The expression “kicked by a mule” was one that I had heard before during my training in the English language, but not one that I felt I understood the direct meaning of. I had never been kicked by a mule, even though I had seen enough of the creatures to grasp the kind of animal they were. I had seen other things kicked by a mule, giving me a good idea of what the sensation of being struck by one of those hoofed feet might be like, but simulating such an action in my head wasn’t the same as experiencing it in real life. However, as the endless moment I had spent in the noypeyyoyjh ended and I slipped out of the blackness and into the world again, my first coherent thought was that being kicked in the head by a mule was probably similar to what I was feeling.

Every sense in my body was overloaded, but I could tell that I was rolling along the ground. The stars in the night sky burned my retinas as though they were lasers, the dirt on my face and hands felt like gravel, and my clothing like sandpaper. My ears were screaming, as if anything but silence was torture, and I could hardly stand to breathe from the stink of human civilization. It seemed that the human who had been inside the noypeyyoyjh with me was recovering quicker than I was because the instant I managed to center my eyes on him I was struck in the head. Something clattered to the ground beside me as well, but I wasn’t able to think about it through the sensory noise.

“Vile jhaoyeyl!” the man screamed. “What have you done?!” My immediate reply, reflexive more than intentional, was to grab him by the throat. Though I couldn’t see much in detail, the darkness of the noypeyyoyjh was visible to me if only because it caused me less pain than everything else. Knowing that it was normally solid, and judging that it would probably remain that way, I somehow got to my feet and pinned the Rehvite soldier against its surface. In the process, my foot impacted the sword that the man had dropped, and I realized that he had intended to cut my head off with his initial blow, only missing because of his disrupted senses.

My fist impacted the man’s face, once, twice, three times. It felt like breaking every bone in my body and rending my flesh, but the sensation quickly faded as my subconscious began to remember what sensation felt like. Oh right, I have magic, I remembered, and my fist accelerated mid-swing on the fourth blow. I was just intending to strike the man hard enough to knock him out, possibly for use as a hostage, but when my knuckles met his forehead the both of them turned to pulp. The man’s head popped like a watermelon, spewing blood out horizontally along the surface of the noypeyyoyjh as my other hand crushed his neck. I should have used electricity, I grumbled to myself.

A few deep breaths later my right hand was healed and the noypeyyoyjh was clean. Whatever form of non-matter its surface was made of had no friction, so the blood and bits of flesh simply slid along it until they reached the ground. My eyes cleared up, my ears stopped ringing, and the chaos that I hadn’t realized was happening in the background of my mind settled down to its usual calm. Slowly, I stepped back, looking up at the night sky, then a shiver came over me. It’s cold, I realized, it’s a lot colder than it was when I entered, almost twenty degrees colder. Though it was the middle of the night, such a shift was too extreme to be the result of darkness in the Uwrish climate. Though I had never experienced it, seeing my breath condense in the air in front of me told me immediately that it was near winter.

Where am I? I wondered, looking around and finally taking in my surroundings. The fortress I had fought in was gone, replaced with a small clearing extending around thirty meters in radius around the noypeyyoyjh that then gave way to scattered houses and tents, barely visible in the darkness. To call it a city would be giving it too much credit, it was more like a larger version of Suwlahtk than anything constructed with purpose, or grown over a long period of time. A few of the tents began to illuminate, and some window shutters opened, their inhabitants’ attention having been drawn by the noise of the fight. Have to move, I thought, picking up the sword from the ground and dashing away from them into the darkness.

When I finally found a safe spot nestled between two of the makeshift wooden buildings, a surge of fatigue washed over me, and I quickly had to sit down to rest. I tried to pull up my heads-up display, but it didn’t seem to appear before I grew too tired to stay awake. It was just a surge of adrenaline keeping me going, I supposed wearily, whatever this place is, it might not be hostile. I’ll just take a nap. It felt like I only had my eyes closed for around thirty seconds, but when they opened again I saw the glow of the morning sun coming up over the horizon.

