At last, the church.

Proper nouns were a weird thing in languages; sometimes they’d be translated—such as countries having different names in different languages—and sometimes they wouldn’t be—like your own name. It was this inconsistency that led to an errant thought within Riza’s mind over what this building was called.

While she had called it a church, Belford had called it a ‘temple’. That in itself was interesting.

For one, both buildings and institutions were intrinsic to a specific religion, and she doubted either of them existed in this world. The fact that Belford used an English word instead of the name of it in his own language meant that the temple probably didn’t mean anything distinct. Therefore, it was most likely translated to ‘place of worship’ or ‘place of learning’, therefore, a temple.

But this opened up additional questions into how the translation skill worked. For instance, she has a dialect that has been influenced by sociolects she'd been exposed to; the skill identified that the closest equivalent word in her vernacular was temple. If someone else who spoke English but was far more familiar with different religious buildings heard Belfore speak, would it be translated as a ‘temple’ to them as well? Or would a different, more accurate word be chosen?

She just didn’t know how much information was being lost in translation.

Alas, she didn’t have time for these thoughts for she was swiftly brought into the magnificent edifice after having only briefly waited in the courtyard immediately outside the front--where carts and wagons were hitched up, people walking with purpose, and what-not.

Inside was… Not what she was inspecting. She thought that the inside would be fairly spacious but without that much in there similar to how she viewed churches. There’d be seats, perhaps pews, a place for an orator, and storage space but the majority would be in view as soon as you walked into the room and there’d only be one floor, able to see the high, vaulted ceiling above.

Inside, she was immediately met with a large, wooden wall, looking very similar to the one in the quartermaster’s place; it looked like it had been made a lot more recent than the temple itself.

Saniel, without waiting a moment for the startled Riza to come to terms with how unimpressive the view was, immediately set off down the corridor, walking with such intentfulness it was obvious he was intimately familiar with this place.

Belfore, meanwhile, walked with a similar alacrity of Riza, surprise or awe absent from his face but neither was unfamiliarity distinctly shown.

So far, Riza had no idea as to what the purpose of this building was. She had thus presumed it to be an administrative building of some kind--the tallest, most opulent building in the village would naturally belong to the Watchmaster, after all--but as soon as Saniel led her into a room, she realised just how wrong she was.

There were beds. Heaps upon heaps of beds, each uncomfortable straw mattresses that she had slept on but each of them were occupied by partially undressed men and women.

For many of them, bandages and casts were wrapped around their limbs, around their bodies, while others had whole arms or legs submerged in metal buckets of water--or, what she assumed was water.

This, simply put, was an infirmary.

As Riza looked around in shock, she turned towards belfore only to notice a similar expression on his face--not one of unabashed shock but rather one showing he had not been away of the extent of this buildings purpose either. Saniel, an excellent contrast, loudly spoke a few words, unperturbed by the moaning and pained whines of the people around him.

Only a few seconds later, a somewhat generic looking man--though, with immaculately cut head and facial hair, the sort you’d see in movies--emerged from behind a curtain. His hands were covered in leather gloves and those gloves were a mixture of brown, dark brown, and a reddish brown, no doubt blood.

As he walked closer, his step surprisingly brisk, Riza’s eyes were drawn to his hands, drawn to his fingertips, and then, in only a moment, the blood just vanished! The leather gloves regained their brown hue where the blood was, but they remained noticeably damp in sections.

His voice was far more melodic than she had expected, and whereas Saniel and Belfore spoke in particularly curt sentences, their words harsh and clipped when speaking in a foregin tongue, the man’s tone was far softer, far more pleasant to her alien ears.

“This is Sylan,” Belfore quietly spoke into Riza’s ear while Saniel was talking to the man--of similar height to Saniel, though of a thicker build.

“He’s explaining the situation to him.”

The talk only lasted for a few minutes before Saniel turned back around, said a few words to Belfore again, and walked off. Riza was almost about to follow him until she saw that Belfore hadn’t the slightest intention of moving.

Facing back around to the doctor again, the man wore an extravagant smile on his face and promptly began speaking.

“His name is Sylan,” Belfore began interpretting for her. “And he is the resident barber. Firstly, he wants to know if you have the heal or cleanse skill.”

“Just the cleanse skill--not heal,” Riza replied, staring fixedly at Sylan, remembering how looking at the person talking to you is polite, even if someone else is translating.

“He can work with that. Do you have any medical knowledge?”

