"I still can't believe our house collapsed like that..." Said Lily whilst sounding exhausted.
"You mean my house!" Adam corrected her, he was looking pale, paler than usual.
"Are you sure we don't need to take a break? You look really ill." Uriel asked - this is like the fourth time, considering he wasted most of his mana healing his hands after the cave incident where he tried to un-collapse a collapsed cave entrance.
"Yes - I'm fine, no need to worry about me..." Adam replied turning around to give Uriel a toothy grin only for blood to begin leaking from his mouth prompting Adam to quickly turn away from Uriel who was about to force the group to take a break.
"Nameless child, heal Adam already!" Uriel demanded, I was walking behind the entirety of the group - I was in the middle of a very intense staring match with the puff.
"I tried - remember, I can't remove poison!" I replied not breaking eye contact with the puff who didn't even seem to be trying - that's when it hit me, do mushroom people blink?!
Upon closer inspection, I saw the puff shed a tear - "Aha! So you do need to blink!"
"Then create a poison-removal spell!" Uriel demanded,
"I don't want to waste my mana pool!"
"What does that mean!? - Aren't you going to need the spell eventually?!" Lily demanded.
"Guys, it's alright - we're almost at a village, we'll be fine." Adam pointed towards the large hill ahead of us, it was covered with houses - big and small - with many almost looking like mansions.
Around us were deep ditches, one on each side - and an endless expanse of farmland to our left and right - in them worked people, they wore usual clothes for the area - vests and generic peasant clothes underneath.
A river cut through the farmland and as a result, we had to go over a wooden bridge - it looked unusually well kept.
"Doubt much grows here nowadays with all the... dying of plants." My remark was contradicted by Uriel who pointed over to the massive field on the right - "They seem to be doing alright for themselves." he said pointing to the cartful of some root vegetable they farmers were hauling.
"Adam, are you sure you don't need a -" I interrupted Uriel, saying "Uriel if you ask Adam if he needs a break one more time I will use your vocal cords to tie a noose to end my suffering..."
Uriel shot me a short judgmental look before turning back to Adam - "You need to go to the doctor as soon as we go into the town." he insisted.
"Alright, alright - I really should." He replied sounding drowsy.
About twenty minutes later we managed to make it to the town, it was broken up into four 'levels' where the first one was seemingly filled with the peasant houses and shops or businesses.
Above that was an area filled with slightly fancier houses and the occasional inn or more specific shop.
"Right, let's head over to the higher ground, I'm sure that's where the doctor is," Lily suggested.
"You're probably right - how about you take Adam there, whilst nameless child and I look for a place to stay?" Uriel offered.
"Good idea!" Lily replied much to Adam's disappointment, although at this point he's too exhausted to comment on it.
He meekly reached into his pocket pulling out a small sachel of coins and tossing it over to Uriel - "That should be enough..." he commented before starting to fall down - luckily he was caught by Lily.
"Alright - let's go..." I replied, my vision was going blurry, the corners of my eyes field of view going black as my eyes stung like the mouth of that one guy who ate chilli peppers with mints to 'even out the spiciness'.
In fact, it almost seemed like there was a solid-green man standing in the field for a second - couldn't confirm it because the puff's single tear became a torrent of tears - "I must be close to victory!" I thought.
Meanwhile, the puff was scared out of its mind wondering why I'm giving it the death stare for the last hour or so.
"Alright - let's go, we need to find a place to stay before it gets dark." Uriel said before grabbing me by the arm and dragging me towards the second 'level' of the village in hopes of finding a decent inn.
As soon as we walked up to the staircase leading up - we were faced with two guards - luckily they were asleep, otherwise, they might have a problem with letting in random people into their fancier area.
I'm relatively certain the guards had tails though - maybe it was just an ass-scarf though.
When Uriel and I made it to the top of the stairs we were faced with two more sleeping guards, we eventually made it to an inn looking building - it was round in shape, like three intersecting circles, with the middle one being the biggest - almost in resemblance of the head of a certain animated rodent.
The two circular parts were decorated with tall glass windows stretching all around them, they were stained yellow, orange and red.
The front of the inn had a little roof over the door - the building itself was made of two of these shapes - one large one (the three intersecting circles) and another three-circle shape above, like a miniature of the one below it.
over both was a red-tile roof.
"This place looks pretty pleasant," Uriel commented stepping towards it.
"Sure does!" I replied my vision almost completely gone at this point - not wanting to go blind I let out a sigh and blinked, giving the puff the victory this time - "You win this one..." I said bitterly before turning to see the building.
We stepped inside resulting in the entirety of the place shutting up. "How the hell did you two get in here?!" a rough voice from the back demanded, it was a tall, muscular man with white hair and a tail.
