“You wahmoydh better Yuwniht!” Mihvay exclaimed. It had been four days since I had picked up my moniker and I had spent the majority of my time learning more words of Uwroyd language, as it was apparently called. The rest of the time was spent either digging further into the wall using the now almost blunt triangle rock or unintentionally going into deep thought about various topics. It's not that it bothers me to have a name, I thought, it's just that “unit” is such a non-name word. I really should have corrected him before it became a habit, and let him pick a name for me.

“Thank you Mihvay,” I replied, “I am trying to improve as fast as I can.” My skill at creating sentences in Uwrish, as I was internally calling the language, was growing quite well. In place of many particle words the people here tended to simply inflect the ends of beginnings of their words, or stress vowels differently, which made the language both harder and easier to use. A more literal translation of what I had just said would be 'Thank Mihvay, I trying improve fast I able.', but with the proper inflections and stresses between words it became much more intelligible. Thankfully for me the inflection and stress trick also worked with English words, allowing Mihvay to more easily determine my intent.

“I think you mean you are mpaeoydh to oyynpowr as fast as you can,” Mihvay said with a smile. “Mpaeoydh means to work as much as you can, and oyynpowr means to... become better.” The boy delighted in interacting with me, treating me with such familiarity that I often wondered if he was trying to deceive me. As far as I knew though he was simply good-natured or extremely gullible. Not that gullible, I corrected myself, remembering how I had failed to entice him to come into the cell multiple times.

“Yes, you are correct,” I said. “Mihvay, would you mind if I asked you for some information?” I watched the boy's face closely as I asked my question, judging to see how much of a reaction he had to it. He most likely could understand that I was being polite, even if he missed a word in my sentence.

“Um, I can't tell you how to get out,” Mihvay replied with a sheepish smile.

“Not that,” I assured him, “I need to know where we are right now. The location of the village.” Mihvay made an expression that I had come to think of over the last few days as his “how does this guy not know this” expression.

“You're saying you came to our village and ngaywvayaebjh a bunch of buildings without even knowing where you are?” Mihvay asked with a laugh. “I thought you were supposed to be a smart forest man Yuwniht.” I had allowed Mihvay to continue to use the “forest man” description of me because it was convenient. As far as I could tell from his explanations forest men were a race of humans who, unsurprisingly, lived in the forest away from villages. Mihvay viewed them with a strange sort of reverence, though the other guard was more disdainful of me because of it.

“I was lost,” I said honestly, “I found myself on the beach and did not know where I was. I headed inland and eventually stumbled upon your village. I was hungry, starving even, so I looked for food. Then I searched a few more buildings and eventually someone subdued me.” A bit of twisting turned the story into a sympathetic one, and it worked judging by Mihvay's reaction.

“This is Suwlahtk,” he said, “that's the name of our village. We're the kahzm zuwf most village on Awsriyah island.”

“What is kahzm zuwf?” I asked. “A direction?” Mihvay thought about his reply for a little while before speaking it aloud.

“Do you know about teyyneyz?” he asked. Seeing my face, he explained what the word meant. “It is a device that can only be made out of special rocks that aligns itself to the stars and the sky, so that it always holds a constant direction. Most mahyneyv have one, doynz too. Say, do forest men have mahyneyv? A place to talk to the wawjh and znoypeym?” He's talking about a compass, but that's that other nonsense? I wondered.

“I know about compasses,” I replied, “apparently you call them compasses. What are wawjh and znoypeym?”

“They are everywhere,” Mihvay said. “Well, not wawjh usually, they tend to keep to one place. Znoypeym are everywhere though, they fill your body and give you life, then leave you when you die.” Oh, it's some religious thing, I thought with a hint of disappointment. Mihvay's initial explanation had set me up with entirely different expectations; Not that I'm overly disappointed that he doesn't know about nanotechnology or how the healing works.

“Forest men do not have temples,” I said to sate Mihvay’s curiosity. “So about the compass, what direction is kahzm zuwf?”

“Well, there are four important directions that are usually used when talking about compasses,” Mihvay began. “My father taught me about them a long time ago. There is aozm, the direction where the sun rises from, and kahzm where it sets. Then the other directions are a half turn left and right from those. Lehpf is a left turn from aozm, and zuwf is across from it.” Mentally I worked these out to north, south, east, and west. They use east and west as the dominant directions, with north and south being applied after, I noted.

“So you're the southwest most village on the island,” I said.

“Yes,” Mihvay replied, “the next closest village is Frahmtehn to the northeast. People say it's huge, many times the size of our village, but I've never been allowed to go there.” Mihvay looked disappointed even though he was complaining about a lack of freedom to a man in a cage. Such a strange lack of self-awareness sometimes, I thought with amusement.

“Thank you for telling me,” I said with a short bow. “One more thing, do you know when I'll be getting out of here? Without going into too much detail, the place where I have been putting my waste is filling up.” Mihvay snickered into his hands, knowing my meaning but clearly not understanding the potential pathogenic danger of the situation. If he was a warbreed it wouldn't be an issue, but he's not, so the bacteria could harm him, I thought, I would be screwed if the whole village ended up getting sick from it and became unable to let me out.

“Well I-” Mihvay began, but he was cut off by a shout from the top of the stairs.

