It just doesn’t sit right with me, I thought as we watched Towrkah slowly approach in the distance. The bandit attack had been on my mind for days, every time I had a moment to think it would come back. Something about it just didn’t make sense to my human side, but I couldn’t logically figure out what it was. How did they afford the ghillie suits if they weren’t very wealthy bandits? I wondered, They weren’t thrown together, they were made with care. Even in the dark, I would have spotted them if the suits were poorly made, the fact that they managed to ambush me attests to the quality of their gear. The bomb too, that was sophisticated.

The fact that I was ambushed at all also kept bothering me. Despite all my power and despite how quickly I managed to recover from it, the fact that I could be taken by surprise with such crude tactics annoyed me. The only modifications to the crossbows were a few weights on the strings and some extra padding around the stress points, things that anyone could afford if they knew how to use them. Is that all it takes to overcome my magic? I asked myself. No, right now it might be, but Vaozey’s durability proves that training can cause defensive magic to react unconsciously. I need to split my focus and start advancing in that direction as well. Replicating equipment from Earth means nothing when I’m barely more resistant to ambush than I was in Suwlahtk.

“Ant,” Vaozey said, pointing up to a tree I wasn’t looking at. “That one’s probably working for the city, considering. Shit, there are a few of them actually.” I zoomed in to where she was pointing and saw fourteen ants arranged in a circular pattern, all looking in our direction.

“Did anyone ever study how many ants it takes for them to make an ‘eye’?” I asked. “There must be a lower limit where the resolu, er, detail is so low that they can’t get any benefit from it, right?”

“Don’t know,” Vaozey shrugged. “I haven’t had many peaceful encounters with them over the years for obvious reasons. Even among themselves, Rehvites tend to keep the details of exactly how the ants work and what they can do secret. The only common knowledge is that intelligent colonies exist and serve them as scouts, same stuff most non-Rehvites know.”

“Hm,” I grunted, “might be worth looking into. There are ants on Mehtsiyah Island, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Vaozey confirmed. “Not out west though, and not on Awsriyah apparently. Something about the soil doesn’t agree with them, allegedly. Might be ngiyvdoym, just something I heard over the years.”

“Maybe we’ll get the chance to ask them,” I replied, and Vaozey laughed.

“You’re getting better at jokes,” she said. “Looks like this trip has been good for you.”

“What do you mean the order isn’t legitimate?” Shahpao snapped at the guard. We had been waiting at the gate to enter Towrkah for over an hour, and the sun had gone down, leaving us illuminated only by torchlight.

“We can’t verify its legitimacy,” the guard sighed, stroking his beard as some sort of stress-relieving tic. “The manner in which it was written is highly unusual-”

“The ngoyth was mad!” Shahpao yelled. “She threatened to kill and eat us for the crime of being sent to reinforce her position. Your captain should consider himself lucky someone that uncivilized was even capable of writing more than crude drawings. It has her signature, does it not?”

“It does,” the border guard sighed.

“And our paperwork is in order?”

“All thirty-eight sets appear to be up to date,” the guard replied.

“Then why-” Shahpao began, stepping forward. The guard he was speaking to, along with the two behind him, all tensed and reached for weapons. I almost drew mine as well, but I didn’t want to be the first to show aggression. Shahpao was convinced this would work, I thought, He’s experienced, so there’s no reason to believe it was a mistake. Something is going on here.

“Sir, I get it,” the bearded guard sighed. “I don’t control this, and I don’t have any say. My job is to relay orders and follow them, and I’ve relayed to you that you are to remain outside the walls until the legitimacy of your orders can be verified. We are not trying to start a fight here, the Towrkah city guard understands that this is an imposition, but orders are orders.”

“I will have that captain’s head if he delays this beyond tomorrow morning,” Shahpao snarled, then he turned around and stomped off to join the rest of us at the wagons. Vaozey sighed in frustration, sating her anger by biting off a piece of the squirrel skewer she was eating violently. I wasn’t happy about the situation either but for different reasons: Any undue attention was a chance that we might be found out, and I didn’t want to have to trudge through the wilderness under constant threat again.

“I guess we wait,” I said when Shahpao reached us and grabbed a skewer from beside the fire.

“That we do,” he muttered, and I tried to stop my mind from proposing a dozen questions a second and wrangle it onto a useful topic.

“What do we do if they say the orders are fake?” I asked.

“They won’t,” Shahpao insisted. “This is just typical jurisdictional posturing. City guard doesn’t like military and vice-versa. If they really suspected us, I’d be able to tell. Just get some rest.” I hope so, I thought, because they looked suspicious to me.

