“They're not people.”

“They look like people, right? They talk, they wear clothes, they eat food, th-”

“They don't eat food.” Thomas stopped, taken aback. Balier just looked at him, with a frustrated expression on his face. The big man was not, as Thomas had initially taken him, a lion-person. Balier grinned, showing far too many, far too sharp teeth, the light illuminating orange and black in the long hair cascading down his scalp. No, Balier was a tiger-person, and he was far alarming to be in the same room as, particularly when he was insisting that “They don't eat food because bandits aren't people.”

“That doesn't even make sense. If I went out with a sword and started robbing people, would I cease to need to eat?” Thomas wasn't entirely certain why he was arguing this; it struck him as an incredibly stupid argument. And curiously, Balier also seemed to regard it as a stupid argument, looking increasingly frustrated.

“No, because you wouldn't be a bandit, you'd be a highwayman, or a mugger, or a deserter. Bandits aren't people. If you are a person, you are, definitionally, not a bandit.”

“That's tautological, you can't just define a bandit to not be a person, and then say that anyone who happens to be a person clearly can't be a bandit.”

“That's the definition of a bandit. You're not going to bring a fish in here and tell me that's a person, are you?”

“Is it a mermaid?” This got an incredulous look; Balier actually raised a finger to clean out a tufted ear the size of Thomas' face.

“A what? A mermouse? Of course a mermouse isn't a person, it's a mermouse.”

“No, a mer...” Thomas stopped, realizing what had just been said, and sa back in his chair, staring at Balier. “A mermouse? There are … what, you have mice with little fish flippers?”

“Yes. They're a nuisance and chew through nets.”

“I … so you don't have people, with fish tails instead of legs?”

“What are you even going on about? There are mermice, merwolves, and merbears.” He paused. “There's also merbats, but they're technically actually a kind of lamprey.”

Thomas studied his drink. Balier had provided a beverage which seemed about half vinegar, and half alcohol. Thomas couldn't decide if it was the most delicious, or most disgusting, thing he'd ever consumed; his opinion was evenly divided between the two possibilities, and there wouldn't be any kind of compromise position reached.

“Okay, back to bandits. Are you saying bandits are, what, a kind of monster?”

“They're called brood, and yes.” Oh. Oh! Huh. That was … that was weird. That was really fuckin' weird. “Experiments have been conducted; they naturally appear in forests, mountains, and rivers. Bandits in rivers and ocean are sometimes called pirates, but pirates, unlike bandits, are not categorically brood. Army brood have been observed, but it's a very rare phenomenon only observed in large-scale wars.” Balier paused to take a very long drink, directly from the bottle – he had his own – which, proportionally, was more like Thomas' cup. “There are also cultist brood, but it's difficult to tell the difference between a human cultist, and the brood sort.”

“How do you, uh, tell the difference?” This was just … weird. There were monsters that looked and behaved like humans?

“Clothing is a giveaway; bandits all dress basically the same. Once you've seen a few, you'll know what I mean there. They also don't really talk; pay attention, and they just repeat the same kinds of phrases over and over again. You'll learn to recognize the phrases, they get tiresome. There's also a kind of inconsistency between what they're saying, and what is going on; once saw a bandit speared through the guts, missing a leg, actually say 'Your money or your life' as she was beheaded.”

“Well, where do they come from?”

“They're brood. If you're asking where brood come from, I suspect Mystery is behind it.” The way Balier said 'Mystery' suggested it was a name.

“Who is Mystery?” Balier stared into Thomas' eyes, slowly taking another long pull from the bottle. Air glugged up noisily, as a quarter of the bottle's contents were poured down that … toothy maw. At length, the bottle was replaced on the table.

“Alright, Thomas, where are you really from?”

“I don't remember the name. I think it was a different planet.”

“So you got pulled here from a different plane? Where you, what, don't have bandits?” Thomas considered correcting the man, but, having apparently lost an argument over whether or not bandits were people, which he still wasn't certain he believed Balier about, he wasn't feeling it.

“The only bandits we have are people. No, uh, mermouses, uh, mermice, either? Or merwolves, or merbears. Just regular mice, regular wolves, regular bears."

“But you have merpeople.” A statement, not a question.

“No, we don't have mermaids, either.”

“Then why'd you bring them up?” Frustration tinged Balier's voice. Thomas was feeling just about as frustrated, and shrugged helplessly, and switched back to the earlier subject.

“Anyways, okay, I'll kill these bandits, if they're not people.”

“Finally, some sense out of you.” Balier stood, and retrieved a paper from behind him, holding it delicately between two claws; a map was placed on the table between them, immediately blotching with spilled drinks. Balier didn't seem to notice.

Standing, the tiger-person was even more impressive in the light. He had a broad face with a wide orange nose, and ears rising above his head; his eyes were orange-yellow, with the barest hint of a slit to them. Broad whiskers spread from his white cheeks, and he had a mane of hair, which appeared to grow in irregular horizontal stripes, a given strand alternating colors as it grew.

He was dressed like a human, albeit in sizes Thomas doubted he could have purchased back home; indeed, he wore the same oilcloth shirt and pants as the rest of the villagers, and wore large black boots that hid whatever his hind feet looked like – Thomas had looked out of curiosity, and been disappointed. He also had a tail; his pants had an extra flap and button in the back that wrapped around it. He did not wear the hat, however; given his ears, it would probably be difficult to find a hat that would work. At his belt was an assortment of knives that would have been impressive, except Thomas had seen the man's claws. The knives were superfluous.

One of those claws tapped on the map. Thomas leaned over to look, his eyes rapidly following the river, and checking the spots where it met streams, found Piketown. Balier was tapping a location further downriver from where they were; the tip of Balier's claw rested right on the shore of the river, in fact. “The bandits have been sighted here. They only significant threat they normally pose is numbers, but given your class dedication, they are unlikely to be able to do you any serious harm. If they have crossbows, however, return immediately and do not engage.”

