Decimate. To reduce by ten. Often used interchangeably with obliterate. However, it had a completely different connotation. Obliteration is when an army comes in and eliminates the enemy. Decimate is when an army comes in, around the flanks as if the king's army had known our positions, and we'd been betrayed. Then they line us all up and start reducing us by a tenth. The worst part about decimation was the counting.

  “1, 2, 3.”

  I had made it through the first round of decimation. Apparently, there were too many of us still, and they felt the need to reduce us again. By this point, the bodies were stacked up and piled near the beheading area, sending waves of disgustingly scented air into the ranks.

  “4, 5, 6.”

  It was going to be me this time. The man in front of me was nervously looking ahead, attempting to count the people, as though he was unsure if it was going to be him or myself.

  “7, 8, 9.”

  The man in front of me was moved forward, much to his clear and obvious relief. Then a hand grabbed me by the shoulder with a hissed 10, and I was pushed off to the side and grabbed by two others, who started forcing my way towards the pile of bodies.

  I wanted to see the enemy headman as a monster. Some cruel asshole who enjoyed his job, but the big man just looked sick to his stomach and tired. I had to remind myself that the king's men were simply men, and mostly it was the samurai who were the pieces of shit.

  I kept my posture straight, my head held high. “I demand the right of Harikari.” I said when they stopped me in front of the headman.

  “No,” came the automatic response of a bureaucrat, his nose in a clipboard. It must have been procedure, because only then did he look up, seemingly surprised that I had requested such. I had no right to Harikari. I was not a samurai. I never wished to be one. The bureaucrat looked at me, as though again reaffirming his no, then looked over to the headman. The headman's uniform said he would kill all the rebel scum. His face said, please, no more death today. The bureaucrat sighed.

  The bureaucrat looked me over and whistled for the two spearmen who had been busy hauling bodies into the piles. He then pulled his short sword and casually threw it on the ground, stepping back. No rights, just a blade. Hurry up and get it over with. I dropped to my knees and picked up the blade, nowhere near as reverently as someone who might actually have the right to Harikari. Then again, neither had the bureaucrat, judging by the way he so casually tossed it down. I had to remember that these people were just the king's peons. I, of all people, should know. I used to be one of them before defecting.

  I had to wonder how many of these people I could take out before they got me. Now that I had a blade in my hands again, I could go for the bureaucrat, then possibly the headman, and maybe take out the two spearmen. But at what point? The king had won. Likely, we had been betrayed, surrounded, and now decimated twice. We lost. I was still certain that we were on the right side, but we certainly weren't on the winning side. I looked around the bloodied field, the piles of bodies, the lines of soldiers, the clear blue sky with its lazily floating fluffy clouds. It was far too beautiful of a day to die. My god, I'm tired.

  I pressed the cold, sharp metal to my throat, and in a quick... Pull and jerk. I was able to take one last thing away from the damnable king, and go out on my own terms. It was far more painful than I would have thought. The slicing of steel through flesh. Fear, not being able to breathe. Bored with dissatisfaction. But it was my own hand instead of the enemy. The blue sky seemed to dim. I stumbled forward, fell forward, face hitting the damp grass. Far too beautiful of a day to die. I closed my eyes. Then I opened my eyes and took a deep breath, which was very strange considering I was supposed to be dead.

  ***

  I took a few long breaths and focused on the pain, or lack thereof. Not only was the pain in my throat gone, but soon too was the muscle and joint pain I'd developed over who knows how long. Everything felt so much better that it was weird.

  I pressed a hand against the earth and pushed myself up to a kneeling position. The grass below me had changed. No longer was it wheat trampled by a thousand men and horses, but it was short green grass, though it had been grazed by some ruminant. The sky was still blue, though perhaps a touch lighter in shade, but the clouds no longer had that fluffy quality, instead strung out in thin wisps. The valley I was sitting in was surrounded by mountains, all of which had not existed previously. Gone, too, were the soldiers, the piles of bodies, and every horrible thing that I had become so accustomed to. I had to be dead. This must be the afterlife of some sort.

