After I had left the town of Westfall, I made my way back towards the little house in the middle of the woods. It had been very enjoyable to explore the town, and to see what it had to offer. But at the same time, I had found myself kind of looking forward to seeing each of the children again, and I had been a little surprised by how much I was looking forward to cooking up a meal with them, and to getting to know them better.

As I opened up the door of the little cottage, I saw Aaron sitting on the bed and reading a book out loud to Lily, who was listening to him with great attention, and resting her head against his chest. When the two of them heard me come in, they each gave me a warm smile, and asked me how my trip had gone. I told them just a little bit about what I had seen, as I closed the door behind me, and locked it firmly into place.

The two kids seemed to be especially eager to know if I had seen any slaves in the town, or any slavers. But as far as I could recall, I hadn’t… and even if slavery was allowed in Westfall, as Torver had assured me that it was, it certainly didn’t seem to be especially prevalent, or a common practice.

That was probably good news for the two of them, although it certainly wasn’t safe enough that either of them would want to head outside anytime too soon – not until the hunt for the escaped slaves had died down a bit, at least.

As we talked, I made my way over towards the bed, and set down the wooden box with the food packed away inside. The three of us opened up the lid together, and Aaron and Lily both looked absolutely overjoyed with everything that I had brought. Apparently, neither of them had been able to eat very well when they had been kept in captivity, so the prospect of being able to eat this much good food was genuinely emotional for them. Lily in particular looked like she was almost about to cry, and I had to tell her several times that she could really have as much of the meat as she wanted, and that I had bought that much of it just for her. Once I had finally convinced her that she really could eat to her heart’s content, she just squeezed my hand in hers, and thanked me in a soft voice that was overflowing with emotion.

After we had all taken a look at the food, the three of us made our way into the kitchen. I had expected Lily to stay seated on the bed, and to wait for us out there. But it seemed like her leg was really starting to feel a lot better. She could walk just a little now, although she had to use Aaron’s shoulder as support in order to keep most of the weight off of her right leg. But I already understood their relationship with one another well enough to know that Aaron wouldn't mind having her rest upon his shoulder at all... and it was sweet to watch him move slowly forward, tenderly holding Lily by the side, and helping to guide each of her wavering steps, as the two of them made their way into the kitchen.

I had never really cooked before, and I certainly didn’t know how food was prepared in a world without any sort of electricity or gas. But fortunately, Aaron seemed to have some experience, and so he soon took charge of finding all of the different implements that we would need to make our meal.

While he began to search through each of the cabinets for supplies, I helped to support Lily, and made small talk with her for a little while, as we got to know one another. It seemed as if she was already really comfortable around me, which was good to know, and I could tell that she was treating me more and more like a friend. And for my own part, just spending time ith the two of them, I found that I felt a surprising amount of warmth towards both her, and Aaron.

When I had first come to this world, I had expected to be alone, for the most part. I had thought that just being by myself was what I would want, after how I had been treated before, and that being in society would be a lot more trouble than it was worth. But as I continued to spend these sorts of simple moments with the two of them - just talking for a while, and cooking up a meal - I started to feel something that I hadn’t really felt in a long time.

In prison, there was just a … coldness, I guess that you could say, in all of the social interactions. I hadn’t had any real friends, and I’d had a lot of enemies among the guards. And so I had kind of forgotten what it was like to see a warm smile, or to have someone treat me with kindness, and with compassion.

But, staying here and spending time with these two children, both of whom clearly loved each other, and each of whom treated me with warmth, and with kindness... it made me feel like maybe, I didn't really want to be alone that much after all. Even once the three of us ended up parting, I wasn’t so sure that I would just want to go and to find a place all by myself after that. And for just a moment, I thought to myself that I wasn't so sure that I would ultimately want to part from the two of them at all - even though it was much too soon to be thinking that in any serious sort of a way. But that I was having those sorts of thoughts at all was a real sign of how much I'd been enjoying their company, and how glad I'd been so far that I'd decided to stay here with them, and to help them to survive.

But for now, the most important thing was just to make up our meal together. There’d be plenty of time for me to think about the future later on, and to figure out what kind of a life I wanted to lead in this new world.