“Sort of? I mean, I know a thing or two about the body but I don’t exactly know any first-aid.”

“First aid?” Belfore asked, not even having repeated back her sentence yet.

“Yeah, like when you get hurt but there isn’t a doctor nearby, you perform first aid.” Riza explained, looking at belfore now.

“And a doctor is?” Belfore inquired, his face concentrating on her words as if deliberately trying to remember and understand what she was saying, trying to construct a larger picture of the society she came from through whatever she referenced. Or, at least, that was what Riza imagined Belfore was doing.

“Sylan. Sylan’s a doctor. People who do stuff to other people to make them healthy,” She explained the simplest definition she could think of; going into all the subsections of medicine and what everyone did was just unnecessary.

However, when Riza said that, a concerned look arose on Belfore’s face.

“He’s a doctor. Is he not a barber?”

“No. Barber’s cut hair.” Riza responded, confused. Something funky was happening with the translation skill, it seemed; it hadn’t translated Sylan’s role into doctor or nurse or medic or something similar. Instead, it called him a barber.

“He does that as well.” Belfore said.

This only led to questions about translation priority. The skill felt more akin to a translation programme rather than actual processing of language--what human translators do; it was ignoring context.

“Oh. Then he’s both a doctor and a barber.”

“They’re two separate things in your language? Here, someone who cuts both the body and hair is known as a kouratros.”

“Is there nobody who cuts hair but also isn’t a doctor?” Riza asked.

“No. That’s like being a farmer without farming.”

By this point, the smile on Sylan’s face remained but grew more and more force, failing to reach his eyes, and he had just about had enough by this point, loudly clearing his throat before speaking to Belfore.

“He wants to know if you’ve cured anything or anyone using cleanse. I’ve told him you cured yourself of essence poison from the miasma but he wants to know if you can do that reliably.”

“Miasma? And I haven’t tried using it on other people, though I’ve used it on my food.”

“Miasma, or what you called a ‘fog’,” Belfore clarified, repeating her answer back to Sylan. It was a bit tedious, not being able to have a fluid, flowing conversation but simply being able to speak to another human being, in a language they can mutually understand, she valued enough as it was.

“What level is your cleanse skill?”

“Only level 1,” Riza answered, unable to keep the slight reluctance from seeping through her voice. She had really wanted to level the skill up but just hadn’t found an opportunity to--she kept pumping her essence into her essence stone; she was growing more anxious by the day and desperately didn’t want to be in a situation she couldn’t out of because she didn’t have enough essence.

And, besides, cleanse was doing good enough work currently, anyway. The skill wasn’t quantified in any valuable way so she couldn’t even determine what levelling it up would even do!

“And how many times can you use it before needing to regenerate that essence?”

“I can use it four times before I run out of essence. Though, I only need to wait a minute and a half before regenerating enough to use it again,” Riza exemplified diligently, unable to restrain a little bit of pride over how often she could use the skill. Actually saying it out loud, she realised that it actually would only take about two hours to level the skill to level 2.

A frown emerged on her face as she began to regret the wasted time she spent in isolation. If only she was more wise in using her time instead of wallowing in self-pity and cursing this world!

Once Belfore told Sylan the numbers, it was his turn to be shocked. A rapid series of words escaped his mouth as he tried to explain something to Belfore, his hands moving to point at Riza but then gesticulating something else.

“You sure you can only use cleanse four times?” Belfore asked quickly, urgency in his tone.

“Yeah. Is that a bad thing?” She was starting to feel like she said something she shouldn’t have.

“You shouldn’t ask people questions like this but I have to; what is your essence stat?” Belfore clapped a hand to his forehead upon asking the query.

“One,” Riza replied, trying to sound as steady and neutral as possible.

“One. It’s at one. You use essence but your essence stat is only at one. How much essence can you have at any one time?” He asked, exasperation colouring every word.

“4 points of essence. Cleanse only uses 1 essence.”

Before said something to Sylan in a stressed tone, both men were clearly caught aback by what Riza had said. Meanwhile, though she tried to remain composed on the outside, an inner turmoil was waging in her mind. What had she done to rile both men up? Was it something she said? It must’ve been, but what?

Belfore took a few steps away from Riza while Sylan merely muttered something heated under his breath.

“Can you even see magic, Riza? When I use my translation skill, do you see the pink glow from my fingertips? Can you see the glyphs I trace in the air?” Belfore asked firmly upon his return.

“No?” She replied hesitantly, feeling uncomfortable under his scrutinising gaze.

