“Eh?”
The chauffeur stared in confusion at what appeared to be a rather filthy looking man in bizarre garb, speaking a foreign language; he’d heard it before, travelling through various countrysides in the east, but didn’t know it himself.
“He’s speaking Anglish,” Sara piped up. “Let me try to talk to him.” she said, then stepping out of the motor-carriage.
“Please, I just need a ride to the nearest town or-or something. I’ve got no clue where I am, and-”
Sara interjected. “But of course. We’re headed down to Pa-... ah, a city, anyways.”
For the first time in an indeterminable number of days, the wanderer began to feel hope again.
“Oh thank the LORD! Do your parents need any repayment or anything? When I get back stateside I’ve got plenty of-"
Sara grimaced somewhat before putting back on a smile. “No worries, no worries. I help out all of you outsiders when I can.”
He looked at her, confused. “I-I see…” Outsiders? “...regardless, where are your parents?”
She grimaced again. “Ahaha, what could you mean, ‘parents’? I, an adult woman, don’t need to travel with my parents, ahaha,” she looked him in the eyes, with a rather malicious-seeming smile, “...as you ought to know.”
This hit the wanderer like a bag of sand. Flustered, he stuttered out “Y-yeah, yeah of course. Sorry. Now can we-”
Her smile returned to a moreso welcoming one. “Certainly.”
Sara strutted over to the back seat of the automobile. “You may sit in the front, with the coachman.”
He nodded and, walking over to the vehicle, he only then noticed that it was, indeed, what appeared to be a car from the very early twentieth century, as his adrenaline levels lowered and the fear of being left in the woods dissipated. At the same moment, he looked over and saw that the eyes of his patrons were a startling red, with strange pupils, and when they smiled or spoke, their teeth…
“Well? Do you want this ride?”
The wanderer snapped back into reality. “Yes, of course, of course…”
He crawled onto the seat of what should’ve been a museum exhibit, quite happy to finally be getting out of the woods, even if his apparent saviors were small demon girls in a Victorian-era car. He leaned back into his seat, only to be poked by the blonde-haired demon.
“So, mister outsider… what’s your name?”
And so they traveled, and the wanderer came to make new friends in this new world.
• • •
As the group rode onwards, the small gravel backroad grew into a much larger stone street, and, not long after, a tall wooden guard tower came into view, apparently acting as a checkpoint of sorts; horse-drawn carriages and a handful of similarly old-fashioned motorized vehicles lined up for inspections by guard-soldiers that appeared almost Roman. Past that, a large wooden gate, flanked on both sides by a tall stone wall that stood endlessly in either direction.
Their automobile drove onwards, skipping past the line of other vehicles, up towards the guard-station.
“And this,” Sara said, “is where our journey together ends, for now.”
The wandered shuddered, still half-sure this was all some strange trick.
“Just remember everything I told you, okay? You’ll be fine! It’s worked out before.” She smiled. “Oh! And one last thing…” She pulled out another small piece of parchment and wrote something on it, which he quickly took and put in his pocket.
As the vehicle came to a stop, a guard approached and came to talk to the driver. Sara took over, speaking to him and occasionally looking towards the alien passenger in front. The guard called over for another, and motioned for the wanderer to come out. He complied, glancing at both the guard and Sara with uncertainty; neither the guard’s stern appearance nor her slightly anxious smile gave him any reassurance.
As he waited, the guard spoke to the driver one last time and motioned for their vehicle to move on. As they did, Elia leaned out, waving. “Goodbye mister outsider!” He waved back, knowing little of what came next.
• • •
The wanderer sat twiddling his thumbs.
Another guard had come and taken him to a large guardhouse, now separated from the forest he had been seemingly imprisoned in by the stone walls standing outside.
‘This might end up another prison in and of itself, though…'he thought to himself.
He now sat alone in an otherwise empty room, possessing only two chairs and a table. After a few moments, a man came through the door behind him, and sat in front of him. He placed some papers on the table, silently and emotionlessly sorting them and quickly characterizing himself as someone who regularly deals with “outsiders” like himself.
The guardsman cleared his throat. “You speak Anglish, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
The guard glanced up at him, then back down at his paper. “Good. What’s your name? Age?”
The wanderer slumped. “Well, I think…” Since waking in the forest, the wanderer’s long-term memories were foggy, almost as though they were hidden behind curtains. He shook his head and remembered what he had talked about with Sara and Elia.
“My name is Renat Flavius Gavriel. My age is, err, 26 or so.”
The guardsman raised an eyebrow. “A Valentian name? Are you really an outsider?”
“Yes, I… don’t remember my original name well enough to keep it.”
The guardsman grunted. “You’re ahead of the game, anyways. Would’ve probably had to change it. Bureaucracy doesn’t much like outsider names.” He scribbled the name down and put down his pencil.
“So, if you know this much, what all do you know about… this world?” the guardsman inquired.
The wanderer, or rather, Ren, leaned back in his chair. “Well…”
Over the two or so hours he had spent travelling here, he had learned as much as he could from the two. The Empire of Valentia, as it was called, was a grand kingdom that took up most of the known world; within its walls, Valentia consisted of many varied peoples from Earth who had themselves appeared in the mysterious Northern Forests over the centuries. Just as well, Valentia was inhabited by hosts of part-human Jinnsians, being made up by various otherwise mythical subspecies, such as the vampire-adjacent Upyir that Sara and Elia belonged to, along with hundreds of others.
Valentia itself originated from the Northern Forests; long ago, according to its records, seven Roman legions, retreating into a forest following a horrific defeat, suddenly found themselves in the forests of another world. No longer pursued, they followed a river south to a great bay, and established a “new Rome”, Palanti, on the side of a grand mountain. An Emperor was chosen among the legion’s highest-ranking officers, and other officers were given governorships over newly explored and territories, eventually forming a feudal-esque lordship system and establishing the Empire of Valentia. Outside the borders of the empire lurked terrifying beasts and violent barbarians.
While the empire boasted a wide array of cultures, many chose to integrate with the Roman majority; they called themselves, rather unoriginally, the Romians, and the empire’s official language would come to be a modified form of the language the original Romans spoke, called Novolatin. The emperorship had very recently changed hands to the newly-crowned Princep Rex Julius Augusta, and the empire as a whole remained in an era of relative stability and prosperity.
“Oh! And one more thing…” Ren pulled out a letter from his pocket, and handed it over to the guardsman.
Opening it, he quietly read aloud “By the words of Sarai Adelaide of the Right Honorable House of DuVoncouer, I order that, by the powers vested in me by His Majesty and the Gods Above, this Outsider be provided Sponsorship by His Majesty’s Imperial Government.” The guardsman grunted and nodded his head. “Seems you’re a rather lucky one, eh? Getting sponsored by the daughter of a lord and all.”
He closed the letter and put it aside. “So, is there anything you remember about your, eh, past life, anything at all?”
Actually, there was. Of all things, Ren remembered his military service in great detail, down to once-vague tactical lessons he had learned in his early days.
He chuckled. “Yes, actually. I can’t remember my damned name for the life of me, but… I do remember just about everything about my military career.”
The guardsman smiled, looking Ren up and down. “Then it’s settled. I think ‘His Majesty’s Imperial Government’ can make use of you yet.”
