Neil

Consciousness returned slowly. I have vague recollections of waking up a few times and being given some water, only to fall asleep again. When I was finally able to stay awake for longer than a few minutes I was still incredibly groggy and I had trouble remembering where I was and what was going on. This was probably one of the few times in my life that I really understood why people loved coffee, a cup would be amazing right about now.

Trying to take stock of where I was, I found that I was incredibly cold, uncomfortable and in a lot of pain. I seemed to be laying on the cold hard ground with a small pile of clothes under my head for a pillow. I Know that I had some good reasons for letting Shassala hold onto my sleeping bag, but right now for the life of me I cannot think of what they had been.

Sitting up with a grunt I tried to take stock of my body, my leg and my side where the tree hit me felt like one gigantic bruise and they seemed to throb in time with my heartbeat. When the pain got to be too much I fell back down on the ground. Deciding to give up on moving for now I simply lay there trying to not move my lower body.

Raising my hands to my face and flexing them I was relieved to see that health potions could apparently be used to treat poison and there didn’t seem to be any lingering damage from my holding an incredibly dangerous toxin in my hands.

I was about to try and sit up again when I remembered what had happened just before I passed out. I had been attacked by someone.

With the return of that memory I started moving more quickly than I probably should have and I tried to sit up again, I made it up to my elbows before the pain in my side caused me to fall back down coughing.

Movement at the far side of the room caught my eye but I was too busy trying to not cough up a lung while cradling my side to be able to do much of anything about it. As a dark figure stood up and moved beside me it was revealed to be a woman carrying a small crystal that emitted a soft light in one hand and one of my canteens in the other hand. Slowly getting my coughing under control I looked up at her.

I watched helplessly as she put the crystal down behind her, the light illuminating her from behind bathing her in shadow obscuring most of her features. Gently she helped me up just enough that I could drink the water without choking. I wasn’t sure how long I had been out for but at least long enough that the water in my bottle had gone from the glacial of the rift, to room temperature.

After I had drank a few large gulps she took the canteen away from me and gently lay me back down. From where I lay I tried to get a better look at her but with the position of the only light source she was still cloaked in darkness. Given how I was still alive she was obviously friendly, I would put the awkwardness of our first meeting down to a misunderstanding. That was something that had been happening quite a bit lately actually and if I could forgive an arrow to the gut then a bright light in my eyes was practically nothing.

I’m not sure how long the two of us simply stared at each other but eventually the cold hard ground started to get more and more uncomfortable and I needed to get up. Lifting my arms slowly so as to not startle her I started to slowly leverage myself up. When I managed to get myself up to my elbows, she moved to help me and between the two of us I managed to get myself sitting up against the desk and facing her without cursing too much from the pain.

From this position I was finally able to get a good look at my newest houseguest. She was smaller than I had thought she had been, probably just over 5 feet tall. She had long brown hair pulled into a pony tail, striking green eyes that practically glowed in the faint light with an almond shaped pupil, but what really caught my attention were the two cats' ears on the top of her head that were twitching seemingly at random.

Alright a cat-girl, that was certainly no stranger than a snake-girl had been. If anything a cat-girl was actually far more mundane than a half snake half human woman would be. I was about to start introducing myself and going through the painful process of having to learn her language when my stomach rumbled loud enough to be heard down the hall.

The cat-girls ears twitched and she gave me a level look before standing, walking away and then returning a moment later with a small plate of cooked fruits, vegetables and even something on the side that I recognized as a smoked and salted meat. Shassala had had something similar back when she had first visited my camp.

I couldn’t help but notice that I was not given either a fork or a knife and I was pretty sure that my belt as well as my knives had both been removed. “Well I can’t blame her for disarming me, I probably would have done the same.” I thought.

Looking at my hands in the low light of the crystal I tried to get an idea of just how gross they were, presumably all of the poison had been neutralized by the healing potion otherwise I probably would have never woken up. To my surprise my hands actually looked clean.

“Shanarakell palios.” The cat-girl said while miming washing her hands and pointing at me.

“Thank you very much for washing my hands.” I said to her. I’d introduce myself later, I was way too hungry to learn an entire language right now.

Picking up the plate I started shoveling food into my mouth as quickly as I could. The amused expression on the women's face was enough to slow me down after a moment, but I was so hungry I couldn’t slow too much. Before long I had eaten everything she had given me and I was ready for seconds.

I was considering trying to stand up and see if I could cook something when she took the plate walked over to the remains of a smoldering fire outside of the room and came back with a second plateful. Passing it back to me I took it with a thank you and started eating at a much more reasonable pace.

This time I was actually able to taste the food and I thanked my cook profusely in Lamianese. She responded with something I didn’t understand and a pleased look. When I had finally finished eating I leaned back against the wall and sighed in pleasure shutting my eyes.

