It turned out, when Wim said, ‘we will travel together’, he wasn’t just talking about Jing, him, and me. No, the entire, freaking family was going, and they weren’t leaving anything they considered important behind. The cart that Jing had first carried me was loaded full of blankets, clothing, and a number of the beakers and cauldrons from Jing’s mother’s lab. A second cart held the anvil and tools from the smithy, as well. I wondered how we were going to carry all of that, considering that we didn’t have horses, until I recalled how Jing had first brought me back to the farm. Of course, I was a lot lighter than a solid iron anvil, but apparently, that didn’t matter much to the family.

I’d spent the rest of that day in training, doing my katas and cycling my qi as I exercised. That exercise consisted primarily of loading the carts according to Wim’s directions, then having his wife come by and tell me to unload them because I’d put two cauldrons too close to one another or had the anvil turned the wrong way. Then, I got to load it the “right” way, only to have her change her mind once she realized she forgot something.

One good thing about the mindless tasks was that it let me check the announcements that Sara had apparently been keeping in check for me. “I didn’t want to distract you when you were fighting, obviously,” she’d explained. “And then, you were talking to that woman, and running with Jing, and…well, it just didn’t seem like any of those times was a good one.”

“They probably weren’t,” I’d agreed readily. “I might have tripped if you’d blocked my vision like that, and who knows what that might have done to Jing? Can I see them now, though?”

“Of course.”

Skill: Unarmed Combat has gained a level.

Unarmed Combat: Adept 3

Skill: Weapon Focus (Unarmed) has gained a level.

Weapon Focus (Unarmed): Initiate 5

Skill: Qi Cycling (Celestial) has gained a level.

Qi Cycling (Celestial): Adept 1

Qi Cycling has reached the Adept ranks! Raise Qi Absorption to the Adept ranks to increase your Cultivation Rank!

Celestial Guardian XP Gained: 160

Profession: Celestial Guardian has gained a level!

New Level: 2

For every level of Celestial Guardian, you gain:

Reason, Intuition, Perception, Prowess, Celerity, and Skill +1

3 Skill Points

Unassigned XP: 520

Unassigned XP can be divided between the following Professions:

Pugilist, Celestial Guardian, Inquisitor (max 45 XP)

You have 24 hours to assign unused Skill Points and XP, or they will be randomly assigned.

“Okay, Sara, this needs some explanation, I think,” I’d said silently as I read over the text. “How does experience work, and why is it unassigned?”

“Experience is pretty simple,” Sara had said. “Whenever you defeat an enemy, you absorb some of their essence, adding it to your personal power. Well, technically, I absorb some of their essence and can channel it to you however you want. However, each of your professions has its own XP pool, and you can only add XP to a profession if you used it to gain that XP.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” I’d admitted.

“Okay, well, let’s look at the quarry battle. When you fought that woman, you used your techniques. The only profession you have that focuses on techniques is Celestial Guardian, so you got 160 XP added directly to that profession for defeating her.

“On the other hand, you killed the rest of the raiders, the Chief, and the two abnormal people with plain, old combat. Pugilist and Celestial Guardian both focus on that, so you can add that XP to either of those professions – or split it up among them.”

“So, why can I only add a max of forty-five XP to Inquisitor?”

“Because the Chief and two abnormal people were the only ones who set off your Sense Imbalance ability. Since the whole point of the profession is to correct imbalance, killing them could be applied to that profession.”

I’d sighed at that, mostly from frustration. It was fairly complex, and I had no idea what the best path was. Hoping to gain some inspiration, I’d opened my status and checked my professions.

Active Professions:

Inquisitor (Hidden)

Current XP: 0 Current Level: 1

Pugilist

Current XP: 765 Current Level: 3

Celestial Guardian

Current XP: 160 Current Level: 2

“Sara, how much XP do I need to reach the next level of each of those?”

“Oh, that would be useful, wouldn’t it? Here, let me fix that…there you go!”