Aaron had managed to find everything that we needed to cook up the food, so it was time for us all to begin the preparation. Apparently, he had done a lot of cooking back before he had been taken in as a slave, so I decided that it would be best to let him take the lead in everything.

While he started up a little fire, Lily and I tried out a few different sauces, trying to figure out what would go well with the meat that we had bought. She seemed to especially enjoy it whenever we found a sauce that tasted really, really awful, and we took turns trying to crack each other up by making the most disgusted faces that we could possibly come up with when we found something that was especially rancid.

Eventually though, we managed to pick out a sauce that each of us really liked. It had a kind of sweet, orange-y flavor, but with a spicy after-taste that wasn’t too hot or too intense, and which helped to give a kind of weight and substance to the flavor. It was really, really good, and when Aaron tried it out, he was positive that it would go well with the meat that we had chosen. So, we decided that we’d give it a go, and throw it on top of the food.

The fire was ready now, so Aaron, Lily and I all started to chop up the vegetables, and to prepare them for the meal. While I took care of cutting up a few of the ones that I figured were pretty easy to prepare, Aaron was showing Lily how to cut and to prepare the rest of them, guiding her fingers as she was first learning how to use the knife, then letting her make the rest of the cuts on her own. Once we were all done, we threw the diced up vegetables into a large pan, and then placed a very large slab of meat right into the middle.

I let Aaron look after the cooking, but I stood by the side and watched, asking a few questions here and there in order to better understand the process. Lily did the same, as she rested her weight on Aaron’s shoulder.

A little while later, we scooped out the finished meal with a large wooden ladle, placing each of our portions onto three medium-sized clay plates. I made sure that Lily got as much of the meat as she wanted, and then I divided up the rest of the food between myself and Aaron.

There was a little table to eat at in the kitchen, but it only really had space for two people, so I let Lily and Aaron sit down, then stood up at the side and ate my meal.

The whole time that we had been cooking, we had all been talking with increasing animation, about where we had been in the last few days, and what we had seen. My story about the wolf in the forest went over especially well, and it was apparent from their reactions that such a creature was just about as amazing to them as it had been to me. For my own part, I listened with great attention to all of the details of how they had made their escape, and to the sorts of dangers that they had encountered along the way. It seemed as if they had been very close to being captured on quite a few different occasions, and I felt thankful that they had made it out to these woods at all, and that I had been able to find them before they had been discovered.

As the three of us laughed and talked to one another, it seemed more and more clear that the children were beginning to trust me, and to feel relaxed in my presence. I guess that they could tell that I really didn’t have any sort of intention at all to take them back, and I think that both of them were just glad to have someone else that they could talk to, and who could help to make them feel like they were safe. Probably they also felt at least a little of the way that I did too, and probably neither of them had seen a warm, friendly face in far too long. From what they had said, it seemed that life on the farm had been very hard, and that they hadn’t gotten much time to spend with other people, or even with one another.

Still, although we were all speaking pretty openly about our lives, I didn’t want to tell the kids about where I was from just yet, or what I was. What Torver had said to me before, about how the Interlopers just seem to go “missing” once they’d been found was really troubling to me, and it had made me decide that I would be as careful as possible about who I told my secret to. Of course, I didn’t have any doubts that I could trust each of these children. But I couldn’t be quite sure what they might say if they were captured again, and I couldn’t be positive that they wouldn’t tell my secret to someone who they trusted, but who I wouldn’t have wanted to know.

But… I didn’t want to keep lying to them, either. So, if I did end up continuing to know them further into the future, I decided that I would tell the truth to them eventually, and that I wouldn’t keep deceiving them, or misleading them about where I was from.

For now though, once all of us had eaten our meals, Aaron helped to lead Lily back to her bed. Then, since our conversation seemed to be over for the moment, the two of them went back to reading out loud to one another.

That reminded me that I had wanted to try and read a few books too, in order to try to learn more about this world. I was pretty exhausted from everything that had happened today, but I still wanted to make a little bit more progress towards that goal, if I could. So, I went over to the bookshelf, in order to try to find a few books that might be interesting.

