Lucrece opened her eyes and saw the spectre right above her. Just like they had told her: white shimmer of hair, black robes, smiling at her. It came to shut her up. It came to divest her of her magic, as it happened to so many sisters back in her native city.

With a roar, Lucrece lunged up, screaming in righteous rage, “No!”

With thuds of heavy cargo being dropped onto the docks, tables crashed, weighty thumps of clothed sacks following it. She sprang up to her feet, blinking around.

People, they were people around her, not spectres. Only now did Lucrece see that, but her mind was reeling with the overwhelm of a newfound kind.

She felt it. It was not bouncy, as in the steppes of Moitow and Hedder. It was not squishy or liquid, barely graspable, as in the Ravenant or Janerian cities. It was also not the feeling of wood that you have to splinter yourself with, as it had been back home.

Soft, pliant and porous, it held her in its cradle, swaying beneath and all around her, offering like a mother, trustworthy like an ardent lover, needy and happy like a sweet two-year-old.

The magical field of Adenf.

“Whoah,” she said, over the clamor of argument that was happening around - apparently, in her name.

The innkeeper was explaining something to the couple of guards. Both red-haired and tall, a woman and a man, they weren't fully dressed in armor, wearing just light long-sleeved chain mail, wide metal rings with runes on their heads binding the hair. They had swords drawn, of course.

Someone came up behind her and said in Western Elven, “Sorry for that.” Lucrece turned, confused. She thought that the one who needed to apologize was her.

“No, I mean, whoa,” the witch had to take a deep breath, still not having fully digested the whole ordeal, “I am sorry - I think I got scared and knocked stuff away?”

“Exactly,” said this someone, and Lucrece finally took in who that was. All braided up, it was a young woman, wearing a black leather corset with a gazillion slots for tiny glass vials, a really short skirt in layered ruffles, and, as Lucrece noticed, no shoes.

The witch remembered her manners then.

“I’m Lucrece, of the House of Quandorlin, nice to meet you,” she bowed.

As it went, the girl introduced herself with something that sounded like “Horthlen”, which seemed embarrassingly like “beetroot” in Lucrece’s native language, so the witch initially did not pick up whatever the woman was, profession-wise.

Minding her fresh mistake, Lucrece forced herself to apologize and ask to repeat. The woman smiled and spelled her name out for her, “Ho-a-r-th and then you just add Len to it. I think it means fireplace in Enkian, or something, Mom told me. So it’s Hoarthlen, Strike of the Jade’s surname. Ok, I think the guards want to talk to you now.” And Hoarthlen gestured at Lucrece, and Lucrece immediately remembered the introduction: a bard and a priestess. That smile could easily be characterized by both occupations. Vibrant, welcoming, just a wee bit spicy and cunning, like she would laugh at you but still take good care of you.

“Miss, may I see your signet, please?” the guard said, outstretching a hand toward her - there was some kind of trinket in it.

“I-ehm- I,” Lucrece mumbled, and made an attempt to look for it, but there was nothing to look for, actually. She did not yet have the signet issued. “I’m sorry, I only have a - this,” she produced the scroll of permit. It was a relatively small roll of paper that was bound with a wax seal. She did not open it. She was not sure if she was supposed to.

The guard took it, showing it to her partner, and the partner tried to apply their device to the wax seal. They began talking in Adenfian then, and Lucrece struggled to breathe properly.

“They say, they don’t remember if they should open it,” the bard-priestess leaned on Lucrece’s shoulders from behind. Somehow, it was not an unwelcome touch. Lucrece was divested of her private boundaries long enough to mind strangers touching her, and she totally could get behind a friendly hug from a casual translator.

“Now they argue if you are culpable for the destruction indeed, because you’re a tourist.”

Lucrece was NOT a tourist. She dared to interrupt the guards in their confusion. It was not the touristic destination village, after all.

“Sorry, sorry, that was definitely me, how can I help to remedy it, have I hurt anyone?”

The guards shut up and looked at her, and then gestured around. “Fix that, and three days of helping the inn, miss. Here’s your checklist.”

And they handed her a paper which had three sections. The frowning innkeeper came up to her then.

“Girl, you did a number on me here,” she said to Lucrece. She was no longer a welcoming self from the morning; she was not happy with Lucrece at all. Totally understandable.

“I am so, so sorry, madam. Let me fix it.”

“Not only will you fix that, girl,” the innkeeper said, “Give me that paper,” she took the checklist the guards gave to Lucrece, “This says, 'Signed by the offended’, meaning me. This says, ‘Works assigned’, meaning I tell you what to do. And this says, ‘Name of the offender’. Understood?”

