A Village to Nowhere
The world spun. It was the kind of spinning you only experience when everything changes instantly, like when you're a passenger in a car and you fall asleep without realising, waking somewhere drastically different. Top that sensation off with a hangover from a week-long bender and you will understand the kind of disorientation I was experiencing.
Congratulations, you have safely fast travelled to your destination.
A second ago, I'd been sitting in Varla's office accepting her offer to organise my trip, laughing at the fast travel mistranslation. Now, I was in the back of an empty wagon, stolen from the Skyrim intro, outside a log warehouse that was surrounded by a whole lot of small log houses that looked like they came from a pioneering film set. Woodsmoke and manure filled my every breath along with a fair amount of something sour, making the experience uniquely horrible.
I grabbed my forehead and turned, trying to gain my bearings and limit my nausea and migraine. I spotted six more wagons in front of the one I occupied. They were all positioned at the edge of a large turning bay in front of the warehouse. The drivers were seated against the far warehouse wall sharing lunch, chatting, and making jokes.
Opposite the warehouse, across the dirt road, were more of the little log houses. I heard metal being hammered beyond the dwellings and could see a line of black smoke above the rooves. There were more houses to my left and a palisade and gate to my right. I was in some sort of medieval village—and a small one, judging by the size of the palisade I could see above the buildings.
What the hell was going on?
The prompt flashed one more time then began to fade.
Congratulations, you have safely fast travelled to your destination.
I finally read the prompt.
Oops.
It may not have been a mistranslation.
I blinked and checked my surroundings a second time. I was still in some random village.
Oh, shit.
The cat from the office leapt up onto the back of the wagon and casually jumped onto my lap, purring. I tensed as he steadied himself, remembering its snide, condescending attitude. He gazed up at me with wide, friendly eyes, before lifting his leg to put his little paw on my chest. He raised himself up and gently rubbed his face against my cheek, sliding warm soft fur against my skin.
Was this a different cat? This one didn't seem like an asshole.
A whisper from a voice too deep for its size filled my ear.
"Do not reply and give me away. These fools believe I am a cat and we need it to stay that way. Collect your baggage and follow me out of the village. We need to talk in private before you open your foolish mouth and ruin anything further than you already have, you absolute imbecile."
Okay, same cat.
The cat stepped away and leapt off the back of the wagon. I gave myself a shake, which didn't help my nausea, and realised I wasn't wearing the robes Varla had given me. Instead, I wore a scratchy shirt and trousers that looked like they came from a Goodwill reject pile. I added the change of clothes to the long list of things confusing me as I climbed to my feet.
It took a bit more effort to stand than I was used to. The previous owner of my body really should have eaten more salads or gone for a run once in a while. I was about fifty pounds heavier than I had ever been. I picked up the leather backpack, since it was the only item in the wagon with me, and threw it over my shoulder before climbing down.
The cat waited in the middle of the gate twenty yards away. I started walking towards him, dazed by the situation. I hope he had some answers.
The young guard sitting in the tower to the side of the gate looked down as I approached and snorted. "Not even here for five minutes and you're leaving." He chuckled at his own joke. "I don't blame you, Arnold. It's a smart decision."
I focused on the guard in the tower the way Varla taught me to less than an hour ago. Words appeared above his head.
Guardsmen Brill
I read his class and name. While floating words had seemed kind of cool to start with, it was quickly losing its power to inspire wonder. What I was seeing was basically just a fancy name tag. I was used to wearing one at tournaments, having strangers knowing my name, so this was no different than that.
The guard didn't seem to care if I replied. I grunted a response and kept walking, trying to organise my feelings. I'd been in this world for less than three hours, and before I received the ring I hadn't been able to communicate with anyone. First I was angry and confused, and then I was excited and confused, now I was just confused. Confused was good. Confused kept me distracted. It stopped me from being overwhelmed by the reality of my situation.
