After another half hour I’m reliably getting weird sensations every time I run through the right hand’s gestures for Find Spellcraft, so I switch to the left hand’s gestures. I’m also starting to get a better idea of the difference between the normal dragging feeling and the feeling of a spell working, which is useful.

I also decide that my earlier decision, to wait for the team to break for lunch, probably isn’t going to work. The sun feels like it’s not moving at all. Maybe it actually isn’t? The thought strikes me that I haven’t even established that they have a day/night cycle around here. That’d be a wild change!

But no, I have a more immediate problem, albeit one that’s relatively minor in the scheme of things.

“Can I borrow some water? I forgot to fill mine before we left,” I ask, slightly embarrassed. “Too much of a rush.”

Bob fields the request. “I got it,” he says. “Gimme yer’ waterskin.”

I twist around to grab my waterskin from where it’s hanging off my pack and pass it forward. Instead of grabbing his own waterskin and doing a transfer like I’d expected, though, he does something I can’t see and hands it back to me only a couple seconds later. It’s partially full.

“Can’t fill ya up,” he apologizes, “since we’re gonna fight later, but this’ll getcha to Caulfield.”

“That’ll work, thanks,” I chirp, and take a sip. It tastes great. I’m getting hungry, but nowhere near the point where it’ll cause problems, so I can continue to ignore that.

My stomach placated, I switch the book to my right hand and start practicing the left hand’s gestures.

This time, fewer than a dozen attempts in, I get a much more reliable indicator of my success.

“Whatever yer’ doing,” Bob says, “I kin feel it.”

“Oh! I hadn’t noticed it was doing anything yet,” I say. “Thanks.” I wonder why that hand’s contribution is so much more noticeable. In fact, I wonder why the two hands apparently have such well-separated functionality in the first place. I’d figured that I wasn’t creating two halves of a spell so much as they were writing out different parts of a single coherent structure. Maybe that’s how they idiot-proofed these introductory spells? Made them out of smaller parts so the failure modes were more controllable and less likely to have serious effects?

“Hey, Bob, can you tell me anything about what it feels like I’m doing?”

“Sorry, nothin’ real useful. Maybe some light qi? ’Ere’s a reason we gave you the book.”

“Heh, no problem,” I say.

This makes me think that the left hand has the part of the spell responsible for the display? I’ll have to remember that when I sit down to cross-reference the spells to figure out how to build my own.

Half an hour later I’m still only getting noticing anything in two in three attempts. Bob says that I always get the light qi, but it seems to be the easiest part of the spell. That I consistently create light qi but fail to get the rest of the display right agrees with the conclusions I drew from the comparison of Belighten and Find Farness, that elemental manifestation is relatively easy and formatting is the hard part.

It’s at this point that we crest yet another forested hill and get our first sight of the village of Caulfield.

Caulfield really is a village. I only count maybe fifteen buildings, all in a little cluster alongside the road’s laser-straight track. It looks like the road was here first and some farmers just picked a spot for some common buildings.

One building has an uncovered annex with a smoking chimney, probably the village blacksmith. Another looks like a guard post, built of heavy stones and topped by a tower that soars high above everything else in the area. I don’t see anything like a classic western church, which admittedly wouldn’t have been unusual for a town this size in medieval Europe either. I can’t identify any of the other distinctive buildings, but I imagine that they have some a tavern, some healthcare, a records office, maybe a school? A couple buildings have small lawns rather than letting the trees grow right up to their walls, and one building has a giant rainbow garden behind it.

I take a closer look at that garden as we close in. It’s clearly not for growing food, having no more than a small cluster of any given plant. Instead, it’s a riot of exotic flowers, odd bushes, and stubby trees. One trellis in particular catches my eye, covered in vines with delicate blue leaves that actually sparkle in the sunshine. The garden runs right up to the back door of a medium-size house, and when we get close enough for me to see the front I see a carved potion bottle on a sign that indicates that the house is exactly what I thought it was.

Hm. I wonder if they’ve standardized that sign, the way the International Red Cross standardized the Red Cross and a couple related non-denominational symbols on Earth? I think I saw something like the potion bottle sign back in Calfort too, but I don’t know if it indicated a healer or just a normal alchemist.

“Is there any standardized signage,” I ask, “like, get healing here, dangerous terrain ahead, get hammered and pass out in a ditch there?”

“One,” Heather says, “Consult the handbook, chapter eight section four, for guidelines regarding safely and responsibly indulging in mind-altering substances for recreational purposes while in public employ.” That’s… awfully specific. If it was Liv it’d probably just be memorization - I’m getting the impression that remembering stuff counts as Perception in her System - but that’s the longest sentence I’ve ever heard from Heather. “Two,” she continues, “Potion bottles usually mean emergency healing supplies, but that’s about it.”

“Yeh,” Bob adds, “some nobby places even got cupboards fulla healing potions these days. Helps when some high-and-mighty type tries too many drugs an’ gets laid out,” he grumps, as if they’ve personally wronged him. “Irr’sponsible idjits.”

Now that we’re pretty much in town, I give up on the grimoire and go to stow it. I try to shove it in a pocket and it just barely doesn’t fit, sadly, even though I picked these jeans specifically for their carrying capacity. I’ll guess I’ll just have to carry it until we put our packs down and I can figure out a pocket for it.

Liv and Ji pull back to join the group. I seriously doubt the village is big enough to have thieves or any other crime, but it’s probably worth being careful.

When we get in sight of the guardpost, I see a group of adventurer-types playing cards on a table under a shady overhang. The hunters that Heather had said she’d sent word ahead to?

