“Get that thing out of my stall!” Was the most common response to my attempts to do the merchant thing. Some other exciting phrases included wordlessly pulling a scimitar and a hurled apple that came nowhere near me since I was on my guard at the time from the scimitar incident.

In one shop, specifically a building set aside for medicinal and other potions and herbs, the young woman running it was friendly enough and spoke kobold. She gleefully bought many of the herbs I had collected for what I assumed were amazing prices, but Mae assured me afterward were far below rock bottom, but considering my position I still felt that I had gotten a good deal.

Things looked up when I counted out nearly 80 gold. The herbs had cost me little effort, and I had a list of things I needed, and I had never been particularly acquisitive, so I turned my entire stash over to Mae, who had, at some point, mysteriously changed her garments for a long kimono. Definitely some kind of fox. I pretended not to notice that under [observe] she was still clad in her short tunic, and had a lot more tails visible, but the artful way she argued, cajoled, and flat-out flattered shopkeepers and stall owners was a wonder to behold.

I purchased a manual of alchemy for 50 gold, but when I opened it I realized it was entirely blank. Apparently, the thing magically loaded alchemical knowledge into a band and was useless to me, and since it didn’t disintegrate she accepted it back from me and returned my crowns, with the understanding that I wouldn’t go around telling people she had sold me a defective product.

She then sold me a novice herbalism manual, which was a much more affordable 12 crowns.

It didn’t have any advanced alchemical techniques, but as a gatherer manual, it explained how to collect a great deal of tricky-to-gather herbs and a basic idea of what they were used for. I imagined that with some experiments and [observe] I might even be able to discover how to mix and prepare them into useful medicines. This book was very old, and was utterly nonmagical and filled with hand-drawn pictures and crabbed, hard-to-read Rhydian.

We didn’t manage to get a D-Bag, whatever that was, but I did get a backpack for small creatures, a cooking set, a sewing and leather repair kit, and a set of small tools and flasks which could hold simple potions or creams, which mostly filled the backpack. I also got some leather wax which I could use to finish my armor, although I suspected I could probably make my own much more efficiently.

It wouldn’t make cuir-bouilli, but it should keep it reasonably waterproof, and in the days of experience since I made the stuff, I was a bit more confident in my ability to dodge rather than whatever extra protection hardened armor would provide.

Lots of waxed thread, a scraper, a weighted wooden mallet, bronze hammer, awl, and a few more tools went into Cassie’s backpack, as well as bags of both salt and cheap brown sugar. I convinced her to use some of my gold to buy a few tools and a whetstone for herself as well, and even purchased a much nicer knife for myself, although I kept the old one because of how useful it had proven.

So far I had seen almost no steel. A bit of Iron, and almost everything else was bronze. The tool shop had a steel pick on display, but at a whopping 10 gold, we decided that Cassie should get a small iron pick instead. I didn’t understand why Iron was available and steel wasn’t until I learned that steel had to be created from Iron with transmutation spells and was horribly expensive.

Steel was just carbonized iron, had they never developed the process of converting iron chemically into steel? It wasn’t particularly tough, especially if you used the wet wootz method or Damascus steel, but maybe in a world of magic, no one had tried to figure out a cheaper method?

The lack of any sort of disinfectant or painkiller in the ‘medicinal’ store other than expensive potions, magical powders, and healing pills implied strongly that medicine was something handled by clerics and other magical healers other than doctors.

Only in the leather store had I managed to find any needles curved that could be used for stitching wounds, although I did manage to lay hold of some very fine thread, even the bandages were simply strewn around the shelves with no thought for cleanliness.

“Mae?” I asked the kitsune curiously.

“Yes dear?” she asked me, going through a box of children’s cast-off clothing, looking for something that would fit me.

“I am very confused. Are there no doctors here? I didn’t even see anything for stitching wounds, or keeping them clean while they healed, let alone even the simplest sulfide drugs for preventing infections, pure alcohol for cleaning wounds, or painkillers of any sort other than some kind of painstopper potion. I saw white willow trees all over the place on my way up here.” I held up a handful of the bark I had stripped while I was walking, and was holding onto it until it dried enough to be useful. “But the medicine and herb shops didn’t even have willow bark tea. Does no one ever get hurt?”