I had been just a little worried that I might not be able to read any of the books that I had found, since I didn’t know any of the languages in this world. But fortunately, I didn’t have any trouble at all in reading what was there. I could make out the titles, and the text of just about all of the books that I looked at… and the few that I couldn’t read seemed to be to be much older, and to have come from a much more ancient time. And so my best guess was that the system had provided me with the ability to understand the languages that were currently spoken in this world, but that I wouldn’t be able to understand any of the older languages that had been preserved, or any language that might long since have been forgotten.

Of course, I could probably pick up some of those languages later, if I ever needed to. For now though, after scanning the bookshelves for a few moments, I just picked out a few volumes that looked especially interesting, as I carried them over towards the large wooden chair, and began to read.

The books that I chose were called The Enigma of Kalia, The Vaults of the Interlopers, The Four Towers, and The Practice of Magic.

To be honest, I hadn’t expected to find that much in the first two that I hadn’t already learned before. But still, even though I had probably learned the truth from Torver already, I just wanted to really make sure of it for myself, and to be certain that no one in this world knew who Kalia was, or why I had been summoned here. Also, I wanted to see if there was any sort of extra hint or clue that I could find in either of the two books that might help to tell me about the secrets of this world, or about how to discover any of the old and hidden vaults.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really find all that much of anything. Most of what they said was just a restatement of what Torver had already told me about before. No one knew who Kalia was, or why they summoned people to this world. Apparently, a few of the Old Books had suggested that Kalia was once worshiped as some sort of a goddess, and that great festivals were held for her in the woods and plains. But that wasn’t all that much of a hint, really, so I just set that book down for now.

As for the book that I had picked up about the Vaults, I got about a quarter of the way through before I decided to give up on that one, too. The book seemed to consist entirely of wild speculation, mixed with drawings of what the vaults might look like, and what sorts of treasures they might contain. But all of the evidence for the existence of the vaults was entirely anecdotal – they weren’t mentioned in a single one of the older and more authoritative books of this world – so it seemed as if most scholarly or academic types didn’t really take them all that seriously. Of course, that didn’t mean a ton to me… but, it did mean that there wasn’t all that much to go on, or at least not in any of the books that would be widely available.

One of the only parts of the book that really stuck out to me was a simple argument that suggested that, if the vaults did exist, then they must be in places that most people never traversed, which likely meant that they would be surrounded by the sorts of dangerous, powerful monsters which inhabited the “wild lands” of this world. That argument, at least, seemed to hold some weight, and it likely meant that I would need to get quite a bit stronger if I really wanted to go out and to try to find the places that each of these vaults might be hidden in.

The only other thing that stood out to me were a few of the drawings that had come down from much older times. I couldn’t say why exactly, but they seemed… authentic, somehow, in a way that many of the more recent drawings did not. But I couldn’t say why that was, exactly, and that might have just been some sort of wish-driven thinking on my part. At any rate, as I said before, I got about a quarter of the way through, then I set that book down too.

That left only two more books for me to look at – The Four Towers, and The Practice of Magic.

One of the only real mysteries of this world that I hadn’t gotten to ask about yet was that huge, beautiful blue tower that I had seen before. So I had tried to find a book that was all about it with a nice, simple and elegant title like “The Great Tower,” or “The Huge Tower,” or even a really nice title like “The Blue Tower.” But the closest thing that I’d been able to find was a children’s picture book with the title, “The Four Towers.” That seemed good enough for now, so I began to flip through the pages, and to see what I could find.

The first thing that I learned was that there were four towers in total, and that they were the most important parts of the landscape of this world.

Each of the towers gave a flat boost to the strength of any city that lay nearby (there must be a role for a “city” in the system that I had yet to discover), with the three smaller ones giving a boost of +25% damage to each citizen, and the largest one – the Blue Tower – giving a boost of +50% damage instead. By itself, that wasn’t an enormous boost, of course. But apparently, it was a large enough advantage that people had been fighting over the towers for thousands of years, and only the strongest cities had been able to build anywhere near them.

