Anika stood in front of the mirror in her room, tightening the final knot in the ribbon securing her braids. She barely had enough time after eating lunch to change into her armor and re-braid her hair into the same style she wore yesterday But she was, at least, relieved to find out the clothing that had been left in her room included more pairs of the lightweight pants and tunics worn under her armor. Until she’d seen them, she was dreading having to wear the same sweaty tunic from yesterday.

  She stifled a yawn and stretched and just wished she had more time to relax! This was way more work than being in college and she was definitely not mentally prepared for the expectations and level of discipline required to to be a magical hero. Her fantasy adventure was feeling a little too ‘real world’ for her and she wondered if Etalen had vacation days.

  A firm, rapid knocking at her door jarred her out of her thoughts, “Anika, Lily, I hope you are ready for today’s training.” Leka’s voice was somewhat muffled yet chipper through the solid wood door and Anika heard every cheery word as an affront to her own stiff, tired, and sore body. Straightening herself with weary resignation, Anika looked at the door.

  “Anika, are you ready?” Lily nudged the side of Anika’s leg with her oversized capybara nose, breaking Anika’s thoughts.

  “Yes, sorry, just thinking.” Anika swiftly grabbed her bow from the armchair in the corner where she had left it before lunch and hurried to open the door.

  Outside, Leka was waiting, dressed in a similar outfit to yesterday and looking far too caffeinated for Anika’s liking. While Anika thought Leka would immediately rush them down the hall, she was surprised as Leka instead looked her up and down shaking her head.

  “I’m glad to see you’re enthusiastic to return to the dungeon! But we won’t be doing that this afternoon.”

  “What? Sinaya said we had more training.” Anika was confused. Yesterday it had sounded like the afternoon was when people often went to the dungeon. Were they instead doing magic training and going to the dungeon at night?

  “After seeing you fight yesterday, and learning about your stats, I’ve decided that we need to rotate in some agility and endurance training. Until Vok releases you from daily archery practice in the mornings, we will need to alternate our endurance training with our dungeon training. On the plus side, most acolytes complete this training in the morning, so we will have the course to ourselves in the afternoon! Some of the other heroes may join us as well, if their trainers decide they can benefit from the courses. Now, pop back into your room and take off your armor. You should have had some light weight shorts and tunics dropped off for this kind of training.”

  “Do I get to do the training too?” Lily asked excitedly while Anika just stood there, processing. Endurance and agility training? Like obstacle courses and parkour? She thought her arms hurt now, but now she had a terrible feeling that would be the least of her worries after whatever Leka had planned this afternoon.

  “I don’t think you’ll be able to do most of the course, Lily, but there is a nice pond near the training area you can swim in and some nice streams.” Leka replied while gesturing for Anika to get moving.

  “Oooo yay!” Lily bounced through the door to wait with Leka while Anika closed the door to change out of her dungeon clothes.

  A few minutes later, Anika opened the door again, wearing dark grey shorts and a pale blue top with short sleeves. It felt more like pajamas, and Anika hoped she could get more of these outfits to wear around the temple or sleep in when she didn’t have ten thousand other things to be doing for ‘training’.

  Leka nodded in approval upon seeing Anika open the door again, but instead of immediately turning to leave like Anika expected, she reached into her bag to pull out a small object about the size of an average playing card. It wasn’t quite as thin as a playing card, probably 2 millimeters thick, and it was a light grey color. Leka held it out for Anika to take.

  “This is a time tablet. Sinaya said you were asking about keeping track of time on your own, so I picked one up from storage.”

  Anika examined the tablet Leka handed her. It wasn’t very heavy and looked like some kind of dark quartz crystal, though how they managed to find quartz with no imperfections was beyond her. On the tablet were two lines, bright blue and bright gold, that ran parallel to the longer edge of the card. The blue line was divided into five segments, with a yellow-green dot past the halfway point of the third segment. The golden line had a series of marks on it, each with a number from one to ten. The numbers were currently sideways, so Anika rotated it 90 degrees left from how she had initially grabbed it. Now oriented in landscape style she saw the numbers properly beneath the gold line, but above the blue line. A bright gold circle sat on the line about a third of the way between 4 and 5. Two smaller black circles on the timeline sat at approximately 1 and 7. At the top of the card, on the left, it said “Piromi” in bright gold. On the right, glowing blue numbers read 04:34:67, with the last number ticking up… 68, 69, 70… as Anika watched. They looked about the same speed as seconds on Earth, but Anika had never quite mastered the feeling of one second. Whether it was ‘one-Mississippi’ or ‘one-one-thousand’, they never quite lined up.