"Who used a marvellous invention referred to as stairs to get here, you should give them a go - they're great!"
Uriel shot me a look saying something akin to "Don't stroke the fire"
"Are you serious?!" the men shoved a table aside causing it to break in half as he walked up to me.
"Yeah - it's great! You should give them a go!" I continued, I was still bitter about the starting contest and really needed to let off some steam.
The man walked towards me, he was seemingly ready to punch me when he got a closer look, realising my body was still that of a child.
"Is this brat your kid?" the large man asked stepping up to Uriel, who didn't seem afraid as much as worried.
"No, actually I'm just here to get a room," Uriel said apologetically.
"Is that so?" the man said placing an arm on Uriel's shoulder, "Yes..." he replied uncertainly, the man was clearly trying to squeeze Uriel's shoulder to intimidate him or something, but it didn't really have much of an effect.
Confused the muscular man pulled back his fist and punched Uriel in the face, Uriel's pose didn't change at all, it was as if the man punched a wall.
Uriel grabbed the man's hand and moved it away from his face - "Are you alright? You seem kind of stressed out."
"URIEL, THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO PLAY THERAPIST!" I called out getting the attention of the entire inn, except Uriel and the man who punched him - "Uhmm... what... did you do?" the man asked,
"That's not important, did something happen in this town? Everybody here seems quite distrought."
A short silence followed - "It's legal trouble - nothing a peasant like you would understand." the scoffed, less aggressively now before walking back to his table, realising it was now cracked.
Thinking that things went better than expected I turned to Uriel only to find that he was, in fact, walking towards the man - I was about to call out to him to tell him he's going to get punched again before realising I don't care, so I followed him, keeping my distance.
"It's alright - I'm not your average peasant, maybe I can help." Uriel offered leaning over to the man.
At first, the man didn't reply.
"It's the human kingdom - they're trying to get us to give up the land we reclaimed - now that all the plants are dying - we're one of the only places left that still grow crops."
"You could try and negotiate a fair price with the kingdom - I'm sure they'd be more than willing to pay for the land."
"As if - it's not the king, it's the nobles - one of them rode in here yesterday threatening us with treason if we don't hand the land over for free, others offer us a hundredth of the value of the town alone."
"Shouldn't you come in contact with the king then?"
"Since he was poisoned we have no access to the castle or the king, what's worse is that the village leader would have to go and the nobles made it clear they could arrange for an 'accident' while he was travelling all the way to the capital, us nobodies have no chance of getting to even enter the castle."
"I understand... do you know what's keeping the land fertile nowadays?"
"...no..." the man replied averting his gaze from Uriel.
"I see... this really is a bad situation..."
"Hmmm, and on top of that about a third of the villagers left - that this rate we'll be missing the people to defend ourselves against the nobles."
Suddenly a loud noise came from behind us as a group of guards marched in "Somone killed the guards defending the stairs - did anyone here see anything suspicious?"
Confused I thought back to the time we were going up the stairs and we saw the sleeping guards - they probably refused to let Adam and Lily into the higher up levels so Lily... did her thing...
"No big deal - I'll shoot these guys with fire bullets and make a run for it." I thought but much to my surprise the white-haired man from before said: "No, nothing here, men."
I turned towards him with a look of confusion.
"A-ah, boss - alright! We'll go search the third level then!" the man announced.
After the guards left and closed the door behind them I turned towards the white-haired man "What the hell are you planning?"
"Don't get me wrong, if they tossed you in prison we'd be left with more mouths to feed - it's best you two leave now." the man said shooting everyone in the inn a look as they everted their eyes from the group.
"Well, Uriel - you heard the teable-tosser, let's go."
"We're sorry about this, we can't leave right now, our friend is getting treatment in this town," Uriel replied.
"I see, the doc's a good man, I'm sure he won't rat your friend out - but if you're caught I can't help you."
"It's alright - you've done plenty for us already," Uriel replied before turning towards me.
"We're going to need a way to blend in."
"..."
"And I think I have the perfect idea for how."
"..."
"Nameless child, I'm going to need to to use your magic to create me something..." Uriel said with a grin.
He demanded I 'spawn' him some thread, needles and some felt.
My concern turned to disgust as he handed me the finished product of his fifteen minutes of work - a pair of fake cat ears and a tail.
"Uriel, before I hove both that tail where there the sun doesn't shine, would you mind telling me what these are?" I asked,
"It's a costume so we can blend in," he explained.
"I could have done this with magic you know..."
"You're the one who complains about depleting your mana pool."
"Yes, but wearing a cat costume is depleting my dignity."
