As usual for the short time William had been in the monastery, the building became dead quiet after the test was over. Leaving Artur behind, he and Miris headed to his room, where she would heal his wounds.
Once there, she left William alone for a few moments before returning with a basket packed with ointments, multicolor jars, bandages, and other mending items.
William put off his sand-colored shirt. Dark bruises covered his pale stomach and chest, his arms scraped as if he had been dragged from his feet by a horse. Dried blood covered his forehead. Now that the combat was over, soreness began to take everywhere on his body. He sighed, wondering how he'd feel the next day.
Miris sat in front of him, grabbing his arms and rubbing a sticky ointment on his scrapes with her dark eyes focused on them. William could see himself on the reflection of Miris' jet-black hair.
"By the love of Sek, look at how that thing left you. What did you think you were doing? William Amber, you are crazy. You wouldn't have survived that if you weren't a lich, and you're still very lucky that gargantuan didn't crush you to glowfungi pureé."
If he wasn't a lich? William remembered how his senses sharpened as he entered combat with those skeletons. His eyes and ears reacted faster than they ever did, and his arms and legs were faster than his thoughts; it was as if time slowed down as he fought, something he had never felt before dying and reviving.
Maybe Miris was right. It was thanks to his new condition that he could put that much into a fight against those skeletal warriors and survive. How strong was he now? Would he get even stronger and faster? What other tricks did he have that he was still not aware of?
"Heh, don't call me crazy. Do it with your so-easy-going leader instead," he responded with frustration. "I'm not gonna lie. I was… faster back there, but that monster had the upper edge. I don't know what would have followed next if Oraesh didn't end the fight."
"William, you should be more respectful," she raised her voice. "He's our superior, even if you don't like him. Besides, Mr. Khugazid wouldn't have put you in a situation that could put you in true danger… at least not yet. He's a tough and ruthless man… but not unreasonable."
"At least not yet…" he repeated her words with mocking irony. "I don't wanna know what follows next, then, but you'll have to do a second-revival ritual on me."
Miris raised her face, frowning her eyebrows as she glared at him for a second before finishing with the ointment and beginning to wrap his hands in bandages.
"Now you're beginning to sound like Artur. Are you westerners all sassy and disrespectful? Look, that was just a test. Don't take it personally. Artur has been tattling so much about how you did so well back in your land before getting captured. I'm sure that if he didn't open his mouth Mr. Khugazid would have put something easier on you."
"Ah yes. Whatever happened back there. Well, not like I'm complaining about the test," he raised and let down his shoulders. "Not the hardest and most painful thing I've been through, though, now that you remind me of how I was captured. You'll know what pain is when you get impaled by a spear and then a crossbow bolt breaks your ribs and mauls your lungs. Not before having been severely starved and confined into a tiny room with nothing but your filth and the one of other five prisoners for more than a week."
"Eh, I guess so…" she raised her eyebrows and squeezed her lips. "But the way you say it makes it sound like the lich life is for you. I mean, about the danger. Not about the filth part. Here, we believe in high hygiene standards. Or at least I do. I'm always forcing Artur to get a bath, but it seems as if he likes stinking like a pig or something. Is that a western thing? Don't you take baths often in your country?"
William rolled his eyes with a grin, the girl repeating his giggles before finishing with his arms. She then sat by his side and made him straighten his back up, applying the cold ointment to the purple stains on his chest and stomach. The freezing goosebumps made him straighten even more.
"So, what's up with you?" he asked. "I mean, we barely know each other. I mean, it's the same with Artur, but I guess that coming from the same place we already kinda know what to expect from each other. But you're an Oksidi. Are you from… here around? from Inanna?"
"No," she replied, rubbing the sticky gel on his smacked pale skin with her soft hands. "I'm from Igigi, a coastal little town west of here. Or well, at least I was when I was alive. I'm from this monastery now."
"Sounds like you miss it."
"I do sometimes, but well," she finished with his stomach, moving to his back. "It's not bad being here. I feel accepted and part of a family. Something I never felt with the Oksidi."
"What do you mean? Are you that mean even with one another?"
"No, dumbo," she rolled her eyes with a simper, rubbing his back. "You westerners are so assuming and judgemental. I'm not really an… Oksidi."