Trying to look like I was just enjoying a food coma, I was actually trying to sense my Mana. I had been getting faster and faster with my meditation but I found it hard to concentrate when I knew there was an armed stranger sitting near me. After a few minutes though I was able to get an idea on the state of my Mana.

I was still not an expert by any means, but I was pretty sure that as I was still recovering Mana Shock I was at a higher risk of giving myself Mana Shock a second time. If I had to guess though, and I did have to guess, I could probably have up to two more potions without knocking myself unconscious again.

Opening my eyes I saw that the cat-girl had at some point moved her face extremely close to my own and she looked like she been actually sniffing me, how had I missed that?

When my eyes opened she jumped back and a knife appeared in her hand so quickly it almost looked like magic. When I didn’t move she eventually settled back down and she put the knife back into a sheath on her hip.

Sitting with my back against the desk I had never felt more exposed in my life. Even when I took that arrow from Shassala I had felt more comfortable because at least Shassala looked just as confused and frightened as I had. This person just looked at me like I was something to be understood. Deciding I had no other choice than to try and open a line of communication I started to speak.

“Hello, my name is Neil. What is your name?” I said gesturing at myself and her.

“Neil?” She said looking confused and gesturing at me, she then gestured to the mountain and said “Neil?”

She thought the mountain was named Neil? What kind of a name was Neil for a mountain?

It took a little while but eventually I was able to tell her that I was Neil, this was the Summit of the Ancients. Shortly after that she introduced herself as Yallia Jones and I reintroduced myself as Neil Fischer using her own words and I was finally able to get my first blue box of the day.

DING

Through practice with a teacher and a native speaker you have learned GENOESE, continue your lessons and practicing to improve!

After that I began pointing at objects and exchanging words with Yallia slowly building up a small vocabulary. When we started to exhaust objects to name, we started exchanging short sentences with each other. I asked her to hand me things, thanked her for handing me things, described what I was doing and had her do the same so I could repeat her words and sentences. It was actually going faster than learning Lamianese with Shassala, but because the situation was far more tense it seemed to take much longer.

After several hours of back and forth and several blue boxes coming up, I finally started to get to the point where I could make my own simple sentences, even if they were riddled with grammatical errors, we could now start to speak to each other.

“Neil, why here? Why underground?”

“I here, Lamia angry. Mountain is special, just for Lamia, bad Neil. Go underground, help Lamia. Then go back.” Using enough gestures seemed Yallia seemed to get the idea, at least she was nodding politely like she understood. “Why Yallia here? How Yallia here?”

Yallia looked like she was annoyed by the question but she answered it nonetheless. “I look for father. Father taken, taken here.” She said miming as if her hands had been bound together.

Her father was a prisoner? Or he had been kidnapped?

“Father study old places, study Neil.”

Her father studied me? No, she would mean Humans or archeology in general. If other people felt about Humans like Lamia did then I could be famous, or infamous. I didn’t really like the idea of inheriting an entire peoples legacy, especially since I had no idea what that legacy was.

“He studies...?” I trailed off indicating myself, I hadn’t learned her word for human yet.

“Yes.” Yallia said then looking at me extremely intently she continued. “Neil is a...” and then she trailed off saying something unintelligible. At my confused expression Yallia grunted in anger. Then having an idea she walked over to her bag took out a small notebook and started drawing something on it.

Turning the book around she showed me a small box with some scribbles that I took to be writing in it, as I looked at the picture Yallia said “DING!”

Looking up from the notebook in surprise I saw a look of shock on Yallias face, like she hadn’t really expected me to actually have any idea what she was talking about. My response to her was cut short by an actual ding.

DING

By studying with a teacher and a native speaker you have improved your GENOESE, continue to practice to improve!

Well that was nice, suddenly words and grammar that I hadn’t quite managed to put together before made a lot more sense to me.

“I hear, ding, yes. Learn fast, I am,” Not knowing the Genoese word for Human I switched to Lamianese and said “Ancient.” Then to English “Human.”

“Human.”

When Yallia said the word ‘Human’ she had been kneeling down, after she said it she leaned back and then sat down staring at me with a look of disbelief on her face. It looked like she had never really expected me to actually be a Human and now that I had confirmed what I was she was feeling a little shock. If I had wanted to fight her now would be the best time to, but I really didn’t think that was necessary, also I still couldn’t move.

“How, what, where? Where did you come from? Have you always been here?”

I really didn’t want to have to explain my entire back story to someone else, especially since they probably wouldn’t believe me and I lacked a lot of the words to give a proper explanation. But seeing as how I needed the language practice I told her in as much detail who I was and where I came from. I didn’t tell her about my life on Earth and what I did there. Instead I focused on hiking in the forest, being lost and finding myself here.

By the time I had told her about my time here I had actually managed to rank up my Genoese one more time, allowing us to finally have a relatively unstilted conversation.

