Chương 11: Lutraville

Bright orange sunlight struck Mark's eyes before he fully crossed the threshold. Pain drove them shut, and tears immediately began streaming down his face. Mark threw one hand over his face, and nearly blinded himself when an unretractable claw scraped the scales beside his left eye. Okay. I'd better remember the claws. The last thing I need is to blind myself.

"Kobolds," Wes said, "are notorious for not handling bright sunlight well. The pain should ease after a few minutes. Hopefully, anyway." Mark remembered a phrase from the status deity's message. The apprentice perk for vision lessened his sun sensitivity by five percent. As bad as this was, it was apparently five percent better than it would have been without the perk. No wonder kobolds were known for living underground.

Mark stood on the step and waited, tears running down his scaled face while townspeople walked past without giving him a second glance. He tugged the hood of his new cloak forward, but it only helped when he bowed his head far enough that he could see nothing but his feet. He settled for shielding his eyes with one carefully positioned hand. While he stood blind and streaming tears, Mark's tongue flickered instinctively to give him some knowledge of the world around him while his eyes were still adapting.

Unfortunately, his tongue's chemical report on the neighborhood contained nothing pleasant. He sensed horse manure which had likely been ground into the cobblestones over decades, woodsmoke from a dozen chimneys, unwashed bodies, and the sour edge of standing water that suggested the drainage situation was grossly inadequate. Gradually the agony from his eyes downgraded to painful but not unbearable. He lowered his hand and blinked at the street. Despite the pain, his vision was extraordinary.

He could read faded lettering on a shop sign over a block away, and track a sparrow on a rooftop that his old eyes would never have resolved at that distance. What held his full attention, though, was the way the orange sun gave everything the wrong tint while his UV-sensitive eyes layered the world with colors that should not exist. When he finally managed to look around, the street matched what his tongue had already told him. He was standing in something close to his mental image of a poor medieval neighborhood.

Buildings were packed close enough to be holding one another up out of obligation rather than any real structural integrity, and the cobblestones had been likely uneven for decades. It made sense that an underfunded apprentice would live here. Mark could only hope Lutraville also had better neighborhoods.

"Aside from the pain, my vision is perfect," Mark said.

"I told you before, kobolds are known for excellent eyesight."

"Thirty-five years of glasses and now my vision is perfect, except for the part where my retinas feel like they're on fire just because I went outside." Mark squinted against the light. The fire had banked down to something like very dry eyes, irritating but survivable.

"Has anyone ever made tinted glass that you could wear over your eyes to help block excess light?" Wes looked at him blankly.

"No? I've never heard of anything like that." Sunglasses apparently did not exist here. Mark knew nothing about glasswork and had no workshop, tools, or money for materials, but the underlying principle seemed simple enough. In a world containing entire species this sensitive to sunlight, surely someone could experiment with tinted lenses. Whoever succeeded might make a fortune. With Mark's knowledge, maybe he could create them first. The thought almost made him laugh.

He imagined being a kobold who became known as a great inventor just by systematically importing Earth technology into this world. Of course there was the problem that Wes owned him. Whatever Mark built the familiar bond likely meant that Wes would legally own the result. That assumed Lutraville even recognized something resembling patents, which seemed doubtful. Without legal protections, anyone might simply copy the design. Regardless, Mark wasn't ready to discard this idea.

Even if Wes received most of the profit, making his master wealthier might eventually benefit Mark. Money could purchase research looking into other worlds. It was an absurdly long path from tinted glass to Earth, but anything that might help get Mark there was worth pursuing. Yeah, I don't need to start imagining myself diving into barrels of gold coins just yet. Mark realized he was still standing in the doorway while Wes waited for him to decide whether his eyes had adjusted enough to walk.

Once the pain subsided enough, Mark looked into the daytime sky and was amazed to see two moons faintly visible. One looked remarkably similar to Earth's moon, as it was round, gray-white, and cratered. The other was larger and carried an odd greenish tint that gave it the appearance of a bruised eye watching the city from orbit.

"Beautiful morning," Wes said as he locked the door.

"It's beautiful, but so strange. The sun I remember was yellow, and we had one moon, not two. It looked like that gray one, although Earth's moon may have been a little larger." He pointed a claw at the green moon.

"We didn't have anything like that. Do you know why it glows green?" Wes chuckled.

"Why would I know that? It has always been green. Your world sounds boring. No magic, only one moon, no status pages. You said you were human and didn't even know what a kobold was. What else is in your world besides humans?"

"Animals," Mark said.

