There was much more to Densmeer than Corbin originally imagined. Perhaps this was another wizard trick: to make the town appear small and filthy from the air, so armies wouldn’t come at it… or that Vethros thing. Now circling just overtop the houses, he found a lot more of those wizard mansions than before. Some were small, little more than a home ringed with walls and a garden inside, with defenses that began shooting at him if he lingered too long. At one point he struck a nearly-invisible bubble of magic surrounding the property, and the crates of eggs outside the home raised up and zeroed in on his position. They began launching themselves at him. It wasn’t too different than the boxy military thing… the mobile missile launcher system, and it only took one magic-infused egg to the wing to put him off scouting for wizards.

He counted perhaps a dozen wizards in town, and estimated maybe a half dozen more by the time he’d been egged.

They spent two days perusing the town and enjoying what it had to offer. Kyessy hit up a brothel on the first day with strict instructions not to contact her for the next twelve hours. He had no idea what she got up to in there, and wasn’t about to jeopardize her help by peeking through her eyes… which he couldn’t do anyway. Apparently she’d unequipped his card. Well, no psychic porn show, whether he wanted one or now.

Corbin now took the time to look over everything he could. The people were now up and about, the market stalls were set up, and people were hawking plenty of non-card wares out in the open area in front of the tavern, the magistrate’s house, the temple and the town hall. Amazingly, the whole area hadn’t turned into a hideous morass of churned mud. However, a light drizzle was starting up, which prompted a whole lot of tent-like shelters to be erected over ceramics, rolled rugs, different colored candles, bushel baskets of all sorts of alien produce, and much more.

The diversity on display here was as shocking and surprising as it was welcome. He noted a family of orcs with reddish, bluish, one purplish, and greenish gray skin, along with several that were flat gray. Fae also had an incredible array of hair colors.

Either there was no gene for hair color, or they could choose their own hair color at will. He also noted that a small number of fae came in various types: some had naturally flowing hair, like a breeze was on at all time. Inspect told them they had sylph ancestry, while others had rough spines coming off elbows, collar bones and ears, along with mostly green hair. The Inspect AI informed him that fae also, in some cases, mated with dryads. Some of the dryad blooded ones had deep purple and reddish hair, like red maples back home, and still others had fall colors for hair. He caught one that was naiad blooded, with hair that seemed to be perpetually underwater, and was not only icy blue, but semi-transparent. He wondered if earth creatures mated with the fae… and on that topic, the magistrate was half fae and half gnomish. This begged the question, naturally, of whether fae women were naturally inclined to get freaky with just anybody, whether fae males were terrible at satisfying their womenfolk, or what sort of dynamics were at play. Magic? Magic pheromones?

And this was the tip of the species iceberg: gnomish folk seemed a lot like miniature dwarves, with bushier hair, and came in various human skin tones. Nellwynians were about the same size as gnomish, but had the builds of smaller humans rather than smaller dwarves. Gnomish and nellwynians weren’t the only ones running stalls at the market by any stretch, but out of a dozen food sellers and another half dozen cooking stalls, fully half of them were run by nellwynians, and out of the craftspeople, almost half were gnomish.

And as for dwarves… they weren’t much shorter than the few humans he ran across. A bit smaller, yes, and wider all around. Incredibly, some had coal-black skin, others milk white, along with the typical human spectrum you’d see in New York City.

He’d been to New York City at some point. Not surprising, given what he knew of his world.

With regard to dwarves, a few had even stranger colored skin: minty green, tinged purple, slightly reddish. It was like they were born as gems. If all the fantasy books were to be believed, they worked in mines and excavated their cities out under the mountains and such. Which meant that this dwarf over here with the sparkling skin like a vampire out of that book series was maybe born near a deposit of opal? Was there a race of pyrite fool’s gold dwarf folk?

Corbin couldn’t wait to be a human again so he could just roam around the lands and encounter new fae intermixing and dwarf skin makeup, and learn about it.

He encountered far fewer of the dragonites, and no golemites. Of the dragonites, these too came in all manner of scale color. The three he came across (the only three in the whole town possibly) were a troupe of bards. He had an involuntary shiver over this, before telling himself these ones weren’t out to smash his head in with a lute for killing their fae girl… girlfriend? The look of hatred on that nellwynian’s face might’ve been that of a jilted lover.

One had fans extending off the sides of their face, given that Corbin couldn’t tell if it was a male or female, while another had two horns sweeping back off their head. One had obsidian glass scales with threads of white, another had brassy scales, and the last seemed more like a snake than a dragon, with brown, black and white scales where the scales peeked out of their clothes, in a pattern reminiscent of a diamondback rattlesnake.

He listened to the music coming off one flute, one lute, and one strange, roaring voice for a time, wondering what it was that caused dragon people to choose bard as a profession. They sounded awful… and somehow had people dropping fistfuls of copper into their busking set up. He’d be damned if he ever took on a bard in his party.

“Never gonna happen,” he grumbled.