The screen had changed to display the new info I’d asked for, and seeing it had helped a great deal.

Active Professions:

Inquisitor (Hidden)

Current XP: 0/100 Current Level: 1

Pugilist

Current XP: 765/900 Current Level: 3

Celestial Guardian

Current XP: 160/1,100 Current Level: 2

“Well, that makes things easier. Let’s use enough XP to level up Pugilist, then add the rest to CG.”

Sara had hesitated. “It’s up to you, of course, but I highly recommend adding as much XP as you can to your Inquisitor profession. It’s a Divine-ranked profession, and leveling it will make you very, very powerful. Plus, after the first level, it’s really, really hard to do.”

“Okay, so add 45 XP to Inquisitor, level up Pugilist, and put the rest in CG.” A moment later, I got a notification that Pugilist had leveled up, and this level gave me another point to Prowess and Celerity. It also brought me an interesting if admittedly weak ability.

New Ability: Leathern Hide

Passive Defensive Ability

Your skin has become tougher, reducing the damage you take from all sources by 1%.

“A passive ability? Does that mean it’s always on, Sara?”

“Exactly. Your Deep Strike ability is the same thing: it gives your blows a permanent 1% bonus against armor. It’s not much, but then, Pugilist is a common profession. You can’t expect a lot from it.”

That had brought my Celestial Guardian – it was easier to think of it as CG, really – XP up to 555, just about halfway to the next level. I remembered Sara telling me that the rarer a profession was, the harder it was to level, and now I could see what she was talking about. The XP I needed to get to level 3 of CG was enough to put me well into level 4 of Pugilist, and I assumed that differential would just get worse as I went up in experience.

The Skill Points let me boost any of my skills by a single point. I had three of them, and Qi Absorption was only two points away from reaching the Adept level, so it felt like a no-brainer to drop two of those points into the skill and the last into Weapon Focus, my lowest ranked skill. That brought up a new notification that I’d been more or less expecting.

Your Cultivation Rank has Increased!

Cultivation Rank: Metal

Your Maximum Qi Pool has increased. You are resistant to qi-based effects of the Wood Rank. Your Qi-based attacks and techniques have improved effectiveness.

Jing had awoken late in the day, and she’d come to help me pack the wagons, although I could tell that she wasn’t fully recovered. She could probably also tell I was pretty unhappy with her, judging from how she avoided my eyes and only spoke when necessary to complete our task. I considered forcing the issue and confronting her, but honestly, I just couldn’t see the bother. If she knew she’d screwed up, then she had to know she owed me a huge apology. If she didn’t know that she’d crapped all over my plan – then there was no point in me telling her that, because she probably wasn’t willing to listen.

At some point during the night, though, I realized that I’d come to a decision. Once we reached this city, wherever it was, I was done with Jing. She was a good fighter, but until she got over her whole ‘combat is honorable’ thing – and maybe learned how to punch someone – she was going to be a liability more than an asset. I had a feeling that I was going to have to do some fairly dishonorable things to figure out what was happening in this world, things that she wouldn’t approve of. I was going to have to lie, cheat, steal, and murder, I had no doubt, and I could see her following along behind me, constantly calling me out and ruining my plans. I was sort of grateful to her father for what he’d taught me, but not grateful enough to blow my chance to fix what was wrong in this world…and maybe get closer to returning to Earth.

We’d left the next morning as the first light filled the gray, overcast sky. I was pulling one of the carts, and Jing hauled the other along. Mine was the heavier one, of course, but that was probably the smart choice. After my recent levels, I had a feeling I was physically stronger than she was, and now that I had learned how to empower my steps with qi, I was almost as fast. Wim wore a sort of wicker pack on his back that held Jia, while his wife – whose name I still didn’t know – had a similarly large pack filled with…well, I had no idea what, really, and I didn’t care enough to ask. Maybe it was food for the women. That was something I hadn’t even considered. Damn, I was bad at taking care of people!

