I bravely stepped outside my room. Bia smoothly rose to her feet and assumed a half bowing position, sort of like a martial arts bow, but with her hands holding her staff low in front of her.¬ I sidestepped to get some space. She didn’t feel any need to move. I waited for a second or two before I remembered that I was waiting on the girl who had patiently spent better than half the morning waiting in the hallway to hand me a set of clothes. I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to grow a demanding nature now.

“Follow me. Let’s see if they serve lunch here,” I said. I mentally kicked myself. It seems like I couldn’t even be bothered with a please or thank you, but I felt like it was too late to say anything now. She wordlessly fell into step a pace behind me and to the left.

We entered the common room of the inn, and I had to admit, it didn’t strike me as upscale. The floor was hardened earth, as well as two of the walls, and the other two walls were badly patched with mud or concrete of some kind. A handful of tables and a smoky fireplace rounded out the furnishings, but the most important part of the room had to be the long bar that ran from the end of the hallway where I stood to the front door. Several kegs of beverages, probably alcoholic, lined the wall behind the counter and a dozen hooks for holding room keys were all the professional accoutrements of the combination inn, restaurant, and bar.

I was a little bit familiar with the way things were usually done in other cultures, so it didn’t surprise me that there wasn’t a menu. I noticed that there was a waitress, though, so I figured sitting down and waiting for service would work. I found a nearby table which, like all of the rest, had seen better days. Colorful profanities and some rather vulgar carvings decorated the surface. I wasn’t sure what language it was, exactly, but I didn’t have any trouble understanding it and I even knew that most of it was spelled wrong. That’s nifty.

Wait, I could read these? Sure, I understood it like it was my native language, but this wasn’t even an alphabet I’d seen prior to this moment. Was that because of Ham? I got the mental equivalent of a ghostly thumbs up. I needed to work on this soul communication stuff. Only talking during dreams was going to leave a lot to be desired.

“Excuse me, sir, can I get you something?”

I looked up. It was the waitress. She was a cute black eyed black haired girl and probably only about 15. It’s a shame that was a little too young for me. I mentally slapped myself and focused on the larger picture. She wasn’t speaking English. Just as I’d suspected, I could understand the language now. Time to give the new language a spin.

“Ah, I was here overnight. I believe that comes with a meal?” I hazarded.

“Of course, sir,” she replied. “We have soup, bread, and ale on tap. What would you like, sir?”

Ale? Blegh, I tried fake ale once. I doubt the real and alchoholic version was any better. “I’ll take soup and bread, but I’d appreciate some clean water, rather than ale,” I answered.

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” She awkwardly curtsied, which I didn’t think was standard fare for customers, and headed for the kitchen.

I hadn't heard sir so many times in a single conversation since I visited a basic training unit as an officer in the army. I suppose it had something to do with my new appearance. I was never this physically impressive before I died. I clenched my fist, experimentally and just felt powerful, in a way I never had before. I bet I could cause some serious damage, even with my bare hands.

Bia had posted herself near at hand and stood watching me and I realized with a start that we could talk. I mean, she apparently understood me in the first place, but now I could understand her too. “Bia?”

“Bia Keres, my Lord,” she corrected. I guess she valued the name for some reason. It was a name or a title Ham had never heard before, since I didn’t get any other meaning out of the words.

“Bia Keres,” I said, thinking rapidly of my options. Part of me wanted to come clean with my ignorance, but I was tensely aware that I didn’t want to try to survive in this world all by myself, for all that I maintained a confident exterior. I frowned as I noticed she was still standing. I motioned for her to sit. I had to do it twice more, each time more emphatically, before she finally leaned her staff against the wall and sat across from me. I considered my next words carefully. I didn’t want to lie, so I started asking leading questions working from my suppositions.

“What preparations have you made for my coming?” I asked. Since it seemed pretty obvious she hadn’t found me by accident, that seemed a really safe question.

“My Lord, I have a small amount of wealth and I am highly trained to aid you in your journey south. There is a weapon for you as well, but I have hidden it, lest it bring premature attention to you.”

I nodded like that all made sense. I lowered my voice somewhat, despite the rowdy nature of the inn’s common room. “Are any enemies aware that I have arrived?” I was really hoping for a blank expression and something equivalent to ‘what enemies?’ as a response. I was disappointed.

“Aside from the six, there should be no others,” she answered.

Obviously, she seemed to expect me to know who ‘the six’ were without being told, lovely. I’d never had an enemy in my life, and now I had six and, given the way she used that almost like a title, they were probably pretty tough.

“And the six, how long until they’re prepared to act against me?” I asked, again with the fading hope she’d be giving me blank looks and saying, ‘never’. No such luck.

“They are aware of your arrival, but with luck they must still awaken before they can pursue you. You have time to gather your strength.”

Great, she was seeing through my little charade. Still, that was important information. Whatever awakening meant, and it didn’t seem to imply getting out of bed, I had until they got off their sorry butts to come hunt me down. I’d better get my rear in gear.

My food arrived while I was thinking, without me noticing. First, what were my skills? I felt a spiritual nudge from Ham and realized that if checking my innermost workings was as simple as saying status in this world, then skills were probably something I could display too.

“Skills” I said, acting on my hunch.