Mae looked at me nearly flabbergasted. “You know of Mentheen medicine?” she asked, and then shook her head, “I mean, They don’t use doctors up here. If someone gets hurt, it’s easy enough to head to a temple and spend a few crowns for healing or restoration. Mentheen peasant medicine is considered pretty much worthless when there are healing spells. The military pays for its people to get healed or regenerated, and most high families have healers that they are patrons for.”

“But umm… what if someone is too poor to afford a couple of gold for healing, like a woodcutter that put an ax in his leg that got infected, or some farm kid that stepped on a thorn or something?” I asked.

Mae shrugged, “They die.” and she turned, almost looking sad. “Or they live. It’s just luck at that point. Adventurers heal so quickly that they don’t get nonmagical infections, and more than one woodsman with an arrow in his chest has chosen to quest to a shrine and get a band to avoid a slow death. If you aren’t able to accept a band, or are too young or too far away, and you start to rot, you mostly just put your affairs in order.”

So, one world grinds its grandparent’s brains into computer paste, and the other allows children to die of easily preventable infections. Well, at least here, maybe I could do something to help.

We also managed to pick up some food supplies. Rik and Cassie mostly wanted to buy something called ‘trail rations’, which were nuts and meats and too much sugar baked into a strange sort of unleavened loaf. I tried a little, and while it was vaguely edible, it tasted a bit like unwashed socks and had the consistency of soggy gravel.

I picked up some bags of dried peas and beans, flour, and a sort of grainy soda, as well as dried and long-lasting fresh vegetables and some herbs, some salt-cured ham, and even a couple of dozen unfertilized eggs. Oats and butter, both of which could survive being out for long periods, and a bunch of apples rounded out the food.

I couldn’t even find any vinegar. I did manage to find a wine seller, though, and Mae talked him into selling a couple of bottles of red and white ‘gone bad’. I opened the bottles, smelled them, and selected and bought four of them that smelled acceptable.

No yeast and the bakery used starters instead of yeast, but I figured that the wine might be capable of starting a halfway decent batch of vinegar. I had no idea how people cooked lots of foods without vinegar, but Mae assured me that most professional chefs used something called a ‘flavor cantrip’ to make the food they cooked taste perfect.

Almost ten percent of the population had some kind of magical potential, and even though it was usually limited to one or two cantrips a day, you could make a good living using those cantrips.

Of course, you had to join a guild to learn those cantrips, but working as a chef indebted forever to the cook’s guild was far superior to eking out a living digging holes, especially if you didn’t want to die young as an adventurer. Most adventurers were not immortals, and unless you were trained to fight or cast spells from a very young age, their lifespan could often be measured in weeks.

It turned out that the folks who had bands also had a built-in map and just looking at even a bad map allowed them to update their internal map, which was much better and more accurate.

I had to admit that I envied that capability, although instead of the reasonably accurate guess I had given the Commander about where the goblin camp was located, they only received a vague red circle of the general area, it looked like within a ten square mile area. Unless they wanted to spend weeks hunting down the cave, it looked like I was essential to locating the goblins.

Immortals were considered the elite of the adventurers. Unlike normal adventurers, they kept coming back after they were defeated, and quickly gained in power and levels, especially since they could take risks for rewards mortals considered insane. They also gained skill and abilities at incredible speeds, seldom seemed to tire, and could vanish to safety at nearly any time if they felt overwhelmed.

In the last month, a new set of classes exclusive to immortals had arisen, one which allowed certain individuals to gain ‘pets’. It was understood that a ‘pet’ was expected to sleep with their ‘master’, but such a relationship ensured that if an adventurer died, they would come back to life, JUST LIKE AN IMMORTAL, for the duration of their servitude.

Only the most beautiful male and female adventurers were chosen, but since their advancement speed nearly matched that of their masters, there was no shortage of volunteers. It helped that most immortals were utterly gorgeous, even if their tastes and personalities might seem unsavory, and that there were limits to the levels of abuse that immortals were permitted to use on their pets.

Below a certain affection level, one could end the relationship with a ‘master’ and suffer no penalties for doing so, keeping any gains earned by the association except, of course, immortality.

Mae wouldn’t talk to me about it, and Shiana seemed to not understand that there was even an alternative. Perhaps she was unable, but her conversations were short and sounded scripted.

I managed to talk Rik into taking the less-traveled wagon trail up to a bridge that their map revealed, simply by pointing out that I could gather many more rare herbs on a less-traveled path. I was mostly right, but I also wasn’t thrilled about the idea of getting accosted by any random wanderers that crossed our path.