They let us in the next morning, thankfully, because it started to pour down rain and our tents were not enough to keep our group dry and clean when the ground began to turn from dirt to mud. We were still under guard until later in the afternoon when our orders were finally determined to be “legitimate”, whatever that was supposed to mean. The relief was palpable, and Shahpao quickly got to finding us some sort of boarding house to stay in. We settled on a house that was roughly at the halfway point of the city vertically but nearly pressed against the outer wall of the city, and was five stories tall. For the beasts, there was a stable just down the road that offered to take care of them cheaply.

That night, after I cleaned off and put on some normal clothing for the first time in over a week, I fell asleep so quickly that I didn’t even remember lying down in my bed. The building was noisy, mainly owing to its all-wooden construction, but even the snores and bangs of the other soldiers moving around weren’t enough to rouse me for more than a few seconds from the sweet comfortable oblivion. When I woke up in the morning and walked down to the common area on the first floor, I expected to find it empty, but instead over a dozen familiar faces were scattered about, and one approached me.

“How good is your Gwahlaob accent?” Shahpao asked. It was strange enough to see him out of uniform with only a dagger at his side, but I almost didn’t recognize him without the beard he had been growing over the trip.

“It’s good,” Vaozey called out with a mouth full of food from a nearby table. “Not perfect, but pretty good. Won’t fool anyone who’s known a Gwahlaob, but everyone else won’t be able to tell it’s fake.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said, switching to the accent. “Is there a reason I’ll need to use it?” Did someone notice me removing my gear last night? I wondered.

“You’re coming out shopping with me today,” Shahpao said. “You have a much better idea of the components we need for more of those shaatgahn bullets, so I’m going to have you explain the requirements to some smiths. I got a list of recommended ones who can keep their mouths shut right here.” He held up a piece of paper with five addresses on it, then stuffed it into his pocket.

“I have several questions, but the most important one is how you plan to hide my face,” I replied. “I was under the impression that I was highly recognizable.”

“In armor with a weapon? Sure,” Shahpao agreed. “Dressed like this? If we get you a hood and have you hunch over a bit while you’re using that accent, it’s pretty unlikely you’d be recognized this deep into Rehvite territory. Moreover, you’ve almost got a decent head of hair now, but most Rehvite descriptions of you are of a bald man.” I touched my hair reflexively, then sighed. It was nearly fifteen millimeters long on average, which was nearly to the point where I wanted to shave it off again. I had grown used to being bald due to its convenience.

“This is a bad idea,” I said. “Something-”

“I have no right to give you orders, but if I did, this would be an order,” Shahpao said, cutting me off. There was an awkward silence, and I exhaled deeply. Is he that worried that he won’t get the details right? I grumbled quietly.

“Would a face wrapping be acceptable?” I asked. “It’s suspicious, but I’m conspicuous no matter what due to my height.”

“We could do that,” Shahpao nodded. “In fact, leave your paperwork here. I’ll bring mine, and if anyone asks, you’re a servant I hired in Muhryehv.”

“A servant who wants steel balls for some reason,” I added, pointing out a potential hole in the story. “Couldn’t I just re-write the specifications so you can understand them? This is a major risk to-”

“Yuwniht, you’ve been going nuts from boredom and stir craziness lately,” Vaozey interrupted, and there were some murmurs of assent. “Just go with him. Shahpao isn’t an idiot, he knows that there’s a risk to bringing you, but there’s a risk with you staying here too. The workers will be back by noon, what if one of them spots you? It’s just as bad.”

“Fine,” I relented. “Get me the face covering, we’ll start with the ones in the poorer areas of town. I need to come up with a decent cover story for this because I’m sure we’re going to get asked some interesting questions if I’m there.”

Two hours later, Shahpao and I stood inside a dusty smithy that was barely illuminated save for the fires in its forge. The first two places we had visited were too busy to take orders but allowed us to practice our routine a bit. As per the plan, I was to remain mostly silent initially and allow Shahpao to do the talking, only chiming in to clarify the details of the requested product. The owner of the smithy, another large man like myself who was covered in soot and branded with a mark of ire on his face, stood with a furrowed brow as Shahpao explained what we wanted to him.

“Why d’they gotta be so precise?” he asked. “Only thing I’ve heard of little iron pellets bein’ used for is as a substitute for ingots. Guessin’ you got someone plannin’ to use magic to forge arrowheads or somethin’? I’ve heard of that before.”

“Not exactly,” Shahpao replied. “Can you do it? Those three sizes?”

