You tilt your head and lift your hands in the universal sign of non-understanding. The scowling guard sighs, and the other one tries again. It's still nonsense, but a pattern is starting to form in the back of your mind. You deliberately don't focus on it; the process works better when you don't examine it too closely.
A beat, then the not-scowling guard starts to speak slowly, dragging out the words the way people do with foreigners. He makes big, sweeping hand gestures, and you think he rephrases himself a few times, which helps.
It's a strange feeling, using this discipline. Psionics in general were a little weird to get used to, but this one sticks out. Learning a language through listening can be very distracting. You can vaguely feel the words and phrases narrowing down, picking through things they can and cannot be. Vocabulary comes easily, but grammar is something you struggle with even with languages you have a lot of exposure to. You can only learn what you hear, after all, and no two people use language the exact same way.
You repeat the last word he says – you think it's something like 'errand', or 'business', something meaning the reason you're here – and he nods in relief, repeating himself.
You tap the small pouch at your side, then mime out counting out money. You still don't know exactly what he's saying – it's going to take a little while longer to get more than the gist – but you're pretty sure you answered the question.
The scowling man mutters something that you think is probably insulting, and the other one shouts something upward. They step to the sides of the door, and it starts to scrape open.
With a smile, you slip through the gates.
Once inside, the first thing you see is… another wall. It's not as huge as the other one, but still bigger than any you'd seen before you got here. This one has visible guard posts along the top of the walls, and it looks sturdier than the outer one. That makes sense, you figure.
The second thing you notice is the farmland. You know agriculture, and this is badly done. The crops are trying their best to struggle up through the soil, but the techniques used here are messy at best and negligent at worst. It itches at you to see land go so neglected. You're here to save a world, though, not fix farms, so you try to keep looking around.
Past the farmland to the west is a small range of mountains, which the second wall curves around and disappears around the side of. You wonder how many more walls there are, and what's in the middle, since the outer one encompasses entire farms and some mountains.
Off to the east you can see a lake, which blows your mind. Not a creek, not a pond, a lake big enough that it probably provides at least some of the water for the farms you see in front of you. Maybe all of it, considering how sloppily-done all of this is.
Okay, it's still bothering you.
[x] You can spare an hour, right? Go up to that farmhouse, and find out why this is so awful.
[ ] You've got a mission. Head to the gatehouse for the second wall.