We didn’t make it as far as I would have wished, since I spent more time than I expected digging out herbs and plants and substances that [observe] identified as useful, and I started to notice that the stuff I spotted with my enhanced survival skill actually seemed to glow a bit before I collected it.

After reading the book, gathering it in special ways got easier, for instance, the blue-spotted garlic needed to have the stem cut off before you could uncover the root, or it lost something called magical potency. A thin line showed me exactly where to cut, and the root glowed vaguely red for a few minutes before it turned green, letting me know it was now safe to dig up. Since it was identified as both having healing properties and being useful as a garlic-like vegetable, I was eager to follow the instructions.

We camped outside of the red circle that evening, alongside the bridge that I could have taken across the stream had I known about it, and Rik started a fire by banging two ‘firestones’ together. Since all he did was stack some fallen wood up and bang the rocks over top of it, I guess it was some kind of magic that set the fire roaring instantly to life.

He set out a tent while I pegged down the small canvas I had found and unrolled a blanket on the ground beneath it, and by simply tugging the four elastic corners out and staking each to the ground, and then putting up a pole in the middle, he was soon the proud property master of an enormous, eight-foot-wide pavilion. Even the tents around here were magical.

Like me, Cassie started setting up a separate place to sleep. Hers was a small, open-ended tent, and she seemed slightly unfamiliar with getting it up cleanly and efficiently. I assisted her, although the styling was somewhat unfamiliar since it used two tent poles and hung from a line between them, and then had a second fly that draped over the top of the poles, it seemed fairly easy.

The tent itself was little more than a tube that got staked down to form a triangular area inside and to protect the user from the bare earth, and both were made of a sort of waxed canvas that seemed to repel moisture.

“You know, Cassie,” I said as I saw her starting to set up her bedroll as if it were furs on a bed, completely covering the entire bottom of the tent with a pair of blankets, “If you fold your blanket in half and sleep on top of it, and then keep the other blanket on top of you, it gets less damp in the morning and keeps you much warmer at night. Even if the air is cool, the ground is much cooler and sucks out your body heat much quicker than the air will.” Yeah, I know that was kind of dorky and know-it-all, but at least I didn't start with "Ashully".

Cassie nodded at me, “Dirt and grass are softer than stone, but our explorers always carry a padded roll for sleeping on stone. I guess that’s why. I wondered why it was always much less comfortable camping than even sleeping in a tunnel. Shiana said it was because I wasn’t a pet yet and sleeping in the pavilion was much more comfortable with a mattress, but I am not ready to do that sort of thing, especially with a human.”

I nodded slowly and then smiled a little, “I am not sure that Shiana is a truly reliable source of information. Something about her seems a little off.”

Cassie nodded and watched as I started setting up a pot by the fire, as well as a pair of branches I had found to make a makeshift spit to hold the pot. “Yeah, I noticed that. I mean, she’s a wood elf, and wood elves are weird and controlling at even the best of times. At first, I thought that was it, just the elf thing, but as time goes by she gets weirder and weirder. She sometimes just hears one word I say and goes off on a tangent and repeats exactly what she said before, or just randomly spits out something weird about how glad she is to have another girl in the party or how she will change after she gains levels.”

I nodded, noticing that Mae was watching us from the pavilion as Shiana and Rik both took a walk around the camp. I quickly cut up several large sausages and some of the salted ham and then chopped some fresh celery, peppers, and onions into the pot while we talked.

“Yeah, I think that she was made specifically for Rik, like magic or something. Maybe after she levels up, whatever mage made her shows up for real and takes over or something. Kind of like me being a provisional party member… you don’t want to spend too much time on an immortal that may decide they hate adventuring and disappear forever, I have heard that happens a lot.”

I was temporizing but had to assume that that was normal behavior. Some people just don’t like a game after they start it, or have to go back to school, or just get bored and quit playing at level 2.

Cassie nodded sagely. “Yes, that often happens to immortals who struggle at low levels. Sometimes they will start screaming or cussing and then just vanish, never to be seen or heard from again. I could see a powerful magic item that allows certain people to avoid those early stages, especially elves. I mean, sky elves could do that easily enough, and I imagine wood elves wouldn’t be that far off magically. To be fair, before I met Shiana, I had never even heard of a wood elf in this area that was lower than level 20, or was a scary powerful druid or other non-banded.”

