I wake up in an empty carriage. Well, some of the boxes are still here, but a solid amount of them seem to have disappeared. Itor and Magna are gone, too, so the carriage is currently stationary. I sit up and get a bearing on my surroundings.

The carriage is sitting in what seems to be a small village. There are stone houses with wooden roofs scattered about, and what seem to be some other buildings - like a blacksmith and church - among them. It seems to be morning, and some people are mulling about on the streets.

There are walls similar to the walls of the city surrounding this village. They’re maybe eight or so feet tall, and seem to be a few feet thick as well. The carriage is parked near the edge of the walls, right next to a large building.

I sit for a few minutes, watching the people walk down the streets and in and out of buildings. I’m hesitant to leave the carriage, but I guess there’s nothing else to do.

I step out and see a few of the villagers glance at me, but nobody pays me much attention. I assume Itor and Magna would be inside the building the carriage was left near. I should probably go in. If I just leave and wander around and they end up having to look for me, they probably won't give me these moments of freedom in the future.

I walk up to the door and push it open. Inside seems to be a tavern of sorts. There are a few tables littered around a large floor, with a bar in the back. It’s empty currently - which makes sense, it’s morning - but the man behind the bar looks up from the glass he’s cleaning at me. He’s confused for a moment, then jumps in surprise.

He quickly walks over to me, muttering to himself. He has a bushy moustache and a shortly-trimmed beard, with what seems to be a perpetually cheerful look on his face thanks to his thick cheeks.

He puts a hand on my back and begins walking me to one of the doors leading out of the main room. He speaks to me, then suddenly stops himself, laughing. I guess he has been informed somehow that I’m unable to speak the language, but I wonder if he knows everything? Or if he just thinks I’m foreign or something.

We reach the door and walk through, entering a stairwell. Leading me up, the man has a slight look of awkwardness on his face, like he doesn’t know what to do if he can’t talk with me. We get to the end of the staircase and go through, revealing a hallway of labeled doors.

I would assume this tavern doubles as an inn and these are the rooms. I guess Itor and Magna are in one of them.

The man leads me to one of the rooms and points to it, smiling at me, then heads back down. I memorize the characters on the label so that if I have to come here on my own I’ll at least know where to go, and then open the door and head inside.

When I walk in, I see Itor and Magna, and two women I haven’t seen before. Itor is sitting on a chair by the wall, looking exhausted, and Magna is lying in a bed. She seems to be asleep.

One of the women looks to be a bit older; she has long black hair with a few streaks of gray, and a face of smile lines and dimples. She has a decently chubby body and - instead of the normal green clothes that I see most people wear - she wears a bleach-white dress with blue highlights.

The other woman is younger. She probably has some sort of familial relationship with the older woman, since they have a similar face structure and hair color. Probably something along the lines of mother-daughter, since this woman is quite young, probably in her early twenties like me. She wears the typical green clothing.

It looks like the older woman is performing some sort of medical treatment on Magna, although I’m not sure what exactly it would be. She doesn’t seem to have any medical tools, but she has her hands on Magna’s broken leg, so I assume she’s doing something to help.

When I enter the room, the older woman jumps, looking startled. She begins to say something to me, but Itor interrupts her, with some sort of explanation. After a few seconds, a more understanding look appears on her face.

Watching Itor as he explains to the woman, I notice him hesitate at certain parts of his speech, while, when speaking to Magna, I never heard him pause like that. He watches her intently as he explains, specifically after he finishes speaking. I’d say there’s a high likelihood of him lying about something.

The woman makes no more attempts to speak to me after this, so I can assume he has told her that I cannot understand her. If that was the truth he told her, I would assume the lie was why I can’t understand.

If he lied to her, I would assume he’s lied to most other people - like the bartender.

After his explanation, Itor goes back to his restful state. I guess he’s been awake for quite some time. The older woman says something to the girl my age, who walks over to me and leads me out of the room. I follow her as she walks me down the stairs and out of the building. She begins leading me down a road through the town.

She looks at me and says a word, pointing to herself. “Sheia.”

That’s probably her name. I respond with “M,” pointing at myself.

The woman - Sheia - seems somewhat athletic. She’s not quite as muscular as Magna or Itor, but those two are clearly highly trained combatants, so being near that level is still very impressive. What’s interesting to me is that her body type is so different to that of the older woman’s.

If I am to assume that the older woman is her mother, then I would think they would eat a similar amount of food, leading to them being a similar weight, but they aren’t. In underdeveloped societies such as this, access to food dictates weight much more than other aspects such as physical activity, like in a typical first-world country.

