Spending time walking around the Zae’ey’yaob residence was, for lack of a better word, awkward. Every centimeter of the place oozed wealth, and the servant humans who maintained the halls and rooms did not take kindly to my presence, even though they tried to hide it. There also wasn’t much to actually do in the mansion besides sit around or do housework, from what I could tell. After an hour of walking around looking at paintings, I asked where my weapons were, retrieved them from a storage closet, and headed outside to the backyard.

The property that the mansion was situated on was at least three hundred meters wide by two hundred deep, possibly more. I knew it couldn’t have been more than five hundred meters deep because there was another mansion around half a kilometer away from the back door, but exactly where the Zae’ey’yaob property ended and the next one began was obscured by a tall hedge maze that occupied the back of the yard. Thankfully, I didn’t really care, and I spotted what I was looking for as I surveyed the rest of the grounds.

“Looking to practice, sir?” the old man, asked from behind me. I learned while listening in to servant conversations that he was the shuwzyaazmay, a term that could be loosely translated to “steward” and meant he was the leader of the servants. His name, however, was something I hadn’t picked up. Not one person used it when speaking about him.

“I need to do something to pass the time,” I replied. “I’m invited to dinner, but it's not for a while yet.”

“I am aware, sir,” the steward smiled. “You are free to use our practice area, but please try not to damage our equipment too badly.” I frowned, exhaling through my nose. “Ah, I did suspect you were one of those types,” the steward chuckled. Maybe I could try asking for help with translating the head priest’s documents, I considered, but then I opted not to. I should bring that up in private, just in case. “If you would like, I could provide you with an opponent,” the steward offered.

“I was looking to try out some moves to maximize my striking force,” I said. “I’d rather not kill anyone.”

“While I doubt you would kill me intentionally sir, but I would rather not test my luck by acting as a dummy,” the steward replied. “If you would instead accept a spar, however, there are blunted swords in the training area we can use.” Intrigued, I nodded and followed along as he led me to the paved training area. I waited near its center while the steward unlocked a nearby shed and went inside. A few moments later he emerged with the “blunted swords” he had mentioned and brought them over to me.

“Those don’t look much like swords,” I commented. The weapons were more like solid rods of metal with sword grips. They likely weighed about as much as a sword, and probably even had the same weight distribution, but had no flat or edge to them. The steward, in response, took one of the rods and slapped the nearest training dummy with it. I watched as the rod deformed slightly, then sprung back into shape.

“Indeed, they do not,” he agreed. “Despite that, I trust they will be acceptable nonetheless? Using them will lessen the risk that either of us is maimed.”

“I wasn’t aware your people had access to this kind of metal,” I replied, taking one from him. It’s definitely some kind of spring steel, I thought, I’ll still have to be careful when using it though, I could bend it if I swing too hard. “Are you aware of how I fight? Specifically, the magic I use.”

“I am aware that you allegedly matched a yihzhae in Owsahlk, yes,” the steward replied, getting into a fighting stance. “I would ask that you not try to severely injure me, but otherwise I am interested to see what you have to offer. No need to go overly easy on me.”

“Alright then,” I shrugged, readying myself. Instead of waiting for the steward to make the first move, I dashed towards him with an overhead strike, crossing the two meters between us in the blink of an eye. Though I saw he was shocked, the steward managed to deflect my blow in time, narrowly avoiding having his skull cracked. I followed up with a horizontal blow immediately, using my superior footing to turn my ‘blade’ on a dime, catching him just under the ribs and winding him. He's denser than I would have expected, I thought, or maybe that was magic.

“Very good sir,” the steward winced, clearing his throat and backing up a few steps. “I will admit, I had my doubts. However-” Much like I had done, the steward dashed at me, but he began with a series of stabs. I deflected the ones I could intercept, but had to rely more on dodging than I liked. The seventh stab in the sequence would have hit me, if not for the fact that I caught it before impact with magic. As fast as I could, I generated a static charge in the tip of the steward’s weapon, then released it. My opponent twitched but otherwise didn’t appear fazed as he pulled back.