The slowly appearing morning light did something to help wake me up, and it also made my surroundings a little bit more visible. As I had noticed during the night, I was in a sort of shanty town, but there were details that were only visible now. Firstly, it looked like there was a wall in the distance encircling the town. I couldn’t be entirely sure about the measurements, but its radius was larger than the fort by at least a hundred meters, and it was taller. It was still dawn so I wasn’t sure, but it looked as though it was made entirely of shaped cement with wooden battlements added on top.

Secondly, the area that the shanty town was located in was unnaturally flat, so much so that it stood out to me. Though there was dirt beneath me, wiping it aside and digging a few centimeters down revealed some kind of bedrock-like material that was near-perfectly flat. No, not bedrock, I thought as I ran a finger along it, this is almost like some kind of carbon allotrope material. Such a thing contrasted greatly with the low-technology dwellings.

Thirdly, the town was definitely Rehvite-aligned despite its lack of reaction to me after the initial scuffle. As I was wiping away some dirt to examine the bedrock, a group of humans walked by wearing identical clothing: two-piece outfits consisting of roughspun fabric pants and shirts with a Rehvite triangle symbol woven into each arm and leg. They didn’t look very warm, but nobody was bothered much, probably because they knew how to use magic to keep themselves warm, just as I was doing now that I was awake.

“Hey you,” a voice called out to me from the other end of the alley just as I finished covering up the bedrock again. Looking in its direction, I saw four skinny men in the same style of outfits approaching, armed with kitchen knives and clubs. The man at the front, armed with one of the clubs, continued speaking when we made eye contact. “You must be pretty seytoydh stupid to flash a sword like that in here. Where’d you get it, doymztoyl?”

“They threw him in without even stripping his armor,” the man to his right remarked. He was the skinniest and tallest of the four, just under my height, and his clothing was worn bare in places. “Probably didn’t feed him either.”

“You hungry, sehpeylay?” the lead man asked.

“Hungry and in need of a bath,” I replied, becoming aware of the dried gore on my body as I spoke. I tried to summon my heads-up display again, but again it failed to appear. What’s going on? I wondered, furrowing my brow.

“Your kind always make eyes like that at people?” the lead man snarled.

“I’m just thinking about something,” I replied. “Do you know somewhere in town I could pay for a bath and a meal?”

“Town? Seems he doesn’t know where he is!” the rearmost man laughed, getting chuckles out of his companions.

“He looks like he got shot through the chest with a tvaandowm, maybe he’s still a bit addled from it,” another suggested. Tvaandowm? I thought, racking my mind for the word, ‘dowm’ is ‘shoot’, but tvaan is… What does that even mean?

“I’ll tell you what doymztoyl,” the lead man offered. “You give us that sword and your armor, and we’ll show you somewhere to clean up.” Looking down at the ruined plate mail I was wearing, I honestly considered the request. If I had any trust that the men weren’t just going to kill me once it was off, I would have agreed.

“How about you show me first, then I give it to you once I get cleaned up?” I suggested, getting to my feet with a grunt. I deliberately exaggerated my fatigue to make myself appear less threatening, though some of the awkwardness was genuine. My muscles felt very stiff from the cold and presumably a few months of inactivity in the noypeyyoyjh. The sword in my hand was flimsy, it probably wouldn’t withstand more than a few swings using my full strength, but if it was going to attract attention I preferred to be rid of it anyway.

“Come now, there are four of us, don’t be stupid,” the leader warned. “Since you’re a mercenary you might not know, but we’re still Rehvites even if we weren’t soldiers before they threw us in here. Even with armor, you-” In the blink of an eye, after checking over my shoulder to make sure nobody else was watching, I crossed the distance between us and sent the man’s head flying. The follow-through of my sword swing also caught the man standing to his left in the forehead, slicing through a part of his brain and knocking him out.

“What the-” the rear man cried out just before the sword flew blade-first through his eye and sent him to the ground with the other two. The last man standing, a bearded individual of average height, tried to swing his club at me, and I caught it with force magic before it could connect with my skull.

“Where can I go for a bath and a meal?” I asked him. His eyes darted to his comrades, then back to lock with mine once more. Their red irises dilated, then contracted.