“Can you understand me now, little better?” Well there was still room for improvement.

“Yes, you learned to speak just now?”

Shrugging my shoulders I didn’t really answer her. “Why are you here? Your father?”

“My father is one of the foremost experts on Humans and the Old Empire. He had been researching some previously unknown ruins, these ruins. He was kidnapped to be brought here in order to help the Empire study them. What about you, you just appeared in the forest here?”

“More on the mountain than in the forest, but yeah pretty much. That was,” I stopped talking to think. “It was, I’m not even sure anymore two weeks ago? Something like that. If your father wanted to come here anyways why didn’t the Empire just offer him funding to come here? Where I’m from academics will often work with whoever will fund their research.”

“My father and I are from Genoa, which is part of the Coalition. The Coalition was made to fight the Empire, stop them from expanding after what happened to the Gnomish Kingdoms. He never would have worked with the Empire. Why did you come down here?”

“Well some armed Lamia showed up at my house and didn’t really leave me with much of a choice.”

“You had a choice, you’re a Human you could have taken your chances in the jungle. You’d be able to find food, magical ingredients, get stronger and survive. It certainly wouldn’t have been any more dangerous than coming down here.” Yallia said leaning back letting the shadows cover her face.

“At the time I wasn’t so sure of that. A day or two before I came down here I had gone down the mountain and I was almost eaten by a baby animal. I thought it hadn’t affected me, but when I thought of just grabbing what I could and running I just couldn’t, I thought coming down here was the safer option.”

As Yallia leaned forwards I noticed that her ears were pointing away from each other, which I took to mean that she was annoyed by something. “You decided that the underground cavern filled with dangerous monsters and unknowable evil was safer than a jungle?” Are you an idiot? Was left unspoken at the end of her sentence, but it was pretty obvious she was thinking it from her facial expression.

A sudden flash of anger and irritation hit me like a bolt of lightning. “I had one friend here ok? If I went into the jungle then her friends and family would probably be hunting me through the jungle trying to kill me right now! So forgive me for hoping that I could somehow get out of this without having to fight them.”

Yallia listened to me impassively and leaned back when I had finished my rant. “Neither choice was very good. Your only mistake was rushing down further before you were ready.”

“Before I was ready? I’m not really getting more ready just sitting here am I?”

“Humans learn fast, if you had taken more time to learn before going you could get much stronger. Do you know any magic?” She said leaning towards me staring at me intently.

Suddenly feeling unsure of myself I answered. “Some, not a lot.”

“Can you show me?”

Looking at her I considered what to do for a few seconds. Deciding that a few quick spells couldn’t give me Mana Shock I chose to humor her.

Concentrating on my Mana I moved some to my hands and quickly added my water affinity to it making a baseball sized ball of water that hovered over my hands. “There that’s it. Not really useful in a fight.”

Yallia leaned closer practically sticking her nose into the water ball. “And you’ve only been practicing with magic for two weeks?”

“Well no, like I said my world doesn’t have magic, I only started actually using magic yesterday, I guess. Just before I came down I managed to use some magic, and then when I was down a few floors I practiced a little as well. Why?”

“It can take people months or even years to learn to sense their Mana, then longer to learn to manipulate it, then longer than that to learn what affinities they have. For you to have learned to do this in just a few days is incredible. I’d heard the stories of humans, everyone has, but seeing it is another thing altogether. How did you know you have a water affinity?”

A little stunned at what I had just been told I answered her. “When I walked up the mountain I saw the dimensional rift spewing water and I got a message that I gained a water affinity from it.”

For the first time since we had started talking Yallia looked shocked, her eyes were wide open, and her ears stood straight up pointing directly at me. “There was a dimensional rift there? I would have given anything to have seen that! What did it look like?”

“It looked like a spout of water in the air, the water was really good to drink too, nice and cold. Not so good for baths though.”

Yallia looked shocked for a moment her ears rigid and facing away and I was worried that she was angry when she started laughing suddenly. After several minutes of laughing she managed to get out a full sentence in between fits of laughter. “You actually used the water from a dimensional rift as bath water? No wonder the Lamia are so angry at you! Most people treat rifts as sacred sites and there you were washing your ass in it!” After that she started giggling for a few minutes before getting herself under control. “Oh god, where was I? Oh, right magic. You were right to come down here if it was the only way to avoid a fight, but for the wrong reasons. Humans can learn almost anything far faster than others, if you had taken more time to concentrate on practicing magic before you went further down you’d be much more prepared, or at least much more prepared to run like hell when they assumed you died and stopped guarding the mountaintop.”

“You might be right, but I have no idea how to learn magic, or what I’m doing, and I think the Mana Concentration room helped a lot too.”

The second I mentioned the Mana Concentration room Yallias entire body perked up and she looked at me all levity gone from her face. “You found an intact Mana Concentration Room?”