Chapter 3: Chapter 2: Camp of the Kren Republic

I first walked carefully with Freya's holding tight below my rib cage. After a few steps, Freya giggled, and so I let loose the reins in my head, shouting with joy and energy. Soon our destination came into view, the camp of the victorious Kren Republic below the banners. When the soldiers start pointing and shouting, and then raised their weapons, I stopped.

Freya jumped down and run ahead, shouting back to them in their gibberish. I waited, breathing heavily, but not yet totally out of breath. After a longer exchange, Freya gestured for me to come.

Freya put again her hand on my lower shoulder when I stood next to her. "You will be guarded, sorry. I will stay with you to speak."

Four soldiers with something like spears (pikes, as I learned later) went ahead, and another four followed them, with an important looking officer in the back. (His helmet had feathers, and he was much cleaner than any of the other soldiers, who stank awful. Well, battlefield.) I nodded and followed Freya's guidance with what felt like a very slow walk.

During the walk through the camp, I fought with the stench. My sense of smell had certainly improved, which in this medieval setting was not a blessing. Between one of the tents I thought, I saw a centaur, but everyone else appeared run-of-the-mill human, well as different in size and shape as humans went.

Our destination was a slightly bigger tent in the middle of the camp. The feather helmet went ahead into the tent and returned soon with two others, with even more plumage on their helmets. "The general, and his second" sent Freya. "Please bow, if you can."

I did as instructed, and surprised myself. I could bow forward until I touched the ground with my head.

It seems to have pleased the general, or maybe rather amused him. Then he talked gibberish, of course, but Freya was quick to translate. As expected, he welcomed me to these days of triumph ... and after a short listing of his accomplishments, he finally came to the point. I was not a prisoner, but, yes, of course, I actually was one for now. He went on that since I was the first of my kind ever seen (why Freya did not tell me that before?) they have to wait for a healer to clear me and probe my soul. And he wanted to know more about my origin.

So I let Freya translate my words, gibberish to them as well without mindspeak. I tried to find anything in the noises Freya made when she translated my origins, that I was human like them, but came from another place, very different from here, which had mechanical iron horses pulling lots of carriages. And that I was hit by one of them, and have just awoken here, transformed. They looked sceptical. As would I, if somebody told me that I will awake tomorrow transformed on a battlefield. And then Freya add more explanation from her own, untranslated, since she used both hands to gesture, and her audience looked even more sceptical.

Freya put again her hand on. "They believe me even less than you. About the soul foremost. Another healer will come and check you, and later a cleric will inspect your soul."

Soul? They were talking about souls as if they were tangible, strange. Maybe this is hell? But I did not dare to ask, I just waited.

Some solder came back shortly, with a man in tow. He was old, and but broad-shouldered and tall. He had also a dark robe which was not in its best state, to be polite. He had a tired, but gently smiling face, and the same clean hands as Freya. Overall, he gave the impression of a homeless doctor. He stopped a meter away, mustering me. He was the tallest around, on my eye level. He slowly extended his hand upwards to touch my shoulder.

"I am Kiara, and I do not bite", I smiled at him, but it had rather the reverse effect.

He frowned.

Freya made an angry face at me. Apparently, I had pissed off some important person. "I am sorry, sir."

Even his mindspeak was like a good uncle doctor. "I should apologize. I am senior healer Parek. I had a tiresome, long day. Let's get this over."

"Of course. I am Kiara, fresh from another world."

"Yes, so I heard. Let's check with you. Please, just stand still. It may tickle."

This time I felt something seeping from the old guy into me. I did not like it and tried to push it back, which was futile, because I had no idea how. It would be too fast anyway, and still somewhat slimy. Then it withdrew.

"You are a healthy female, soul is more than complete. No immediate need for mana." He looked at me as if this was a great achievement. Then he removed his hand and told the others of his assessment. Most of them still looked at me sceptically. After another exchange between the general and the healer, the latter did some gestures and went back to where he came from.

"Kiara, hello," I had not felt Freya putting her hand on me. "I have been assigned to look over you since I can mindspeak and as the youngest healer, I cannot support the other much. And I have looked after some centaurs before."

"Oh, what are they, I mean."

"Later, I am happy to tell you more. Please, let's leave these important people."

Oh, she was right. I bowed again, which made some people chuckle, and then let Freya guide me.

"We get a tent in the Kwal prisoner camp for now."

"Kwal prisoner?"

"Kwal, our enemy. What do you think? You appeared in the same place as the centaurs. So until it is sorted out, you will be treated like them. Well, differently, because I will be with you to translate."

