I rolled backwards, surprising myself with my quick reaction, and pushed myself back to my feet. I turned to run away, but a fourth man appeared behind me and charged. I jumped neatly over him and rolled again, standing just in time for a rock to slam into my left shoulder and send me reeling. My vision went white with pain for a moment, and when I managed to regain my senses I was already surrounded. I kept my hands up. I was still hurt from my fight with the squid, and these were the first people I’d encountered. I didn’t want to fight them.

They closed in and the nearest one slashed at my leg. I cast flash step and was suddenly behind him. The effect was disorienting and cost me a second, but I managed to recover more quickly than the dwarves. I laughed a little, surprising myself. Somehow, I was having fun. I dodged around them a little longer, narrowly avoiding blows and was eventually forced to run. Unfortunately I was cut off from the path I’d been on and so turned around toward the town to run only to find my path blocked by another dwarf.

This one was a woman. She was wearing the same glowing clothes as the other village folk, but hers were unpatterned and glowed entirely green. She had thick curly black hair tied up in a neat bun, and over one of her eyes was what looked to be a thick magnifying glass which she was regarding me with very intensely. She didn’t sport a full beard like many of the other dwarven women did, but she did have thick sideburns on the sides of her face which was covered in what looked like ink stains. Before I could react to her, she closed the distance between us and began poking and prodding at me, muttering to herself in the same language that the men who’d attacked me had spoken.

I jumped backwards away from her, my body tensing. I wouldn't have even let her close the distance to begin with, had the surprise of her appearance not stunned me. Still, I refrained from drawing any weapons and continued to do my best to appear non-threatening, though the grin that had crept onto my face during my blade dodging likely wasn't helping.

She put some of the goo she's collected with her prodding on my shirt into a small vial. She then approached again. This time, noting that she was unarmed, I let her. She examined the small imprints the cave squid’s suckers had left on me, and dragged me down by the collar so she could more closely examine my eyes and ears. I found the situation highly appealing in comparison to being attacked with sickles.

The dwarves who’d been attacking me looked on with confusion for a few moments, but one of them eventually took a step closer to us, pointed at me and yelled. I braced myself to run, and started looking for the quickest ways out. The dwarven woman dragged her attention away from me and looked over to him, yelling back. They exchanged words like this several times until the woman finally turned to me.

“You speak common right?”

The words she spoke were completely unfamiliar to me, but somehow I understood them completely.

“Uh, I don’t know.” I responded, in the same unrecognized, but understandable tongue.

“Oh!” Her eyes sparkled. “You’re new.” She turned around and started yelling back at the group of dwarves. There was a back and forth for a while and she turned back to me.

“Are you with the stonemen?”

“I uh, don’t know what those are. Or what you are. Or where I am. You can assume I’m not with anyone.”

“Even if you’re not with the stonemen, why should we trust some elven outsider? How do we know he's not the one that's been taking our people?” said the dwarf in the lead, addressing the question to me.

I gently removed the woman’s hand from my collar and faced him to respond. “You probably shouldn’t trust me? I mean, I don’t know the state of dwarf and elf relations, but I understand feeling some enmity toward a person that arrived in your village covered in blue blood and grease. I’m human by the way. At least I was before I got here. I definitely haven't kidnapped anyone.”

The two dwarfs behind the lead one looked at one another and one of them put his hand on the lead one's shoulder.

“Galgrum, I believe him. The stonemen wouldn’t send a threat to us this way, and the man looks half dead.”

The other dwarf shared some additional words in what I assumed was dwarvish and Galgrum deflated, lowering his sickle.

“Fine, but we’re going to report this to the council.” His words felt halfhearted. Like a person who’d realized he was wrong halfway through an argument, but stayed committed anyway. He looked at the dwarven woman next to me. “You’re in charge of him, okay?”

She had returned her attention to the blue blood on my sleeve, but managed to wave him off.

He sighed and walked off with the rest of his group. As they left I got another notification.

Congratulations! You’ve resolved an encounter with Mushroom Dwarves (Lvl 3-5) nonviolently! You gained 125 xp!

So nonviolent solutions granted XP as well. That was good to know. I looked down at the woman who had saved me. “Uh, thank you,” I said.