Soul GathererThe Necromancer is the master of the souls of the dead. With this ability, he can capture a soul and keep it. This allows him to use the creature's memories and knowledge as though it were his own to the extent that the creature permits or cannot resist.

Passive and Active

Mana Cost: 0

Death SenseThe Necromancer is the master of death. He instinctively knows when someone is about to die and the major cause of death. He can also sense the aura of death on places and objects that have seen much death or are haunted by spirits or the undead.

Passive

Mana Cost: 0

I suppose that explains how I got Ham. It certainly didn’t elaborate much, though. Still, it looked like gathering power was synonymous with gathering souls, at least if I wanted to go any faster than very, very slow. I wasn’t any kind of genius back home, just a guy with a good memory and lots of practice with codes and numbers. I wasn’t keen on dying again. The mere thought brought me a glancing reference to the unmentionable pains of hell. I began to eat my meal to escape the thought, barely tasting the food except to note that it wasn’t terrible.

Now that I knew what it was, I began to pay attention to that strange tickle in the back of my head. As I did, I felt my gaze drawn to a place somewhere past the wall of the common room. A place so loaded with death, I was stunned I hadn’t noticed it immediately. I must have been deliberately ignoring it. I finished eating while I tested the sensation.

“Bia Keres,” I said, catching her attention.

“Yes, my Lord?”

"What's over there?" I asked, pointing in the direction I sensed.

She looked in the direction of my gesture and seemed to ponder her response for a moment before she replied. "That way leads along the main thoroughfare, the market, the arena, and lastly the Palace of Lords."

I nodded in response. An arena could certainly generate an aura of death, not the way a battlefield would do it with thousands dying together, but trickle by trickle as the lives of the contestants bled out on the ground. "What do you know of the arena?" I asked.

"The arena here has a mixed reputation," Bia answered frowning. "It is voluntary to enter and participate without any use of slaves or prisoners. Most of the battles are not against other humanoids, and the battles between humans are not usually to the death. However, persistent rumors claim that contestants never really have a chance and the arena champion is determined by political intrigue more than combat skills. I have not researched it properly enough to give you more information. Would you like me to do so, my Lord?"

"No, that's alright," I answered. "Can you tell me how long it's been operating?"

"The arena has been operating for nearly two centuries, my Lord," Bia answered.

I frowned. "How long has the city been around?"

"The city traces its roots back to before the cataclysm, my Lord. It has always been here."

My frown intensified. "Yet, I sense older death in the Arena."

Bia Keres remained silent in the face of my commentary.

"Let's go investigate it, Bia," I said.

"Bia Keres, my Lord," she responded, yet she snagged her staff from where it rested and fell in behind me as I left the inn.

A wall of noise, color, and smells assaulted me as I stepped outside. The sheer mass of people and the babble and stench momentarily disoriented me as I experienced, for the first time, the busy city street of a medieval fantasy city. At least, I had to assume as much, since the beings crowding along the street weren’t all human.

Thankfully, the inn’s front door opened into a lowered landing a few stair steps down from the street and we were protected from the press of the crowd. Along the street in both directions there were shops, stalls, and carts lining the streets, picking up, dropping off, buying, and selling in a cacophony of yells, bartering, and animal noises. The occasional mounted figure moved through the foot traffic. I was gratified to see that the creatures they rode were very similar to horses and Ham’s supporting knowledge flowed in to tell me that there weren’t any significant differences between many animals in my home world and the ones that existed here, although I was no zoologist.

With a deep breath, I plunged into the crowd with Bia following tightly behind. It was necessary, but I occasionally felt her bump against my arm with her shoulder or breast. It was a little distracting. Still, the pull of my goal was ever uppermost in my mind as we pushed through the throngs of people. Luckily, it seemed that most of them were moving in my direction. I noticed a young man and his girl chatting as they traveled the same way. The young man seemed to drip recent violent death. I concentrated to pick out the conversation of those around us.

“…blood! Haha!”

“I don’t know. Watching those poor fools who think they can win so easily get slaughtered just gets me in the mood, you know.”

The girl tittered cutely at his unsympathetic statement and something very different went by in her face. “Oh, I know,” she laughed.

“So, the first fight is this brawl with all the first participants just killing each other left and right. They have to do it with these really cruddy weapons, too, so it takes forever! I remember last time…”

I quit listening as he began a graphic description of bloody violent inefficient death. I was appalled to learn that although death wasn't mandated, most of the contestants would end up dead either from other contestants or monstrous foes. Apparently, undead, animals, and similar powerful but manageable creatures were very popular.

“Bia Keres, I’ll need my weapon,” I said. "You mentioned you had one prepared if I was ready?"

“This way, my Lord,” she responded. She took the lead and I followed as she led me into the surrounding alleyways. I had thought that the streets were always this busy and that we were on a main street, but I soon found that all the streets headed into the center of town were similarly packed, mostly with arena-goers, while the several alleyways and cross streets were empty or lightly trafficked.

Before long, Bia had led me into a painfully shady portion of town. The lingering taint of recent death seemed to have touched nearly every inch of this place and I wasn’t too surprised when she led me to a ramshackle two story building on a curiously deserted street. I’d sensed our destination several streets ago.

How could I not? It was obviously haunted.