," said Iona as she continued to peek at Li through the crook of the door. 

"How generous of you. Here I thought you didn't care much about mortals." 

"I condemn their actions as a collective, but I understand that they are still comprised of precious individual lives." 

"Still, a lot softer than I took you for. Now then, I'm sorry to be barging in on your house without warning, but I had something to discuss with you. Mind if I come in?"

Iona paused as her eyes flitted away from Li's. "This filthy place is not fit for one such as you."

"I don't care about that kind of small stuff." Li pushed his hand on the door, applying enough pressure to let her know he was coming in whether she wanted to protest or not, and she yielded, letting him step into her room. 

"Not too bad, all things considered," said Li as he scanned his surroundings. Iona's flat was essentially the size of a large room. There was a small lantern atop a wooden table that emitted a faint light not nearly strong enough to illuminate the whole place. A couple of blankets sprawled around one edge of the room indicated a bed. 

A set of herbalist equipment with racks of vials, droppers, beakers, and the like were neatly stacked and arranged atop the table. Aside from that, though, the room was very bare, though there were a couple of books stacked beside her blankets. New books, it seemed from their shining leather. 

Li had lived in similar conditions when he was a broke student struggling to stay afloat while studying and working all day, so he did not think much of these living arrangements. He took a seat by the table and motioned for her to sit.

When she did, he pointed to the blankets and said, "I didn't know you had to sleep."

"I have some mortal needs from consuming their souls," she said with a sigh. "I can survive off of sunlight alone, but I have come to need some sleep as well. I consider these needs an apt punishment for my foolishness."

"And a need to drink as well?" Li tilted his head forwards, motioning beside her bed where several empty bottles lay haphazardly on their sides. 

Iona glanced at the bottles with a cringe. "Those…are from times best forgotten. As my being has taken in human souls, gaining more of their physical traits, needs, and their powerful emotions, I felt ever more strongly how my existence held no meaning. Hunted down with none of my kind left and my way of life, the reasons for which I was created, destroyed.

I saw that humans could drown their worries away so easily with drink, and I wished the same for myself."

She shook her head and changed the topic, her voice becoming stronger and calmer. "But that is before I met you, when I felt there was no reason for my existence as a forest spirit. But with you here, my life and being is in order, you need not doubt that.

Now, please tell me what you wished to talk about, for I am certain that I can be of assistance." 

Li also felt that it was best to move on from the matter of her drinking, evident as it was that it was part of a troubled past. 

"I'm here to get your guidance on something somewhat drastic I wanted to do."

"Oh?"

"I'm going to try and expand my farm to grow a lot more crop, not to mention different types of it, and for that, I'm going to get all the farmers back to work on their fields under me."

Iona cocked her head. "The dispossessed farmers? They are all city dwellers now. Many years it has been since their hands have held a plow."

"Right," Li nodded. "But it doesn't matter that they're rusty at farming. Skills can fade. But faith is far more resistant to time. People can hold onto it for the rest of their years, hell, they can entirely entrust their lives to it, and I hear they used to worship through their farming. They just need someone to rekindle their faith to get back to their land, something to believe in.

And that's going to be me."