“Mihvay! I told you to stop talking to that savage!” the guard yelled down at him. Stomping footsteps came down the stairs and the adult guard who often served my evening meals rounded the corner. Mihvay had told me his name was Mpahray, but I considered it too much of a pain to pronounce so I still referred to him as “guard”.

“Yes Mpahray,” Mihvay said, scampering past the guard before he could be slapped or assigned some other punishment. The guard walked over to the bars with his hand on his sword, crouching down to receive the empty bowls I had left near the cell door. Over the last few days the ration sizes had shrunk, as had the bowls holding them. They were now small enough that they could be slipped between the bars by turning them sideways, which is exactly what the guard did.

“I don't know what you think you're doing,” the guard hissed, “but you're being zervjh to a taapeyraal from Frahmtehn tomorrow, so you aren't going to be my problem much longer.”

“What are you intending to do with me?” I asked. From the context there could only be a few answers that made sense, but I had to know which one.

“You're being zervjh you savage idiot,” the guard mocked. “What, do your forest friends not have yeylao? How do you nih for things? Maybe with rocks or sticks? Oh I know, you taath bugs and use those.” He’s talking about trade and markets, I concluded from context.

“To be clear, you intend to trade me for some money right? I am to be given to someone in exchange for something else, which will be given to you?” I asked, trying to be as clear as possible.

“Don't speak that disgusting language of yours to me unless you want a beating,” the guard spat, “I wouldn't want to mehpthay you before you are to be sold.”

“Is the buying and selling of men common in this village?” I asked. This could be a good way to earn money once I leave, I thought, catching these humans is a breeze compared to warbreed, my only issue would be making sure I don't kill them.

“Only savage spaotz like yourself,” the guard grinned, “the veh in Uwriy doesn't protect you like it does for us.” I have no rights under their laws because I'm a “forest man”, I realized, that's probably why they didn't just kill me or let me go, they were keeping me as merchandise. Normally this chain of events wouldn't have bothered me. It was a positive even, being indentured into servitude came with a level of trust not found in imprisonment, a level of trust I could abuse easily. However, given that I had no rights whatsoever as far as I knew, it was possible I would be killed by my new owner instead of used for labor. Warbreed always liked to pit captives against each other for fun, I grimaced, a situation like that would be worse than this because the security would be higher.

“I understand,” I replied neutrally, “seems like you can be helpful when you want to be, npoyt.” I still hadn't learned exactly what that curse word meant, but I knew it to be effective. The guard, as I had anticipated, drew his sword and walked close to the bars.

“Maybe you do need to be taught a lesson,” he threatened, “We can always just feed you more tomorrow to help you recover.”

“Please,” I taunted, “come in if you want. I'll tear your arms off and make you beg for me to kill you.” For a moment it really did look like the guard would respond to my taunting, but he calmed himself at the last moment and sheathed his sword. I watched as he walked back towards the stairs and left without a word. Damn it, I raged, I can't believe that didn't work. I need to get out of here now, or figure out a plan for tomorrow.

Some hours later, after eating my second meal, I had dug out a third link from the chain in the wall and reached a point where hope had died. Behind the last link was a fourth half-link bound to a flat iron plate that was massively larger in radius than the hole I had dug up to it. There was no way I could dig it out in time with the tools I had, and the chain itself was still as unbreakable as ever. Looks like it's time to resort to more drastic measures, I thought with another grimace as I looked at the keyhole on my leg. I had been sizing it up for a few days and I had a plan, but it was a very bad plan.

I couldn't help but let out a low growl as the near-bare bone of my left index finger smacked against the insides of the key mechanism. In order to pick the lock, which used a fairly large key, I had used the last sharp edge of the triangular rock to cut and peel the skin from my finger to reduce its diameter temporarily. I had pulled the skin down and bunched it around my first knuckle, then chipped off the bone around the second and third knuckles while keeping the tendons intact. The result was a crude biological lockpick that just barely fit into the manacle’s mechanism. Only a little further, I hissed, the lock doesn't even have pins, I'm sure of it.

With a clunk, the manacle popped open and freed itself from my leg. I took a deep breath as I withdrew my finger and re-sliced the skin on my first knuckle, then pulled it back into its normal position. Before it had a chance to seal itself together I remembered to pull it back again and replace the bone chips as well. I’m guessing it will heal faster if it has all the pieces, I thought. Even such powerful regeneration couldn’t possibly produce matter from nothing.

My finger took a minute to put itself back together, which I assumed was due to the extent of the injury and how I had exacerbated it. I checked my heads-up display as I waited, which was as cryptic as ever. The blue bar’s top sub-bar showed around five percent depletion, and the red just a sliver which vanished while I was watching it. I had a similar amount of depletion when I was testing my regeneration, I thought, maybe the underfeeding is affecting the blue bar? The green bar indicated that I was lacking nutrients more than I had been when out in the woods, with certain sub-bars being quite low. Could the healing speed be influenced by my overall state? I wondered, I just don't understand how this works at all.

I broke off a piece of the rock and jammed the lock on the manacle so that it would stay open, then put the manacle back on in a way that made it appear closed. Just have to make sure I wake up when the first meal comes, I thought, then I can put a plan into motion.