“I prob’ly can but-” the smith began, stopping to inhale. “How close they gotta be?” Time for me to intervene, I thought, seeing the expression of suspicion forming on the man’s face.

“Excuse,” I said in very broken Uwrish. “I am… builder in home country. I use to make machine for commander, fix his wagon.” The smith, who had been almost ignoring me the whole time, looked shocked. Did he think I was a bodyguard? I wondered. I wasn’t carrying any weapons besides a hidden pouch of hiltless blades, but I supposed that was no barrier to doing the job for a magic user.

“You have a broken wagon?” the smith asked.

“No,” Shahpao said. “My engineer doesn’t speak much Uwrish.”

“Commander right,” I said. “Word is ‘improve’. I make improve to wagon with machine from home country.” The eyebrows on the smith’s face went down, and suspicion was replaced with curiosity. Good, I thought, that’s what I want.

“Now you’ve got me interested,” the smith smiled. “What sort’a use would these have for a wagon, exactly? I’ve never heard’a that in my life.”

“That’s not what we’re here to discuss,” Shahpao interjected, right on cue as I had told him to when explaining our cover story.

“But it could be,” the smith replied, subverting my expectations. Based on the attitudes of the Uwrish, I expected him to threaten to cease business, but it seemed he was more willing to be polite than forceful. “We get a lotta wagons comin’ through here for repairs. If I can use these for that, well, I’d have reason to make quite a few of ‘em. Might even sell ‘em cheaply.”

“Cheap good,” I said, looking at Shahpao with a facade of innocence.

“In the name of Rehv,” he muttered, rubbing his brow. “Fine, we are not businessmen anyway, and perhaps this could help more than just us.”

“Okay, I explain,” I smiled behind my mask, enough that the expression would be readable to the smith. “In Uwriy country, many wagon. Country big, wagon go very far. Some design good, some bad, but all have bad part I see. Uwriy put, er, stick for wheel through bottom frame of wagon, then use metal to make hard. You understand so far yes?”

“I get you,” the smith nodded, stroking his chin.

“Very bad,” I continued, shaking my head. “Stick for wheel rub on metal of frame and wear down. Not only, but also noise, and hard to move. Uwriy use, er, sand oil? What called?”

“Grease,” Shahpao said.

“Right, grease,” I said thoughtfully. “Uwriy use grease to make stick and frame last longer, easier to move, but no good. In Yahn Gwah, we use different thing. Ball bearing. You have paper and pen? Need for explain.” The smith broke from his silent listening trance and shuffled some things around on top of one of his word tabled, giving me a smudged piece of paper and shard of charcoal.

“No pens, but this should do,” he said.

“Yes, it do,” I nodded, beginning to draw. I sketched two images of a simple ball bearing design. The smith looked on with great interest, mumbling to himself. “This is ball bearing,” I said, showing him the drawing, “in Uwriy language, meaning is ball bearing.” Technically Uwrish had a word for bearing, they just used it to refer to only sliding contact bearings like the ones they used in their designs. The meaning of the phrase was nearly identical to English.

“How does it…?” the smith began, trailing off. “No wait, with the little lips on the edges… how’d’ya get the balls inside it?”

“Put balls in outer ring, then slide to side,” I explained. “Then put inner ring inside, spread balls apart, add, er, holder rings. Simple, effective. Cover with grease, slide very easy.”

“Like a wheel for the wheel,” the smith thought aloud. “You said this is a Gwahlaob design?”

“My people make,” I agreed, smiling widely again so my cheeks would rise. “Not secret, you no worry. Make wagon less noise, also make wagon easy move. Beast no tire quick, even man move wagon on flat ground with bit of magic. No hot as well, Uwriy wagon stick get very hot when moving. Put on grease after put ball bearing in wagon.”

“So can you make them or not?” Shahpao asked. “We only need the balls for the design in those three sizes.”

“Do the different sizes do different things?” the smith asked. I moved to reply, but I knew Shahpao would cut me off first. The smith had fallen for the bait completely, there was no need to risk questions by making up excuses.

“Yes or no,” Shahpao demanded. “We can take this elsewhere.”

“No!” the smith blurted. “No, please, I can do it no problem. When you need ‘em?”

“Four days,” Shahpao said.

“Heh, four days,” the smith snorted. “These are pretty simple, the precision is the toughest part. I can get you probably a keg of each in four days if you need that many.”

“If the design works, we’ll be needing that many,” Shahpao replied. “How much?”