Of tieflings, he counted five. All of them had a similar look to Kyessy: their skin color slowly shifted from one color to another, except their hair, which was white. Two had ram’s horns curling off the sides of their heads, while one’s horns were barely visible and looking more like they’d extend straight back off the head, and the last had long, straight spiraling horns almost two feet straight up from the top of the forehead.

Felinians were also scarce: he noted two. One had the distinct look of a mountain lion, or puma, or whatever you’d call it. Basically a more tanned version of a lioness, without spots or stripes. The other looked like a bobcat, with those hairy triangular ears and shaggy gray fur. The bobcat one was almost a head shorter than the puma.

And throughout it all, the questions: were half-fae possible with dragonites? With humans? Could humans mate with dwarves, gnomish or nellwynians? If a dwarf with gleaming gold skin mated with a sylph-blooded fae, what would happen? Did felinians have litters like cats did in his world?

He shook his head and told himself to stop trying to pioneer genetics work on an alien world. He was a bird, not Reginald frickin’ Punnett.

From there he circled outside the town, and got a better look at the countryside. A single road led to what couldn’t be anything other than Denspire: a much larger city dominated by a huge single white tower. A few travelers were on their way to Denspire, and to Densmeer from Denspire. Another road led southward to a miserable looking cluster of homes at the edge of the swamp that stretched off south practically forever. The third road disappeared off north, either toward another settlement or directly to the Teeth of Vethros. Probably the former, thought he couldn’t see the town from here. And lastly, the westward road stretched around the northern knife point of swampland they’d been through, then directly southwest into the central point occupied by the portal.

That thing. It was the epicenter of ruins he hadn’t noticed in the furious battle that had been his introduction to this new world. Kyessy mentioned the portal had once been a city.

There was so much he didn’t know, and he didn’t like it. This Vethros guy? Or was he a god? The event that opened up this portal? The event that triggered game stats around his favorite card game, both in the affected part of earth and this otherworld? Priscilla’s ex-husband, the monster, turning into an actual monster? Kyesiara’s choice of brothel partners?

“At least I know I was a human. Blech.”

Coming to this other world wasn’t spurring on any of his former life’s memories. He needed to turn back into a human and head back to his world for answers about The Five. About whether he was a good guy or not.

For now though he kept up the Inspections. He knew that several of the trees he’d passed were not species that could be found on earth. He found several species called rund (the white rund and dappled rund), consisting of mostly white bark (the former) and places where the dark gray showed through. Both had leaves in the shape of cloven hooves: two tiny points at the bottom near the stems, and two much larger points out front. The only useful tidbit out of the inspection was that rund wood was quite hard, and also fire resistant. The people here used in quite a few shields or keep doors. Another great find was the sinterberry bush. Sinterberries were bluish and the size of apples, with the starburst bottoms of blueberries. They also had a natural healing effect, the skill told him, up to a point. After that they became poisonous.

He got some sleep on the tavern rooftop, picked up some breadcrumbs beside the bakery (run by a nellwynian and a gnomish working in tandem), and some better scraps out behind the butcher’s shop. One was rancid and tasted even better than the non-rancid one, which disgusted him almost as badly as eating frickin eyeballs.

“Bird,” she said, just after breakfast on the second day.

“I have a name, you know. It’s on the card.”

“I hadn’t looked.”

“Don’t tell me you can’t read,” he responded.

“Don’t tell me you want someone else to turn you back into a… human.”

Ugh. Fine. Another thing about the tiefling he didn’t know. Throw it on the dragon’s hoard of information he didn’t have about her.

“I’m in the tavern.”

He wasn’t entirely sure how she’d gotten there without him noticing.

He was about to rejoin Kyessy in the tavern when Survey popped up, and told him he had just failed a check. The system suggested he up his Survey skill, no surprise there, but it then told him that he’d be at a disadvantage on future Inspect checks against the thing he’d already missed. Which stood to reason, but he hated the idea that he was missing something, knew it, and wasn’t about to find out, either.

The thing he missed was likely much higher level than him. Not okay.

He returned to find Kyessy tucking into some stew or another. It was brown, but the vegetables inside were purple and neon yellow rather than starchy potato yellow or carrot orange.

“What is it?” she asked around a mouthful of stew.

“You’re being watched. Or followed.”

She nodded. “Keep an eye out.”

“I’m already… I know how to… gah! You be careful yourself, okay?”

“Why do I even have a bird’s eye view?” she muttered, specifically for him to hear, like a butt.

He did, but wasn’t able to find anything that day, while she got a good lay of the town and started selling off the materials they likely didn’t need. They were looking to get enough money to change him back once they met the wizard. Like he expected, the wizard might need expensive components or to hire assistants to go through the transformation ritual, so now they were playing the opposite game as with Prissy.

He suddenly and inexplicably missed Prissy. She’d only ever promised things and then lied, promised again and then tried to back out.

So why was he hoping she was doing well? That didn’t make a lot of sense. Maybe she was already planning to have a litter of white and ginger haired cat children, some with stripes, some with blotches. There were plenty of adorable cat photos on the internet with mustache cats.

He shook off the ruminations and got back to his surveillance.