Stepping outside, the contrast between the clean interior and the dirtiness of the street struck Alric at once. The paper in his hand felt irritatingly present, its texture wrong somehow. With a flicker of annoyance, he moved it into his item box and felt the familiar, faint tug as it vanished.
He paused.
That was the first time he had used it frivolously.
Across the street, Tyke was sitting exactly where he had been left. As Alric approached, he watched the boy swing his legs against the crate, heels bumping wood in a lazy rhythm, his attention drifting from passerby to passerby. Some people moved with purpose, others wandered or lingered, and Tyke seemed content to simply watch the difference. The idleness of it struck Alric, how time could feel abundant for some and thin for others.
Tyke hopped down as Alric reached him and looked up.
“Gotta be home before sundown,” he said. “Or Ma’ll get mad.”
Alric glanced at the lengthening shadows. Late afternoon already. He had spent most of the day trying to sell a single set of armour and somehow managed to end up three steps further back than when he had started.
“Alright,” he said. “We should head back anyway. Can we stay on this avenue?” He gestured toward the main road.
Tyke shrugged and nodded, and they set off together.
As they walked, Alric noticed the buildings lining the avenue were noticeably better than those tucked deeper into the city. Cleaner fronts. More deliberate spacing. Less sense of things pressing in on one another. There was space for wagons to enter if needed.
Tyke clasped his hands behind his head and kicked his feet forward as he walked, his gait loose and exaggerated, full of spare energy.
“Uh,” he said, glancing sideways, “I wanted to ask. What’d you do to make Ruth cry?”
Alric let out a slow breath through his nose, the memory settling uncomfortably in his chest.
“I showed her my item box,” he said. “Gave her a fright.”
Tyke pushed out his bottom lip and nodded slowly, thoughtfully, like a connoisseur who had just discovered a new food and wine pairing he particularly liked.
Despite himself, the corners of Alric’s mouth twitched, and he had to suppress a laugh.
They walked on in companionable silence, Alric observing as much as he could while Tyke simply enjoyed the breeze.
The buildings grew undeniably poorer the farther they went. Ramshackle additions began to appear, first one or two, then spreading until nearly every structure bore some awkward extension. Laundry lines followed, crisscrossing the spaces between walls. Traffic along the road thickened, carts and pedestrians pressing closer together.
Ahead, Alric spotted the gate he had first entered the city through. Now people were pouring in steadily. He watched the flow and realised someone could pass through the gate, turn left, and reach the docks, the nobles’ bridge, and the merchants’ street while bypassing most of the city entirely.
The thought unsettled him, though he could not immediately say why.
Tyke turned off the main avenue and down the road they had entered on earlier. Traffic was far thicker now.
“Can we go down some alleys to skip this?” Tyke asked.
Alric nodded. The density of people made it feel uncomfortably like traffic flow on roads back in his previous life.
Tyke ducked into a narrow alley, and Alric shuffled after him. They followed a series of turns and twists, passages narrowing and widening without any obvious logic. Alric quickly realised he would have been hopelessly lost on his own. Eventually, they emerged around the side of the inn.
Tyke stopped and held out his hand expectantly.
Alric grinned and passed over the copper coin he owed him. Tyke grinned back, clutching it close as if it might vanish if he loosened his grip.
They entered the inn together through the open dining room door, skipping the reception area entirely. Alric was surprised to find that the boy’s antics had lifted his spirits more than he had realised. The relative calm inside was a welcome relief from the noise and pressure of the streets outside.
“Lemme know if you need to go anywhere again,” Tyke said with a grin as he headed for the staff door. “It’ll cost ya, though.”
He did not wait for a reply before disappearing from sight.
Alric lingered where he stood, considering his options. The problem became obvious almost immediately. He had more questions than answers, and none of them were going to resolve themselves. This needed to make sense to him.
His room, he remembered, did not even have a desk.
That settled it.
He scanned the dining room and chose a bench still catching the last of the sunlight, then sat. He retrieved a sheet of paper and a charcoal stick from his item box and set them on the table. The paper lay blank before him, and he found himself staring at it as though it might already contain answers to questions he had not yet figured out how to ask.
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He started with what felt obvious enough. Resting his forehead against his free hand, he wrote money at the top of the page.
Small coppers. Large coppers. Silvers?
Small, large. Gold?
Small and large? Bigger?
He recorded it all in cramped, uneven handwriting, arrows and half formed thoughts branching off without much order.
Frowning, he glanced around the dining room, only to be reminded there was no one there to ask.
“How is a street vendor sausage a small copper?” he muttered aloud.
Halfway down the page, he broke off and started a new chain of thought.
Sausage: 1 small copper
Honeyed apple: 1 small copper
Inn meal: 4 copper
Ale: 2 copper
Room overnight: 8 copper
He leaned back slightly, staring at the list.
Was food wildly expensive, or was accommodation unusually cheap?
He frowned at the page, dissatisfied with the question and even less happy with the lack of an answer.
With a quiet huff, he shook his head and pushed the paper aside. His hand hovered over a fresh sheet, charcoal poised to write brewing at the top, before he stopped.
“Do I even want to make beer?” he asked the empty room.
The question lingered longer than he expected. He had sold the armour because he was not going to get dragged into combat nonsense, but beyond that he was not even sure. The thought stalled him.
After a moment, he wrote item box at the top of the page instead.
Limits?
Capacity?
