Shortly after Barb left to grab me some wine, I saw something slightly unexpected. Or rather, I saw something I probably should have expected, but just hadn’t really crossed my mind.

There, walking up to the serving area, was Ava. Seemingly ever by her side, the shorter kexid, Edgar, was present as well. While I wasn’t certain where he’d gotten them from, he had somehow gotten his hands on a similar pair of clothing to the queen’s, now all wrapped up.

Huh. She seems… kind of calm. After she’d run off the other day, I’d imagined I’d be seeing her soon thereafter when she discovered her home was in shambles. It wasn’t something I’d felt the need to manually check up on, because I’d kind of expected it to get taken care of like many of my problems did: By blowing up until I couldn’t ignore it. As best I could tell, though, she was fine.

As was everyone else, which shocked me just as much. The kexids were vaguely humanoid, true, but other than that, they weren’t exactly lookers, at least from a human perspective.

Still, that might have been an Earth mindset. Especially for the fighters from Drawgin, seeing a kexid out and about was probably just another Tuesday for them. While they hadn’t numbered nearly as high as the standard humanoid races, I did recall seeing some citizens of unidentifiable races during my stay.

That reasoning didn’t apply to those who’d come from Ftheran, but then again, they’d also been around everyone from Drawgin for a while. After sharing a bath and a drink with the various races that made up the fighters, the kexids were probably just less of a big deal than I’d assumed they’d be. Admittedly, it probably helped that Amak had alerted everyone to their presence as well.

Hope they’re doing okay. Probably someone should check up on them.

I sat there for a moment before it struck me.

Oh shit. That’s kind of my job, isn’t it?

It wasn’t even something I could delegate — no one else spoke their language.

Which still isn’t something I’ve figured out, but… Well, whatever. It was a lucky break, and I didn’t feel the need to question it too much.

Figuring I might as well say hi while Barb grabbed me some wine, I made my way over to where they stood.

“Oh! Edgar, look! It’s the human from the welcoming party! Hello deary!” Even before I could close the distance between us, Ava called out to me from afar.

I waved, returning the greeting. “Hi. Just, uh, checking in. Doing okay? You, uh, managed to find your home?”

She angled the final segment of her arm downward as if bending her wrist. “Oh, dreadful business that. You wouldn’t believe it! There’s a load of dirt covering all the tunnels down to Kesser’Thalis! Likely some side effect of the renovations, yes? But no worries — we’ll clear it out soon enough and get back down there, now won’t we Edgar?”

The smaller kexid angled his head upwards, making eye contact with the hive queen before animatedly shaking his head up and down.

Jeeze. Is this the right time to try to break it to them again that there’s nothing down there? I mean, they kind of have to know by now, don’t they?

“Not to put a damper on things, but I was being serious about that atta-”

Quite abruptly, I was cut off as Barb came rushing back, bolting straight towards me.

Huh. That was fast. He didn’t have to sprint over. I don’t need a drink that badly.

“Tess! Ah, there’s a slight problem, I’m afraid.” He seemed much more jittery than I was accustomed to seeing him.

“Barb, calm down. If you weren’t able to get the wine, it’s fine. I appreciate you trying.” It was a shame, but I’d live. Or, I supposed if I tried the class trial again, I’d die, but in the not-permanent kind of way.

“Yes, right. Well, you see, it’s not so much that I failed to procure the wine, as much as your acquaintance seemed to recall my face from your previous encounter, and she might have seen through my attempt to acquire a bottle for you.” He delivered the words nervously, rushing through them.

I winced. “Yeah, my bad, I guess, for sending you when she would have known your face. I’m sorry if she told you off or yelled at you. If you’re worried about me, though, don’t be. Her and I are already on pretty rough terms; I don’t think this is going to make it any worse.” As long as I managed to keep avoiding her (a perfectly legitimate and healthy coping strategy), this didn’t really change anything.

Somehow, this didn’t seem to calm Barb down. “Right. I apologize — I don’t believe I’m making myself clear. She saw through me and then left the bar. She determined you’d likely be waiting here, and-”

A booming voice cut over the ambient noise from the few others that were in the dining area. “Tess! If you run away, I will get Elphaea to tie you to a tree.”

I turned to the source of the voice already knowing who I would find standing there. As expected, Nadja stood at the far end of the dining area. She looked… well, kind of pissed.

Euughhh. Odds are she actually follows through on that threat if I run away? Elphaea wouldn’t actually tie me to a tree, would she?

Wait, yeah, she probably would. I did kind of forget to tell her about Hartha, plus she had already told me to stop avoiding Nadja, so I wasn’t liking my odds here.

Can I avoid Nadja and Elphaea maybe?

Not happening.

Euuuuuughhhhh. I was so not trying to get my head bashed in today by everyone’s favorite bartender.

I stood there as she closed the distance, desperately trying to think of a plan of action that didn’t turn this into a full on physical altercation in front of everyone. Even with enhanced Intelligence speeding every thought up, however, I had nothing. Instead, I just watched with dread as she got closer and closer until-

Plunk.

A clay bottle hit the ground by my feet. One angry bartender stood behind it.

“I’m staying in your stupid city. And I’m done trying to bash your brains in, even if you deserve it. So if you want your own fucking wine, you can get it yourself instead of being a gods damned coward.” She turned away and started walking off, calling out to me even as she walked away. “Enjoy the drink. And you know where to find me if you’d ever like to apologize.”

I, along with Barb, Ava, and the rest of people lingering in the area, watched her go in silence.

When she was at last out of sight, I bent down, grabbing the bottle of wine.

I opened it, raising it to my lips and taking a long swig.

“Well, that went well.”

Not quite clued in to what just happened, it was Ava who responded first. As she began to speak, the tension in the air broke, everyone else returning to their affairs.