"Just put it on already!"
So yeah... we all go fake animal ears and tails... not sure how I feel about those... below is a run-down of who got what.
Uriel - Cat
Me - Dog
Adam - Rabbit
Lily - Fox
The puff got a full-body frog costume
Later that day...
Uriel was in the room we rented for about double the price someone wearing in any way convincing costume would.
I use magic to create something too, I walked over and handed the item to Uriel - "Oh, a gift? What is it?" he asked, with a completely dead look and dog ears and tail I replied: "It's a noose, please use it."
That night…
Uriel headed to bed, Lily and Adam were still missing - "I guess it meant he's hospitalised" I thought before rolling to my other side - I was struggling to sleep, the whole cave experience messed up my sense of day and night.
I looked to the side and saw the puff - it was asleep laying on a pillow I took off the bed and placed on the little table on the side of the bed.
Unable to sleep I sat up - seeing that Uriel was already passed out and not wanting to wake the puff up I decided to go outside for a walk, it was getting pretty cold so I took the blanket and wore it like a cape - I'm paying five gold for this room, I'll summon a dark god if I fucking feel like it...
Going outside I saw that there were no stars, no night lights, it judging by the fact it was actually dark for once, I guess it must've been cloudy.
I looked around with what little light made through the thick clouds in hopes of finding a bench of some sorts - you never appreciate computers and televisions as much as when you're the only person awake at night with nothing to do.
I've become a lot more social ever since I appeared here - even I have to admit that, back on earth, or any of the previous worlds for that matter - I would have been not only happy but almost hoping for this level of isolation - "This world is making he soft." I thought looking up at the round outline of the night-time sun cutting through the parting clouds resulting in a few blue rays falling down clouds and down onto the ground.
I followed the rays with my eyes only to see that they led to someone in the fields, a person was farming in the middle of the night, with no lights, in this cold.
I rubbed my hands together to warm up a bit before deciding to go speak to this nocturnal farmer - I made sure I had my fake-ears and fake-tail which was attached like a belt for anyone interested.
I walked down the relatively steep slope down to the farm area, seeing that the person was in fact just tilling the soil.
"Isn't it a bit late for this kind of work?" I asked walking up to the man who turned to me with a judgmental expression causing me to recoil a bit - "Are you alright?" I asked causing him to shift to a more confused look.
"What are you doing out here?" he demanded.
"I mean - if I was to tell you I got stuck in a cave full of mushrooms which forced me to commit genocide on them so we could leave - would you believe me?"
"..."
"Out home got destroyed so we came to this village since my friend was ill," I explained.
"I see, so you're not from around here..."
"Yeah - you seem pretty ill yourself..." I remarked seeing his green skin.
"I'm not buying that disguise, so why don't you get rid of it." the man said annoyed before returning to tilling the soil.
"Yeah - I knew it wouldn't fool anyone." I sighed taking the dog ears and tail-belt off.
"No - I meant your child disguise..." the man said confused about what to him must have looked like me tearing off my ears and tail.
"Oh, this isn't a disguise - it's my real body... for better or for worse..."
"No normal child should be able to see us - you can't fool me..."
"Did you say us?" I asked looking around only to suddenly realise there were a dozen or so more people.
"That's right - most people can't see us, only the ones with a specific spell - which means you're here on behalf of the mayor..."
"Who? He wouldn't happen to be the village leader here?"
"That's right - it's him..." the man pointed to the tallest layer of the city where stood a massive mansion, a place a noble wouldn't mind staying while his castle is being renovated.
I looked at their green skin and hair before realising what I should have from the start - "Wait - are you guys dryads?" I asked prompting the man to squint his eyes as he placed the hoe he used to till the soil over his shoulder, he has long hair which was a shade darker than his skin, a short beard and moustache - his clothes were tattered and plain looking.
"That's right - what about it?"
"Nothing, it explains the skin colour - that's all."
"I guess you dryads don't feel the cold..." I remarked seeing them standing in the field - men, women and children all diligently working on the fields.
"Of course we do! - but that doesn't seem to concern the mayor..."
"Well... can't you just... not work here in the middle of the night?"
"We don't have a choice - the mayor used magic to make us invisible to the people and chain us to the soil itself."
"Alright - so to clarify, you're telling me that the people of this village are making you dryads slaves?"
"That's right - it all started when the crops started to die - we offered to help the villagers since we've been living here for a long time now - since this land isn't human territory we weren't persecuted."
"But the moment the mayor realised they could have a monopoly on the food supply in the entire country he decided that he's going to exploit us - at first we complied, but soon enough we were tossed in here like animals forced to work to feed our 'masters' " the man explained looking over to the field, some dryads seemed dead on the inside, upon closer inspection their hands were covered in cuts and bruised - thanks to their healing properties though I bet they will disappear soon.