“Ho!” Liv calls out to them jovially. “Caulfield’s hunter team, I hope?”

They look up and start packing up the cards. One of them, a cultivator judging by the eerily smooth movements, almost levitates to her feet to greet us. “Yes,” she calls back, “that’s us!” She’s wearing a brown cloak over a simple green shirt and dark grey pants, probably great for sneaking around in a forest.

“Perfect,” Liv says. “Senior Special Agent Liv Thompson, Bureau of Isekai Affairs. Call me Liv. Spotter and buffs,” she reels off her introduction. “Just to confirm, we’re requisitioning your team for an emergency mission, combat likely?”

“Anna, Caulfield Hunter Team,” the cultivator replies. “Melee combat. That’s what the message said.”

“We’re ready for a fight!” That’d be one of the other hunters, a man carrying a huge unstrung bow and wearing a simple outfit colored a deep rust-red. “Yann Alanson, ranged attacker.”

“Good to hear,” Heather says. “Supervisory Special Agent Heather Townsend, tracker and ranged attacker. Our target is a necromancer Visitor that we’ve tracked to Bascroft Forest. We hope to interrupt him before he can finish zombifying a high-end beast that he found there.”

“What do you know about this beast?” The third hunter finishes stowing the cards. She’s carrying an unstrung bow too, though hers seems tiny and has a far more complex shape than Yann’s. She wears grey, grey, and more grey, cloth wraps keeping everything tight against her body. “Katell, stealth and tracking. If we’re lucky we might know something of it.”

“Special Agent Bob, healer and utility,” Bob introduces himself. “Big skeleton under a hill in a clearing, well off the trails ’bout two miles north-north-east of here. Buncha people skeletons in a nest in an ’uge cave too, thousands’a days old at least.”

“I wasn’t around back then,” Katell says. “Yann, Ewald?”

“I was,” the last hunter says. “I am Ewald, healing and utility spellcasting for the Caulfield Hunter Team.” Despite his grey hair and lined face, he speaks quickly and precisely. He looks like he’s leaning on something, though I can’t tell what it is because everything but his head is hidden under an all-enveloping dark green cloak. “To my ear it sounds like you’ve finally found the Caulfield Night Snatcher, or what’s left of it.”

“I remember someone telling me about that,” Yann says. “Before my time, five or six thousand days ago? Got almost thirty people.”

“May I ask how the beast was vanquished?” Ji asks. “This Special Agent is Long Ji, Initiate of the Cloudy Dragon Sword Sect,” he introduces himself. “I impair our opponents and ensure we ourselves remain unhindered.”

“An irresponsible Gifted from Stonehill got lucky and drove it off.” Ewald sighs. “By that time we had concluded that it had a stealth ability of some form. The Gifted told everyone to stay inside during the night, hopped himself up on potions that boosted his vision and reflexes, and blasted anything that moved.”

“Blasted how?” I ask. Then I panic slightly, realizing that I probably need to introduce myself. “Uh, Whitney Ismael, recent Visitor, probably a liability in a fight? Might be useful to know what it got hit with, seeing as it apparently died from that one hit.”

“He was Gifted with an Intrusive System of some form, though I don’t know the details,” Ewald apologizes. “All I know is that it was not one of the Big Five. He used a narrow, shimmering beam that tore up whatever it touched, leaving behind a small but ragged hole or gash.”

“It probably got hit in the guts and died of an infection or internal bleed, then,” Liv concludes unhappily. “Which isn’t a relevant weakness any more thanks to our necromancer friend.”

“Gotta bash his zombies to pieces to stop ‘em, an’ even then we sic Agnes’s god on ’em ta make sure they don’t keep wiggling,” concurs Bob. “‘S why I’m carryin’a big ol’ stick.”

It takes me a second to disentangle all the sounds Bob is slurring together. It’s bad enough that I’m starting to wonder if it’s an actual accent or if he’s just messing with me.

“Flame has also proven efficacious,” Ji intones, “on those occasions when I have been able to cultivate sufficient yellow bile.”

“He means when he gets so pissed off at them that he literally explodes,” Liv stage-whispers, prompting an amused snort from Agnes. Ji glares at her, and I can’t tell if he’s actually hurt or just faking it for amusement. Heather rolls her eyes at her team.

Katell just sighs in relief. Actually, now that I think about it, they’d all looked pretty unhappy when Liv told them that the necromancer’s zombies resisted piercing damage. I suppose that archers wouldn’t be too happy about hearing that their enemies are immune to arrows.

“That’s a relief,” Yann cheers. “I can do fire!”

“The only other meaningful assets we expect are the necromancer and the necromancer’s mount,” Heather says, “which we will discuss more as we travel. Before that, however, my team needs to eat and make final preparations. How’s the food at the tavern here?”

“Better than you’d expect! Alfwyn retired out here after running a restaurant at Stonehill for like twenty thousand days,” Anna says. “C’mon, it’s right next door.” She eagerly turns to head down the street and everyone follows.

I can’t disagree with her enthusiasm - a good meal is starting to sound really good.

Even better, I get to eat lunch in a fantasy tavern! Maybe there’ll be a mysterious stranger giving out heroic quests.

…On the one hand, the average lifespan of my D&D characters suggests that I should not accept a quest from a mysterious stranger in a tavern.

On the other hand, it seems like my other option is to be the fantasy FBI, which is about one step up from being part of the city guard when it comes to NPCs getting murked.

Eh, it’s a tossup. I’ll just keep studying detect magic and hope I don’t blow my hand off with a miscast.