“Morkal! It’s me!” Jessica called out to the watchtower.

  Jessica heard the sound of a heavy wooden plank being shuffled and then dropped. The double-door opened and she was greeted by Morkal looming out of the darkness with her red eyes. The toad resting on her shoulder croaked.

  “You sound distressed and have come with few supplies. Something has happened? Are we in danger?” Morkal asked, and then a moment later added, “are you in danger?”

  “Not… right this second,” Jessica replied, voice on the verge of cracking.

  As soon as Jessica stepped inside, the stone cold wall of survival she had erected in her mind finally collapsed. Tears poured from her eyes as images of Min-woo driving a knife through the dragon girl’s eye replayed in her mind. Her throat trembled with the effort of not breaking into a sob before doing so anyway. She sank to the floor.

  “They were sisters…”

  That was all Jessica could squeeze through her constricting throat. She didn’t know why that was all she had to say, but she could see crystal clear the look of shock on the face of the blue dragon girl as her sister was mutilated. Even Min-woo faded into the background against that face.

  “Tell us about the brew you wish to make,” Morkal said.

  Deeply-rooted instincts wiped away the horror in an instant, replacing it with a chart of opium alkaloids by density. She pulled herself up from the floor.

  “It— it’s an extraction. Opium poppies have strong analgesic alkaloids bound to the latex by meconic acid which can be stripped away by a stronger acid. I heard that the queen was in pain and I thought I could make something to help. I-I guess it’s in the hopes of getting elevated to a… a chief pharmacist, or something. I don’t even know if it’s to help anyone. I just want to escape here.”

  She expected Morkal to chastise her, but aside from a warbling groan from Toad!Morkal, they were silent.

  “Erasing pain is worthy. And you do not belong in servitude. Tell us how this can be made,” Morkal said.

  “You won’t need to do anything. I can make it myself,” Jessica replied.

  “We know this. But it would be good for you to explain it.”

  Between Morkal’s ethereal voice and alien features, Jessica had never been able to decipher what the monstress was feeling at any given moment. This time she thought she heard a rare tenderness in Morkal’s tone. Explaining the steps of morphine extraction was not for Morkal’s benefit, Jessica realized, but an opportunity for her to calm down by working through a chemistry problem. Morkal was offering her somewhere to rest her mind.

  “R-Right… First we start by boiling the opium plant in a cauldron.”

  Jessica spent a little over an hour walking Morkal through the multi-step reaction. Had this been an undergraduate lab, she might have run through it in ten minutes. But since distraction was the goal, she allowed herself digressions, explaining everything from modern chemistry terminology to the state of the US opioid epidemic. Morkal, for her part, asked enough questions to distract Jessica until she was ready to talk about the real matter.

  “And then the last thing we’ll do is separate the morphine hydrochloride and codeine hydrochloride by an amine-type anion exchanger. That is— hmm… how do I describe that in old-timey alchemy terms?”

  “Jessica, tell us what happened.”

  Morkal’s request hit like a crash test wall. Jessica opened and closed her mouth for a few seconds before everything came out in a flood.

  “Adventurers came this afternoon. Looking for you. One of them grabbed me and asked me to guide him to your cave, a-and I should’ve said no except he realized I was from Earth and we got to talking and he—” Tricked her? No, he hadn’t. Nothing he said was a lie. “He… he convinced me. He said I should join his party and that I was missing out on exploring Tushita and it wasn’t worth going back to Earth and I— I-I believed him! I’m so sorry, Morkal—”

  Morkal made a clucking sound with her teeth which had no comparison in any human utterance.

  “Are you angry?” Jessica asked.

  “We are not. You have not seen many adventurers and so had little reason to take us at our word. Please continue, though we suspect we know how your account will end.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Jessica swallowed. “So… Min-woo is his name. His companion, a mouse girl, she smelled another adventuring party. They told me to wait and I ignored them and snuck around to the cliff above your house. There was… an argument. The two adventurers were arguing about who had a right to kill you and get the quest reward and then th-they…”

  “This Min-woo killed the other adventurer’s harem, did he not?”

