At The Inn

I woke up. I was laying on a bed. My stomach was feeling extremely painful. It took me a few moments to remember who I was and what had happened.

I opened my eyes and sat up. It caused me lot of pain. I was in a small room. There was only a bed, a bedside table and a chair in the room. There were two doors in the room. I figured that one of these must be the entrance to the room and the other must be the toilet. I moved a little so that my back rested against the wall.

'So? What happened' I thought.

( I'd better not tell you. You won't act right when you receive this information from Lily. But I can tell you that this has happened before and won't happen regularly in the story again. )

I wondered what could have happened. I sat there thinking for about half an hour.

The door was opened. Standing in the doorway was Lily. She looked shocked. "Are you going to come in or just stand there in the door." I asked jokingly. She came in and closed the door. She had my bag which she put on the table.

"So, tell me what happened?" I said. "Y-You don't remember?"She asked. "No." I replied simply. "Oh! Ok. Umm we were coming out of the forest when a Demon Boar attacked us. It impaled you and you were thrown into a tree. Then it started coming towards me. Then something strange happened. You raised your arm and did something. I closed my eyes in fear and when I opened them I saw a that large area in front of you was frozen. I stood there for a few minutes processing what happened. After that I realised that you were injured. I rushed to you and carried you to the city. I got us a room at an inn and got a doctor to look at your injury. The doctor dressed it and told me that it will take at least two weeks to heal. I then went to the Guild to give them the herbs. I paid the doctor and told the Receptionist what happened.

She asked me to show her the monster and I did. She said that a Demon Boar is worth 80 silvers. She gave me the money and I came back to the inn."

'Hmm so I was only out for a few hours. That's an improvement. Last time I used magic I was unconscious for a full night.' I thought.

"Thank you. You saved me yet again. I don't know what I'd have done without you." I said, trying to cheer her up. She blushed a little and replied "I..i..it was nothing. You saved me first." "So that makes us even again."

There was an awkward silence. To break it I asked "So how much money did we make?" "Well we made a total of 1 Gold, 42 Silvers and 50 Bronze." She said. "But the doctor had to be paid 1 Gold so we were left with 42 Silver. The inn costs 5 Silver a day. So I had to pay 5 Silver to get a room. Now we're left with 37 Silver. We need at least 60 Bronze a day for food and that too if we only eat the cheapest bread and cheese."

I thought about it for a while. "So we can only stay here for 4 or 5 days, putting aside some of the money for food." I said. "So what do we do?" She asked. Our conversation continued like this for the day.

A few days later.

I was sitting alone in the room. We were going to leave the inn the next morning. Lily had gone to get some food.

( You should really examine the contents of your bag. ) "Why?" I asked. ( You'll see. )

I took my bag from the bedside table and looked inside. I saw that I couldn't actually see the insides. I hadn't noticed that before. But had I looked inside the bag before? The answer was no.

I put my hand inside. I felt a box. I grabbed it and pulled it out. I was small. About 8 cm [ 3 and 1/5 inchs for anyone reading this who doesn't use the metric system ] in width and length and 3 cm [ 1 and 1/5 inchs ] in height. It looked like one of those boxes that you keep rings or necklaces in.

I opened the box and saw inside. Similar to the bag, it's also looked like they were filled with darkness. I put my hand inside again and again felt a box. I took out the box again. This time the box was nearly identical to the first but this time it was significantly longer. It it was about 60 cm [2 feet]. I did the same thing again. The result was the same again but this box was wider than the one before it. It too was 60 cm long but it was 60cm long too.

'How many times are you going to make me repeat this?' I asked. ( Open this and enter. You were pulling stuff out of the boxes. Now you have to enter it. I'll explain when you enter. )

I got up from the bed. I had recovered a lot in the last few days but movement was still painful. I opened the box. Unlike the first two, this one had darkness inside both of its sections. When completely opened, the darkness made it look like a small door. I crouched and entered.

What I saw was a fully furnished, completely clean, living room. I was simply shocked. Too shocked to even ask questions. I looked around. The room even had electric lights.

( As expected you're shocked. This place has electricity and water so you're pretty much all set. Also the number of rooms will increase to accommodate more people. There's areas for training and a fully functioning washing machine. The machine is hidden so that anyone else who will stay here won't get suspicious. )

I wandered around the place. There were two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, a living room and a pantry. ( The training area is hidden in your room for now. The temperature of this place will be kept at a constant 24°C but the temperature in the training room is adjustable. )

Each bedroom had a bed, a table, a chair and a wardrobe. I walked around for some time. I finally exited the, for lack of a better word, house.

I sat down on the bed. After a few minutes, Lily came. She looked at the open entrance to the house. "What's that?" She asked. "Its a...umm...I can't really explain it. You'll have to see for yourself."

"What'd you mean you can't explain it?" "It means I can't! It'll be easier if you just go inside and see." "See what? Go inside where?" I sighed "Follow me."

I went inside the house. Even though I couldn't see her expression, I could feel her shock. I looked back at the seemingly impenetrable darkness. "Are you coming?" I called out to her. I heard footsteps. A moment later she entered. She looked around the room. Her mouth open.

I let her look around. She went inside, looked around the whole house. She eventually came back to the living room. She asked "How does this whole thing fit inside that door?" "I don't really know." I replied. "Must be some sort of magic." "You had this the whole time?" She asked. I thought I detected a tone of anger in her voice. "Yes." I answered as it was technically the truth. "But I only found out just before you returned." I added quickly.

She looked around again. "What is that?" She asked, pointing at the lights. "I don't know that. Must be some type of torch." She now looked like she didn't know what to say. "On the bright side, we have a place to stay. We won't have to sleep on the ground anymore." I said. She looked very happy at this idea.

"What do we call it?" She asked. "Actually I was going to ask you that." We brainstormed for a few minutes. In the end we settled on Casadona.

The next morning we left the inn. We found an alley with some garbage that would help us conceal the entrance to Casadona. Over the next few days Lily went out of the city to collect herbs. We made a point to always make sure that Lily returned before sunset. I couldn't be of much help since I was injured but I tried to make up for it in trying my best to cook something delicious for every meal. It was extremely hard as we didn't have a lot of variety in neither food or cooking appliances. I hadn't yet found out where the training area was and the author was refusing to tell me.