After about four hours of nonstop travel, we arrived at a city; it was relatively large, not very large, but enough so that it could not be called a town. When we entered through the main gate, we saw several armed soldiers wearing chainmail, spears, and swords, although one seemed particularly special to me, because he wore a kind of heavy glove instead of a weapon; it was strange, in my fragmented mind I couldn't associate that with a weapon used by a soldier.
The guards looked at us suspiciously, but the man who brought us said something like we were his nephews. It seems the guards knew him, so they let us in without further ado.
When we reached a more central place in the town, the old man told us to get off the cart and gave us what looked like about twenty silver coins. He told us to enter the inn in front of us and rent a room. After that, he said we should try to earn some money to survive for a few days until he came back to get us. He had to leave the city to deliver some things or something like that; honestly, I didn't understand very well what he meant.
It seemed strange to me that that man would come back; maybe he only said it to calm us down, because I don't see the point of why he would want to come back to help us if we did nothing more than look like poor beggars.
And that's how I ended up sitting at a table in a room facing Rowan without either of us saying anything; it was quite uncomfortable for me, although it seemed that he was staring at the table thinking about something else.
"So… are we really brothers, not cousins, friends, or something else?" I asked after a long time of absolute silence.
"The truth is that I don't really know," he said. "After that wave of energy, a few fragments of memory came to my head, but honestly I don't know well. I could remember my name and yours, but not a surname or anything more specific." Just then a knock was heard in the next room and distracted us for a second, but he continued, "I can't explain why, but I am certainly sure that we are family… and judging by how much we look alike, I would bet we are brothers."
"I understand," I responded heavily, "at least I'm glad I'm not alone in this situation."
Rowan nodded his head.
A minute later he spoke again, "Well, we should go out and do something. Let's divide the tasks and come back here later tonight."
***
A while later I found myself walking down the street; it was quite busy, with several carts passing through the center of the main road and many people walking on the sides. It was easy to see that this was the center of this city.
After talking for a while about what we would each do, we agreed that he would look for work in the city to get some money and food. Meanwhile, I would also gather information, but about this world, which we had no idea what it was. Many things we saw couldn't be associated with what seemed normal to us. For some reason it seemed extremely strange to see soldiers in armor guarding the streets, the clothing, the houses, the atmosphere, and not to mention the strange attack the old man used against the wild beast he called… "Panlagor?" That, curiously, seemed even stranger to me than the rest of the things.
While I walked lost in my thoughts, I realized I had found what I was looking for: a building with a slightly fallen wooden sign that read "library."
When I entered and approached the counter, I was greeted by an elderly man. He didn't say much, only that it cost four centos per day. Honestly, I had no idea how much that was, whether it was expensive or cheap, but I took the risk and gave him four of the coins I had. I stood still for a few seconds to see if he would give me change, but he simply continued doing what he was doing, so I assumed I had just given him four centos.
I wandered around the shelves picking up some books that might help me, until I stopped at what looked like a large rolled-up sheet. When I opened it I could see it was a map.
On it, there appeared to be four continental masses: one in the west and the other three closer together in the east. On the western continent there wasn't much information; I don't know why, but it only marked some large port cities and not much more. But that wasn't the case for the eastern continents. These were filled with marked points, from the topography itself to cities, towns, and important places.
I rolled the map up, put it back where it was, and continued on my way. After getting all the books I wanted, I went to a nearby table and began to read.
***
It seems that the known world is divided into four main continents, one of which, the one in the west, is completely hostile toward the rest and does not allow anyone to approach, which is why there is so little information about that place.
Returning to the three in the east, it can be seen that there are several kingdoms and empires, but the one that caught my attention the most was the one in the central continent, which was dominated by a single authority: the "Corantian Empire." At first it was only a kingdom, but it seems that approximately 40 years ago they took up arms and overran the three kingdoms that ruled the area. The point of all this is that it seems we were there, in a small city called "Aldefor," which was located in the west of the continent, near a huge mountain range that I managed to see on the map earlier.
The more I read about this world, the more astonished I became. I couldn't believe what I was reading, which seemed extremely strange to me, since this seemed like something completely normal in this world. I had so many questions, but the most important one was why I had that feeling of strangeness about the rules and normalities of this place. Why, when I thought about it, did "this world" come to mind? Could it be… that I'm not from here?
No, there's no point in thinking about that. I should keep investigating this for now.
For obvious reasons, what caught my attention the most was the fact that there seemed to be… magic? It seems that's what Rowan did on the way. There were many things related to that, but none explaining how it is done or anything similar, only that magic was mainly controlled by the important houses of the different kingdoms, especially the martial ones.
As I said, there was a lot of information about it, stories and great feats about the so-called "Shockers," who seemed to be the bearers of these abilities. The most…
"Hey kid, I was calling you," said the receptionist from before.
"Oh, sorry, I hadn't heard you," I replied, with a hint of embarrassment in my voice.
The man shook his head, "No problem. I was just telling you that I'm closing; it's nighttime."
"Shit, I'm really sorry, I'm leaving now." I quickly stood up from my seat, put the books back where they were originally, left the library, and hurried in the direction of the inn where I was staying with my brother. I didn't know the time, but I was sure it was very late, so I quickened my pace.
There weren't as many people walking on the street anymore, but enough to know that it wasn't excessively late. After 15 minutes of walking I arrived at the inn. I showed the card the receptionist had given us and was able to enter my room.
"Finally you're here. I thought something had happened to you," said Rowan, sitting at the table while eating some bread.
"It's just that I found a library and stayed reading until just a moment ago. Everything in this world is so 'fantastic,' but it seems so…"
"Strange? Weird?" my brother interrupted, "Yes, I feel the same."
I nodded my head, sat across from him, took a piece of bread from the table, and began to eat, satisfying the voracious hunger I had.
After eating in silence for a while, I began to explain everything I discovered in the library today, from the continents to some of the history I learned about them. It wasn't that extensive what I managed to learn today, but it was enough to give us an idea of where we were.
"It's… interesting. The part about magic is a bit curious, since I didn't see anyone using anything like it except for the old man who rescued us this morning," he replied, while looking at his hand.
Before I could say anything, he spoke again, "Alright, now what I discovered."
He began to tell me everything he had done since we separated, mainly that he got some coins by helping unload carts at a nearby warehouse. They weren't many, but enough to eat. He explained that the currency was divided into three parts: the Centos, the Crowns, and the Imperial Crowns.
The centos were the currency seen in the day-to-day life of a normal person; a few dozen of them could allow four people to live for a week comfortably. Rowan received 6 centos for helping at the warehouse for a few hours, and he spent 2 on the bread we were eating right now.
"…It also seems that we are on day 35 of spring in the year 1070," he finished explaining.
Once we finished talking and eating, we went to sleep. This week we would have to continue that routine of gathering information to know where the hell we were. We didn't want to seem strange with no knowledge of anything; it would be extremely suspicious.