"Millions of different types of animals. Just no other truly sapient species like humans." Wes stared for a second, then laughed.

"That is not as funny as you seem to think it is," Mark said.

"I'm sorry." Wes was still smiling.

"It just sounds so empty." Wes seemed to believe the idea of a human-only world as further evidence that Mark's memories were artificial, as if no real reality would be stingy enough to produce only one sapient species. Mark could have pointed out that they were both working from a sample size of one reality, which made any claim about what a world ought to contain scientifically useless. Instead, he let the matter drop.

He had spent nearly every conversation with Wes angry, usually for good reason, but maintaining that anger was exhausting. One of them had to behave like the adult, and it apparently would not be the twenty-one-year-old wizard. Wes finally seemed to notice that Mark had adapted to the sunlight and so they started down the stone steps. Mark's tail tried to help him balance, which might have been helpful if it had consulted him first.

Instead, it nearly sent Mark stumbling into Wes, and he only prevented it by grabbing the railing.

"Sorry. I'm still getting used to the extra appendage. It may take me some time to relearn the physics of balancing with it." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"I'm sure it will become second nature eventually. Also, what does physics mean?" Mark opened his mouth, then closed it. Explaining physics for a world where magic seemed to treat science as optional felt like a conversation neither of them was ready for.

"I'll try to explain when we get down the stairs. I don't think I can explain it without falling again." The attempted explanation lasted three minutes before Wes got bored, because every example Mark offered as a basic law of nature turned out to have magical exceptions. Wes kept finding those exceptions without seeming to understand that predictable rules might still be useful in a world where most people could not use magic. The only useful part of the conversation was that Mark learned some vocabulary.

Specifically, the orange star was Solarius, the pale moon was Loon, and the green one was Verdesme. After a few minutes' walk, their small alley emerged onto a much larger cobblestone street. At the corner of the street a woman hauled water from a roadside well, one bucket at a time. Past her, a burly man cranked a pulley to lift goods to a second floor, the rope complaining the whole way up. Mark had expected a world of mystery and wonder, and he was given a slice of medieval life instead.

The rough tunic Wes had given him was better than much of the clothing he saw on the street. An old man swept outside a small wooden hut, his clothes more hole and grime than cloth, and nobody spared him a glance. The clothing reminded him of the peasants from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which made him feel guilty because these were not actors in costumes.

Since he was now a fantasy creature, Mark had expected to immediately see other fantastical species, but the streets around Wes's building were mostly human. When he asked, Wes explained that this was one of Lutraville's poorer working districts, populated mostly by humans who had neither magic nor money. The upper districts were far more diverse, with humans, elves, dwarves, and other citizen species living closer to the Academy, the guild offices, and the market area. Old money tended to cluster there.

Most upper-district shop owners came from families with long histories of both money and magic, which Wes explained made Morty's apothecary a genuine anomaly. Morty was a ratkin, a species most people placed at the very bottom of beastkin respectability, and a former familiar on top of that. Through sheer skill as a potion master he had built the second-largest apothecary in the city.

"Anyone who knows potions knows Morty is the best potion master in the city," Wes said.

"His shop would be the largest if so many customers didn't prefer buying from someone who wasn't ratkin." The lower quarter, which lay in the opposite direction past Wes's housing, was diverse in a very different way. Among the citizen species, it held many poorer beastkin and people driven out of insular communities, especially members of species stereotyped as violent, such as orcs and werewolves.

The humans who lived there tended to be poorly paid laborers, failed apprentices, rural immigrants, the unemployed, people unable to maintain steady work because of illness or injury, and criminals attracted by the crowded streets. Wes admitted he avoided going to the lower quarter. A wizard's robe and a bonded construct would make Wes stand out in exactly the wrong way. Mark watched the people in the working district haul, sweep, crank, carry, and mend. Everything, of course, was done by hand.

He began to understand the shape of the inequality. Anything truly complex in this world seemed to require magic, and people without magic were left with muscle and time, their tools centuries behind Earth's.

"None of them have magic?" Mark asked, gesturing with his clawed hands at the people.

"Most people do not have the capability for magic. Even among species that can learn magic, it's a rare ability," Wes said.

"Most people live ordinary lives. It's always been this way."

"But it doesn't have to be. In some places, people have advanced tools that don't require magic so anyone can use them. That woman has been making that trip to and from the well three times since we've been able to see her. Where I'm from, you turn a handle in your kitchen and clean water comes out of a pipe."

"Are you talking about your memories?"