  I blinked my eyes rapidly, trying to get rid of the odd flashing in the corner of my vision. No matter how many times I've turned my head, it seemed to follow along with the direction I was looking. Freezing in place and trying to catch sight of whatever it was, by looking out the corner of the eye, I found a glowing, pulsing yellow with a black symbol inside of a vertical black bar with a dot underneath.

  With my attention placed upon it, it blinked louder and larger, then flashed into a large blue box that popped up, obscuring most of my vision, like a semi-transparent blue-stained glass. A panel of semi-transparent blue-stained glass, complete with writing. The expansion startled me, and I jumped, wildly looking around, trying to look for danger behind the panel. I calmed down when I realized I could see through it. It took a moment to check my surroundings before reading. Welcome, new entity, to the...

  Welcome new entity. This is the new entity tutorial. All entities in this world have a character sheet. You may access your character sheet by willing its existence to pop up. Do so now. I stared at the text, less because of what it was saying and more because it wasn't Loey Pan and I was capable of reading it.

  Welcome, new entity. So I had died, and this really was the afterlife. Interesting. And apparently I could read a language I wasn't familiar with. I re-read the message, then focused on the thought of a character sheet. Unsure what that was supposed to mean.

  The panel disappeared, only to be replaced with a new one, full of more text. Name, Junko. Race, Itaean human. The rest of the words were cut off as another panel popped up in front of it, obscuring the previous one with new text. You can dismiss your character sheet by simply willing it to go away. Do so now. I was actively trying to see the panel behind this new one, but was having no luck. I dismissed this character sheet thing, and both panels disappeared, only to be replaced again with another panel. This concludes the new tutorial entity. You may dismiss this panel now. I did so, and was left once again with my normal vision.

  How odd. Weird pals aside, this version of the afterlife had a whole lot less joint pain and fatigue at the moment, so I wasn't going to complain yet.

  ***

  There was sound behind me. Footsteps. Multiple people. I looked around. I had no weapon. The sword was gone. And I had been stripped of my weapons and armor. Prior to standing in the line for decimation. With a deep lungful of air, I got myself to my feet and turned. Facing the oncoming threat.

  Hey, said a male voice, before I completely turned around. What I found was two men and a woman. The older man was carrying a spear, leveled vaguely in my direction, though not in a particularly threatening manner. All three of them were carrying baskets of vegetables. Behind them was something I had completely missed as far as sound went. An entire walled-off village. The walls weren't particularly high, but there was a large number of people crowding around the gate as they slowly filtered in. It would seem that most of the area around here was farmland, and I just happened to land into a particular patch of pasture.

  What are you doing out here, Chino? asked the man. Chino. That was an interesting name. Did he think it was someone else? I am called Junko. I said, trying to clear up that I was not whoever he thought I was, oddly enough, I was not speaking in Cajun. That little fact seemed extremely odd. When exactly did I pick up a language I had never heard before?

  "Yeah, whatever. Stay out here when it gets dark and you'll be called dead. Let's go," said the man, shooting a nervous look towards the shadows creeping across the valley.

  It would already seem that my afterlife would not be a peaceful one. So much for luck. I took a few steps forward, my boots crunching to the soft grass. This seemed to catch the spear-wielder's attention, so the two others stepped back. He looked me over, up and down, evaluating whether or not I was a threat. I'd already done the same. If I could get close enough, I could take him. However, he then turned, and all three of them started making their way towards the village.

  Are you new? asked the girl in a soft voice. She probably hadn't hit 20 yet, though she was clearly a young woman as opposed to girl. Though at my age and, I suppose, experience level, everyone seemed like a child to me.

  Yes, I told the girl, because, honestly, I'd never been here. Her eyes seemed to get wide. Her eyes grew extra wide as she took an inward breath, and then said in a quieter voice, Did the goddess send you to save us? I frowned. The older man yelled, None of that shit. And we resumed walking in silence. Goddess. Oh, crap. This was definitely not going to be a piece from the afterlife.