“Tell you what,” the smith smiled. “Hundred and forty-four ngoywngeyt, and that’s real cheap. Normally for a specific rush order like this it’d be four times that.” I looked at Shahpao, who sighed in mock defeat. I guess that’s a good price, I thought, I’m not really familiar, but it seems cheap.

“Agreed,” Shahpao said. “Come on, let’s go. We have more to do.” We hurried out of the smithy before any more questions could be asked, then speed-walked down the street and around the corner. Only once we saw an alley and ducked inside did Shahpao allow himself to relax and indulge in a few victorious chortles. That was too easy, I thought, but I put the notion aside.

“What was the budget?” I asked, pulling down my mask for a moment to breathe.

“Eight times that price,” Shahpao grinned. “That thing you showed him, is that real?”

“Yeah, it’s real,” I confirmed. “But, given the level of precision needed to produce a functioning prototype, he would have a tough time making even one, let alone the four needed for a wagon. By the time he figures that out, though, we’ll be long gone.”

“You can be pretty devious even out of battle,” Shahpao laughed. “Come on, let’s grab some food and head back. We’ll have those shaatgahn bullets in-”

“You’re doing that on purpose,” I muttered.

“I am,” Shahpao grinned. “I’ll stop, there are a few good ideas for names for the new ammunition we can use instead. How does ‘shard bullets’ sound?”

“Better than you butchering English, certainly,” I grumbled.

When we got back to the boarding house in the afternoon, I was pleased to hear that the employees had already finished their maintenance and left while I was out. The soldiers were playing some dice and board games at the tables, and I saw that the makeshift capture chess set I had produced in Muhryehv was the subject of some interest. Vaozey was nowhere to be found though, and when I asked about where she was I was told she had gone up to the roof for some reason. I needed to drop off the hood and face mask in my room on the fourth floor anyway, so after doing that I headed up to the roof to find her sitting and staring off across the city.

“Need you to check something,” she said without turning around.

“How did you know it was me?” I asked.

“You have the lightest footsteps of anybody we’re traveling with,” Vaozey replied as I walked over. “See that building there?” She pointed to a four-story stone building that looked to be about three hundred meters away or so.

“Yeah,” I grunted.

“You can see the inside of the room on the third floor from here, right?” she asked. “Through the window?” Zooming in my vision, I found that I could actually see exactly what Vaozey was pointing out.

“A bit of it, yes,” I said. “There’s a desk, a chair, some kind of painting on the wall-”

“And a little wooden figurine of a bear on the desk, near the pen and inkwell, right?” Vaozey asked. There was, in fact, exactly what she was describing sitting on the left side of the desk.

“You know the owner of it?” I asked.

“Nope,” Vaozey laughed. “No, I’ve been working on something lately and it finally paid off. I can’t control it quite yet, but I think I’ve managed to work out one of your new tricks.” I glanced over to see her grinning widely.

“How did you manage it?” I asked, a bit bewildered.

“That’s the crazy thing, I’m not really sure,” Vaozey admitted. “Ever since you mentioned that you could just make your eyes see stuff further away, I had this feeling that I could probably do it, but I wasn’t sure how. A few times while we were out walking I tried putting magic into my eyes and my vision would sort of… shake a bit, but not do much. Today though, I was sitting up here and thinking about those.” She pointed up to some scavenger birds that were circling the city opportunistically.

“They don’t use magic,” I said.

“Huh?” Vaozey grunted.

“I think I see where you’re going with this, but they don’t use magic to see long distances,” I explained. “Their eyes are just constructed differently than a human eye.” Technically I wasn’t entirely sure, but given the similarity to Earth life, it was a reasonable conclusion. In fact, why is all of the life here so similar to Earth life? I wondered all of a sudden. It can’t just be convergent evolution at this point.

“Still worked,” Vaozey mumbled. “Just for a second, it was like I lurched all the way over there and smacked my face on the window. Then I bounced all over so quickly I couldn’t see anything and snapped back here. Nearly threw up after everything went back to normal, and I haven’t been able to get it working again since. Still, I wanted to make sure I hadn’t just fallen asleep from boredom or something, that’s why I had you check a detail I saw.”

“Well, it’s certainly surprising,” I said. “I wouldn’t have thought lensing magic, of all things, would be something you’d be able to do. For me, it required somewhat complex visualization to create in the beginning before I grew used to it.”

“Any hints?” Vaozey asked. “It’s been a decade since I’ve learned a whole new kind of magic, I didn’t think I still had it in me. This feels like trying to burn a stick by feeling again.” Something came to mind, but then a sound distracted me, and I found myself watching a scuffle between two guards and two dirty-looking men a few streets away. There are fewer people than the last time I was here, I realized. “Nothing?” Vaozey asked.