The whole group of us set out at a run, and I was only slightly surprised to see that the old lady kept up with everyone without much trouble. In fact, I quickly realized that I was the slowpoke in the group, and that the rest of them were matching their pace to mine. I decided that I didn’t care; I was doing the best I could, and if I pushed just a tiny bit harder, picking up my pace slightly, it wasn’t because I knew I was slowing everyone down. Besides, once we started traveling with the women, we were all going to be going an awful lot slower, I was guessing.

We reached the quarry without incident, and Wim sent me forward to clear the entrance to it. “As the one who barred our entry, it is only meet that you restore the quarry, Xu Xing,” he said mildly. I couldn’t really argue with that, so I set to moving stones. It took me a full minute to realize that it would be smarter to start at the top and work my way down, so I clambered up and started hefting rocks, tossing them out of the ravine onto the flat surface above. It had only taken me twenty seconds or so to collapse this entrance, but it took me a solid ten minutes to clear it out. I guess destruction is always easier than repairing what was destroyed.

Once the path was clear, I led the others into the quarry. I guessed that the old man knew his way around this place – or the old woman did, I suppose, depending on which of them came here the most – but I also didn’t want the women to freak out seeing strangers entering their hiding place. As I walked through the cleft in the earth, I saw signs of the ladies’ handiwork. Places that were filled with bodies or smoldering corpses when I left only had scorch marks and bloodstains. They’d dragged the most damaged structures into neat piles, and the central area had been fairly thoroughly cleared out.

When I entered the place where Jing had fought the Chief, I was glad that I’d gone first. The wide space looked totally empty and deserted, and for a moment I feared that despite my precautions, the beasts – or some of the raiders we’d missed – had gotten back in and slaughtered the women. Granted, that would have made my life easier, but it would have also been a hefty load of guilt to bear. As I said, I was fine with killing, but I hated when innocents died for no reason.

“Master?” a voice I recognized echoed through the quarry. A moment later, the familiar form of the woman who’d spoken to me last time rose from behind a pile of rocks. “You have returned, as you promised!”

“Of course, I did,” I replied, not mentioning that I’d been sorely tempted to leave them all there to their fates. “And I brought – well, if not friends, at least more people to protect you all on our trip to the Sunrise Moon.”

The woman scrambled over the stones and hurried over to stand before me, quickly dropping to her knees. “All has been made ready for the journey, master,” she said. “We have gathered what food and supplies we could find and loaded them into the vermin’s packs – those that survived the fire, that is. We have rested as we could, and we are all ready to begin.”

Jing walked up and stood beside me, looking down at the woman curiously. “You call this one ‘Master’?” Jing asked, a slightly hard tone to her voice. “Why?”

“He is our master, Practitioner,” the woman replied, not looking up at Jing. “He freed us from our enslavement, slew the ones who held us in bondage, and drove off the sorceress whose power kept the vermin safe. We all owe him our lives, and thus, he is our master.”

“He did not do this alone,” Jing said icily. “It was I who battled the Chief of the vermin, and I aided him in his efforts.”

“Forgive my impertinence, Practitioner, but it seemed to me that your challenge to the Chief caused more difficulties than it solved. I, who watched all, saw our master abandon his plans and rush to your aid, which brought him into conflict with the sorceress and nearly cost him his life.”

“But I wounded the Chief,” Jing grated, her voice quietly angry.

“And our master slew him when you fell before him,” the woman replied calmly. “Again, I intend no disrespect, but we have discussed this, and we are all in agreement. We owe him our lives and what little honor we retain.”

Jing fumed, but a moment later, she smiled slyly. “It is of no matter. I defeated him in combat, and so he is in my service. The master of your master is the true master.”

“Forgive me again, Practitioner, but he also saved your life, did he not?” the woman spoke, and now there was a definite touch of frost in her voice. “Surely, the debt you owe him for that more than outweighs what little he owes you? The value of a life must outweigh that of a lost duel.”