  We fell into line with the crowd trying to get through the gates. I got a lot of looks from a lot of people who were definitely not Italians, but nobody really said anything. The gate guards weren't even focused on the people entering. Instead, their eyes scanned the horizon, nervously glancing towards the ever-darkening patch to the west, where the shadow of the mountain was creeping across the plains and just starting to make it to the field.

  The walls were unimpressive. Eight to ten feet tall, two feet thick, and comprised of sticks, straw, and mud. Functional, yes. But not particularly militarily viable. What was truly odd was the amount of firewood on the other side. Logs stacked just as high as the wall and placed into bunkers, presumably to prevent fire from spreading if any section went up. From what I could see, it went to the entire circumference of the wall.

  "You two go home," said the man with the spear, handing his basket off to the boy. "Chino, you follow me," he said, marching his way further into the village as the other two split off. I had no idea if I should be disappearing or following. I followed anyway because... what else was there?

  The buildings were certainly nothing special. Wood at best, mostly mud and straw, with only a few larger stone buildings scattered around the place looking like warehouses.

  The spearman wasn't a particularly friendly sort. But honestly, if he had been friendly, it would have tripped my senses and made me worried. He led me deeper into the village until we got to a squat stone building that didn't look like a warehouse. Walking in, he looked at a woman at a desk and simply stated, "I found this Chino in the field. She's new." The woman looked at me, did the whole up-and-down scan thing, stared at my face for far too long before getting up and moving to a back door. That wasn't long before I was pushed into another room, my guide having disappeared. Another came in, standing off to the side while a man at a desk finished paperwork.

  The office was rather small. The shelves were filled with scrolls and ledgers. The only opulence would be the window, which in itself, while it did have a pane of glass, wasn't of particularly high quality, nor very big. And the single magical light, casting a pale glow over the bureaucrat's paperwork. The other guy stood off to the side. He looked a bit older, but was clearly subordinate here. He kept eyeballing me, as though he wanted to ask me questions.

  I no longer stood at attention for anyone. Firstly, this man was not my superior officer. Secondly... those days were far behind me. I had stopped standing at attention when I became a traitor. Still, my general-at-ease stance must have made him nervous because he kept glancing up at me while trying to finish whatever paperwork he was doing. After some long, tense moments, he finally finished his last statement, set his pen down, and sat back, fully looking me over, up and down. With a loud sigh and a groan, he said, "Great, one more fucking mouth to feed. You are a foreigner, yes?"

  "Yes," I said. Foreigner seemed like an apt description. I'd never been here, and I looked nothing like this. And beyond being human, I looked nothing like these people. He nodded, looked at the guy next to us, and said, "Take her to Ian. Take the Chino to Ian at Ian." The other guy looked puzzled. "Ian? Shouldn't I take her to the church? The goddess clearly sent her to save us." The bureaucrat scoffed. I practically did as well. "Do you think the goddess would send us a woman?" Okay, now I was slightly offended. I wonder if he'd say that in front of me if he knew exactly how many men I'd killed.

  Perhaps I would get lucky in this Ian with a tan like myself. "Okay, but... Ian, sir?" The bureaucrat practically rolled his eyes. "Do you honestly think the Church is better at explaining to this foreigner her predicament... than the other foreigner?" Perhaps this Ian was another Itayan like herself, but at least it would be nice. The other man bobbed his head, "Right, so I'll take her to Ian." "Good, and if he's still wasting the resources on that damn wall of his, make sure he knows I'm going to have him arrested." The man gave the bureaucrat a nod, and then motioned for me to follow.

  Char 2

  This, she knows, new. The Magistrate's much as usual. Fill her in on whatever she needs to know before I take her to the church. The man, standing upon a two-foot wall he was building in between two houses, looks down on them, eyeing both myself and my escort. He was definitely not detained. In fact, physically he wasn't any different from the other locals.