“You should never have chosen any life skills. You didn’t even meet the qualification for a mage.” Belfore muttered the last part under his breath. “Let me explain; the average person only has an essence and spirit of 1. They can’t see essence, can’t sense it, and can’t even see those stats on their stat block. Additionally, they don’t have access to any skills that utilise essence. You only unlock those when your essence and spirit are both 5, though there are exceptions.”

“But Renald could see magic; he saw me use the cleanse skill!” Riza spoke suddenly.

“Renald? It doesn’t matter. The thing is, you’re weak for your level; before I even levelled up, I had an essence stat of 6. Essence doesn’t just mean you can use a skill more times, it empowers the skill as well. Your life skills are as weak as they could possibly be without being a lower level.”

It’s not my fault I’m so weak! And similar thoughts ran through her mind as she felt herself being scolded, being berated, for bad decision making. How could she have known she was making wrong decisions?

“Does it even matter?” Riza asked, her voice forceful and filled with all the annoyance that had welled up inside her.

“Yes, because you belong to the Dominion now. If you were raised from the beginning, you’d have never been let anywhere close to essence; you’d most likely have followed either the path of a spearman or an archer. Did you at last put any points in spirit?”

“Yes,” Riza replied in a drawn out voice, like the answer was obvious. “It’s 21.”

“At least you’re not a complete idiot. And how fast did you say you could regenerate essence?” Belfore’s tone finally calmed down as he resumed his initial line of questioning.

“I can use cleanse after every minute and a half.” Riza replied, only for Belfore to have a dumbfounded look on his face.

“How long is a day?” Riza asked after a drawn-out paused. She had already asked the question once before and Belfore didn’t answer it seriously. She was hoping he would now.

“A day is 12 hours.” He replied matter-of-factly.

“And an hour is?” Riza asked further, knowing full-well she probably seemed like the idiot he just said she wasn’t.

“An hour is 60 minutes. A minute is 60 seconds.” Something was wrong there.

Humans had a circadian rhythm and while she may have had a few late nights, she was fairly regular in her sleep schedule, staying awake for 16 hours while sleeping for 8. That meant she always woke up at the same time, and that meant she had probably kept that schedule in this world. Or, at least, it had shifted somewhat.

In addition to that, she could count out how long it took her to regenerate one essence and it was as long as the system said it was. As far as she had observed, time on this world was the same as she was used to, down to the second.

But yet, Belfore said second. Just what was this skill? Clearly, second couldn’t have meant the same thing she thought it did and so, rather than a precise length of time, it was rather the smallest denomination of time.

Even if that conclusion was wrong, the maths were still the same; in this culture, a second was twice as long as it was to her.

Time is a universal thing, a constant, but the way people measure time isn’t necessarily constant. It’s orthogonal to mass and weight; your mass is constant throughout the universe but a person’s weight depends on the acceleration due to gravity which is thus dependent upon the mass of the body the person is standing on. In short, a person weighs less if they’re standing on the moon compared to the Earth.

A second here was twice as long as it was on Earth.

“It takes me about 45 seconds to regenerate 1 essence,” Riza answered with her corrected time.

Belfore relayed that to--the now much calmer--Sylan.

“You can be useful. Sylan needs you to use cleanse on the people who have their limbs dunked in a stabilising liquid. It’s meant to hinder the spreading of essence poison in the body.”

Riza nodded to show understanding as Belfore spoke to Sylan.

Taking a look around the room there were quite a few people there, the majority of which were using up that stabilising liquid in one way or another. The metal buckets weren’t circular shaped but were rather elongated, similar to a trough but a tad smaller and meant to be portable. There were even handles on the sides.

The fluid itself, upon closer inspection, didn’t hold as much resemblance to water as she had thought; though she was unable to judge its viscosity or density--seeing how it was still and calm--the distortion of the object submerged in the liquid (an arm in her current example) was far greater than she’d assume for water.

Greater refraction meant the object had a higher refractive index. That probably meant the liquid was denser than water.

Secondly, though this may have been due to the candlelight illuminating the room, there was a slight, yellowish to the liquid and it wasn’t as clear as drinking water. Then again, that could just be due to the liquid being impure; it wasn’t like she’d be able to find pure water easily.

Although, she could purify water herself. It was an inefficient process but relatively easy to set up, but she’d rather use essence on cleanse than to do that.

Her idle thoughts were dragged back to reality by Sylan calling her name, and she actually half-understood what he was asking her to do--which was to get started.