“Sorry, distracted,” I mumbled.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you apologize,” Vaozey snorted. “You still look troubled.”

“I just-” I began, inhaling and stopping as I looked away from the street. “Something about the last few days isn’t right. The bandits in particular bother me. They were too well-geared for a group of idiots in the wilderness. Then the business with the papers, but us still being let in? It’s almost too convenient.”

“You think it’s a trap,” Vaozey said.

“I think something is going on here that we aren’t aware of yet,” I replied. “Ever since I came back, I’ve had this creeping sense of paranoia, and it’s only been getting worse recently. I guess it’s because… no, never mind.” How much of this is part of the plan? My mind continued, How much of what I’m doing right now was exactly what the operator predicted? It shouldn’t have bothered me, and rationally I knew that it didn’t matter, but I had to accept that I was no longer a fully rational being.

“If it is a trap, what would you do?” Vaozey asked.

“Leave,” I replied immediately.

“And be caught?” Vaozey asked. “You can’t leave, even if you got into those stupid slums we were in last time we got stuck here, you’d need to be smuggled out of the city and there’s much more value in turning you in.”

“I could cross the wall myself,” I said.

“And have to walk across the wilderness with no repellent or uniform for the ants and this whole section of the country chasing after you,” Vaozey added. “Plus, you’d need to go down a path you’ve never been down before to get to Duwbkaav, which is the only way you can get to Mehtsiyah and thus Zihzehsheshk. You can’t leave unless you want to put your chances of completing Roydlow’s request to nearly nothing.”

“I’d prepare, then,” I sighed.

“Have you not already?” Vaozey asked. “I’m a bit surprised I need to remind you, considering that you’ve been fighting much longer than I have, but there’s a point where you just need to accept that you’ve done everything you can and deal with what comes. You can’t predict tomorrow, you just have to be ready. Relax.” But if it weren’t for the insistence of someone who can predict tomorrow that telling me about it would hurt my chances, I could be perfectly prepared, I sighed. “You seem unconvinced,” Vaozey noted.

“The only way to counter a plot is to uncover it,” I replied. “Anything else risks falling into it.”

“Gods, you’re impossible,” Vaozey chuckled breathily, shaking her head. “Any advice for the magic?”

“That lurching feeling you had is natural for someone who hasn’t separated their sense of balance from their eyes completely,” I rattled off a high speed. “By focusing on that, you might be able to trigger the effect again, since your brain may have drawn a connection between the two.” I was only half paying attention to what I was saying, the rest of my mind busy with re-assessing my memories of the last two weeks.

“Right,” Vaozey muttered.

“I’m going to train capacity until tonight,” I said. “Call for me if you need me.”

“Likewise, yell if you’re about to die again,” she snorted back.

“Without disclosing your background, converse with your interlocutor and verify all details of your provided identity.” If I ever have to do this, my cover is probably shot already. Was this simulation really so low-resolution? I can practically see where the tessellation rendering repeats on our uniforms.

“Excuse me, captain?”

“Private Oliveira? Is there a problem?”

“About these orders…”

…

“Simulation concluded. List details that could not be verified.” You know, it never stuck out to me as much before, but it’s odd that the training system announcements were rendered in English but a good fraction of the interpersonal exercises were in Portuguese. Maybe it was designed by English speakers, then purchased?

“First name, date of training graduation, combat record.”

“Score, eighty-seven points.”

“What did I miss?”

“Appearance.”

“I see.” Was I seriously supposed to just ask him what I looked like? That’s total idiocy, I could just find a mirror.

“There’s no reason to bother him,” I heard a muffled voice outside my door say. “He could just be running late.”

“Don’t make me move you,” Vaozey replied, also outside my door. Taking a deep breath, I rolled over and pulled the blanket off myself, sitting up on the side of my bed. A moment later, the door opened and Vaozey walked in, a serious expression on her face.

“Something happen?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“Shahpao and four others who went with him are three hours late coming back from a trip to buy uniform scent,” Vaozey replied. “We have a license, so we can buy it legally. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be back by now.”

“There could have just been a delay,” the man behind her said. “It’s not unheard of.”

“They would have sent a runner,” I thought aloud.

“Exactly,” Vaozey agreed. “Looks like you might be right about a plot.”

“Do we know where he was going, exactly?” I asked.

“I have the address ready,” she replied. “Get some food and get your armor on, we’ve got work to do.”