“Will you let me go?” he quavered, his whole body shaking in obvious fear.

“Yes,” I lied.

Leaving bodies where they fall was something that I didn’t tend to do in populated areas, but while I was in the middle of killing the final, unconscious man on the ground a woman passed by the alley and looked directly at me. As I was preparing to jump out and kill her to keep her quiet, she simply made a strange expression and walked off, completely uncaring about her fellows. Looking down the other end of the alley, I saw a man watching me as well, not saying anything and apparently waiting for me to finish.

“You taking those knives?” he asked when our eyes met.

“No,” I replied, trying to gauge his reaction and obtain some kind of explanation for his behavior.

“I will then,” he replied, crossing his arms. He waited until I had walked out of the alley, but it seemed he did exactly as he said, as strange as it was. Meanwhile, I walked away from the site of a quadruple murder, still spattered with the blood of the victims, and apparently what attracted attention from the passersby was my armor, not the gore. The bathhouse I had been directed to was just a few streets over, so I did my best to act casual as I made my way to it.

The sign on the outside of the building was in Holy Inscription, so I couldn’t read it, but judging simply by the appearance of the place I wasn’t misled or given bad directions. As I pushed the door open, the smell of past meals that had soaked into the wooden boards of the interior met my nose, and I felt my hunger pangs return with greater intensity. Heads-up display is still not working, I thought, frowning as I scanned the room. It was around half the interior size of the building, but there were two floors, so it was only a quarter of the total internal volume. More importantly, despite a counter to my left, it was empty save for myself.

I was about to call out to see if the owner was somewhere in the back when I noticed that the muffled sounds of argument that I was overhearing weren’t coming from outside, but instead from the room behind the door nearest to the counter. Walking closer so I could make out the words, I sat and waited for the argument to resolve. A few minutes later, after hearing the discussion circle around twice, I simply opened the door to interrupt it.

“Pay your debts, young man, then you can have food,” the woman inside insisted. From the sound of her voice I had expected someone aged, but she looked absolutely ancient, with long white hair and a curved back.

“You teylm, how am I supposed to pay anything if I’m too hungry to work?” the man arguing with her shot back. He was taller by a few centimeters, covered in scars, and a bit muscular. The grease in his brown hair told me that he too needed a bath, probably more than food.

“You should have thought of that before you-” the woman hissed, before pausing at the sight of me.

“Do you have baths and food here?” I asked.

“Do you have money?” the woman asked back. “You must, you seem new.”

“I-” I began, reaching for where I normally kept my wallet before remembering that I wasn’t in my usual clothes. “No,” I said.

“Then you can get out too,” the woman huffed. “Deadbeats, the lot of you.”

“I could break you like a twig you ngoyth,” the man snarled.

“Do you take barter?” I asked, pulling the sword from my waistband. It was slightly damaged from my recent use, but far from irreparable.

“How did you get that?” the man demanded. “You can’t have those here.”

“Is that a pre-retribution noypeyyoyjh guard sword?” the old woman asked, pushing past the muscular man to take a look. “Where did you find this, young man? Surely you didn’t bring it from outside.”

“Took it off of someone who didn’t need it anymore,” I answered, earning a raised eyebrow.

“Well, I’ll make you a deal,” the woman offered. “The sword and the remnants of your armor for a bath, a meal, and some new clothing.”

“We weren’t finished talking!” the angry man shouted.

“Yes, we were,” the old woman said. “Zhayyeyl, remove yourself from my store.”

“You’re making a mistake,” the man warned.

“Young mercenary, could I hire you?” the old woman asked. “If you would kindly remove this man from my store I would be more than happy to give you something else you desire. So long as it is within my humble means, of course.” I glanced at her, then at the man, who bared his teeth at me in anger.

“Deal,” I said, walking up to the man and charging my hand with electricity. One tap later, I slung his limp body over my shoulder. “Anywhere in particular you want him?” I asked.

“Just toss him outside, I’ll warm up a tub for you,” the old woman smiled, her expression hinting at something else beneath the surface that wasn’t quite intelligible. “Today is a special day, it seems.”