“Crossbows are bad?”

“Crossbows mean they're a higher tier brood, and all their equipment will be poisoned.” His eyes lifted to meet Thomas'. “Brawlers do better against poison, but not that much better. If they have crossbows, their poison will outclass your ability to ignore harm. Get me?”

“Got you. If they have crossbows, run away screaming.”

“Don't scream, they'll hear you.”

“Run away without screaming, got it.” Right. No joking, serious matter.

“If they have a boat, try to start the fight by knocking a hole in it. If the bandits are river pirates, they're likely to retreat. Not to get away from you, but so they can pepper you with arrows from afar. If that happens, you'd have to go into the water to get at them; they'll just wait there forever.” Balier's lips pulled back into what was probably a grin, not a threat to bite. Probably. “If they have a boat, and you knock a hole in it, I personally recommend watching. They'll try the same trick anyways, and it's hilarious to watch them get eaten by great alligators, or whatever river beasties are about.”

“R-right.” Okay, joking, but Balier had a sick sense of humor. Wait, great alligators? Given cute name the deer that had nearly eaten him had, what kind of alligator would merit the name 'great'? Thomas made a mental note never to join the people who swam in the river.

Thomas didn't have much in the way of preparation to conduct; he'd purchased a small count pouch, now tied to his belt, which held the eight copper coins he'd managed to save so far. He just started walking, following the river downstream; he waved when a fisherman – fisherwoman? – throwing a net greeted him, but didn't slow; he'd taken a job cleaning fish, and the lot of them never stopped talking. Piketown passed behind him.

Thomas had thought about it, and decided he wanted to pay back Anne, or maybe Anne's group, for the clothing they'd purchased him, and the food he'd eaten. He wanted to be different than he'd been back home, he wanted to be something other than the person who just accumulated debts to friends and family he would never repay.

So he'd asked Balier about something that paid a little bit better, even if it wasn't quite as safe. Thomas still wasn't certain how he felt about killing the bandits, in particular not really believing Balier that bandits were, what, NPCs? That sounded … like an comfortable lie people might tell themselves, too comfortable to analyze in any depth. The bandits weren't part of their tribe, so they weren't human; there's no issue in killing them, they're just animals.

Then again, he got special powers for leveling up, which was pretty much the only reason he was willing to consider the possibility. But if the bandits were NPCs – so clearly NPCs that people who didn't know the concept saw them as not-people – what was everyone else here? And … he stopped. If bandits were 'brood', what exactly were they a brood of? Balier had kind of avoided answering the question of who, or maybe what, Mystery was.

As he walked, more trees started to appear, scattered across the hills. They were scraggly looking things that were all curves, their trunks as craggly as anything he'd seen before; he doubted you could get two feet of straight wood out of one. They looked more like overgrown bushes than trees, really, and maybe that was a more accurate description; as far as he had always ben concerned, there was grass, which was short stuff, bushes, which got a little taller, and then trees, which were really tall.

Thomas was brought up short on his trek by an odd snorting noise, and stopped, immediately scanning his surrounded for boar, then looking doubtfully at the nearest tree. Right. And he didn't want to get in the water. What kind of horrible boar did this place have? He remembered the green pigs a rancher had kept, and wondered if they spat acid.

Thomas slowly sank down, not quite into a crouch, just bending his legs, and leaned forward to creep in the direction he'd heard the noise. The river was to his right, and the hill ahead had a small rise he thought the noise might have come from behind; he hesitated, then changed direction to move up the hill, to maybe catch sight of whatever it was.

And he caught sight of it almost immediately. At first he thought he was looking at a hairless pink dog, sniffing at the ground, injured and moving awkwardly; that's what his eyes tried to pattern match the thing to, and it took a moment for him to really understand what he was looking at. Thomas took a very, very slow step backwards.

If you started with the body of a hairless dog, with pale skin, and then added an eye on the shoulder, and a muzzle which couldn't close all the way around the mishapen teeth growing out of the side, you'd be on your way to creating this … monster. Its back legs didn't move quite right; they were jointed in opposite directions. And there was another eye staring out of its front left leg, just over what might have been a knee.

The … thing, whatever it was, was sniffing with the side of what should have been its head, and as it turned, he could see another mouth, differently shaped, sticking out of the far side of what should have been its face, with which it wasn't so much sniffing as inhaling. Where the mouth should have been placed was just smooth skin, the kind of pale-yellow pink of white people. His mouth felt dry. It looked … like it had body hair, like human body hair, growing in random tufts all over its malformed body.

Thomas was struck by competing impulses as he took the thing in, like he should run in every possible direction at once, one of them being towards the monster – and this was a monster, straight out of nightmares – and smash it into a paste until it was entirely unrecognizable. The need to run away warred internally with an intense need to make this horror just stop existing, a sense of aggression and revulsion and existential rage he would never have guessed he'd have had.

As his struggled, not even to decide, but just to try to comprehend the emotions that had suddenly risen within him, the thing sniffed at the air again, and turned, as if to look at him, except there was blank skin where eyes should have been. The eyes were everywhere else. It took a step towards him, and the rage slipped away in an instant, taking with it the terror.

He was aware of his feet moving beneath him, turning him sideways to the creature; his hands rising in front of him as if of their own volition. He was utterly calm, and he was going to destroy this affront to existence. A small part of his mind started screaming at him, but it didn't pierce the cold nothing that slowly embraced him; it didn't stop, the scream just didn't matter. More snorting noises came from ahead. He heard another from behind. Thomas found himself smiling. The scream in his head intensified, but the words were irrelevant.