Chapter 10: Chapter 10 – Halls & Corridors

 

The language of the knots was the Tide Children’s answer to a life spent almost perpetually on the cold grey seas. Parchment and paper too quick to rot in the salt air. Surprisingly detailed, whole meaning can be conveyed by both distance and type of knot on a length of twine, silk, cordage, or any combination thus. I myself find it a slow and ponderous form of record, but perhaps that is just a failing of one who was not born to a life on the rolling waves.

 - The Fanciful Travels by Beron de Laney 376 A.C

 The following morning was spent a little different from my last.  My regimen consisted of a basic breakfast, followed by vigorous physical training consisting mostly of calisthenics. As I completely drained my Stamina, I healed the damaged Health with magic. At the end of this brutal session, I was awarded an increase to my Constitution. This was then followed by the mental training of my Intelligence and Wisdom, where I would slip back into the knowledge and lessons of my old world. I still had a few ideas on how to increase my Charisma and Luck. An attempt to alter the former through interaction with my jailers failed when they simply pointedly chose to ignore the strange man in the cell.

 Around midday, my cell was alive with the sounds of the bustling city outside. I watched the busy scene of people going about their daily lives from my window, and as I completed my set of pull-ups, a flash of inspiration came to me.

 A little way outside of my cell, in a small square, a market was forming. Sellers had placed many stalls with a wide variety of goods, ranging from the mundane to the exotic. From pots and pans, arms and armor, to tropical fruit and menacing alien-looking creatures caged in bars of cold steel. The merchants hawked their wares with guttural cries, no doubt espousing the quality of their goods and offering bargains. The smell of cooking meat and unknown vegetables wafted into my cell, and I felt a rumbling in my stomach which I chose to pointedly ignore.

 A little regret filled me as I held myself up to the bars, my little gateway to the outside world. I spotted a middle-aged turbaned man in furs arguing jovially with a woman clad in fancy colorful clothes of amber and gold. I steeled myself as I prepared to cast a spell. Focusing again on the man, I shifted my attention to the words that he was speaking; I blotted everything else out of my mind and cast Identify.

 A swathe of information poured into my understanding for the brief few seconds I connected with him, the man's words translating into my native English. Practicing the new words on my tongue, I had difficulty mimicking the coarse guttural tones and inflections. I was astonished to find that I could recall his words with almost crystal clarity, a feat that I would have found impossible in my foreign language classes at home. A wave of homesickness threatened to drop me into despair, but I pushed my feelings down. I fired off Identify spells at random conversations, sating my curiosity and increasing my vocabulary, but also thankfully distracting me from thoughts of home. Driven by a need to understand the language of the men I swore vengeance against, I vowed to learn their primitive language.

 After a second round of mental training and rest, I once again pulled myself up to the bars, draining a little of my Mana. The market was closing for the day, with people breaking down stalls and packing away their goods, but I was still able to catch some words. As I continued to listen, I began to understand more and more of the language, this time without the aid of magic. Whether it was the effect of the lingering repeated use of the spell, or due to my growing intellect, I had begun to grasp the structure of the language’s patterns. Every word was a key to a door that opened new meaning, and every assembled pattern of grammar a corridor that opened up new areas and higher concepts of language. A notification confirmed my progress with another increase in my Intelligence. Pleased with my scholarly progress, I took a moment to applaud myself for my creative use of magic to learn their hateful tongue, armoring myself with a false sense of superiority as a thin defense against the powerlessness of my situation.

 During a lull in prison life, I noticed that the local fauna had decided to pay a visit to my cell. Small insect-like creatures scuttled into view. They were about the size of a large coin and featured considerable mandibles, two joint thoraxes, and two pairs of legs attached to an upcurved abdomen. Inquisitively, two or three of them would skitter about my cell when I was perfectly still. I threw small loose stones that had fallen off the wall at them, making a game of it, and with a lucky strike, I was able to injure and slow one of them. I finished the injured creature with a quick stomp. Blue viscera stained the stone floor, but I was not awarded any experience. The mini-games of this world were a bit of a letdown, I thought to myself.

 With this successful act of violence against a helpless creature, fantasies of hot vengeance filled my mind. I undertook another hard round of physical training, earning me an increase of one point in both Dexterity and Strength.  Before resting for the night I decided to look at my character sheet. I was pleased with the gains across my attributes; thanks to my herculean regimen, my Constitution sat at eighteen points. Also, I noticed that I had considerably boosted my Intelligence and gained a smaller bump in Wisdom, no doubt due to my meditations. Casting magic and the active pursuit of understanding had also increased my maximum Mana. The hike in my physical attributes had bumped up my Health and Stamina, and I had gained a marginal increase of twenty points of experience for my efforts.

 It appeared that in this world there were three ways to gain experience; quests, the practice of skills, and cold-blooded killing. The last reminded me of the party that found me, and I coldly swore to turn them into experience points.

 With my efforts, I had more or less countered the effects of my initial curse. Nodding in satisfaction with the growth of my mental faculties, I curled up on my pile of straw and faded off to an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

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