Predictably, this had meant that, to each of the four different towers, there was a single corresponding city, which had seized all of the land around its respective tower. The book didn’t go into too much detail about each of the three smaller cities which had been built around The Red Tower, The Orange Tower, and The Green Tower, respectively. But, it did say that the city that had been built around the Blue Tower was the oldest and the strongest nation in the world, having survived for well over two thousand years.

From the pictures that accompanied its description, I was able to learn that this was also the same city that I had seen the painting of before, when I had seen the city that was ringed by walls of gold. The drawing in the book was also especially vivid, and it showed a huge, majestic city, with beautiful walls that seemed to stretch out forever into the distance, and the strange and elegant tower looming impossibly high up overhead. It was an amazing sight, and I found myself just really looking at the drawing and soaking it in for quite some time.

If what this book said was true, then in all of the time that this majestic city had existed, it had never once begun a war. Apparently, in the older days – what the book called the Age of Mages – there had been almost constant fighting over the possession of each of the towers, and especially of the Blue Tower, which was the strongest of the lot by far. But a long time ago in the past, a great hero by the name of Lucian had conquered all of the land around the tower, and proclaimed that it would forever be a sanctuary where all could live in peace, far away from the violence of the world.

Since that day, the City of the Blue Tower had been ruled by a loose coalition made up of the highest-ranking members of the two most powerful guilds in this world – the Guild of the Pen, which I had mentioned before, and the Guild of Knights, which was comprised of the heroes of this world, who helped to protect the whole world from monsters, and also to protect the weak and the innocent from the cruelties and the transgressions of the strong.

The view of the city seemed to be just a little idealized, of course, and it was hard to figure out too much more about the reality of the place from such a simple children’s book. But from what I could gleam, it seemed to be where most of the world’s greatest artists and scholars had made their home, in order to create and to study in peace, away from the turmoil of the world.

The city really did seem like an amazing place, and reading through the book made me want to visit there someday, and to see what it was like in person.

Still, though… if all that the tower provided was a kind of strong, flat damage boost, then it didn’t seem that important for me to think about for now. The book had said that only very rich or accomplished people were allowed to live in the city, too, so I wasn’t going to be able to benefit from the bonuses of the tower anytime all that soon.

Maybe someday I might try to become a member of the Guild of Knights, or a high-ranking scholar in the Guild of the Pen.

But for now, I decided to just put those things out of my mind, and not to give too much more thought to the tower for the time being.

For now, all that left me with was The Practice of Magic… but, unfortunately, that session only lasted for a couple of minutes. As the book informed me in the first few pages, magic had been outlawed in this world for thousands of years by the hero Lucian, after the cruelty of the mages of the past (during the Age of Mages, which I had mentioned before). Since then, no one had been allowed to learn magic before the age of 65 – and even then, it could only be learned with the express permission of a high ranking member of either the Guild of Knights, or the Guild of the Pen.

It seemed as if that law was taken very seriously, too – even trying to learn magic at a younger age was punishable by death, and punished quite frequently in practice – and so I imagined that I wasn’t going to be adding any spells or enchantments to my arsenal anytime too soon.

And so, I just put that book down as well, as I made one last scan of the bookshelf.

I felt as if there was a decent chance that there was still something else that I ought to have been thinking about, or to have investigated. But honestly, with all of the excitement that I had been through lately, it was hard to even keep track of all of the questions that I wanted to ask, much less to figure out how to resolve them. And so, with a long, and tired yawn, I just placed the books back onto the shelf, and began to prepare myself for the day ahead.

It had started to grow late, and the three of us would need to find some sort of candle or light-making device if we wanted to stay up any longer, and to continue to read.

But, it seemed that all of us had grown just about equally as tired, and that the long day had taken its toll on us all.

So, after going down to the compartment once again and bringing up one more bed for myself, the three of us talked just a little bit more together, then laid down, and began to drift off to sleep.

My last thought before I fell asleep was a strong, single image of the blue tower, that I had seen painted in the book.

It felt… enchanting, somehow. I knew that it was important, and I knew that I wanted to go there.

And someday… I felt certain that I would.

Then, with those sorts of thoughts in mind, I just drifted off, before I at last fell into a deep, and restful sleep.