Jing’s face paled, and she spun and stalked away from the woman, who gave the woman’s retreating back a smug grin. I couldn’t help but grin myself. I was starting to like this woman’s attitude. At least, I liked it when she wasn’t fawning all over me.

“I’m sorry,” I told her, “I never got your name.”

“I am called Shi Lo, master,” she bowed before me. “Thank you for your consideration of me.”

“If I’d been considerate, I’d have asked when we first met,” I chuckled. “How many of you are there?”

“Twelve, master. All of us are ready to travel.”

“Then get everyone together, and I’ll introduce you to the rest of your escorts.”

I waited until the rest of the women gathered and gave them a quick examination. They weren’t in the best condition, which I supposed was to be expected. Four of them were visibly pregnant, although none looked close to popping, but I figured that would make travel even more awkward. They were dressed in ragged clothing that they’d obviously scavenged from the raiders, and each carried one of the crude weapons and a heavy pack on their back. A few had a beaten, hopeless expression that I didn’t much blame them for, but the rest seemed oddly hopefully. I guessed that after what they’d just been through, the idea of walking through a beast-filled land being protected by a handful of strangers probably felt like a godsend.

I led them back to the entrance to the quarry, where the others waited for me. Jing had a disgruntled expression on her face, and she eyed Shi Lo angrily as the woman walked right behind me. Wim and his wife, though, looked calm and serene as the women exited the quarry and looked at them nervously.

“Be at ease, children,” the old woman said gently, eyeing the women with a piercing gaze.

“Forgive me elder, but none could call us ‘children’ after these past months,” Shi Lo said in a hoarse, angry whisper.

“I meant no disrespect,” the old woman smiled at her. “I call you ‘children’, for that is how you seem to one such as I, despite your horrific experience. And yet, should the term offend, I shall refrain from using it.”

“Thank you, elder,” Shi Lo bowed low.

“Of course.”

“I am given to understand that you call Xu Xing your master,” Wim spoke up in a mild tone.

“We do, elder. He saved us, and we owe him our lives and our honor. We could do no less.”

I expected him to argue the way Jing had, but he merely nodded. “That is appropriate,” he agreed before turning to me. “They are in your care, Xu Xing. You must see to them and protect them. We shall aid you as needed, but they are your charges.”

“Yes, teacher,” I said, managing not to sigh as I did. I didn’t think the ladies would take that very well, and I didn’t need them getting mad and sneaking off at night or anything. I turned and faced Shi Lo.

“I don’t know where we’re going,” I told her. “Do you mind walking along with me and showing me the way?”

“Of course, master,” she bowed her head at me.

“Thanks.” I looked back at Wim. “I don’t know much about the beasts of this area, either, teacher. If you were leading this group, how would you do it?”

The old man stroked his thin beard. “Were it me, I would follow behind, where I could see all my charges,” he said. “If an attack came, I would be ready to respond.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” I agreed. “Shi Lo, lead on. I’ll take up the rear.”

“Yes, master,” the woman bowed again before heading down the rocky slope. The other women fell into a disorganized group behind her, and I waited until they had all passed before dropping in at the rear.

Traveling with the women was a lot slower and more nerve-wracking than I’d expected. The rocky terrain wasn’t easy for them to cross, and they had to help one another navigate some of the rougher ground. They also made a lot of noise, not just from how they traveled, but from the constant stream of low conversations they kept going. I wanted to shush them, but I had no idea if their chatting was likely to bring a predator down on us or not. Without knowing how dense monsters were or how good their senses were, I had no idea what to expect. That meant I had to be constantly on the alert, and I can assure you, no one can be perpetually alert. I’d made my former living on the fact that even the best security gets tired, complacent, and lax when the threat they’re expecting never materializes, after all. You can try to keep your awareness at a maximum, of course, and you can do it for a while, but it’s tiring, and it leaves you mentally worn out and frustrated.