William raised one eyebrow. "What do you mean? You look and dress just like any of them. Well, I mean, you look good. You're a … cute girl. And nice too," he awkwardly tried to not sound insulting, to which she only stared with bothered, playful eyes. "But you're not Oksidi? What are you then? What makes you different?"
"I'm only half-Oksidi. My father was Uchimi. And let me tell you that, when the Oksidi and the Uchimi aren't looking down or trying to enslave the Katosi, they aren't being best friends with each other. I'm a filthy mutt, an oddball for both of them," she sighed. "Herewith the liches, I feel as if I belong. No one judges me because of my origin."
Uchim. Now that William remembered, he had barely heard anything about that place. He had already been to an Oksidi town, eaten their food, and even met a Katosi female, hearing things about their strange land. But Uchim? Nothing. It was some land in northern Reniram, and its inhabitants were some kind of nomads, but that was all he knew.
"¿What's up with that place? I haven't heard about it nor met any Uchimi yet. Well, until I met you, I guess."
"Yeah, I guess so," she replied. "Uchim is mostly a cold and arid land at the north of Reniram mostly made of steppes. The Uchimi are nomads, living in yurts and riding raptors, furry lizard-bird bipeds, and more recently horses, though lots of them are sailors. We're at the border with Uchim right now, you know? This mountain is part of a mountain system extending west to east, separating it from Oksid and Katos."
She finished with the ointment, grabbing a wider bandage and beginning to wrap William's chest and stomach like a gift. Her smell at that distance was sweet and minty, though he couldn't discern if it was her or the chilling ointment drying out.
"Lizard-bird bipeds? Ah, never mind. I guess they aren't the weirdest thing I've heard about this place. Horses, you say? I didn't see any in Inanna. All cars were pulled by those giant lobsters."
"The Mauris brought them," she said. "the Oksidi see horses as nothing but food. They don't taste half-bad, you know? but it's something the Uchimi see as a barbarity. They also make fun of Oksidi men for not wearing pants."
"They aren't the only ones who'd think that's a barbarity. I mean, eating horses, not the pants thing," he said. "But well, I guess that some things are ironic. People and kingdoms dislike each other even here, hundreds of kilometers away from home. I guess some things don't change, doesn't matter where you are."
"That's so. You will have to tell me about your land someday. Is it true that there are green plants right there?" she looked at him with incredibility, as if she was talking about something absurdly epic.
"Well, yes. Almost all of them are. Artur said there are none like that here."
She finished with his bandages. Grabbing a wet cloth, she began to clean his forehead from the dried blood. William felt weirdly flattered by the attention he was given that she didn't seem to mind.
"Is it true that wood is brown there? and what about the fireballs that grow in trees and people eat them? How can you do that without burning? I heard that there are also yellow and black fairies that create nectar that always keeps you young. Is that true too?"
"Eh, yes. Our wood is brown, unlike yours. And fireballs that grow in trees? I haven't heard anything like that before. You must be thinking about… apples. And no, those aren't fairies. Those are bees."
"What's an 'apple'? What's a 'bee'?" she remarked both words as if she wasn't sure if she pronounced them correctly.
"Eh, it's a red fruit that tastes sweet. Bees are like… moths, you know?" he thought about something she could recognize. "Miniature moths yellow and black, living together like giant families, recollecting pollen to create honey."
"Oh, honey? You mean, like the one that subterranean cockroaches make here?"
"Eh. Yes. Just like that," he slowly nodded, unable to imagine such a bizarre image.
Miris finished shortly after —not without making more strange, naive questions about Sunia and the west— which made William feel oddly captivated. How different were they, after all? Maybe he was seen exactly like her, asking odd questions about mundane and trivial things about Reniram that were the bread and butter of Reniramians, but completely alien to foreigners.
After she was done, she helped him get tucked on his bed, feeling already numb and sleepy, the product of the herbal products entering his body. She told him to rest and sleep well; that same day when the night arrived, they'd be busy with another task; Zho would take them all down to Inanna.
Their first class would begin, one that had something to do with the most important part of a lich; their phylactery, which needed something specific as energy to work…