“Gerik left,” Fridu told us. “I guess he’s in trouble with the law?” She gestured to three city guardsmen standing at the bar. Solid-looking fellows with ill moods and suspicious eyes. The largest had a face resembling a pig’s. Like the others, he wore a uniform of light leather armor. They all had swords at their sides.

  “Whitewater Guardians,” Molly told me, noticing my curiosity. “They’re like regular beat cops back in your world. I suppose they’re reasonably honest, but only by the standards of this city.”

  “They won’t step on your toes if you don’t step on theirs,” Fridu said.

  “Does that mean your friend Gerik stepped on their toes?” I asked.

  “Probably,” Molly answered. “Gerik’s never met a toe he didn’t step on. But he’s a damn fine thief, and we need a thief in our party.”

  “We’re having a party?”

  “No, we’re not having a party. Well, actually, we could? I enjoy parties. A few flagons of ale. Punches getting thrown. Clothing getting tossed. But when I said we needed a thief in our party, I meant our adventuring party.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said, nodding. “Out adventuring party.” I looked around the room, which was vast. There were two separate bars and an open kitchen preparing plates of meat and bread cooked within wood-fired ovens that reminded me of the kilns from the pottery class I’d taken as a freshman, largely in the hopes of getting laid. The fierce scent of the meat swaggered throughout the entirety of the bar, while the bread’s rich aroma mixed with a thousand other smells.

  There were over a hundred customers in the Leaky Centaur, seated at circular tables or the type I’ve seen illustrated in depictions of Viking longhouses, the ones that look like stretched out versions of picnic tables.

  The ceiling was twenty feet above us, higher in some areas, a mix of wooden beams and colorful banners that ranged from small to enormous, all of them bright, some of them warning against breaking the bar’s rules, some of them menus, some of them lewd, some of them with comical sayings, many of them in languages I didn’t recognize.

  And all around me I could hear endless waves of languages ranging from the coarsely guttural to what sounded like the trilling of birds. Numerous women danced for the crowds’ amusements and coins, and a handful of men were dancing as well. A band played flutes and drums on a makeshift stage.

  The air was filled with sweltering sweat, wood-fired smoke, the perfumes of several women who were clearly courtesans, and the kitchen’s clean scents merging with those of old wood, fresh iron, tobacco and wine.

  Molly and I’d joined Fridu at a circular table stained with liquid history. We drank wine from badly dented tin cups. I was reaching to pour myself another cup when a scuffle broke out. A man had tried to steal another man’s wallet, and he’d been caught. The victim punched the thief twice in the stomach, another in the face.

  Staggered by the beating, the thief fell to the floor at my feet. He landed so hard on the wood and straw that his tunic loosened for a moment, and I saw a modest collection of purloined purses secreted in the folds of the cloth. He saw me noticing his stolen cache and gave me a grin through his bloody lips, then lurched to his feet and made his way to the bar. Nobody had paid much attention to the fight, and they paid none to the aftermath. It was that kind of bar. I turned away from the scene and back to Molly.

  “So, what does an ‘ do?” I asked.

  “We take missions from the Adventurers Guild,” Fridu answered. “Pretty much any dangerous job that needs doing. If brigands have been harassing caravans, we go out and fight them, for instance.”

  “Slaughter them, for instance,” Molly amended.

  “There’s that,” Fridu agreed. “Or, let’s say some shit-filled giant rat’s gotten itself camped out in a bar’s basement, we might get sent there to deal with it.” She winked at me.

  “Anything that needs doing, we do it, Molly said. “And of course, there’s dungeons.”

  “Dungeons?” I asked.

  “Yeah, dungeons,” Molly said, in tones close to lust.

  Fridu said, “Dungeons are underground complexes. The temples of forgotten gods. The remnants of ancient civilizations. The lairs of monsters. Things like that. All of them commonly full of monsters and treasures.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I said, “If there are monsters, shouldn’t you stay away?” Molly grunted and then repeated my words in a far more mocking tone.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” I told her. “But monsters are dangerous. And what kinds of monsters are we talking about? What’s in this world?” I gestured around the room, meaning the greater world of Goncourt.

  “The usual abominations,” Molly said. “Giants, for one thing. Not just giant people, but giants of all kinds, like bugs, which fucking sucks. And there’s other giant animals of all types. You haven’t truly lived until you’ve stabbed your sword through the throat of a giant gorilla.”

  “Okay,” I told her, totally disagreeing.

  “And there are griffins,” Fridu said. “And the undead, of course. I mean,

  many undead. Skeletons. Vampires. Ghosts. Zombies. All sort of bastards.”