“That sword style is familiar,” I thought aloud. “You're experienced with internal force magic though, so it’s more effective in your hands.” Probably without wanting to, the steward smirked for a moment.

“I did teach young master Koylzmeyl how to use a sword, that must be where you learned of it,” he replied. “Tell me, what was it you tried to do while holding my weapon? I felt a strange sensation, but it was not very strong. Did the technique fail, or…?” No, I just couldn’t reach you with it, I thought, the amount of charge I managed to separate didn’t create enough of an effect because I'm relying temporarily induced currents to trigger nerve depolarization... I think. It's not a direct attack. Glancing at the weapon in my hand, I had an idea, and one that seemed obvious in hindsight.

“If you’d like to try again, I think I can improve the effect a bit,” I said, separating charge in my own weapon. This wouldn’t even be possible without magic, I thought, However, I can hold charges in place and also partially insulate myself, so I can probably direct a shock through him. Using magic, I charged the section of my sword I could reach, dumped the opposing charge to ground, and insulated my hand. While doing that complex mental dance, I took up a ready stance again.

“I am intrigued,” the steward smiled. “Are you ready, sir?”

“Ready,” I replied, my voice strained from concentration. Not needing a second response, he sprung into action again, this time with a horizontal slash at neck level. He probably intended for me to block it, only to follow up with something that would evade the predicted position of my guard, but the moment before our weapons connected I released only the magic holding my weapon’s charge in place, letting it flow freely once more.

Instantly, with a loud crack, a bolt of electricity jumped between the two metal rods. Even though I was massively increasing my hand’s resistance by holding its charges in place, my entire arm still went numb and I dropped my weapon. The steward fared worse, his whole body jolting from the shock and throwing him backwards onto the ground. As the remnants of the bolt echoed off the back wall of the mansion, I stared at the old man in front of me, hoping I hadn’t killed him, while he stared at the sky.

“I was not expecting that,” he finally said. “I do believe you’ve beaten me.”

“Yeah,” I replied, opening and closing my right hand to try to get the sensory nerves to respond. “I think I overdid it. My mistake.”

The mansion had indoor plumbing in a sense, as I found out when I asked to take a bath. While not as sophisticated as the plumbing based on designs of the Earth creator humans, it was nonetheless capable of both drawing and draining water at an acceptable rate. There was also a burner of some kind that could be used to heat the bathwater inside its basin, though I elected not to use it because heat magic worked well enough and allowed me superior temperature control.

After soaping myself thoroughly, rinsing, and drying off, I moved on to my clothing. I was fairly sure that the mansion had different rooms for laundry and bathing, but I wasn’t about to put filthy clothes on now that I was clean. The soap did a good job of removing the built-up grime and mud from my clothing, and soon enough it was clean. With a bit of heat magic, I began slowly drying my pants, then the female servant who had directed me to the bath walked in.

“Oh, apologies,” she said, averting her gaze from me.

“I’m just drying these off,” I replied, gesturing to the pants. The woman looked back and saw my technique, then looked away again.

“If you would like, I could dry them quicker,” she said. I was about to reject her, but then my curiosity compelled me not to.

“Sure,” I answered, tossing the pants in her direction. She caught them in midair, then held them aloft with one hand. Using her other hand, she began using some kind of magic on the pants. That’s heat magic, but also… wind? I observed. “How are you making that wind?” I asked.

“Magic, sir,” the woman replied unhelpfully. I can use light magic on the air, and even heat magic, so why not force magic? I asked myself rhetorically. While I waited I made a few half-hearted attempts to replicate the servant’s technique but had little luck. A few minutes later the pants were dry enough to wear, and so I put them on while the servant worked on my gambeson. She glanced at my weaponry several times as I put it on, but exactly what she was thinking about it wasn’t clear.