Lucrece nodded and took out the magical quill she had strapped on her belt - to sign her name in, but the innkeeper stopped her, “No, you brute, it is not - gimme that,” she took Lucrece’s permit, which she was holding in the other hand, and touched the wax seal to the paper - Lucrece was trying to understand if there was a special place on the paper designated for this touch, or you could just slap it on and it would understand somehow where to fill in. The paper self-filled then.

“Hey!” The innkeeper shouted after the guards, proceeding in Adenfian, but they had already been gone.

“What? Is something wrong?” Lucrece asked. The paper of assault compensation was looking fine to her: her name where it should be, as an offender, the innkeeper’s name in the line of the offended, and the works were filled in too. The works line said, “Cooking duty, room service duty, delivery duty”. Was there something wrong with that?

And the innkeeper then took Lucrece’s quill and scratched the lines of duties, muttering in Western Elven, “Don’t need you meddling in the kitchen and supply area, girl, you’re only safe in cleaning up,” and she wrote instead “Clean-up after hours, room change clean up.”

The paper glowed and erased her changes then. The innkeeper roared in frustration, shoved the quill into its slot on Lucrece’s belt, and poked Lucrece under the collarbone, saying, “I come back and the dining hall is restored to the state it was when you first saw it! Clear?”

Lucrece nodded eagerly. She still felt elated from discovering the magical field. She wouldn’t dare to use it now, though. She felt like a newborn calf, so unsteady and fragile, she decided to practice at home before using it around people.

She did not dare to flip out the fairy in front of everyone, either. Goddess knows, she had done that one before, and it had not been met with understanding everywhere.

So she simply began to do whatever she knew ought to be done in this situation.

Picked up the tables, the chairs. Found the broom. It was magical, so it kind of ripped itself out from her hands immediately after Lucrece made a couple of sweeps and went on to do the cleaning on its own. The witch was struck dumbfounded, looking at it.

The bard-priestess observed her for a couple of moments and then began to help out. The workers who had been trying to eat before Lucrece’s faint-out were judgmentally eyeing them, but then gathered their stuff and left. Well, lunch break only lasts so long.

They, however, did not pay. At least Lucrece did not see any coins being left or passed around.

Rude.

But that was her fault.

“What is the 'well'?” Lucrece asked Hoarthlen when they turned yet another heavy wooden table to its upright position.

“It’s a signature potion of Mayala’s family. Strange you didn’t hear of it. Mayala said it had been a subject of international trade for five years now. At least, the Galls’ Trade Council had approved it for overseas shipping, and I remember a huge celebration over this cause.”

The priest-bard stood, pondering out loud, while Lucrece was wiping the soup from the floor. The magical broom successfully spread the muck of it all over the place now.

“Sorry, how do we stop… this?” Lucrece came up to the broom, and it was not allowing her to catch itself.

“I don’t know, must be some call-back trigger, try saying…” and Hoarthlen said a couple of Adenfian words. Lucrece repeated them, trying her best to sound as Adenfian as possible, but Hoarthlen laughed and said, “No, sorry, it’s two different phrases, I was just suggesting…”

Finally, the clean-up was nearing its completion. A whole wall of clay dishes got wasted, though. Lucrece was very sorry and embarrassed. When the innkeeper burst back in, Lucrece came up to her, saying, “Can I pay for the damage?” And she produced the gold coin, which, she figured, must be at least worth something in Adenf as everywhere else.

The innkeeper laughed at that and clapped her on the shoulder. “Girl! Get your wovenbook, dear. Whatever I’m going to do with your gold? Ahaha, you silly!”

Lucrece got a whole-body flush then. Wovenbook? What’s a wovenbook?

“Can I buy you the dishes then? And pay for the workers that left without paying?” She asked overcoming the heat that threatened to kill her.

“Workers? Oh, mages that came here to eat? They’ve paid. Sad they didn’t get the actual lunch, I’d have to feed them with a discount next time, I guess.”

“Did they pay beforehand?” Lucrece went after the innkeeper like a duckling imprinting.

“No! This!” The innkeeper shook a leathery rectangle that unfolded into a book of sorts, with differently colored pages, “Is an enchanted wovenbook with all the transactions of yours! To put the coin on one, you should go to Erilnern.”

“They actually opened a Treasury counter in Cindenward, like, two years ago,” the priest-bard remarked, sitting down at the bar.

“Alright, Lucy, prior to fainting, you wanted the Well. Was it your first time trying it then?”

The innkeeper once again started the kitchen works, as Lucrece’s push back outed this too.