  “The top of the time tablet tells you the day and the time. The timelines show the progress through the day with sunrise and sunset,” Leka pointed to the two black circles on the gold line.

  “Wait,” Anika stopped her, pointing at the black circle that was just past the 1 on the timeline. “Does this mean your time starts in the morning, like when we wake up?”

  “Of course.” Leka prepared to continue.

  “That’s so weird. Why does it start then?”

  “The day starts with the sun. Our time is based on the longest day, so that sunrise on the summer equinox will be at the start of our first hour of the day. We use the black orb to indicate how far sunrise is from the start of the day, which is especially helpful in winter.”

  “When does your day start?” Lily asked curiously.

  “Um… in the middle of the night…” Anika trailed off, realizing their method did seem sensible.

  "Interesting,” Leka stated before jumping back into her explanation. “The orb on the gold timeline will change color based on the weather. Blue for rain, gold for sun. It’s gold right now because it’s a perfect sunny day.” Leka pointed to the gold dot on the gold line, then pointed to the greenish-yellow dot on the blue line. ”The orb on the season-line will change based on temperature. White, Blue, Green, Gold, and Orange from cold to hot. We find that useful here when preparing for our daily activities. You won’t likely see much warmer than solid gold here, but as you venture further south to other dungeons, it can get hotter in the summer.”

  Anika nodded along, trying to affix all the information in her mind. She wanted a simple watch, but it seems she got a time and weather app instead. It would be pretty useful to have an idea of how hot or cold it was and whether to expect poor weather before going outside for the day, so she appreciated that the time tablet had a lot more to offer than just the time.

  Leka tapped on the card’s blue season line, “Sinaya explained the breakdown of time to you, yes?” Leka raised an eyebrow at Anika.

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  “Uhh… yes… you have 5 seasons of 10 weeks. There are 10 days in a week, 10 hours in the day, and each hour is divided into 100 minutes of 100 seconds… which is super weird by the way…” Anika started to comment on the foreign system as Leka interrupted.

  “Oh? And how do you do it?” Leka seemed genuinely interested in Anika’s response.

  “Well, we have 12 months in a year, 30 or 31 days in a month, though one month has 28, and every 4 years there are 29 days in that one 28 day month. Then there’s 24 hours in a day, and 60 minutes to an hour, and 60 seconds to a minute…” Anika trailed off as both Leka and Lily started laughing.

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all Anika,” Lily squeaked through giggles and snorts.

  “Uhh…” Anika paused, actually thinking about the division of time on Earth, “Right… I suppose your method is more logical…”

  “How did your world come up with such an obscure method of counting time?” Leka managed to get her laughter under control.

  “Well, it’s kinda based on circles, I think?”

  Leka snorted in an attempt to conceal additional laughter, “What do circles have to do with time? Time moves forward in a line, it doesn’t repeat from the beginning.”

  “We... uh… don’t really talk about why? I think it goes back to planetary rotation and orbits and phases of the moon… there are 12 in a year. Do you have a moon?” Anika realized she hadn’t been outside at night to see if there was a moon in the sky and was desperate to not have to try to explain the history of time, something she definitely had never paid attention to. Did they even teach that in school? Nowadays, they barely taught how to read hands on a clock! At least Etalan had a digital option as well.

  “We have observed moons with other worlds in our system, but this world does not have a moon.”

  “Ah… well, how did Etalen decide how to tell time?”

  “It’s based on the gods, of course. Each Primary has a season, and each season, week, and day are divided into 10 based on the five Primary gods and the five lesser demigods that make up the Pantheon. It’s Piromi, the day of Fire, which means we are in the greater half of the week. The greater part of the week starts with Kinemi, the day of Aether, and the lesser week starts with Weyami, the day of Essence.”

  “So… Piromi means fire day? Is each day named after the god?” Anika was now curious that the days of the week were new words she wasn’t familiar with, but the gods themselves had names that she understood and recognized. Some of the food had names she was familiar with, but some jumped out as being from a language she had never heard. She now had a sneaking suspicion that whatever translation ritual they used was translating words that existed in English even if it would have seemed more logical in some cases to not translate - like the gods’ names.

  “Of course. Every day of the week is a compound, just like the seasons. We are currently in Pirorat, and next season is Degorat.” Leka looked at Anika like this was the most obvious statement in the world.