“Why don’t you let me focus on possible threats, John?” Sara suggested. “I see and hear everything you do, and I don’t get tired or worn out.”

“That’s great, but then what do I do while we’re on this leisurely stroll?” I laughed silently.

“Well, remember how I told you I had an idea for better qi storage?”

“Dimly, yes. I kind of forgot about it in all the commotion.”

“Totally understandable. I didn’t, though, and I’ve got something for you.” An image flashed in my mind, one that looked like a complex layering of bands of energy. “Look closer. It’s actually just a single thread of qi, John, but the pattern it’s wound in makes it much denser than what it is now.”

“Why would I want it to be dense?” I asked curiously.

“Well, for one thing, you could pack more qi into your dantian this way, which means you qi pool will grow. And for another, this puts your qi under significant pressure.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good thing, Sara. I’ve seen what happens when the pressure in a vessel gets too high. It makes for a nasty explosion – and it’s not very good for the container.”

“Oh, no, not that sort of pressure, John,” she laughed. “Well, at least, not at first. You might get there, but you’d have to find a way to harden your dantian, first. No, the pressure is a good thing. If your qi is pressurized, then it’s always trying to escape, which means that when you draw on it, it’ll respond much more rapidly. With this, you could activate one of your techniques in under a second, and the better you get at storing qi this way, the faster they’ll become.”

That did sound useful. I didn’t know much about techniques, yet, but I knew all about being the first one to strike. Being fast was a huge advantage in combat, and being able to hit before someone else had a chance to get their defenses up was an even bigger one. A good first strike often made a second one unnecessary…and made sure that your mark never knew what hit them.

“Okay, hook me up. How do we do this?”

The next few hours passed without incident, fortunately. I focused on the new qi pattern, which wasn’t as hard as I’d first thought it was going to be. It was an actual pattern, one that repeated itself endlessly, so once I had the base down, all I had to do was keep doing it again and again, packing the strands tighter with every iteration.

It wasn’t easy, though. I had to completely empty my dantian to do it, which meant building my cultivation spiral and filling it with every last drop from my qi pool. I had to deepen the complexity of the spiral just to be able to handle all that energy at once, and then I had to split my focus between it and the new pattern I was building. I slipped up more than once, layering a section in too lightly or loosely, and when that happened, I had to drain that part back out and redo it. It was demanding work, but it passed the time, and at the slow pace we were moving, that felt like a minor victory.

We left the stony foothills and turned west, heading parallel to the mountains. Shi Lo took the path of least resistance by weaving around the hills when possible. That was probably easier on the women, but it also took us farther out of our way and blocked us from seeing any enemies that might be stalking us. Of course, it also made us less visible to those same creatures, so I supposed it was a fair trade-off.

Jing’s mother stayed at the front of the group with Shi Lo. I couldn’t see them well or hear them at all from my position in the back of the group, but what little I could make out looked like the old woman was trying to engage Shi Lo in conversation, and my new follower or whatever seemed to be doing her best to avoid chatting. I didn’t know what that was all about, but honestly, I didn’t much care. If the old woman was trying to convince Shi Lo to stop following me, well, I couldn’t really see a downside to that. I was fine with letting them be someone else’s problem – that is, so long as that someone else was actually going to take care of them.

Wim walked along one side of our impromptu caravan, still carrying Jia on his back. He looked perfectly calm and serene, like we were strolling through a park instead of wandering next to mountains that might have held thousands of dangerous monsters in them. Scratch that, almost certainly did hold thousands of dangerous monsters. Of course, for all I knew, this was the sort of thing he did for relaxation. It wasn’t like the people here had TV or video games, after all.

Jing trudged along on the opposite side of the group from her father, and her face held a sullen, downcast look. She still moved with her easy grace, but her shoulders were slumped, and she reminded me of someone who’d suffered a nasty setback. I’d seen the look before; heads of security often looked something like that once they realized that their principal was dead, and they hadn’t been able to stop it. I didn’t know why these women calling me their master bothered her so much, but again, I couldn’t bring myself to care. In a few days, I’d be done with Jing, and good riddance.