"What do you do to your prisoners?" Curse my imagination.

"Feed them, heal them, and bargain with Kwal for them. Same as they would do to us. And now I heard they signed a treaty, so hopeful everybody can go home soon."

Soon home, that sounds nice. "Do you have mages that can send me home?"

"Sorry, no mages with us here. But for this, I think you have to ask the Magic University of Kwal. They made the centaur, and very likely they did the soul magic which caught you in our world. I was careless speaking about sending home."

"Honestly, it was more of a reflex. I have not much left there. And I probably died there if I understood your explanation correctly."

"I am not sure, too. It is another thing you should ask the soul mages of Kwal. You are very unusual."

"Yes, that I found out myself already. But you even said unique. There is no one like me?"

Freya looked down, embarrassed. "Yes, again sorry. I have never seen and not even heard of something like you. There are of course a lot of stories of other beings, but even then none of them mentioned something, hmm."

"Yes?"

"Oh, something almost godlike like you."

Now I froze. "Godlike?" This humble me?

"Well, mythical, like from ancient tales. You know, she who is swifter than a horse, wilder than a tiger, wiser than a philosopher, and prettier than a flower in the morning dew."

Oh my god! I went red so that I felt my head would explode from blood pressure. "But I am not that, how could you, I mean"

"Oh come on, just teasing."

"Juvenile!"

"Er, that did not translate. But you can't deny it, you are a little of it all. Soon news will travel and I am sure, you will be described like that."

I shuddered. But she was right, I did stand out. Just because I was surrounded by humans, I was no longer in their peer group. Overall, they even treated me better than the reverse case. I shuddered at the thought of being inside a holding cell in area 51.

We walked in silence.

"This is no longer the soldier's area," I tried to break the silence.

"Oh yes. You see the camp is divided into different support group areas. We are going away from the battlefield, so here are the non-fighting groups like carpenters, ...." She seemed happy as well to have something else to talk about.

I tried to pin down the equivalent era more precisely. But I was not a historian, and my historic knowledge was from movies and books. Still, everything was very medieval, I saw no steam engines, and the carpenters over there were only using hatchets, not even saws. In the soldier's area, I had seen something like a crossbow, but mostly only normal bows and swords, and no guns at all. So something in the dark ages, even before Renaissance in my terms. Well, a dark middle age with mages and centaurs.

"Say, Freya, is the Earth a sphere?"

I had derailed another train of thought at full speed it seems. My revenge for the godlike.

"Er, what, I mean, who cares, maybe. Why?"

"Well, my Earth was a sphere, circling around the sun."

"Well. Hmm, I have to ask a senior healer about that. Anyway, here we are," she evaded my question.

Freya nodded to two guards, as we entered an enclosure at the outer edge of the camp.

"Welcome to your camp," Freya said.

"But I do not know anybody here."

"You know me!" Freya corrected.

"So you are now the enemy?"

"Ah, you are incorrigible! You know, you are special."

"And you too. Everyone is."

We were rather bickering like an old couple. And of course, it made no difference. Everywhere I went, everyone was gaffing. I was still too overwhelmed to care. I only just gaffed back at five centaurs in an extra enclose at the far end of the compound.

"Kiara, heja!" Freya had walked ahead and held open a large tent flap. Large for a human, but I just squeezed through.

Freya came after me. Even with us two, the tent felt already crowded, so I ask the voices to fold my legs under me and they obeyed. Now Freya was a head taller.

She giggled. "Don't look at me like that!"

"What?"

She sighed. "Your big puppy eyes. Can we have a look at the saddle bag?"

"Saddle bag? Oh, this one." I had of course seen it, I mean it was strapped to my lower body. Yet, I had totally forgotten about it. I raised again, bent forward, even more forward until my head was behind my front legs. My Yoga instructor would have been delighted. Ok, I could not breathe anymore, but my arms had no trouble opening the buckle. I also notice that the fur on my underside was white.

Then I raised up, turned around until I faced straight backwards, and lifted the heavy bag off my lower back. It was heavier than expected, so I turned back more slowly and set it in front of me while folding my legs again under my body. I thought I would have stared the same way as Freya if I had seen myself operating like this, but at each moment it seemed easy and natural. Somehow I was getting the hang of myself, although no idea why and how exactly.

I opened the flap and start taking things out. "Let's look what we got here! Hmm, looks, like a brass beaker?"

"What are you doing?"

"What?" I looked down at the beaker in my right front paw. I turned it around. "Anything special?"

"You are standing on three legs and hold this with your paw!"