She approached the nearest person to her--a woman of hazel hair and a tortured expression to her face. Both her legs were submerged, her trousers rolled up and her mottled skin underneath looking more like a diseased plant than human--or, Skaldian--skin.

Riza bent down for a closer look. Although she had caught essence poisoning herself, she had it for less than a day and cleanse flushed it completely out of her system; she had yet to see what effects it had other than limiting her health.

And it was hideous! The skin was all deformed, stretched taut in some places while disturbingly loose in others. While her skin was mostly tanned, there were many, many dark clusters, patches, of pale, desaturated skin, of an unhealthy white or grey colour. The discolouration was denser and more intense the closer to her feet and, through the layers of liquid, her feet looked ancient; like the mummified remains with flesh still attached.

However, once she caught Syland staring at her disapprovingly from the corner of her vision, she relented upon her observation and laid her hand upon the knee of this individual. She knew that she didn’t need to touch where the poison originated from to cure it.

Next was the hard part.

Riza closed her eyes, doing her best to ignore all outside stimuli. She brought up her visualisation of whirlpools of essence--the essence stone in her right hand situated front and centre. It was spinning faster than ever before, its intensity increased to a strength it was almost a blur. Each orb, each particle of essence, let of a brighter, stronger blue glow.

She then focused on her hand, on the feel of rough, coarse skin beneath it. The woman was scarred, her skin uneven and with innumerable scratches.

Was this woman a mage, or more physically focused? She didn’t know, but it probably didn’t matter; in here, this space of mind, a human was essence. The person in front of her constituted a whirlpool of her own, each particle ebbing and flowing unperturbed in a perpetual cycle.

The particles, contrasting her own, were slightly greenish tinted, a signifier of a different entity. And subsumed between those particles were the venomous, grey orbs of poison; representations of essence posion.

As the image came into fruition, the energy beginning to course through her mind, she began to feel a connection. A familiar connection, one that she had established many times before when she used cleanse.

However, this time was different. Every time she had used cleanse, it was either on herself or something dead. Essence, she believed, was analogous to life but, as the miraculous knowledge of the system informed it, it was unique to an individual. There was pure essence, there was aspected essence, and there was the essence that made up her being.

For her, cleanse worked like an immune system; foregin essence was attacked by native essence. How would that work for another person, where her own essence was the one invading?

She didn’t know, but she had yet to try.

Drawing a bridge, establishing a connection, a tunnel formed between the whirlpool of the stone, of her body, and the woman in front of her. And then, with just the gentlest of mental nudges, particles began to flow en mass.

The essence bombarded this whirlpool, shifting through it and assimilating into it, the speckles of slightly different hues evening out and, with it, the disruptive grey blobs of essence were consumed, overwhelmed, by the energy Riza had just poured in.

A little tired from the ordeal, Riza opened her eyes, seeing the woman, and her legs, in front of her. Disappointingly, the mottle, taut skin was still there, the physical destruction of the poison not having been fixed by cleanse.

Though, perhaps that was to be expected; if you cured someone of an illness, the physical effects of the illness on the body wouldn’t necessarily instantly vanish. She’d probably need a skill like heal to cure the woman further.

But, just to make sure, she should ask Sylan. Belfore was nearby, keeping an eye on both what Sylan was doing--sometimes asking him questions--as well as on Riza, but she wanted to practise the language without relying on a translator all the time.

“Sylan!” She called out loudly, getting the man's attention. The smile was wiped off his face as he looked at her seriously, though not with an expression that was unwelcoming.

“What do you need?” He asked, Riza putting together the meaning.

“Leg. How do you heal?” She tried her best to affect the sentence with a questioning tone.

“With heal,” He responded. Well, I guess that answers it.

Satisfied, Riaz moved onto the next patient.

Over the course of the next hour, Riza moved from patient to patient, cleansing them of whatever essence poison they had. Some of them, she was sure, didn’t even have essence poisoning; she half-suspected one merely had a fever, perhaps a cold. Cleanse should have taken care of that one, though.

She had used cleanse quite a bit but it had yet to level up; it had been so long that she forgot how much essence she had invested in it already.

By the time she was finished, she asked Belfore what to do, but he merely told her to ‘wait for more people to come’, echoing what Sylan had told him.

As she waited, she did feel half-bad, however, for Sylan was going around to all the patients, even visiting ones she had cleansed, and using heal--she assumed it was rather--to cure any injuries or deformities. He didn’t get around to everyone, and took significantly longer on a single person than she took to cleanse him.