"Yes." Mark could tell Wes was becoming annoyed at hearing about memories he believed were false. I'll try not to argue, but you'd better get used to these memories. I'm going to keep bringing them up to ensure I don't forget.

"Magic can do the same thing. There are fountain enchantments in the upper districts."

"How many non-magic-using people can afford them? In the world I remember, almost everyone could afford running water," Mark said. Wes had no answer to that. They passed a blacksmith, the first worker Mark had seen whose clothing and equipment suggested a degree of prosperity. Sparks flew from the metal as his hammer came down. Mark flinched, and his tail attempted to wrap protectively around his legs, which nearly toppled him before he grabbed Wes's arm for balance.

As Mark recovered his balance, movement across the street caught his widened peripheral vision. A brown-scaled kobold, smaller than Mark, was squeezing out through a gap between the boards covering a building marked with a red X. Nobody else seemed to notice the kobold, but the kobold definitely noticed Mark. When he saw Mark staring, he pressed one finger to his mouth and slipped back through the boards.

"Was that a kobold?" Mark asked Wes.

"I didn't see anything, but I wouldn't doubt it. Kobolds are fond of squatting in abandoned places. Some find work and rent crowded rooms in the lower quarter, usually with several other kobolds. Most who leave their warrens for the cities can't find steady work, so they end up squatting wherever they can. Don't talk about it too loudly though because if the blacksmith reports him, the city watch could come investigate. The watch raids places like that fairly often.

Officially, they clear the buildings and drive the squatters out of the city. In practice, non-citizens often get hurt, and the watch rarely faces consequences if one of them is killed while resisting." As the streets widened, Lutraville became a little nicer, and Mark began seeing other species. Aside from humans, the most numerous were dwarves, elves, and the beastkin, who looked like animals that had decided to walk upright and take up trades. One woman in particular caught Mark's eye.

She wore a short dress over a human torso, but from the waist down she had the body of a chestnut thoroughbred. She carried a stack of books and had mastered power-walking despite having twice as many legs to coordinate.

"Don't stare," Wes murmured.

"I'm not staring, I'm observing. There's a difference. Centaurs were famous mythological creatures in my memories, so actually seeing one is bizarre. I have so many questions about how their anatomy works. Is it okay if I go ask?"

"Do you want her to stomp you with her hooves? I'll get you an anatomy book for citizen and non-citizen species. Just don't embarrass me. Most species don't have the highest opinion of kobolds, and a kobold walking up to someone asking personal anatomy questions would be a very bad idea." Every species he passed seemed to have at least some positives. Elves all appeared youthful. Dwarves got legendary craftsmanship and excellent beards.

After seeing a dwarf woman with a beard, Mark had to remind himself that species-normal hair distribution was not considered an endocrine disorder. Centaurs got the ability to cave in a curious kobold's chest with one backward kick. Kobolds instead got light sensitivity, weak physical power, raw rats for food, and were treated like local pests. It was unfair. Every creature Mark had seen so far resembled either a real animal or something from Earth mythology.

Kobolds resembled reptiles, although he assumed they might also appear somewhere in mythology he had never encountered. The overlap was difficult to dismiss as coincidence. Even after the dimensional warren, some minuscule part of him still hoped this was a coma or hallucination, because everything so far had been fantastical in a specific Earth-like way. That hope lasted until he saw it.

It was roughly the size of a large dog, covered in overlapping plates like an armadillo's armor, with six legs arranged in pairs and a head that seemed to be mostly mouth. It was pulling a small cart loaded with cabbages. A beastkin rabbit woman walked beside it as though this were completely normal, which here it probably was. Beside the creature pulling her cart, the giant rabbit woman looked almost mundane.

"What is that?" Mark asked.

"A drulk," Wes said nonchalantly.

"What's a drulk?"

"A pack animal. They carry things for people like that one is doing. They are immensely strong for their size." The rabbit woman guiding it showed no fear at all. At one point she scratched the armored creature beneath its jaw, and the drulk leaned into her hand with enough enthusiasm to nearly pull the cabbage cart sideways. Mark watched it pass. Elves, dwarves, centaurs, and kobolds could all have been pulled from stories he remembered.

The drulk belonged to nothing he knew, yet it was entirely ordinary to everyone except him. For the first time since awakening, Mark saw something that did not feel borrowed from Earth. That proved nothing of course. Dreams could invent things, and an injured brain could produce experiences far stranger than a six-legged pack animal. Still, as the drulk trundled away with its cabbages, the coma theory felt less convincing than it had a minute earlier.