Volume?
Weight?
He stared at the words, the charcoal already smudging beneath his thumb, aware that this, at least, was something he actually possessed.
Further down the page, he added a few more notes.
Useful for logistics.
Movement.
Roads.
The wagon ride into town surfaced in his mind, the hard bench, the constant jostle. He tried briefly to imagine a life spent on the road. That image did not last long. Mosquitoes. Sleeping outdoors. The slow grind of it.
He wrote merchant beneath the list, then crossed it out.
Army? Same problems as a merchant, only with far less freedom and significantly more shouting.
He crossed that out as well.
He wrote storage in the centre of the page and circled it, then pushed the sheet aside to join the one about money.
Taking out a fresh page, he stared at it for a long moment, head resting in his hand, doing nothing but think. He started to write life, then paused. That was too broad. The real question came first.
Rural or urban.
He did not hesitate long. Rural brought back the image of the massive lizard hauling the noble’s wagon, and he shuddered, shaking his head. He was not cut out for that kind of life.
That left urban.
He sat with the thought for a moment. It was not inspiring, but it was solid. The only option that did not immediately repel him.
Which meant professions.
Crafting?
He frowned. In his previous life he had been a computer systems engineer, and none of that translated into anything remotely useful here.
That left brewing.
He let out a slow sigh. It was not inspired, but it was something. He wrote brewing at the top of the page, then stared at the word in silence.
Water.
Hops.
Wheat.
Barley?
He added question marks beside each, then wrote yeast beneath them and circled it, hesitating before adding another question mark. He knew he had some kind of power related to it, but he had no idea how it actually worked.
After a moment, he decided to test it.
He stood and moved over to the hearth. The feeling returned immediately, that faint, instinctive sense that the spell was there, waiting. He held his hand out toward the empty stone and thought, yeast.
Nothing happened.
He frowned, then remembered the god’s words. He would need a specific yeast. He would know how it worked.
Closing his eyes, he concentrated instead on bottom fermenting lager yeast. It would consume sugars and
White light flared behind his eyes.
He jerked his hand back on instinct, blinking hard. When he looked again, there was a small white blob on the stone where there had not been one before.
Carefully, he touched it with a fingertip, then brought it up to his nose.
“Oh,” he murmured. “That’s yeast, alright.”
He returned to the table and his papers, looking them over again. Yeast, at least, was covered. Everything else was a problem.
He flipped the sheet and started listing the brewing process from memory, step by step. He did not get far before it became obvious just how little of it he could actually do. By the time he reached the end, the conclusion was unavoidable.
He absolutely had to sell the armour. Without that, he was not getting anywhere.
Setting that page aside, he pulled out another and placed it next to the one marked brewing. At the top, he wrote brewing equipment and began to list what he would need.
The list grew quickly. Then it kept growing.
By the end, it was uncomfortably long. So many things he had never once thought about, simply assumed would exist. Even basic details. Liquid seals, for one. He stared at the words for a moment, irritation creeping in.
How the hell was he supposed to manage a liquid seal when he had barely seen any glass at all beyond windows?
He let out a deep sigh. There were far too many questions and nowhere near enough answers.
His thoughts were interrupted when Ruth appeared at the edge of the dining room, peering in. After a moment, she wandered over, leaning closer to the table and eyeing the scattered pages with open curiosity.
“Ooo?” She tilted her head. “What you doing?” Her gaze skimmed the writing. “Is that mage writing? Are you planning a spell?”
Alric blinked, his expression cycling through several layers of confusion before it clicked. Either she could not read at all, or she could not read his handwriting. Unsure which, he decided it was not worth untangling.
“Nothing like that,” he said. “I’m just making lists. Trying to organise my thoughts.” He hesitated, then added, “And I’m sorry about scaring you earlier.”
She waved it off with a small shake of her head. “It was just a shock, is all.” Her attention was already back on the page. “What’s this say?”
“Money,” he replied. “I was trying to figure out how much I actually have.” He paused, then glanced up. “Hang on. Do silvers come in smalls and larges?”
She blinked at him, then tilted her head the other way.
“Everyone knows that,” she said, as if stating the obvious.
Alric closed his eyes briefly and gestured for her to continue.
“Yes,” she went on, frowning slightly. “They come in smalls and larges.”
“And gold?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said after a moment. “But I’ve never seen a large gold before.”
Alric nodded and made a note.
“I see,” he said. “You’re very clever.” He hesitated, then added sincerely, “Can you tell me what else costs one copper?”
Ruth brightened at that. As she spoke, Alric wrote quickly, charcoal scratching across the page. A bundle of carrots for a copper. Two heads of lettuce, but only when they were in season. A whole cabbage.
He paused and lifted a hand to stop her.
What kind of ridiculous denomination was a small copper? How was there nothing smaller than that? How did a single coin cover everything from a street snack to a pile of vegetables?
He stared at the page, unsettled in a way he could not yet articulate.
“Anyway!” Ruth said suddenly. “I gotta go. Evening meal will be soon!” She paused, then added, “I came to ask. Your hot water basin. You happy to get it to your room after eating?”
Alric nodded, smiling. “That’d be great. Thanks.”
She returned the smile and hurried off, already calling something toward the back as she went.
Left alone again, Alric looked back down at the page. Of everything he had written, it was the small copper that stood out the most. The absurdity of it refused to settle, needling at the back of his thoughts.