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I had not noticed. Indeed, I held the bag open with two hands and had taken the first item out with the front paw. Not even thinking.

"You are amazing."

I blushed again. "Please, let's focus on the content. Here." I put the brass beaker in her hand and reached for the next item. The bag contained a lot of strange stuff. Quite a few of these brass beakers from an alchemist (which they probably were), syringes, and some other tools fitting for dark age torture chambers, together with springs, and things I could not even guess their purpose. 17 tools and their parts were now neatly arranged in the grass.

The right bag held things like papers with bleached-out mandalas. Freya almost shouted, and I had to lay them down very gently in the far corner of the tent as if they could explode at any moment. There was also some glassware but mostly broken, not surprising after the jumping and running. Unfortunately no mirror, that would have been great. At the bottom was an empty journal.

Maybe the brass had value here, but to me it looked like complete junk. "Yes, I have never ever owned one thing from that bag. Looks like someone wanted to get rid of his junk together with me. You can keep it all!"

"No doubt, because these are alchemy and mage tools. And we need a mage to dispose of these runes there." She pointed to the papers in the corner. "I would not even dare to burn them."

"So we leave them there. And the rest?"

"A few items we could use as healers. And I think most are really expensive. Even the glass shards."

She inspected one of the brass beakers more closely and scratched in the burnt downside with a twig. "Sdhgfgh nae ttrdtrdte," she exclaimed proudly.

She put again a hand on my shoulder and shoved the beaker under my nose. "See here, a monogram. I will eat my hat if this is not Kwal University."

Many of the brass parts carried the same monogram, which would have been chicken scritch to me. Another thing to ask later. "So if this is Kwal University, then I would have been there before awaking here."

She nodded. "Yes, but why did they wake you there? Something does not make sense at all. All centaurs arrived at least a day after being awake for the first time."

"It would be really helpful if I would have been"

"Oh, no, don't even think about this. The centaurs were blank slates, they barely knew how to talk and walk, and which side of a sword to hold. We even had to teach them how and what to eat. And there were made from stale souls merging with horses, and had not even a full soul and still need mana to survive. They were like cripples compared to you."

I was shocked. "Cripple, that is that not harsh?"

"I wish not. The poor centaurs were just a human upper body instead of a horse head. Crudely made, sometimes there were even studs with boobs and mares with male upper bodies. And badly made, the horse part is fighting the human part and vice versa. Way too small nose and mouth for two lungs, no endurance, anyone in the camp can outrun them."

"I think I have also two lungs. When I breathe, both top and bottom expand."

"Yes, but you have a much bigger nose, and the lungs seem to work properly together because such a show of vitality and endurance as on the battlefield would be impossible for a centaur. And you have only one heart, which is in your lower body. They were really like a human pasted on a horse, two of everything, more working against each other than synchronized. And their bodies often gave up their internal fight, or maybe their soul gave up. So many are dead already. " She took a big breath. "That is why your arrival is so strange. If they could create something like you, then why make those poor centaurs? If they can call a soul without a blank mind, why have only mindless centaurs arrived so far?"

"So I am lucky?"

She smiled, "totally so. Someone put a lot of effort into your body to combine the best traits of animals and humans; unless they had found your race on another plane of existence."

"As I told you, I was human. And please never tell somebody else, but I think too that my body is really made from many animals. I can hear something like their voices and ask their guidance, like for walking."

"You are too trustful, Kiara." Freya looked at me thoughtfully. "Sorry, I cannot promise that. But I will not tell anybody unless under oath."

"That is fine with me," I shrugged. "What else is different to centaurs?"

"This conversation for instance. The centaurs had been given some pre-installed reflexes for fighting and they could speak Kwal. But no other skills, no social skills. There were close to machines and had to learn everything else again. And as said, always sick from the start."

"I feel healthy."

"A quick check at the field showed us that much. Maybe you can even outlive me."

For the first time, I really looked at her as human, not a healer or translator. She had greyish hair, but it was not the grey of age, it looked full and young. She had also freckles, but again rather dark ones. Her eyes had no wrinkles, and she could barely keep still. She must be young indeed. "How old are you?"

"Nearly 10 years."

"A child?" I bit my tongue. Social skills, my ass. "Sorry, I think years here differ in length because I was 36."

"That's quite old."

"So I thought. When, um, women can get their first child?"

"About 9 or so You were not totally wrong."

That would be about a third longer. "Hmm, then I had been at least twice your age. So like 20ish."

"But you look not older than me now."

"So the animals made me younger." Then I snickered: I could be a teenager again.