“I can just wear it like that,” I said, gesturing to the damp gambeson.

“No, you will wait until it is dry,” the servant replied firmly.

“It’s just as damp as my pants,” I countered.

“Then take them off so I can finish drying them,” she commanded.

With dry clothes and a clean body, I began pacing around the mansion once more, randomly opening doors to see what was behind them. The number of rooms was staggering, and what was more surprising was that most of them were totally empty save for a chair or a bed. It was as if the building was designed to be a barracks, but never actually filled and never completed. I found an empty room that was sufficiently out of the way and entered it, finding a mat on the floor and not much else. Good, I thought, I can concentrate here without distractions.

Sometime later, perhaps thirty minutes, a continual gust of air was blowing out of my hand as though I was holding a large fan. Using force magic on the air turned out to be as simple as enclosing a volume and then moving it, but there were many optimizations that could be made to allow the process to be more efficient. My end result functioned like a cylindrical tunnel, drawing in air from the back and pushing it out the front while keeping the sides still. It actually consumed energy a bit faster than just shoving the air with the same amount of force, but had a much higher flow rate due to its geometry.

The complexity of the visualization definitely affects energy use, I thought, the simpler it is, the less it uses as a base cost. As a test, I created a ball of very bright light, enough to visibly use power on my blue bar. Then, using the same amount of power, I made a human shape. The resulting magic was much dimmer, though still bright. Turning the light into the shape of a short Uwrish word resulted in something that more resembled a display hologram than a flashlight. I should have confirmed this earlier, I thought with a sigh, in hindsight, it’s extremely obvious.

I practiced light magic for a while in the room to take a break, working on tweaking my control over color and shape. The possibility of being able to manifest my own holographic display was tempting, but I was far from skilled enough to create much more than a word or two. As I was trying to produce a three-dimensional image of a crossbow, a servant opened the door without knocking, seeing the glowing shape in midair before I banished it. He was surprised, but kept himself from reacting audibly and stood up straight.

“Sir, master Aavspeyjh has called for you to join him and his family at the dinner table,” the servant declared.

“Okay,” I replied, getting to my feet, “where is it?”

“Follow me,” the servant instructed, and I followed him out the door.

“Ah, I’m glad you could join us for dinner,” Aavspeyjh smiled when I entered the room behind the servant. I was expecting some kind of extravagance after viewing the rest of the mansion, but the dining room was truly excessive. The table was rectangular, long, and thin, enough to seat at least forty humans if needed. However, Aavspeyjh sat at one end and not a single other human joined him with the exception of a woman, who sat beside him to his left along one side. I saw an empty chair to Aavspeyjh’s right, so I walked across the room and sat down.

“Where Koyl?” I asked, earning myself a glare from the woman across from me.

“Resting. I’m sure you must be starving,” Aavspeyjh smiled politely, gesturing to a servant at the door nearest to him. A moment later, three more servants carrying silver platters of food emerged from what was presumably a kitchen and sat our meal down on the table in front of us. “I hope you like tkihv,” Aavspeyjh said.

“Is that the meat?” I asked, and the woman across from me rolled her eyes.

“Do we really have to entertain this barbarian?” she bleated. Aavspeyjh glared at her, then made a sharp gesture with his hand.

“This is the man who saved our son’s life,” he said sternly.

“This is the man who has been torturing him for months!” the woman snapped back.

“I haven’t tortured Koyl,” I interjected. “That was Yaavety.”

“You shut up,” the woman shot back. “What do you think drugging him, forcing him to fight, and saying all those horrible things to him is? You’ve been mistreating my son, and as I understand it he never would have been captured in the first place if it wasn’t for your stupid scheme. You've done as much harm to him as anyone else.”