I grabbed my newly refurbished fish trap and headed to the stream with the pot. I had added about a cup of rice, Thyme, Cumin, some of that magic Garlic, and even some white and black pepper and paprika.

In addition, I crumpled a few dark red dried peppers that looked a bit like Cayenne but might be chili peppers, and a small clay pot that I had bought at the Inne that the innkeeper advertised as ‘wake up for eggs’, which you were supposed to add to eggs in the morning to beat a hangover.

I suspected that they were just green and red peppers with a dash of ginger for heat, but it should make my homemade jambalaya taste halfway decent.

I came back from the stream, the fish trap set in the water in a small pocket that looked perfect for larger fish hunting, and with the pot filled with clear river water. I would have loved to have some way of filtering it, but at least by scooping the water, I doubted I had invited any foreign visitors in. If there was, in fact, an extra minnow or two, they would just add extra flavor to the mix.

I put the pot over the fire on the spits, just high enough to avoid burning the bottom, and put the lid on top. “Does everyone have bowls?” I asked curiously, more loudly than before so Mae could hear.

Mae and Cassie both nodded, while Shiana and Rik headed into the pavilion and closed the flap. I had little doubt as to what he was doing, which was confirmed a few minutes later by rhythmic, quiet grunting and slapping. Mae got up and moved to one side while Cassie started peeling off her armor and checking it for wear. “I am used to cooking being much faster,” Cassie said, as I watched Mae, now simply dressed in her short kimono and sporting one tail, started moving in what looked a lot like a Tai Chi kata.

“When Rik cooks, he just throws everything in a pan and puts it over the fire, stares at it, and then pulls it out. It’s usually either half-raw or burnt, which is why I was glad to get ration bars. They are a bit tastier.” She shrugged, “But whatever he does is probably better than what I can do since I never really had to cook before. That’s one of the reasons I was so hungry when you saw me. I grabbed some rations and left, but when I ran out I had no idea what to do for food. I am used to there always being a pot of stew ready in the caverns, and hadn’t even thought about it when I left.”

I figured that Rik must be playing some kind of mini-game for cooking or something because real food takes time. “Well, I cooked a lot growing up. What I am making right now is called Jambalaya, which really just means ‘jumbled up’. It’s sort of like a stew, but it cooks faster because the meats are mostly already cooked or cook quickly, and you don’t have to wait too long for them to be falling apart."

I added, "the salted ham will take the longest because it has to absorb a lot of water as it cooks, and the rice as well, but everything should be ready in a little under an hour and I hope you like it.” I stirred the mixture for a moment with a large spoon I had bought, and then put the lid back over it.

Cassie nodded, “It’s a little like alchemy. We tend to have a simple diet, stew, bread, and occasionally roasted meat or vegetables, but I have never seen anyone put that many different things into a pot at one time, except when an alchemist adds stuff into a cauldron. Even bread is almost like magic, all that folding and pressing and rolling and then waiting while it grows like a mushroom. Bread doesn’t taste like mushrooms, though, and we sometimes have special bread, with cinnamon and butter and sugar rolled up, or a kind of sweet flatbread that is quick to make that doesn’t raise, made with flour and butter and lots of sugar. They were called biscuits, and I used to steal them while they were cooling. They were so tasty, so was pie.”

I nodded to her, “Cinnamon rolls and shortbread cookies. I can make those, but they are better in a real oven. I have some oats and brown sugar, so if we find more berries or you like apples I can make you a cobbler, which is sort of like a sweet pie with crunchies in it. It seems a little weird that there wasn’t much variety of food in town, though.”

Cassie shrugged, “It was mostly an army town. Simple food, simple recipes, and buying as much of each ingredient as possible from specialist farmers to save money. If you needed different flavors it was just cheaper to have a mage change the flavor, so as long as you have enough, what you eat is not as important. Plenty of meat and some vegetables to make sure everyone is healthy and you are good.”

The pot was boiling now, and I smiled, stirring it again. I adjusted it to be a little higher above the fire so It wouldn’t burn and then took the most important step, leaving it alone so the rice could cook. “It should be ready in a little while, I think I need to talk to Mae for a little bit about her exercises.” to which Cassie nodded, and started working on her armor again. “That’s a good idea, I will stay here by the fire and work on my armor and then probably Rik’s.” she gestured towards the still-noisy pavilion, where I could see Rik’s plates set beside the entrance. I had been carefully ignoring the noises, so I hadn’t even heard him scoot it out. It looked like Rik was usually in charge of cooking, and Cassie, with her metalworking, was in charge of maintaining armor and weapons.