  He also wants me to tell you to stop wasting materials on this wall, or he's going to have you arrested. Tell the Magister to go fuck himself. With that statement, I decided I kind of liked this guy.

  My escort crossed his arms and glared. This really is a waste of time and resources. It wasn't that much of a waste. The wall was rammed earth. There was still... there were just a few posts and ropes, a couple of planks, and all the dirt. So it couldn't be that much of a waste of resources. It was, however, a terrible place to put a wall. Presumably, he was going to make it as high as the building it was sandwiched in between, making the building the weak point.

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  "You may go now. I need to escort her to the church for a bit."

  "I know where the church is. I'll take her myself."

  Ian made a shooing motion, and my escort glared at him while we were walking up. The man on the wall stood watching him leave, hands on top of each other, resting on the handle of the tampering device. The tamper he was using attacked the ground or the wall.

  His eyes then moved to me and gave me that same up-and-down appraisal everyone else has, though he seemed to focus more on my clothing. My two inoculated pants were warmed with stains, and I doubted he could tell the difference between the sweat stains and the blood stains, considering that the setting sun had stretched the mountain's shadow over the village and left us with some sort of elongated twilight.

  "My name is Ian Wilson. Please, just call me Ian," he said, leaning the tamper against the wall of the building and stepping down from his in-progress wall.

  "I am called Junko."

  His eyes widened slightly, his lips twisting into some semblance of hope—being the closest I could imagine. "Anata ga Nihonjin desu ka?" he asked, the sound of the words being vaguely similar to the tan, but the sentence itself was gibberish to me. He must have seen the lack of understanding on my face—my shoulders fell—and he shrugged. "Well, it was a shock. Is there a family name for that?"

  ****

  I

  I gave up my family name a few years ago. Ian merely nodded and bent over to pick up a big pot. He promptly stopped and took a drink, handing it out to me. I shook my head and watched as he put it back. I wasn't thirsty, which was odd because I remembered being thirsty before I had died.

  "Okay, first of all, are you okay?"

  "Yes. I am fine," I said, because obviously I was fine. Better than I had been in a while. All the aches and pains were gone as though my body had been reborn.

  "Oh, I'm sure you're physically fine. But in order to get here, you have to die. I mean, emotionally, are you okay?"

  I stared at the man in front of me. Everybody so far had been rather gruff and terse. Even the girl who asked if I was here to save them seemed more hopeful of what I was going to do for them than concerned about me. This one actually had some type of sincerity in it, and I gave it due consideration.

  The short answer was yes. This had less to do with my adaptability, and more to do with the fact that the path I had chosen had led me to accept that I was either going to die or become a slave. My chosen course had let me even say goodbye to my family before I embarked upon it. So, death was not exactly a surprise. It was, in some sense, even welcome. This afterlife—particularly this afterlife that didn't look like it was going to be particularly easy—was a bit of a shock. It seemed to be existence laughing at my expectation that death would be some sort of rest. I nodded, more to myself than to Ian, and said, "Yes, I am fine."

  He stared at me for a moment as if trying to decide whether or not I was lying. He then shrugged. "Okay, let's see here. You need exposition... where to start? And how to be succinct with it."

  I guess I'll start with a few questions of my own. People here are going to call you Chino. Do you know what that means? No, I said, shaking my head. Watching as he gave a nod. What about Asian, Chinese, or Han? I have never heard of these. Okay, did your world have magic? Yes. Okay, was everybody human? No, I answered. I watched the mildly surprised look on his face.

  The questions themselves were telling. They told me that not all worlds had magic, and some were composed entirely of humans. Ian scratched his short beard and continued, "All right, tech level, did you have gunpowder?"

  "Yes," I answered.

  "Did you have guns?"

  I had to pause. I didn't know what a gun was, but the word was used in the word gunpowder, much in the same way that the Italian word plant was in the word for field. "I am unsure." He nodded.

  "Did you have the ability to fire projectiles using gunpowder?"

  "Yes."

  "How long did it take to reload?" he asked.