“Here, you can come to my house and take a bath. I have such questions to ask you.”

Before I could respond she began dragging me by the hand, already asking the questions as we moved. I let her, keeping my attention on the departing guards and continuing to map out an escape route in my head.

“When did you get here?” she asked.

“This afternoon.”

“No I mean to this world.”

“Still, what I think was this afternoon. It’s been less than a day, I think. How are we speaking the same language?”

“The system grants everyone common. We’re all new to the world so it makes sure every race can communicate.”

“Wait, everyone’s new?”

“Well, ‘new’ is relative. Our clan has been here for several hundred years, other races longer, but from what I understand no one has been here for longer than a thousand years.”

“So you didn’t like, ‘evolve’ here? You just-” I stopped myself. “I’m sorry, you were the one that wanted to ask me questions.” I wanted to keep pushing, but I also didn't want to offend the one contact I'd made that hadn't tried to immediately kill me.

She smiled back at me. “I can’t tell if you have a high personality stat or a low one. It’s fine, the questions you’re asking are actually answering some of the questions I have.”

“The PER stands for personality? So if I put points into it I’ll be more charming?”

We arrived at what I assumed was her house and she pushed open a door made out of a material I didn’t recognize that felt firm, but with a little give to it. I had to duck on my way in. Dwarven architecture was not friendly to my, tall even for a human, stature.

“Not necessarily. A higher PER stat means that you’re more likely to get what you want or convince people of things, but not necessarily in a charming way. It depends on who you already are. A craven coward with a high PER can convince people to do what he wants by crying and sniveling about it. It’s not that he’s more charming, it just makes him more effective at being who he already is.” She closed the door behind us. “Take off your clothes, they're covered in materials.”

I felt heat rise in my cheeks, but pushed it down. I didn’t know what the cultural norms around nudity were here, perhaps that was just the polite thing to do. I started to strip, but then caught myself. My embarrassment shouldn't be concerning me as much as the vulnerability that would come from being parted from my weapons or armor.

"I assume you want to bathe?"

That was an offer I couldn't refuse. The feeling of grease and blood against my clothes and skin was not something I wanted to endure in the long term. I began stripping, but kept my belt with my dagger at the ready.

“Interesting, I thought elves were more conservative. I expected you to change in the bathroom.”

I felt the redness in my cheeks spread to the rest of me. “I er, didn’t uh, where is the bathroom?”

She smiled a smile that I’d seen many times before from many women who’d just witnessed me embarrass myself. “Just back there. There’s a shower for you to clean up. Do you mind if I take some samples from your clothes?”

I was already heading toward the room she’d indicated with all the speed I could muster. “Sure, thank you.” I closed the door, which was made of the same oddly firm yet springy material as the front door. The bathroom was simple enough. Hole in the floor, what looked like a sink, and an area with a dome like floor and a hole above it connected to a chain. I was grateful I’d encountered dwarves first. They were bipedal humanoids that seemed to have a lot of similarities to humans. I'd seen plenty of races that those descriptors hadn't applied to while I was going through the list of races earlier in the day. Having to figure out the bathroom of one of the insectoid or lizard races would’ve likely been much more difficult. I ducked down and sat in the dome, made sure my belt and dagger were handy, then pulled the chain. It released a torrent of tepid water and I held the chain down until all of the blood and grease was washed off of me. I didn’t see any soap, but was grateful I was able to wash at all.

After I released the chain I sat still for a few moments and once again took stock. Teleported to a new world, inside a massive cavern, killed a cave squid, there’s an RPG system for some reason, met dwarves, weird dwarf saved me. I made the deliberate choice not to ruminate any more than that, and exited the shower to make my way to the sink. There was a mirror above it, and I squatted down to look at my reflection. I was definitely still myself, but also different. I was long and lanky like I’d always been, but also covered in lean muscle. My hair was still red, and a bit too long to be professional, and my nose remained on the large side, but my features all looked a bit sharper, with clearer edges. The most startling change was my eyes and ears, though the newly pointed ears weren’t as much of a surprise given standard knowledge of elves. My eyes were orange, and matched the color of my hair, and my pupils looked just a little off, like they weren’t quite a circle as they’d been before. I made another deliberate choice not to ruminate any more on that either. These were problems for later, when I had my bearings.