  I drank more wine, thinking of all the questions I still had, and if I wanted any answers. At the table past me, a huge bear of a man heaved an enormous sack onto his table and revealed its contents to the woman sitting across from him. There was a decapitated head in the bag. Something like a horse’s head. But smaller. And more human. The woman nodded and gave the man some coins, downed the rest of her ale in one go, then strode out of the bar with the bag.

  I looked back to Molly as she put her feet up on the table. It showed off her legs, which would have been pleasant, but she was still explaining the world around me, and it was making my gut clench like I needed to puke.

  “Demons, of course,” she said. “Devils of all types. Ettins and gargoyles. Goblins by the millions. I hate those little fuckers. Hmm, let’s see, I’ve fought a minotaur or two. And the lizard people, who are sometimes nice but most often vile as shit. There’s trolls and ogres. I once fought a vampire rhinoceros.”

  “A vampire rhinoceros?” I asked.

  “Don’t get her started on old story,” Fridu cautioned. “It gets bawdy. Anyway, we need to talk about something else. Your stats, Josh. How the hell do you have an ‘open’ class? That’s just not possible.”

  “We’re hoping you can explain it to us,” Molly said, moving her feet from the table to my lap. It wasn’t a gentle transition. She looked to me, glanced down to her feet in my lap, and shook her head, telling me, “Don’t get any ideas. I don’t ever get drunk enough to sleep with a zero-level man.”

  “She does too,” Fridu told me. “All the time. But more importantly, let’s talk about this ‘ class of yours. What do you do, Josh?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do. I mean, what do you do back in your other life?”

  “Oh. I’m a college student.”

  “Terrifying,” Molly said, taking her feet off my lap. “Listen, you two talk. I need to take a piss and punch somebody.”

  She stood from our table and strode away, purposefully shouldering a couple of men, seeing if they would take offense. They did, but both clamped down on their feelings when they noticed it was Molly. She soon disappeared into the crowd.

  “That woman’s violent,” I told Fridu.

  “There’s that,” the witch agreed. “I love it about her. Now, are you sure you’ve never been in Goncourt before?”

  “Never.”

  “You’re positive? No dreams that might not have been dreams?”

  “I don’t think so?” I was racking my brains for childhood memories of fighting giant rats or being chased by hordes of skeletons. There was nothing.

  “When you knew Salena, back when Molly’s mother babysat you, do you remember her casting any spells?”

  “No.”

  “You seem pretty sure of yourself for a man who didn’t believe in magic until yesterday.”

  “There’s that,” I agreed.

  “Good boy. Humans are usually so stubborn. Now, did Salena do any magics? Cast any spells on you? Ones that maybe some part of you understood what was happening, but your old mind refused to accept?”

  “I really don’t think so. All I can remember is talking with her. And those plants. She loved plants. Another thing, she always seemed to have snacks handy. Candies, mostly. Maybe she created those by magic, but I don’t think that’s what you’re talking about.”

  “Not really. I mean, did she cast spells on you? When she tucked you in at night, did she do or say anything special?”

  “I had a crush on her.”

  “What?” Fridu looked over to me. She’d been studying the pig-faced guardsman.

  “Shit,” I said. I hadn’t meant to blurt out anything about my old crush on Molly’s mother. I’d only been seven years old. It shouldn’t be counted against me. I’d wanted to kiss Molly in the basement, and I was still hoping it might happen at some point, but there probably aren’t too many women who find it beguiling for a man to broadcast his impassioned memories of their mothers.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I only meant that when she was tucking me into bed, I was too busy being aware that she was a woman. But only aware of it in the way a kid is aware, you know? Like, there’s the knowledge that there, and of how that ‘ is definitely . . . nice? But you can’t put your finger on.”

  “At seven years old, you keep your damn fingers to yourself,” Fridu laughed. “But I know what you mean. It used to be that way with me and magic. I remember being a little girl. This was in the days when I lived in Stone Wood. In the caves. You maybe don’t know this, but as a people, dwarves don’t much care for magic. My kind are into rocks and minerals. Crafting armor and weapons. That’s the life for a dwarf. Not me. I enjoy magic. And forests. Give me an ocean and a beach. I love it.”

  She wasn’t looking to me. She was looking away. At first I thought it was because she was lost in her dreams, but then I noticed she was looking to the pig-faced guardsman again.

  “You think he’s handsome?” I asked. It seemed inconceivable, but I’d recently walked through a doorway into the land of the impossible, so who knew?

  “I think he’s trouble,” Fridu said.

  “Trouble?” I asked, but even as I voiced the question, I saw what she meant. Pig-Face was doing his best to be subtle, but he was making his way toward us. It was a meandering route, strolling around other tables, pretending to be interested in other things, but his eyes kept flickering to Fridu and I. His hand was on the pommel of his sword, resting only lightly, but never leaving. The other two guardsmen were acting much the same, spread out in a triangle formation, closing the distance to our table.

  Shit.

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