  "It's a complicated process." He nodded again.

  "How many days are in your year?"

  "330."

  He squinted at me for a moment, but tilted his head to the side as if it was close enough.

  "What did you use for lighting?"

  "Fire and magic. To be fair, I mostly used fire because magic was expensive."

  "Are you used to winter? Snow and ice and shit?"

  "Yes."

  "How long does winter last in days?"

  I had to think about that for a moment. Three to five months would have been 90 to 150 days, give or take. "It depends per year." He nodded.

  "Good, that increases your chance of survival."

  I felt my lips pull into a frown. "Why?"

  He held up a finger. "I'm getting there."

  "I do not like that." It sounded ominous.

  "Are your mountaintops colder than your valleys?"

  That was an odd question. "Yes."

  "Do your stars change between summer and winter?"

  "Yes," I said again with a nod.

  He seemed to think for a moment and then nodded to himself. He was about to open his mouth and speak again, but he paused to look at me—mostly starting at my feet and working his way up as though he was checking my posture.

  "Are you a soldier?" he asked, this one sounding more like a question of curiosity.

  "I am."

  He looked me in the eyes, nodded once, and said, "Good."

  That, too, was ominous. He seemed to consider his next words for a moment... before saying, "Let's start with Chino."

  "I'm pretty sure that comes from my world, and I'm also fairly certain it was supposed to be derogatory. Here, it just references your physical features, particularly your eyes." He said, tapping a spot next to his left eye and taking a deep breath. "There's no negative connotations, so don't take offense to it.

  "The Imperium is likely to call you Han. If anyone calls you Asian, or asks if you're Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, you can generally assume that they are foreigners. Here, a foreigner is somebody who died and popped up randomly. We're kind of rare. I suspect that's less to do with how often we show up, and more to do with whether or not we survive our first winter."

  There was, again, another reference to winter being terrible.

  "Winter?" I asked, hoping he was going to answer this time.

  He held up a finger again. "I'm getting there.”

  Okay, now that that's out of the way, welcome to Sill. Sill is a fucked-up place with fucked-up physics, and it fucking sucks. Not everybody calls it Sill, but everybody here—Ian pointed at the ground, in the village of Trent—calls it Sill.

  Anyway, the part you really need to know is that winter is two years long. He let the statement hang in the air.

  Like a spear to the gut. Well, fuck me. I hadn't said the words out loud, but he must have read it in my expression, because he nodded solemnly and said, "Yeah. A little mini-apocalypse every four years. On the positive side, summer is also two years long. Spring and fall are a year long each. Technically a year on Sill is about eight years. I suppose that's closer to nine if you're counting on your scale, but I think most cultures here are from my planet.”

  ***

  The plants and animals seem to be adapted to this little mini-apocalypse, and they breed like crazy. That includes the fucking monsters. There's a bunch of wards around the village to keep the monsters out, but sometimes they just don't work.

  Ian paused and scratched his beard. "What else do you need to not die," he mumbled. "Climate or something, I guess. Okay, so we're in the southeast of the continent. Sill has one continent. There's a frickin' hole in the middle. It's surrounded by the Imperium. There's levels or something. Nobody goes there from the back. Blah blah, not important. One continent surrounded by water. There's a few islands out there. The sun is going to come up in the east, slightly northeast of us, make its way across the sky, and go set in the... slightly northwest."

  Everything moves from east to west until you get closer to the south and north, and then they just kind of spin in circles. It's fucked up. The stars don't change. The positions of the moons—there are three of them—do not change. They just go up in the east, down in the west. Basically, just think of them as pictures. You can't look at the stars and tell what time of year it is. Just fuck that shit. It's useless.

  Also, it's going to be warmer in the morning than it is at night. That's because we're on a fucking flat plane, and the sun is closer to the east side in the morning and farther on the west. Also, because of that fucking bullshit, valleys are going to be colder and mountain peaks are going to be warmer. So everything you think you know about how planets work in general—just throw out the fucking window.