So if they are in a family and have similar access to food, it’s curious that one of them would apparently eat so much more than the other. Being weighty would typically be seen as a good and attractive thing in this society, so it’s not like one of them cares about beauty more than the other or anything like that.

Eventually, we seem to arrive at where we’re headed. Sheia brings me to a small stage in the middle of town, surrounded by seats, about a quarter of them filled. A man stands on the stage next to a closed case, about two feet long. He’s wearing colorful clothes.

Out of one of the seats in the back row, a man stands up, calling over to Sheia with me and - from what I can tell - gesturing for her to sit next to him. She calls back, pointing to me and explaining something. She leads me to a seat in the front row and sits with me there. The man looks confused.

A bit of time passes, and the man begins speaking to the gathered crowd. He opens up the case to the cheers of many, and takes out a device, sitting it on his lap. It looks to be some sort of lever contraption that has a row of buttons that, when pressed, trigger a small hammer to strike a drum or other piece of material. The buttons are set up similar to that of a piano.

The man presses a few of the keys, turning some knobs afterwards. It seems he’s tuning the strike power of the hammers. The instrument creates a strange sound, the keys don’t seem to be arranged by pitch. Instead, they seem to be arranged by category of sound. For example, some of the keys create a hollow sound like bongos, others a heavier booming sound, and some seem to simply have the hammer strike a piece of metal, creating a sharp ring.

Eventually, he begins to play. He plays incredibly quickly, showing both his dexterity but also his ability to memorize what sound each key makes. The music he makes reminds me of a more complicated version of those paint can drummers that sometimes would perform on the streets for money; the sounds aren’t incredibly complex, the impressive part is more the ability to create such an infectious rhythm.

The people in the crowd cheer the man on as he plays. Occasionally someone will walk up and put pieces of metal - coins, it seems - in front of the man on the stage, to which he responds by increasingly upping the tempo of the song. Sheia nods along, smiling. She occasionally glances at me, seeming to want my reaction. I offer her a polite smile.

Eventually, the song ends. The man collects the coins on the stage and then speaks to the audience in a conversational tone. A few people respond, prompting a sort of discussion between him and some in the crowd. During this, the man in the back - the one who seemed to want Sheia to sit with him - wades through the seats and comes to sit in the front row, sitting on the other side of her. She seems a little irritated at this, but lets it slide.

Now that I can get a better look at him, I observe the man’s physical stature. He’s a little taller than me - maybe 5’8” or so - and seems somewhat scrawny, like me. He looks at me with a hint of disdain in his eyes.

The musician goes back to playing, this time taking up a slower song with a more consistent beat that makes me instinctively want to bob my head to it. In fact, I catch myself doing so occasionally throughout the song, much to Sheia’s delight. She looks at me and watches for my enjoyment of the music more than she looks at the musician himself.

It seems she really enjoys showing people something she likes.

The man that sits with us takes notice to Sheia’s unique attention to me, sulking and sending me glares throughout the song. After it ends, the man taps Sheia on the shoulder, getting her attention. He speaks to her. She responds by saying something and stating my name, M.

He stands up, looking down at me. He makes a gesture as if to shoo me away, speaking to Sheia. She looks concerned and grabs my arm, standing by my side. He looks at the hand of Sheia’s that grabs my arm, disgusted.

It’s quite obvious what’s going on.

If the man really does have a romantic interest in Sheia and perceives that she likes me more than him, this will most likely end in some sort of altercation between us. Not that that sort of thing is common normally, but this man seems to have that sort of personality.

I’m honestly not all that interested in this woman - Sheia - anyway. And I also don’t even know if she likes me romantically, either. That just seems to be what the man thinks. I’d be happy to just have a discussion with the guy and let him know as much, but a language barrier makes that hard to do.

So if I’m stuck with this guy who hates me and this girl who likes me, what’s my next best option to diffuse the situation? I could try and just cut contact with the woman, but that leaves me without a valuable ally. Or I could just blatantly display my lack of romantic feeling toward her, but then, if she actually is interested in me, it could lead to her disliking me and refusing to help me if needed later on.

Honestly, I already don’t have a good relationship with this man, so if I completely burned the bridge between us - intentionally increasing the disdain he has for me - it could let me get rid of him as an enemy altogether. If, say, he attacked me relatively unprovoked and I simply bested him in combat, he would probably leave me alone from then on and I would gain reputation and sympathy from onlookers.

First, I need to make sure that I can actually beat this man in combat. For example, if he can create those stone spikes like Itor and Magna, I need to scrap the plan altogether. But once I get some more information and rule out any better options, it may come down to this.

Besides, when someone looks down on me like that, I can find it difficult to let it slide.