“My dear ngoyveyrjh, please,” Aavspeyjh said, tone shifting to placation. “The man is a warrior, clearly. The ways of fighting men are not always the easiest-”

“Oh don’t give me that nonsense,” the woman snapped back at Aavspeyjh. “You did it with Pahzheyleyvjh, you did it with Zeyngaaztheyl, you will not do it with my Koylzmeyl. He was a good boy before you filled his head with all that nonsense-”

“I didn’t fill his head with anything,” Aavspeyjh countered. “If anything, his head was filled with things I never wanted it filled with. Regardless, Koylzmeyl was a man when he left, and he left for his own reasons. It was not our place to stop him, and I said as much at the time. His life choices are his alone.”

“Oh but you certainly didn’t try to talk him out of it, did you?” the woman growled. “No, you were too busy roping Pahz into that stupid scheme you had running with the gambling parlors and making money to care about your youngest-” I decided to start taking food from the table and eating since it seemed that whatever argument was happening had very little to do with me. The tkihv, which appeared to be some sort of bird meat, was decently tasty but not as flavorful as some of the street food I had eaten. The provided crushed tubers and vegetables, however, were cooked to perfection.

“Can we not have this argument when I am entertaining a guest?” Aavspeyjh asked finally, breaking up what felt like a multi-minute-long exchange of verbal jabs and insinuations.

“Oh sure, let’s just not talk about how our son nearly died because of a barbarian who couldn’t even read, and how you’re rewarding him for it!” the woman, who I had learned through the argument was named Tahpeyvael, sarcastically replied. “And you!” she snapped, turning to me as I stuffed my face. “How dare you begin eating before your hosts, have you no manners?”

“Hm?” I grunted, mouth half-full.

“You will leave my house before I have you thrown-” Tahpeyvael started to yell.

“He will do no such thing,” Aavspeyjh interrupted. “Koylzmeyl wouldn’t stand for it and you know it. Do you really wish to alienate your own son a day after he has come home?” Tahpeyvael sneered at Aavspeyjh but said nothing. “I am sorry Yuwniht, but you can see, tensions are somewhat high in the household at the moment.”

“The food is good,” I replied, ignoring the apology. Aavspeyjh smiled, then took some of the food as well and began eating. Nothing was said for a while, so I decided to continue. “We were going to discuss a favor, right?” I asked.

“Oh here we go,” Tahpeyvael groaned. “How much money do you want? I’m sure he has plenty sitting around in that office of his.” Aavspeyjh as well looked as though he was thinking something similar, but he tried to keep it hidden.

“The noypeyyoyjh to the east,” I said, “I need to get there, and I need to know as much about it as possible.” My answer seemed to shock both of Koyl’s parents, oddly. That’s a bit of a strange detail to leave out of your story, Koyl, I thought, Maybe it would have been too hard to explain.

“Why?” Aavspeyjh asked. His tone wasn’t quite accusatory, but there was an implication behind it that I should have a good explanation. Tahpeyvael gripped a kitchen knife in front of her tightly, glaring at me.

“It’s my mission,” I said simply, using English. “I received a… set of instructions telling me that I needed to go there.” While my response was, of course, extremely vague, it was vague in a way that suggested I was commanded not to speak of it. “Not from Rehvites,” I added.

“That’s good because you won’t find much love for the Rehvites in this town,” Aavspeyjh said sternly.

“You can’t possibly believe-” Tahpeyvael snapped.

“Did Koyl tell you about what happened in Owsahlk?” I interjected. “He didn’t, did he?” The looks I got in return were enough of an answer. “I am no friend to them, and I have the blood on my hands to prove it.”

“Neither of us meant to offend,” Aavspeyjh said. “Your allegiance is not in question here. However-” The conversation was interrupted as Koyl, wearing fancy clothing but looking like he had just gotten out of bed, shuffled into the room and sat down at the table without saying a word.

“How are you feeling, Koylzmeyl?” Tahpeyvael asked, getting not much more than a grunt from Koyl as a reply.

“Let’s just finish our meal, we can discuss this more after in a suitable location,” Aavspeyjh suggested. I nodded, then went back to eating. “Now, I heard you have some interesting stories, care to tell us one?”