Just beyond the gate were dozens of tiny log cabins, even less impressive than those inside the village. I could see thirty or so people working in vegetable fields, tending crops. Every one of them looked like they had seen better days. They wore clothes that were threadbare with signs of mending. Many of the youngest children didn't even have those. Instead, they ran around clothed in sacks stamped with some sort of company name in a language that didn't make sense.
It was all just a bit too much. I dropped my gaze, shutting out the world around me, and followed the cat out the gate in search of answers.
***
"Once again, it is left up to me to pull the poor human out of their ignorance," the cat said, deep voice rumbling as it finally broke its silence. It looked at me and then flicked its tail disdainfully.
We'd followed the outer wall around the village to the far side, where there were only a few dozen houses pressed up against the palisade and a flat grassy plain that stretched for miles before stopping at a forest. An old dirt road cut through the centre of it all, passing under the closed second gate in one direction and heading towards the distant forest in the other. The cat had scampered down it toward the forest without saying a word, taking us past burnt-out barns and houses until we were more than a mile from the village.
He hadn't answered any of my whispered questions or spoken until now, which was probably why my response wasn't the politest. "What the hell happened to me, cat? Wait, first of all, where am I?"
The cat glared at me. "I'm going to ignore the cat comment this time since you are clearly distressed, but do not test my patience. I am not your pet. I am not your cat. I am a familiar. And you are not my equal. Remember that."
"Ah, sorry, let me rephrase that. What the hell happened to me, familiar?"
The familiar's glare intensified. "You, oh ignorant one, decided to accept the archbishop's offer to fast travel. This is the village of Blackwood, more than ten weeks' travel from where we were."
I frowned. Ten weeks' travel. I did ten weeks' travel in the blink of an eye. Damn, that was kind of cool. My frown turned into a stupid grin.
"So we like, teleported here?"
In retrospect, I probably should have asked if the prompt was a mistranslation before accepting. But how the hell could I have known fast travel was real? It seemed too far-fetched to consider it anything more than a joke.
"We…like…did nothing of the sort. For the past ten weeks, I have had to sit next your vacant gaze as we travelled to the far edge of the kingdom."
"Huh, we travelled here?"
"Yes."
"I thought you said we fast travelled."
"I said you fast travelled."
The stupid grin fell away as quickly as it appeared. I blinked, trying to draw some form of logic from his statement that fit with my life experience. I didn't find any. Our puzzle pieces didn't match. "You're confusing me."
The familiar chuckled, dropping the hostility. "You need to become used to that feeling now if you wish to save yourself from added distress."
"Just tell me what happened."
"Fine, I'll explain," he said, rolling his eyes. "From your perspective, no time passed between the moment you accepted the archbishop's offer and the moment you arrived at your destination. She decided to give you an easier route, letting you ignore the discomforts of life—at the cost of it."
That sounded bad.
"What do you mean, 'at the cost of it'?"
The familiar started to roll its eyes, but then sighed instead. "It took you ten weeks to get here. Those are ten weeks you will never get back. In other words, you have utterly wasted ten weeks of your life. Ten weeks in which I could have been educating you. Now we are at the edge of nowhere, on the other side of the kingdom, and you are just as dangerously ignorant of how you will function here as you were when we departed."
I looked around, taking in the sad scattered details of abandoned farmhouses and barns, which were mostly burnt-out husks in the late stages of collapse. The fat herds of cattle and sheep roaming the plains were less sad, but even they were few and far between.
I turned my gaze further afield, looking to the dense wild forest that was so overgrown you couldn't see more than fifty feet into it. Beyond it to the north and south, past any sign of civilisation, lay a line of jagged hills slowly curving east. The hills went as far as I could see before disappearing over the horizon.
The view was not to my taste. I definitely didn't know how to function in this type of environment. This could be a problem. "Couldn't we have gone somewhere less depressing and rustic?"
The familiar nodded. "Certainly, and that was my plan, but like an utter fool you went and fell for the archbishop's manipulation."
I blame the high level of disorientation for my slowness because the scope of what he said finally hit me. "Wait, stop. Are you saying Varla intentionally made me lose ten weeks of my life?"