  Ian glared at me. "Is that it?" Like I had any idea whether or not he was done with his... bitter... spiel... on this new world. Winter. Monsters. Backwards fucking climate. Flat Earth bullshit. He mumbled. "I feel like I'm forgetting something important," he said, reaching for his water jug and taking a drink.

  I guess it was my turn to actually ask questions. The big one being why people thought I was here to save them. That itself had its own ominous feeling, in the same way that the piles of wood stacked against the inner wall hinted at the horrible winter situation. I thought of how I wanted to word it, and opened my mouth, when Ian snapped his fingers and said, "Fuck. Character sheet."

  "Open up your character sheet. The first three lines should be something like Junko, human, level 0, correct?"

  I considered asking my question instead of listening. However, I had no idea what the character sheet was or why it was important. And since he was going to explain it, I figured I might as well let him. I did as instructed, opening the character sheet and agreeing that it was indeed what it said, though it was Itaean human instead of human. I figured it was close enough.

  I nodded, and he continued. "Below that are your attributes. This is just you quantified into numbers. If you want to get stronger, you go lift heavy shit. It works like normal. There are things that can modify those numbers—spells and enchantments and shit. I've never seen any, but I haven't gone looking either. Do you have any modifiers?"

  I looked down the list of attributes, but saw nothing that said that my base attributes increased or decreased. "No," I said.

  "Great. Below that's a little white box that says goal."

  I looked at it, and I had a secondary popup. Would you like to add a goal now? Yes? No.

  "Whatever you do, do not add a fucking goal."

  I mentally told the box no, and it disappeared.

  "It is empty, correct?" Ian asked.

  I nodded. "That is correct."

  "Good."

  "You're going to want to add a goal soon, but if you put in the wrong goal, you're kind of fucked. You can reset your goal, but it costs a level worth of experience. Going from 0 to 1 is 1 XP, so if you're level 1 and reset, it's not so bad. However, going from negative 1 to 0 is something like 100 XP. Which is honestly just kind of fucking bullshit. They don't tell you this crap, and there's probably half a dozen kids wandering around with an XP deficit."

  "XP," I asked—"experience points?"

  "Shit you get for doing stuff you would do anyway, provided you put your goal right. The only thing it does is increase your level. The only thing level increases do is give you a class every five levels. Classes are based on your choices and shit you've done. So whatever you want to be when you grow up, try to do that.

  "The other thing you get every level is a freaking perk. Perks are fucking awesome. They're kind of the only thing that's really different in this world, as far as, you know, your own personal existence. General advice—which nobody gave me—was to save your perks until you get your first actual class. That said, a perk point into Endure Elements and Reduce Pain is something I'd highly suggest."

  "You want your goal to be broad enough that most of the things you do give you XP, but narrow enough that you get more XP for doing shit actually directed towards your goal. I set my goal as fucking building shit, which is great, because I get XP for doing practically everything—but it's such a minute amount, because building shit means literally everything, and I mostly focus on actual building.

  "I've only recently discovered this issue, so don't make my mistake. I'm also level 7, so going back a level would fucking suck."

  "Anyway, point is, figure out what you want to do and then set your goal. I'll help you with any perk point distribution bullshit later, if you're interested. And I think with that—" he paused a moment as though concentrating. "I think that's pretty much it. Questions?"

  I closed the panel blocking my vision and considered the situation, my eyes examining the bitter man. Now it was my turn to decide what information was important.

  Chap 3

  Ian took another drink of his water and looked at the ever-darkening sky. I suppose I better get you to Castelia, he said, a certain amount of weariness creeping into his voice, though he wasn't interested in doing the walk.

  "Why put a wall here?" I asked. It wasn't the question I had originally intended, but as we were going to be moving off, it seemed like the one that was most relevant at this time, and the two were likely related.

  "Well, I suppose that's mostly because I'm only one person, and while I do have a couple people to pull dirt for me, I just don't have enough time to build a larger wall."

  "There isn't a better, more defensible place to build a wall?"