"So do the villagers know about this?"
"Yes - but they deny it out of guilt, the mayor's official explanation is that we left - that we just decided to leave one night."
"Why don't you just stop working then? - It'll be useless for him to keep you guys here if you're of no use to him."
"We already thought about that... but he resorted to killing those who opposed him - he threatened to pour poison into the field is 'they were going to be useless anyway' "
"Is it really worth living like this though?" I asked,
"We all have something to live for, human - even if that something isn't something we can do or say." the man said looking over his shoulder to a small dryad struggling to till the soil.
"I see, so it's an illogical attachment..." I commented,
The man actually smiled for once - "A little, I guess - but there is nothing we can do but live to see a better time."
"I'll get going now..." I said turning away from the field-dryad and heading back towards the inn, sitting outside and realising I still can't sleep - "How can a growm-ass man like him say something like that with a straight face..."
I looked up towards the night-sun which now illuminated the field through a round opening in the clouds.
If I didn't want to - I could just close my eyes and not see them - yep, just an empty field doing its thing - fielding.
"Cold this time of year isn't it?" A void asked from somewhere around me - "Yeah - if you're in the mood for stabbing me or robbing me, please wait a bit - I'm broke at the moment." I replied.
Somone looking like a child around my age stepped out from inside the inn - I couldn't tell if it's a dude or a girl - god damn traps...
"Surprisingly I'm not here to stab you," they replied walking over to me.
I drew my gun and pointed it at them - it wasn't loaded so it was a bit of a bluff.
"How are you going to shoot me without bullets?"
"How do you know?"
"Look - I'm just here to talk, put down that gun and let's have a chat!" they offered with an innocent smile.
I slowly tried to place my gun back into its holster only to realise that it was already there - did I even draw it?
"Who are you?" I asked with a raised eyebrow - "I relaxed slightly upon realising that if this person wanted me dead - I'd probably be dead."
"I just want to have a little chat!" he exclaimed.
"...did you bring food?"
They went silent for a bit, "I'm sorry what?"
"You came for a chat and didn't bring snacks?"
"..."
"..."
"...what do you want?" they asked with a sigh.
"Biscuits and a cup of tea," I replied.
They snapped their fingers and before me appeared a platter with some biscuits and a mug of tea.
"Did you add sugar to the tea?" I asked,
I saw the child's eyebrow twitch as he asked - "How much sugar do you want?" whilst trying to maintain a polite smile.
"Two," I replied holding up two fingers.
He tossed me two sugar cubes which I proceeded to place in my tea.
"Now then, how about we have that chat?"
"Alright, let's start with introdcutions," I replied.
"Ah - right, you can call me Deus!" he announced.
"A cool - I thought you were God or something," I replied.
"I am God," they replied.
"I don't know - you must be a pretty powerful being if you can create tea - which doesn't exist in this world..." I replied.
"But you don't know what real tea tastes like, do you?" they replied with a smug expression.
"...damn they're good..." I thought,
"Thanks!" they replied.
"And now you're a mind reader?" I asked,
They replied with a smug smile.
I proceeded to image in the most horrific thing I can - an abomination - I looked over to God seeing that he was disgusted but more so in me than the image itself.
"This is why I don't like you people..." he replied shivering slightly.
"Anyway - what do you need 'God' " I asked,
"Well, since you've got all of life figured out - I came to see how you're going to deal with the slavery going on here."
"Why don't you do something about it?"
"Why should I? Do you personally deal with every little death in an ant colony?"
"I wouldn't have an ant colony if I wasn't prepared to deal with it."
"But what if you got one, and now you're stuck dealing with it - do you annihilate it all?"
"I guess so..."
"Well - that's not an option - so should my entire existence be agony for the sake of you guys? I mean the ants..."
"Look, you're asking the wrong person for your existential crisis - go ask Uriel or something."
"Uriel? Isn't he retired?" they asked,
"Allegedly he was assigned to deal with me or something like that..."
'God' laughed to himself for a moment before turning to me "That cat never changes - tell him hi from me, alright?" they said before getting up and stepping away.
"So that's all you had to say?"
"Not exactly - but let's call this our first appointment - I'll be back soon - until then I'll leave you a little gift!" 'God' said before snapping their fingers, disappearing and leaving me with nothing other than a weird feeling on my right hand - I looked over and saw that it was a ring... "I have a bad feeling about that..."
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Check out a tts reading of chapter 1 and potentially more in the future! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xorRJDGAQk&feature=youtu.be