“I am sensing that the other human woman was rather vexed with you. And yet she gave you a gift! How strange! That was strange, right Edgar?”

Edgar bobbed his head up and down.

Figuring it probably wasn’t the right time to dive into the fine details of it all, I shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

Hearing our exchange, Barb — who’d previously looked like he wanted to somehow fold himself up into his own body and disappear — fixed us with an intent stare.

“Forgive me — I don’t mean to detract from what just occurred, and I would like to reiterate my apologies for bringing that about — but could you repeat that?” He was eyeing me as if I were some particularly abnormal lab experiment, a far cry from his usual demeanor.

“It’s complicated?” I repeated.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not what you said.” He turned to Ava instead. “Would you mind repeating what you just said?”

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to understand Barb, I conveyed his message to her. Though confused, she repeated her previous words.

Seeming to grow more sure of himself, he quickly reached into the pouch at his side, grumbling for a moment before pulling out a weather-worn book. He held it in front of Ava excitedly. “Can you read this?”

Evidently understanding the intent without me having to “translate” it for her, Ava grabbed the book with her claws, carefully leafing through it. She held it down low, so Edgar would get a chance to read as well. Picking a passage at random, she started to read aloud.

“... with great huffs like the bellows of a Ksarthuvian furnace, he thrust himself forward, his pulsating member harder than a bar of- Oh, it’s smut!” She scanned the rest of the page, thankfully doing so silently this time. “You may tell your friend that it’s a kind gift, but I’m afraid I’ve already read this one, sadly.”

I gaped at her, making no attempt to hide my horror. What had Barb given her?

She caught sight of my face and made a sort of clacking noise. “Well don’t look at me like that, deary. I read them educationally, of course. Helps me learn more about humans and such. And it’s your friend who’s managed to wear the book down until it’s practically falling apart at the seams.” In a more hushed tone, she added on. “And besides, The Swords of Ksarthuvia is a classic if you must know. Of course, by swords they really mean-”

“All right! That’s enough!” I did not need to think about the kexid queen reading about people’s swords. “Barb, if your goal was to get me to stop thinking about Nadja, you have entirely succeeded. What the hell, man?”

Perhaps noticing that my face had grown a bit red, he frowned, cocking his head to the side. “She was able to read it, yes? You’ll have to tell me what it’s about — I haven’t had a chance to translate much of it yet. I believe it may be a historical account of sword forging techniques?”

My soul wanted to cry at how wrong he was, but that wasn’t the point right now. “How about I’m just going to ignore everything I heard. You said ‘translate’? You know what language this is in?”

While visibly confused by my reaction, he answered nonetheless. “Well, yes. It’s a bit of a hobby of mine, actually. I’m not very good, but I thought it would be amusing to pick up some Old Common as a kid, and well, I do try to keep it up from time to time.”

Old Common… Old Common was different than new Common?

Well that was a dumb question: Of course it was. I vaguely recalled having to read Beowulf back in high school, and they’d shown us a passage from the untranslated version. Despite being called Old English, it was essentially gibberish to me.

Makes sense that Ava would know it, I guess. In fact, while I’d figured she was speaking her own kexid-specific language, that probably didn’t make much sense. In Hex’s vision, the kexids had been perfectly fine communicating with the people in Emer’Thalis — they had to know some kind of well-known language.

The real question was why did I know it? It wasn’t as if I’d ever studied Old Common.

Then again, not like I studied regular Common either. I basically learned the language by having it magically shoved into my hea-

Oh.

I pulled up my extended character sheet, looking for the line containing the languages I knew.

Languages: Common

That was it.

No specification on the dialect. No specification on the time period. Just Common.

They gave me the whole damn history of the language, didn’t they?

I wondered if such a thing had been on purpose, or if perhaps whoever was in charge of onboarding offworlders just hadn’t gotten around to updating their software. I was still pretty murky on who or what ran the whole “system” thing, but if gods were involved, a couple thousand years probably passed in a blink for some of them.

Well, you know, gift horses and mouths and all that. I wasn’t going to complain.

“That’s actually very helpful, Barb. Thank you. I wasn’t sure what language it was.” Not that it had been too urgent for me to figure it out, but it was one less problem to solve.

He opened and closed his mouth a few times. “But… You were speaking it,” he protested.

I shrugged. “Don’t ask me to make sense of all this fantasy shit.”

He seemed to be at a loss to that one, deciding to cut his losses and pivot. “Would your friend desire a conversational partner, perhaps? It’s rare that I get an opportunity to actually converse in it rather than to simply read. Perhaps over tea?”

Well, that certainly worked for me. It would be nice if Ava had someone in the city she could talk to besides Edgar. I relayed his message to her, and she actually seemed enthusiastic about it.

“Oh! Do you hear that Edgar? Tea! It appears we’ve stumbled upon a human with similarly refined tastes! An absolutely delightful occurrence. By all means, relate my acceptance to him.”

I did so, and then suddenly feeling the stress of everything catch up to me, I decided to bow out.

“I’ll leave you three to it, then. Think I need some time to decompress.” Of the three of them, Barb was the one to react. Judging from the concerned look on his face, I must have said that bit in new Common.

“Very well then. And I cannot reiterate enough how sorry I am for that all. If you need to talk…”

I waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. Not your fault. I appreciate you trying, honestly. And I’m sure I’ll hit you up after I take a little break.”

Seeming to sense that I really did need some space, he ushered Edgar and Ava away. As they left, I could pick up on a small piece of their conversation.

“So… Enjoy book you? Book about with swords?” He stumbled over the words, clearly not quite fluent.

“Oh, Edgar! He wants to discuss the smut book over tea! How lovely. I do love a fellow connoisseur of the arts.”

I eyed the bottle of wine which still sat in my hand.

I took another long swig.