  "Sure there is," Ian said, holding up his hands to tick off his points on his fingers. "But I'm not allowed to build there, it's too big for me to build, and it doesn't protect the things I care about."

  I had a feeling that last one... was more important.

  "What's wrong with the existing wall?" I asked as we started walking.

  He shrugged. "Not enough men to defend it."

  All in all, this meant there was something that needed to be defended against, and that they were expecting something—and that he wasn't fucking telling me.

  I held in a sigh while catching a glimpse of a very small, pale, reddish moon coming up over the eastern hills. Maybe this was a test. It certainly was trying my patience. I was done asking questions.

  "Give me the part I'm missing. Make it brief."

  Ian side-eyed me for a moment and shrugged. "Goblins. Because it's always fucking goblins. It's a fucking trope. And for good reason, I guess. Every summer, the goblins start moving. They attack some of the smaller villages and are usually repelled. If they're not, the king sends down some soldiers to wipe it out before it becomes a problem.

  "However, this summer, our local Imperium puppet got into a massive altercation with a neighboring Imperium puppet. And he's been overzealous with conscription. The goblins took a smaller village, killed everyone, moved in, used the walls for defense, and the granaries to increase their breeding. Now the larger horde has moved on to a larger village and done the same. And then again.

  "We are next. The scouts are already here. They're watching us, likely, right now. It's only a matter of when the horde shows up. And of course, our king can't send any soldiers, because he might lose whatever freaking argument he has with whatever other noble bullshit crap.

  "And so, you see, we don't have enough people to defend the walls. And we have a freaking council who won't put walls in a better spot."

  I let out a long, tired sigh as I put all the pieces together. "And they're waiting for a savior," I said, trying—and failing—to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

  I could practically feel Ian roll his eyes. "Yes, well I just asked their fucking goddess what to do. And apparently she replied that a foreigner would appear to guide them through this situation. There's not exactly much guidance needed—build a fucking wall and train up with some spears and shields and shit so you can defend against the horde.

  "Somehow they took it as ‘a savior will come and do all the work for them,’ or some bullshit like that. Well guess what, I'm from a foreign land. I told them what they had to do, and they won't fucking listen."

  "So they are expecting me to be their savior." Nice, then.

  We moved past the houses into a small square. It looked like it might be a small market.

  "Ha!" Ian half-laughed. "Sure, except the only advice you can give—unless you're hiding some overpowered ability in your character sheet you didn't think to mention—is the same suggestions I have. And no one's gonna listen to you, ‘cause you're female, and the patriarchy is strong here."

  "Well, fuck me."

  "Cuso a co," Ian repeated, his tone questioning as if he was asking if he had pronounced it correctly.

  I hadn't realized that had been audible. I also hadn't realized it had been my native tongue. Having a separate language in your head that wasn't there before certainly was an oddity.

  ***

  I didn't answer his implied question. He gave me a side-eye for a short time before letting out a long breath.

  "Anyway, I think tomorrow you should probably locate Captain Asher. He's head of the guard, and has access to the weapons and armor… that you're probably going to want to have when everything goes to hell."

  We walked up a short set of steps that could have presumably been a church. It actually had a stone face, unlike most buildings, though the larger structure was made of wood. This one included stained glass windows, which were much rather attractive, with the light coming out from behind the side. The blues, greens, and yellows of the glass depicted a field of amber wheat set among the verdant hills. Everything about it said, Harvest God.

  Ian walked through the doors in casual disregard to the sanctity of the building, as if it was his own home. His blatant distaste for everyone and everything felt out of place—as if he expected the world to listen, and wasn't surprised when it listened to him… and wasn't surprised when it didn't.

  The church had a few pews, a raised dais at the back, and then some extra rooms. It really wasn't that large inside… and was everything I would have expected.

  He called out for a woman's name—Cecilia. Then out came a person from a back room. There was some quick introduction, and then Ian gave a little irreverent wave to me and headed off, leaving me with the oldest priestess. I quickly learned to hate Cecilia.