I gently opened the bathroom door and peered out. My armor was clean and sitting in front of the bathroom as was a simple t-shirt and pants. I took them into the bathroom, and struggled to put them on while also doing my best to keep from slamming my head into the ceiling. I failed twice. The T-shirt was too wide, and the pants too short, but winning a fashion contest wasn’t exactly my goal.

I exited into what I assumed was the living room and saw my host leaned over a stone table that was arrayed with stone tablets, papers, and vials. She was examining my clothes, and taking notes. I thought the desk was lit by a lamp, but realized it was another mushroom letting off a warm yellow light.

“Thank you for letting me wash up.”

She spent a few more moments finishing the notes she was taking before she looked up and smiled. “I really just wanted the excuse to look at the blood on your clothes. Besides, now you owe me answers.”

“Before that, what’s your name? I feel weird thinking of you as ‘the dwarf lady’. I’m Cormac by the way, but you can call me Cor.”

“Rockelle, Elle is also fine, and I’m not a lady. I’m a Seeker.”

“Rockelle, really?”

“Is that a strange name where you’re from?”

“No it’s just. You’re a dwarf, who lives in a house made of rock, and your name is Rockelle.”

“Rock doesn’t mean rock in dwarvish. It means blessed child.”

My head hurt as I tried to wrap my head around the fact that I was speaking a language I didn’t know yesterday, talking to someone in that new language whose name meant one thing in my original language, but not in their language.

“Don’t think too hard about it. It causes headaches," she said with a sympathetic look.

“You said you were a Seeker?” I asked.

She nodded. “It’s my job to learn what I can about the world and bring it back to my people.”

That explained quite a bit. “Why are you here and not, well, seeking?”

“No chance of leaving while the stonemen are here. Especially with all of the people they’ve kidnapped.”

“What about-” I paused. “I’m doing it again. Sorry, we can go ahead with your questions.”

There was a gleam in her eye and she readied some charcoal and a blank sheet of paper. “Do you remember where you’re from? How you got here? What your home world was like?”

“Yes, I’m from a world called Earth. I was chosen by a god, who transported me here. My home world was very different, no dwarves or magic, though we did have stories with both.”

She scribbled furiously as I spoke, but kept her eyes on me. “Interesting, when the first of our people arrived they had no real memories of where they were from, only impressions. Which god brought you here? Death, Life, War, Peace, Magic, or Technology?”

“Um, I know it wasn’t death, because he said that was his sister. None of them sound right, is that all there are?”

“Those are all we know about. Our elders, and those travelers that pass through tell us that this world started with only Life and Death and the others have arrived in pairs since then. Always accompanying their opposite.”

“So, even the gods are new?”

“Yes. We think. There’s so much we don’t know. That’s one of the reasons it’s so frustrating to be trapped here.”

“By the stonemen right? What exactly are they?”

“The other people in the village wouldn’t want to say it, but they’re dwarves, like us. The only real difference is that their skin is the color of stone. It lets them blend into the caverns.”

“There’s more than one type of dwarf?”

“Yes, there are dozens of types in these mountains. Most of us arrived separately, divided by a generation or two. The stonemen are the latest though, and so far they’ve made their mark through violence.”

A notification popped into my vision.

You’ve been offered a quest by the Village of Mykas

Men of Stone and Blood:

Eliminate the threat of the stonemen through diplomacy or violence.

Reward: High XP, Increased Renown, Companion

Do you accept this chance to make your mark on this world? Y/N

Make my mark on the word? Increased renown, High XP, and a companion? Those seemed like solid rewards. I'd need to establish myself a bit if I really wanted to succeed here. This appeared to be as good a method as any. I was a little hesitant about helping people that had attacked me, but I could always just cut and run if I needed to, better to say yes now to hedge my bets. I mentally selected yes and saw Elle staring at me.

“Did you just get a quest?”

“Uh, yes.”

“One to solve the stonemen problem?”

“Yes…”

“You didn’t accept it did you?” There was real concern in her voice.

“I did. Was I not supposed to?”

“Not necessarily it’s just… You’re probably going to die.”