“Yes. In fact, I wanted to know where I could get the water. Drink. I wanted to drink water.”

Both of the local women looked at her, frowns of not catching up identical on their faces.

Lucrece suspected that Adenfians might differ physiologically from other subspecies of humans, but wasn’t the not-needing-water feature a bit… deal-breaking to the pre-requisite of “human”?

“Don’t you have-” started the innkeeper.

“Haven’t you got-” doubled her the bard-priestess.

“What?” Lucrece said, growing alert and scared.

Hoarthlen took her wrist to inspect it, and then patted her all over, shaking her head to the innkeeper.

“I thought they sold the water bracelets right near the Temple these days,” the innkeeper said, reaching under the counter for something.

“Well, I guess, there should be some sign about it in the Halls of Arrivals,” Hoarthlen shrugged her shoulders and took Lucrece’s hand, checking something. “Yeah, ok, at least she’s got the ring of attunement.”

Mayala then proffered a bracelet with blue glass beads and silver flat buttons interlayering the beads.

“I’ll put it on your credit, have this. It recharges off your home altar if you pray well before bed. This way, you can have enough water both for morning prayer and about ten regular glasses for the day. Make sure not to use it in the streets or in the communal places like the inn, it draws the field.”

Lucrece reeled from the information. An enchanted item that USED the magic? Like, not carried it in itself? She frowned, but put on the bracelet.

“I’m sorry, could you allow me to use it now, so I could… You know… not break more stuff?”

The innkeeper smirked at that, “You’re just like our Vinze, eh?” She looked at the dim crystal hanging on the ceiling above the bar, and added, “Ok, do it here. Here’s the glass. Cast it over like that - it’s activated with the press-on stone here…”

Again, a press-on activation, like with the key, Lucrece noticed.

The bracelet emitted a soft cling and a click, and the glass filled itself up, leaving some free space equalling to a couple of fingers to splash about.

Lucrece downed it right away and then filled another glass and downed it right away too.

“What does the 'Well' do?” She asked the innkeeper, reading herself to go out.

“It’s a mana replenisher. People sometimes would ask for it, but later. During dinner times, mostly. When working overtime.”

Oh, that was why Lucrece blacked out from it. Raised some dead parts of hers.

“I must pay for it too, and I may need it more.”

The innkeeper guffawed at that, “Dilute it with water next time, ok? It may be too strong for your mana pool.”

Lucrece nodded in appreciation. “I shall come back after hours, then?”

“Make sure you do, sweetie.”

“Where are you headed to now?” The priest-bard also meant to go, as it seemed.

“I need to find my cat. He ran off. And maybe a place to… wash myself?” Lucrece offered a small smile, in case it was a too-much-information. She wouldn’t mind a direction from a local, though. Not everyone in Merefe Tirred knew Western Elven, after all.

“In any confusing situation in Adenf, you should go to a temple,” Hoarthlen smiled broadly and nodded to the innkeeper on her way out, “Let me show you around then?”

Lucrece nodded gratefully, exiting along her.

The outside greeted them with gusts of cold wind and swirling clouds in the sky.

“Ooh,” Hoarthlen cooed, “We should make haste. Have you - oh, it’s obvious you don’t, I am sorry. Here, one second.”

The bard-priestess took a stick from where it hung in its holder slot on the outer side of the porch and clicked something on it. The stick had a shovel-like ending, a step of some sort.

“I think we should fit,” the owner of the device said, and stood on the step - it floated right up, a palm up from the ground, hovering. Oh, so this was something they rode here. Lucrece must have seen it in the morning, when the girl rode it, but the witch had been too scared to pay proper attention.

It was an awkward and not a safe fit, truth be told, but the worst part was the ride itself.

Somehow, it was always so romantic in Lucrece’s mind - to gently hold onto the rider while traveling distances at some non-pedestrian speed. She’d seen it back home on the greysers, the animals that were used to ride instead of horses in her native country. A greyser-rider would charge ahead, and some swept-off girl or boy would hug them from behind - oh, the bliss of the chance to have an excuse to be close to your crush - or just anybody. It seemed cool.

Reality happened to be surprisingly uncool. There was zero romance in clutching at Hoarthlen’s waist belt, as she had instructed, and praying to Twin Gods to survive the ride. A street, another street, Lucrece deep in panic, sweating and paralyzed. No hug - it was grabbing for dear life.

Probably, Lucrece thought, it just required skill - to be a passenger on such a ride. And while she was no stranger to one-manned greyser ride, could handle a beast just fine, her mind somehow decided to put a strict no on the shovel-ride. To navigate on air standing on a tiny steppy while holding onto a stick? No-thank-you.