After about twenty minutes of waiting, a group of five people entered the room, four of them wearing the same clothes as her while the fifth wore white robes with a yellow-dyed hood, just like Saniel.

Not all of them were injured; two of them had massive gashes torn in their gambesons--dyed red by blood--while one of them clutched their arm to their chest. All of them were moaning in pain, and Sylan directed them towards recently evicted beds.

With exchanged a few words with them before waving me over and sending me to help the man grasping his arm.

I repeated the same mental spiel as I had done numerous times before, utilising cleanse on him to drive out the poisonous substance. I briefly wondered if it would still work the exact same way if a person didn’t have essence poisoning, but I was unsure.

Once all the people were situated in beds, and Sylan was either tending to them or waiting for his essence to regenerate--why didn’t he get essence stone as a skill?--Riza whiled away her time by practising cleanse or talking with Belfore.

“Why should you not ask someone what their stats?” The question had been bugging her since he mentioned it, and it would prove a serious obstacle to learning about this world and the system.

“An inquisition like that, without a valid reason for it, is akin to looking for someone’s weaknesses. The Grand Regent deemed that a failing of the nation was over-reliance on stats and to prevent judgement and persecution, you can be punished for asking such a question unnecessarily.”

“Grand Regent?” Riza asked. From how he spoke, it sounded like the Grand Regent was in charge rather than merely adversary to the ruler. That suggested the country was in some sort of interregnum.

“They’re the supposed ruler of the nation,” Belfore clarifide, dislike dripping from his words.

“You’re not a fan?”

“I doubt they even exist. But even if they do exist, what they’ve done to the Dominion is a perversion that I cannot stand.” His tone was decidedly harsh.

“What did they do?” She inquired.

“I don’t know much--mostly only what my teacher sought fit to tell me--but, concerning the halls, they wiped some of the records. Furthermore, if there’s any history that gets discovered but goes against their vision, the knowledge is discarded, the scribe deemed a traitor and exiled.” He practically spat the last words out, disdain infused to their very soul.

“And you’re telling me all of this? Could you not get into trouble?” Riza’s question was less derived from concern but rather intrigue; from the sounds of it, any sentiment of dissent would be swiftly punished.

“I’m telling you only because I’m speaking in English. No other scribe has encountered this language before, so you’re the only one who could understand what I’m saying.”

She ruminated on those words, on the place she had found herself in.

But, eventually, the most pressing question, one that had existed from the moment she met this man, pressured itself to the forefront of her mind.

“What skills are you using to talk to me?” She had wondered for so long.

“The main skill I’m using to converse with you is ‘translation’ but the skill I used to decipher the language to begin with was ‘linguistical immersion’. They’re both a part of the linguistics skill branch.”

Once she got her answer, Riza excitedly scrolled through her menus, looking for the auspicious skills.

0th Tier

Linguistical Immersion (1/10)

Greatly enchances your ability to decipher a language

Cost: 10 es/min

Archive Language (1/10)

Commit a deciphered language to a central codex

Cost: 10 es

Translation (1/10)

Communicate using any known deciphered language

Cost: 10 es/sec

As expected, it didn’t give her much information. What it did do, however, was lend credence to the idea Belfore was merely accessing a database or translation programme rather than learning the language himself.

While useful in the short term, relying on it would probably hinder someone attempting to learn the language themselves.

“How many languages do you know?” Riza asked, curious for Belfore’s opinion on the matter.

“Only the one. You rarely need any more than that and when I do, that’s what the skills are for,” Belfore replied without shame.

“You don’t have any ambitions of becoming a polyglot?”

“A poly-what?”

“It’s someone that’s fluent in many languages,” Riza explained.

“I don’t see a reason in doing that. I can either discover new languages, applying what languages I’ve already discovered, coming into contact with languages that I haven’t experienced before, or level up. Learning a new language doesn’t fit in.”

His response surprised Riza somewhat; for someone dedicated to linguistics to not be interested in actually learning other languages was a bit unexpected.

After that, she continued to ask some questions, used cleanse, and attended to any individuals that came in. The hours began to pass by as her duties seemed relatively minimal.

Belfore didn’t stick around for it all, and she tried to make conversation with Sylan. While he was a charismatic man--she assumed--and he tried his hardest to talk, the conversation was limited and he busied himself with other things. At one point, there was only her in the infirmary, wandering between patients and talking to them occasionally.

