There wasn’t much more to be said that night, so they all turned in. Len hadn’t sussed out the specifics of her use of the medic tent and hadn’t seen a single medic during her stay. With no further instruction, though, she opted to worry about that in the morning. Kila took the other bed and the goblins seemed content enough to take the floor.

When the morning came, they were all shuffled out of the tent by an annoyed looking Orc nurse who just looked at them with disgust in his eyes at the state they’d left his tent in. Len bowed sheepishly and got out of his sight as quick as possible. Kila just shot him a winning smile and waved at him as she made her exit.

“Gotta say,” the forgemistress declared as they wandered down the street towards the main markets in town “I haven’t slept that well in a while. Sure, the fact that my best friend’s been replaced by an alien from another world is a bit of a twist, but still… a very good night’s rest.”

“I’m sorry, what?” put in Curly, the only one of the goblins to have been paying attention.

“Oh, right, you see Len here is actually a- hrk.”

“Hrk” had not been the next line Kila had meant to deliver, but it’s a tad difficult to divulge important secrets of a friend when said friend has planted an elbow in your rib.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Len, glaring daggers at Kila.

“Right, we’ll ignore the clearly important detail that your friend just shared. Whatever, I don’t care. I’m sure it’ll come up later if need be. You just better not be hiding something that’s gonna get us killed.”

“Nothing like that, I swear. Though there may be one or two Trolls that definitely want me dead and probably want anyone associated with me to be likewise dead, that’s not a problem, is it?”

“Oh absolutely not. There’s nothing I like more than knowing that there are giant regenerating death beasts that are eager to kill someone I’ll be spending the next month of my life shackled to like so much lead around my neck.”

“Good to hear it, ‘cause it’s only gonna get messier from here,” she grinned sweetly at him. She had decided that with Curly, the only way to match his bitter sarcasm was with chipper sarcasm, a more evolved form of the lowest form of wit.

This earned her a most satisfying glare.

She hadn’t really had much time to think about her place in the current society, what with being dumped into the middle of a fight for her life, but now she was able to really dig through some of those memories. Family? Dead. Caretakers? Had basically laughed her out the door now that she was old enough for the proving. She’d demonstrated no aptitude whatsoever in the arts they’d cared about, so it was time to be rid of her. If not for Kila, she’d have probably been lost right now. This was tough to deal with, since she’d been quite close to her family on Earth, but she supposed it kept things simpler here. Kila might have been willing to roll with the punch of her friend’s sudden transformation, but the choice between lying to loved ones or telling the truth and likely being hated and/or thought insane was nice to avoid.

This did leave her with a bit of a problem when it came to what to do with herself now. She really didn’t have anything to her name. No funds to work with, and no particular prospects.

“So, Kila…” she said, drawing it out.

“Yeah…” the Orc eyed her friend, cheerful but wary.

“I know that you helped out a ton getting me ready for the Proving, the training, the food mooching…”

“Yeah…”

“I’m gonna need some more help.”

Kila mock-glared at Len in response to that. Adopting a severely put upon air, she held up three fingers.

“Three silvers. That’s damn near my entire savings. I told you that you needed to put in more hours at the meadery.”

“They stopped letting me work after I broke that guy’s wrist,” Len grinned at the memory.

Len stopped for a second. It was strange how easy it was to fall into the pattern of thinking of her life here as *hers*. It seemed like something that should be outright maddening, that one set of memories would feel more real, but they didn’t so much clash as just occupied different compartments in her head. She was still dead certain that she was the person whose name she’d lost, but sometimes the other memories flowed just as easily as thoughts of going to church on Sundays.

Kila, of course, missed this moment of introspection.

“Yeah, well, cop a feel, lose the use of your hand. No way they should’ve kicked you out for that.”

“I mean, I did kinda break his nose, jaw, and left leg while I was at it.

“Okay, yeah, a bit extreme but still…”

“And the owner’s nose when he tried to pull me off the guy.”

“Ah, yeah… that’d to it. How did you not tell me about this?”

“I was kinda preoccupied with how I was gonna deal with the Proving.”

“Oh gods,” Kila’s eyes widened, something occurring to her.

“What?”

“Well… you’re here, right?”

“Yeah…”

“She could be wherever you were. Fully psyched up and ready to go on a rampage in the grand brawl but with no clue what happened.”

Len paled at that thought a little bit. She’d, for the most part, been able to gloss over the existential ramifications of commandeering this body. Not like she’d had any say in the matter, and so far things seemed to be going okay. The thought of someone else running around through HER life, though, that was absolutely terrifying.

“You don’t think she’d do something too insane, do you?”

“Well… you know everything she does, what do you think?”

Len did not have many good thoughts on the potential there. Still, there wasn’t much to be done about it at present, so she forced the thoughts from her mind and carried on towards the shops. 3 Silver wouldn’t go far, but it’d be enough to at least get some basic equipment for herself and the Stooges. There’d be more than enough time to worry about what her counterpart was doing with her body if and when she got through the Grand Proving.