They stopped at the chapel with a low palisade around it. Well, if one could call a row of very closely planted trees, no higher than an average Adenfian, a palisade.

Lucrece felt somewhat nauseous, but managed to keep it, distracted by shivering from scare and the view before her.

All the chapels and temples of Adenf she had visited impressed her. Maybe that was the effect of all the greenery around it, or maybe this special tradition of adding mirrors to every construction - why didn’t they do it back home, Lucrece wondered? It was so pretty.

“Alright, it seems I’ve got a request to do,” Hoarthlen chirped, looking at the board with papers and waxtablets and leather-notes stuck to it. She snatched one of the leathery pieces. The board was right beyond the fence, and they walked past it to the chapel’s steps. The walls were done in an artistic spackle application, reminding Lucrece of the salt lakes of her hometown. The random round mirror would catch the sun and blink at Lucrece when she moved.

The chapel doors had a dusty wax tablet with an engraved timetable, as it seemed. Thank Gods Adenfians were on board with general time-counting here, unlike Axxians.

“What are those times for?” Lucrece asked, following Hoarthlen inside.

“Oh, these are for mages to replenish mana. The first session starts early, then lunch, and about now should be the evening session. Not mine, though, I served the first one. Now I’m onto plumbing tasks.”

Lucrece was inspecting the drawings on the walls, depicting some events, completely alien to her, when the words of the bard-priestess sank in and the witch asked, “What?”

Like, bard-priestess who also tripled as a plumber?

“Well, I happen to be the only water mage in this village, not counting several kids in high school, who are probably gonna go off somewhere and not stay around, so - I’m being awarded the Caring badge for staying to fix people’s toilets.”

She made a face, but the irony was lost on Lucrece.

“What do you mean, the only water mage?” Lucrece asked. Not being sure if that was the question that bothered her most, but she had to start with something.

“It means, only I can manipulate water around here.”

Lucrece was puzzled. Did it mean…

“I could manipulate water. Before I came to Adenf.”

A dreadful feeling was spawning inside Lucrece’s chest. Did it mean she could only do one type of magic then? What about healing? What about de-cursing? Fire? Lucrece had to forcibly get a grip over her panic then. She would get back to her hut and investigate it properly.

“Well, that means you’re a water mage!” Hoarthlen was gathering some things: a bucket, a bag of candles, a couple of scrolls, then she just took a huge wicker basket, which clinked with a metal sound from inside it. “The tubes! You can use the baths downstairs. I need to go to… lemme check…”

Hoarthlen frowned at the leather note and read, “Pernar Jaws of the Sun, hut number three - establish a water supply. Wow, a dude rents out stuff without water, what a douche.”

Lucrece reddened in the face. That was her hut. For whatever reason, she felt embarrassed that she was renting it from a douche, felt like she was enabling him to do her wrong, and she was responsible for being a fool to fall for it.

“It’s… It’s where I live.” She squeezed out of herself.

Hoarthlen’s mouth formed an O, smoothing out into a confused smile. “Come on then. Let’s grab you a proper bathtub on our way, shall we?”

And a toilet seat.

Only now, Lucrece remembered the outline of her hut and realized there was no toilet.

Gosh, the shame was trying to smother her, but the panic soon took over when they once again had to ride to the blacksmith’s on the cursed shovel.

It started raining. And the sun was shining. And Lucrece was stumped, shivering a little from the gusts of cold, droplets in her face aggravating the chill. What was wrong with the weather here?!

After a turn, they passed a broad street full of kids - the main one, probably, and then they turned again, all but sneaking behind households’ backyards. Shortcut got them onto the opening at the edge of the village, with a two-storeyed house, which was fully made of stone. Double-taking the roof, Lucrece noticed that the roof was not a pyramid-shaped one, like all others, but instead appeared to be a usable space. Something was drying up there. Lucrece squinted against a drizzle of rain and bright rays of sun, blinding her. Was that… underwear?

The ground floor of the house looked like a pot belly - round, extruding outwards. It had arced passages at every corner, not counting the front doorway, which lacked a door. At least it wasn’t visible.

Hoarthlen called a name, adding something in Adenfian. Lucrece followed her towards the house, looking around. There was a large iron table outside, just next to the entrance, and something furry and black was lying there.

Lucrece looked at it with a stopped heart.

It was a cat. Split open, like a chicken for consumption.

Lucrece grabbed Hoarthlen’s shoulder hard, her lips trembling, wondering if it would be ok to pass out the second time today into her arms.

Published 30 Oct 2025