* * *

The cleric came soon. He was far from the rounded monk stereotype. He could have been a soldier, with broad shoulders, standing tall. However, the white lank hair and the smile on his soft face did not match a soldier, and of course, he was not wearing armour, but an almost white tunic.

Kiara showed him first the pieces from the saddle bag and the mandala-papers, that she had been so afraid of. Apparently all safe, he just waved them away.

Then he turned to me. The tent was too crowded with the stuff on the floor and three persons inside. So I just bowed a little.

He put his hand next to Freya. "Hello, my name is Clavs." His mindspeak was much more, um, silent, and much softer.

"Kiara, Sir."

"Very good. I am happy to meet you. I will just check your soul. It will not hurt, actually, you should not feel anything. If you want me to stop, please give any sign."

I nodded. Freya removed her hand.

"I will start now."

I felt nothing at first. But then the voices came running to me and tried to hug me. I know it sounds weird, voices hugging. But we all hugged us. I counted six voices and me. We were all a little frightened, even though nothing really happened.

"Did you feel unwell?"

"A little."

"I understand. Your soul, or rather your souls are strange, indeed. I can confirm that your human soul had died before. Quite some time ago, about half a year I would say. And you have memories?"

"Yes, I mean, I think so, I died, but, ah, how?"

"Well, it is puzzling also for me. I would say someone grafted very carefully several souls together of parts of what is you now. Soul magic is forbidden. Hence, I lack any real experience. However, from what I learned from the centaurs, and in my life, I can give you an idea. First, please keep this to yourself. So as far as we know, calling a stale soul never gives the full soul, at best three quarters but the centaur had more typically just half a human soul. Even together with a full horse soul, this is not enough to wake a centaur. Thus, they constantly need mana to anchor the souls in their bodies for a long time. Can you follow?"

I nodded. About the same clarity as talking about quantum-electrodynamics.

"In your case, someone grafted several animal souls to your soul. I would say cat, goat, squirrel; maybe more. So while the animals contributed lesser souls, they have great vitality and together they were enough to complement your human soul. When you arrived without mana, there was enough vitality to let you wake up on your own. And I think you arrived here some time ago, because your human soul had healed more than in most centaurs, and then animal souls are more than half merged with it already. So you have currently vitality of above one full human soul."

"That sounds like good news?"

"Ah, sorry, yes, this means you are complete, no need for mana, no soul to recover. There may be some side effects because I have never heard of such an illegal  soul grafting."

I decide to come clean since he talked about the animals. "I hear voices when you probed me. Were these the animal's souls?"

"This may be them. Let me stress again, I have no real experience. But in the end, souls are tough. Healthy souls will regenerate, as long as the body and mind are willing. In the same way, your excess souls is, hm, radiating. I feel it even before probing you. So in much less a year, your souls will have totally merged and you will appear fully human."

"You mean two legs and so?"

"I must apologize for my poor choice of words. You will have an absolutely normal soul fitting your body, and no one could tell that you once had been dead or had been part animal. I mean apart from the physical animal part, sorry, I mean you non-human parts."

Clearly, he was a lot sidetracked by my anatomy. "Thank you for the nice explanation. So what now?"

"Your soul will heal, and you can have a long healthy life, as long as your parts work together. For this, you have to ask Freya. Honestly, I am happy to see a healthy person with a healthy soul after all the dying today. You are very interesting." He even winked at me. "I confess, the soul you are radiating is really refreshing me after sending so many souls away. I would invite you to join us for dinner if you want."

"Thank you, I have to ask Freya. And thank you for taking the time to explain it to me."

Then he removed his hand, and also his presence shrunk a little.

Freya said something, pointing at the saddle bag. The clerics looked again at the bag, then at the empty notebook, turned some pages, and seem to read something on the empty page.

They discussed something, then he came back.

"Kiara, again you are clear. The things from the saddle bag will be sent to Krenburg for further investigation. You can keep the bag, there has never been soul magic on it. As for you, I will ask the general to let you go and to recover and mend your soul. And keep in contact with us, just in case."

"Will the general let me go?"

"Yes, I think I can make the point that you are rather a case for the clerics. You were obviously not involved in the war, and you are a victim of forbidden magic. Since you arrived void of mana, there can be no hidden magic keys to trigger a rampage. Sorry, this busy day is not over yet. Take care, Kiara."

"Thank you," I bowed

And then he left, also doing the complex hand pattern.

I did not know there were magic keys, Heck, I did not though there was real magic until today. And I was more than happy that now I was officially not a magical timebomb.

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