  “Right, that makes sense,” Anika nodded as she processed. That means that the fire magic and the Fire god weren’t just fire, they were piro. That made sense since the fire people were ‘pireta’. ‘Mi’ must mean ‘day’, and season must be ‘rat’, but since those words exist in English when used alone, they were translated for her. Since the days of the week didn’t have a direct comparison to her 7 day system, the translation enchantment Nilendi had told them about had no choice but to give her the actual Etalen names for the days, which now allowed her to figure out the real names of the gods. Somehow, it made the fantasy world feel more real to call them Piro and Kine, not “Fire” and “Aether”. The whole enchantment made a lot more sense as well, now that she had experienced words that were not in her English vocabulary.

  “We should begin our walk to the training field. Any other questions you can ask while we walk.” Leka suddenly returned to the business of training, clearly deciding that Anika’s most recent question had not been worth holding off training for.

  “Yes, let’s go!” Lily trotted down the hall after Leka, not waiting for Anika.

  Anika quickly shoved the time tablet into the large pocket in her shorts - she was relieved to find out pockets were common in all garments on this planet - and closed the door to her room before walking quickly to catch up to Leka.

  “So what did you mean by ‘greater week’ and ‘lesser week’?” Anika asked once she had fallen into step beside Leka.

  “You know the week is 10 days. The first day of the week is Kinemi, which starts the greater week. The greater week are the five days dedicated to the Primaries. The lesser week begins with Weyami and are the five days dedicated to the demigods. During the greater week, we do our duties to the gods - maintaining the balance of magic by venturing to dungeons and defeating them and bettering ourselves by practicing our skills and focusing our minds to grow our power. During the lesser week, we do our duties to the town and focus more on the health of our bodies and our communities. Dungeon expeditions may still happen, but usually to gather materials for our local towns and craftspeople. Our goal is to serve and assist the people in the communities that support the temples through service.”

  “Do the people in town not have a distinction between the weeks?” Anika didn’t yet know anything about the people outside the temple, and it seemed like a good opportunity to find out more about how the world worked.

  “Everyone on Etalen follows the basic tenets of the greater week, which is a focus on betterment of the self, and the lesser week, which is a focus on the betterment of the community. In the greater week they do work that improves themselves and others. For example, children are in school during the greater week. These are days where artisans work to improve their craft, researchers dedicate themselves to knowledge, and those with aptitude practice magic. During the lesser week, they improve the community. For example, children apprentice to different trades during the lesser week. Additionally, the people come together to discuss community improvements during town halls and offer their skills to maintain the common improvements. The lesser week also includes market days, festivals, and other activities that improve the health of the community.”

  Anika wondered if they would be participating in these community activities or if they would be considered exempt as they were not from the world, but were there to solve the world’s problems. Could she afford to lose a day of training when she was already so far behind? At the same time, if she didn’t get a break, she knew she would completely burn out. She already felt overwhelmed with everything she had to do and learn, and still had been given very little time to process anything while being hurried to practice and dungeons and more practice.

  “Does that mean we will be doing things in the town in a few days instead of going to dungeons? Or will we still be practicing and fighting every day?” Anika braced herself for Leka’s answer.

  “One of the reasons for the greater and lesser weeks is that it is not healthy for the mind to overwork the body, and not helpful to the body to overwork the mind. Everything in good time and measure. During the lesser week, everyone, including you heroes, will be expected to contribute to the community as well as engage in other pursuits as needed to maintain a healthy whole.”

  Anika breathed out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as she listened to Leka’s answer.

  Leka chuckled, “We would not work you to your death after the gods did so much to bring you here! I think you will be relieved to hear that we also have two rest days. Kinemi is the day to rest the mind and spirit. It is the day we hold services in worship of our gods. You were summoned on Kinemi because it is the day of the gods’ power. We do not go to dungeons on Kinemi, and have no formal training. Weyami, likewise, is a day to rest the body. It is the day festivals are held, and again we do not venture to the dungeons or have dedicated training on those days. You may use practice facilities on those days, but we recommend taking the time to rest and regenerate.

  Anika let out another sign of relief, “I was worried we would be fighting every day… I don’t think I could last without some rest days. I’m already exhausted and it’s only my second day here.”

  “You’ll be alright, Anika! We will get good rest in three days!” Lily bounced through the hall with the endless energy of a child. Anika shook her head.

  “The course this afternoon will challenge you, but you will start at the easiest level. You must push your body to some extent to earn your additional points in Potency and Vitality.” Leka said.

  Anika sighed, knowing that she was going to be too exhausted again this evening to do anything but sleep. She hoped she adapted to this kind of schedule sooner rather than later. Games and stories too often forgot to mention the tiresome work that went into becoming a hero.