We stopped as the sun sank low, and the women busied themselves setting up a sort of makeshift camp. Jing’s mother had me dig a deep hole in the center of the camp, which I didn’t understand. There was nothing around here to burn but grass, and the smoke and light from that sort of fire would be visible from a long way off. I hoped she wasn’t having me build some kind of latrine; it seemed to me that sort of thing really belonged outside the camp, or at least at the very edge of it.

Once I finished, though, the old woman took out a flask from her pack and sprinkled a dark purple powder into the pit. The powder shimmered with a weird radiance in the rapidly dimming twilight. A moment later, dark purple flames burst from it, sending up waves of heat but emanating very little light. The woman must have seen the shock on my face because she smiled and held up the powder.

“Crystallized Dark Fire,” she told me. “A Savant-ranked creation; it will burn for hours without fuel, emitting no smoke and very little light. It is also useful for purifying wounds of rot and certain diseases.”

“Sounds handy,” I nodded.

“Indeed, it is.” She slipped the bottle back into her pack and pulled out what looked like a loosely bound book of some kind. She held it out to me. “I wish you to read this,” she told me.

“What is it?” I hedged, not reaching for the book. I had no idea what the book was, but there was a reason I hadn’t gone to college. Well, several reasons, but one of them was that I hated studying. I couldn’t think of many fates worse than being forced to read books that didn’t interest me, memorizing random facts that had no real impact on my life.

It was strange, because for a job, I was all about studying. I’d taught myself basic quantum mechanics to infiltrate a think tank once; the place had a silent financial backer who funded it with some very dirty deeds, and she’d muscled in on the territory of a person who didn’t take that sort of thing lightly. I’d also studied psychology, history, advanced math, chemistry, and a whole host of other subjects that I would have loathed in high school. I guess it wasn’t that I hated studying; I hated doing it because someone else told me I had to.

“This is a basic treatise of medicine,” she told me. “It teaches the simplest concepts of the body and how certain compounds work upon it. Should you study and learn it, I will agree to teach you the art of medicine, for you show great promise and much instinctive knowledge.”

I stared at the book for a moment, considering. I had wanted to learn alchemy – or medicine, as it was called in this world – but the old woman was acting like I should be grateful to learn it. That was the attitude that always rankled me back in school, and a petty part of me wanted to refuse her just out of spite.

However, I didn’t live as long as I had by ignoring long-term benefits for short-term pleasures. When I got to the city, I’d need some kind of trade to earn a living while I worked out what was going on, and alchemy would serve as well as anything. It might also provide me a cover to get into places I otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Plus, I knew enough about chemistry to know that medicines and poisons were just two sides of the same coin. The right dose could cure you; the wrong dose could be lethal. I’d wanted to learn more about toxins in this world, and this was probably the best place to do it.

“Thank you,” I finally said, reaching out to take the book. “I’ll read through this when I get a chance, I promise.”

“Good,” she nodded. “Now, as you are in charge of these women’s safety, I would recommend that you find a place to rest where you can watch over the camp this night. While my fire will not draw beasts, the presence of so many people may.”

“Good suggestion,” I agreed, rising to my feet and walking to the edge of the camp. It didn’t take long to find a relatively low hilltop that gave me a decent view of the camp without outlining me against the sky for any predator who happened to look this way to see. There was still some light, so I took the book she’d just given me and cracked open the cover.

It was gibberish. At least, that was my first impression. It wasn’t that the book was too complex for me, or that there were concepts I didn’t understand. I literally couldn’t make out a single word. Not even a letter. It looked like someone had scribbled random drawings all over the page in some sort of dark, black ink. If this was how the people in this world wrote, then it seemed I was an illiterate, here.

“Flip through a couple of pages, please, John,” Sara instructed.