She explored a bit of the area. There were sharp implements that she found in a cordoned-off part of the room, in the corner. It contained a multitude of varying scissors, some saws, and other bits and bobs. Like a mix between surgeons tools and barber tools.

Some times, she did spot Sylan attending to someone that wasn’t a patient and merely wanted their hair cut, though it didn’t look like he got paid to do that. He wasn’t being paid for anything, really; healing people and cutting hair all happened like it was a part of his job, which, she supposed, it was.

The efficiency of the infirmary should’ve been incredible--able to cure diseases in minutes, and able to heal wounds without the necessarily days or weeks to do so naturally. Therefore, there was a question in her mind about why there were people still resting in beds, blood still visible on them and still imperfect.

One person even seemed to be an amputee! Could heal not regenerate lost limbs?

A limb was just a collection of different bits of tissues and cells. Riza imagined that heal functioned similarly to leech, so if she was able to patch up injuries in her body, instantly closing the wounds, heal should do the same as well.

In fact, how did leech patch up her wounds? The way the body worked normally was blood would rush to an opening, clot it up to stop the blood flow, and those blood cells would eventually turn into the same cells as the ones surrounding it. At least, that was what worked for things like cuts, which she had experienced.

Leech, therefore, emulated that. Did it speed up the process? She doubted; that sounded something that time magic--not that she knew that existed--would achieve rather than life. Life, conceptually, seemed more like it’d emulate life to the tee; the essence would act as blood cells and the skill would emulate the healing process. The reason it happens quickly is because of how much essence it consumes.

That was just a hypothesis for now, but it was building upon something she was conceptualising; namely, what is essence? Essence transformed itself into health and healed her wounds. The conversion between essence and health seemed to happen automatically, and was mediated by the system and the skills she had been granted. By using leech, by throwing essence at the problem, it was like boosting her body to do something more.

She needed more data, more situations, more theories. There were too many straws to grasp at.

Eventually, however, she grew hungry, as did her colleagues of Sylan and Belfore. She was taken to an outdoors canteen, it seemed; there were multiple, large, cast iron pots all filled to the brim with stew. There were people dressed rather casually from what she had seen, handing out bread and pouring stew into bowls as people lined up to get a meal.

Saniel had met up with them again, apparently having gone to bring Riza to get some food.

All of this was being done from out of a partially-demolished house; except, this house seemed more like it had been renovated rather than collapsed due to a natural disaster, like the other houses did.

Tables and benches were set up around the place, and the sky had finally stopped raining, a rainbow barely visibly on the horizon.

Belfore grabbed his food, eating the same thing as the common person, and sat down at a table were there were a few boisterous young men and women. Riza quickly followed after him, nearly losing herself between the relatively larger members of the company but managing to get her food unscaved.

She sat down next to Belfore, not that he seemed to mind, and dug in. The bread was hard, rough, and bland while the stew felt more like hot water than anything else, but she was fine with it. There was plenty of it go around and though a few people tried to initiate conversations with her, she managed to get across her inability to communicate.

After eating, she returned to her work, passing the time in similar ways. Happily, all the work she was doing through the day manage to level both cleanse and essence congruency to level 3 each!

Cleanse (3/10)

Cleanse an entity from any toxin, disease, or contamination

Cost: 3 es

Essence Congruency (3/10)

Use 4 active skills at the same time

The day drew to a close as the sun began to dip down. Belfore explained that Saniel was going to take Riza to her dormitory, where she was going to sleep. She wanted to ask why she couldn’t sleep in the house she had been so far, but Belfore vanished before she could even utter a sound and she was left with Saniel.

The dormitory, as it turned out, was a house like any other. Inside, beds were littered about the rooms and there was very little room for anything else. Additionally, half those beds were occupied, with women in various outfits. A couple had robes like Saniels but most just had gambesons, tunics, the lowest denominator clothing.

Saniel ushered her in before making a brisk get-away, noticeably uncomfortable with the situation.

She was met with curious gazes and a few women introduced herself but the lack of enthusiasm suggested that this wasn’t something unusual to happen. She learnt a few names, a few new words, and expressed her troubles herself. Some seemed interested in her height, unsurprisingly. Riza realised she needed to get used to that, the difference between her and other adults.

More women began to trickle into the dorms until every bed was filled up, every chest filled with their clothes as they shuffled into their individual beds, ready to go off to sleep.

Eventually, sleep, too, consumed Riza.