I stepped over to where Mae was doing long stretches, and asked her, “Do you spar as well? Or am I interrupting an exercise Kata?”

Mae glanced up at me and then shifted from a bow stance into a swallow stance. “Right now I am just doing basic motion cycling. I do not want to interrupt this, but perhaps later we should spar? Mae Bae Ling sees you, Gallagher Brantley Winterborne. I know what you are, reborn but not immortal, a human soul in a monster’s body. I can see that you are building your foundation, but have yet to extend your Chi into your body. I cannot teach you, as you are a cultivator and I am a sorceress, but I know some of what you need, and perhaps can help you find your methods or direct you to one who knows.”

I answered her rather simply, in the same vein, “Gallagher Brantley Winterborne, who is called Bran, sees you Bae-Ling Mae and desires friendship. I know what you are, kitsune, and wish to extend trust...Hurk!”

The strange noise was the result of suddenly having a knife against my throat, and being lifted entirely off the ground by Mae’s forearm. The funny thing was, at the same time I could still see myself standing in front of me while Mae was practicing her Katas, in the same positions as before. In my ear, I heard a whispered, “How did you know that? How do you know what I am, how did you know the way I am to be addressed? Are you from the Eternal Empire? Answer me or I will be hiding your body in the river while we move on!”

I motioned with my hands since with the knife at my throat as well as her forearm choking me out I couldn’t move or breathe. Or speak. I let out a little croaking noise. Without [observe] active she had fooled me with her illusions, I had never even seen her approach me.

After a moment she shifted her arm so that my throat was in the crook of her elbow instead of my windpipe getting crushed by her forearm, and I took a slight breath before answering. I could have held my breath a long time, but she didn’t need to know it would take over ten minutes to choke me out. “I don’t know your eternal empire, but where I am from it is just a story, nothing more. As are those of the kitsune, or the fox-women. What else am I supposed to call a fox woman with three tails?”

“You are not lying,” she stated simply, lowering me back to the ground. “How did you know my address? Are you from Mentheen before you came here? If you are an assassin, you are a very poor choice.”

“Not an assassin,” I stated. She might have some way of sensing the truth, so I wondered if my earlier fibs had been caught. “Where I come from, I guess we have a place similar to Mentheen. It is called China, and names are arranged that way. I simply thought it was more respectful to call you by your real name rather than the arrangement the system gave you, of name, then surname.”

“Do not do that here. Because I look changechild, my name and garb draw little notice, but if you speak my name in the Mentheen style, it may draw more attention than I wish to pursue. What do you know of my kind?”

“Well, where I come from, you are a bit of a dichotomy. Kitsune are a sort of Oni, and some legends tell stories like they are demons that destroy the lives, futures, and eventually devour the souls of powerful men, while others paint you as divine spirits that seek justice and succor for the oppressed, with the trickster twist. I figure the truth is something in between, with the story being told by the survivors, and kitsune can be either, just like humans can be saints or monsters.” I shrugged a little, stepping away slightly as her elbow relaxed. “But there are two eastern, not southern, Lands."

"Your people come from one land, which we call Japan, while your name is clearly that of another, China. In my home the two kingdoms were at war for most of recorded history, occasionally with Japan conquering China before losing it again due to rebellion, mismanagement, and the sheer difficulty of a tiny island trying to control a land five hundred times larger than it’s own.”

Mae shrugged a little, finally seeming to meld with her own illusion as she started moving in her stances again. “Mentheen is a great land south of the Winnowrill, bordered by the tall Pelee kingdoms on one side, and extending south until the lands warm and then freeze again. Mathoria, the land my people were from originally, is not an island, but a Valley bordered by impassable mountains on three sides, Goblin Valley to the North, and a small connection to Mentheen to the west."

"Yes, the lands are nearly always at war, and Mentheen is much larger than Mathoria, and its people are softer without constant warfare with Goblin Valley. Mathoria often conquers Mentheen, much like your history, but conquering Mentheen is like conquering the tide. You can only hold it for so long with your hands and feet before it flows out again into the Ocean."

Mae continued, "Rhydia has succeeded and then failed, Pelee has succeeded and then failed, the Sky elves succeeded and then failed, and now that monster Alister has succeeded, but he too will eventually fail.”