“What?”

“Flip through the pages. This is a linguistic system based on a tongue I’ve already decoded. Cracking it is just a simple matter of matching character patterns to speech patterns. I just need a large enough sample size to get started.”

I actually knew what she was talking about, so I flipped through the pages, not really reading them, just letting my eyes scan the characters. The book was like a code, one where each symbol either represented a letter or a word. Since it wasn’t designed to keep people from cracking it – in fact, it was probably made so that people could decipher it without too much effort – breaking the code wouldn’t be much harder than unscrambling a message where each letter had an associated number attached to it.

“Okay, I think I’ve got it,” Sara said quietly. “Just give me a second to fix it, and…there you go!”

I blinked as the alien characters shifted and swam in my vision, then suddenly resolved themselves into perfect English. I knew that Sara hadn’t actually changed the book; somehow, she was altering my perception of it so that I saw it in English rather than in…whatever language it was. I hadn’t really considered it, but it occurred to me that she had to be doing the same thing with the language I was hearing; she couldn’t change what the people speaking were saying, and I couldn’t pull up the vocabulary for the Kuan language or whatever it was in my head. That meant she was changing the words in my head as I heard them.

“Well, yes, that’s really the only way I can help you understand a language,” she said almost apologetically. “I have to do it when you speak, too. Have you noticed that you use contractions and idiomatic phrases constantly, but no one else does…and they don’t seem bothered by it?”

I frowned. I had noticed that, but I assumed that while most of the people I met were overly formal, some weren’t, and they were just assuming I was one of those. I figured they might have thought I was a little rude, but it couldn’t have been too bad, because no one had smacked me for it, yet. It wasn’t like Jing and her father had ever hesitated to hit me or anything; if they weren’t pointing out my rudeness, then it must not have bothered them. From what Sara was saying, though, they weren’t upset because she was cleaning up my speech for me…which felt a little invasive, to be honest.

“It’s not about ‘cleaning up your speech’, John. The Kuan language doesn’t have any contractions. They don’t exist in the language in any form. There are no nicknames, or abbreviations, or any sort of shortening of the tongue at all. So, I don’t have any choice but to change your contractions back into the full words. It’s either that, or tell them the English word, the way I do when you use a word with no real translation in Kuan, like ‘rat’ or ‘pet’.

“It goes the other way, too, by the way. That’s what happened with the ‘vermin’. The word they use for those people literally means, ‘unwanted creatures who infest places they do not belong’. Vermin was the closest translation I could come up with.”

“Well, to be honest, it kind of bothers me,” I admitted. “I don’t like thinking of people as vermin. Any chance you can change it to ‘raiders’?”

“There is a term in Kuan for people who ambush caravans and homesteads to steal, John,” she told me. “And we don’t know that all of those types of people live by theft. It might not be appropriate in all cases.”

I frowned. She was right; the word ‘raiders’ did have a strong negative connotation. If a group of those people were living peacefully somewhere, and I kept thinking of them as ‘raiders’, I’d probably approach them in a less-than-friendly way. I needed a word that described them accurately but didn’t necessarily make them sound evil.

“What about ‘cursed’?” I thought after a few moments. “Could you translate it that way?”

“That might work,” she said after a few moments. “There isn’t a specific term for someone suffering from a random curse in Kuan, at least not that I’m aware of. Cursed it is, John.”

“Thanks. That makes me feel better.”

“I’m glad it does. However, I don’t think that feeling’s going to last.”

Even as she spoke, I felt a prickling sensation creep down the back of my neck. It spread into my shoulders, making them tingle, and wrapped around to my throat, filling it with an icy feeling. I rose to my feet and glanced around, my eyes straining to pierce the deepening gloom of the spreading evening. It took me several seconds to see the long, serpentine shapes creeping over the side of the hill across the camp from me, sliding down toward the unsuspecting women below.

I sprinted down the slope of the hill, swearing as I did. This had seriously been a shit day.