  Jessica wiped her eyes and nodded.

  “This is how adventurers settle their differences. Neither wish to die, so they kill the other’s party members as a show of force. They believe anyone or anything born in this world is no more than a piece of scenery, that only people who come from Earth are worth preserving. Their relationships with their party members run no deeper than their skin. The adventurer who lost will soon replace them.”

  Jessica shuddered. “Why do they put up with it? The— the girls, I mean.”

  “They are foolish. And they believe their adventurer will be an exception. They are convinced of this until the moment they die.”

  In a horrible way, this description really did make the harem members seem like expendable cardboard. If she hadn’t seen the look of terror on the dragon girl’s face, she might have even believed it. But it was clear the girls didn’t understand what they were signing up for. They probably imagined legendary battles against beasts alongside a dashing adventurer from another world.

  “Min-woo’s comrades… They shot one of the girls to death with arrows,” Jessica said.

  “The longer companions stay with their adventurers, the more their minds resemble their leader’s. This Min-woo, we recognize his name. He is one of the Original Eight?”

  Jessica nodded.

  “Combat between adventurers is rare. It is rarer still for one of these old adventurers to lose. It is not impossible his party members have been with him for decades now. But then, it is also possible he traded them out a week ago. We do not know. However, you may think of them as appendages. You will not change their minds. It is best to give them a quick death.”

  “I’d rather have nothing to do with them at all,” Jessica said.

  “Yet at this very moment they hunt us. We have no say in the matter.”

  Seeing that Jessica needed a moment to process everything, Morkal went and brewed a pot of tea. What was in the tea, Jessica had no clue. It certainly didn’t taste like camellia sinensis.

  After a couple of sips heat settled in her stomach and a wave of drowsiness blunted the world’s sharp edges.

  “What’s in this?” Jessica asked.

  “Yaupon leaves,” Morkal replied. “They have some of the essence of camellia or coffea but we prefer their flavor.”

  “It’s making me sleepy.”

  “It would not be the tea making it so,” Morkal said. “We have no bed here, but if you wish to doze you may do so knowing we stand guard.”

  “Thank you,” Jessica said.

  Off in the corner, Morkal had set up a fire away from the gaps in the walls and ceiling which might spill the light outside. Jessica lay down beside the fire with her head on her arms and Morkal draped a tattered piece of cloth over her.

  “You know what made me want to believe him?” Jessica said, fire dancing in her steely grey eyes. “He said Tushita was meritocratic. That it was fair. Back on Earth it felt like everything was about who you knew or how much money you had instead of what you could offer the world. The way Min-woo talked about Tushita… it felt for a moment like there was nothing standing in my way. That I could do whatever I was capable of.”

  “He was correct,” Morkal said.

  Jessica rolled over to face her. “How?”

  “This world is meritocratic. If one such as Min-woo should use their merit to subjugate another and to kill and maim for personal gain, there is nothing stopping them. A world where Min-woo may do as he pleases need not have room for Jessica to do the same.”

  “That’s not what I meant by meritocratic,” Jessica said.

  “It is the same,” Morkal said, “but you have seen and thought about too much today. You should sleep.”

  As though waiting for permission, Jessica’s body went slack and she fell asleep. When she woke it was dark. Darker than any night since she arrived in Tushita. The fire had gone out.

  “Morkal?” she whispered.

  “We are here,” Morkal replied.

  As Jessica’s eyes adjusted she saw the monstress’ lanky frame slump against the wall, eyes closed. Staring at her was Toad!Morkal. The toad was apparently acting as Morkal’s eyes and employing whatever method of vocalization the sleeping form used.

  “Is it safe to leave?” Jessica asked.

  “No,” Morkal replied. “There is an unusual amount of light for this time of night. It is not safe for you to return to Barleyfield.”

  Jessica bolted upright. The tattered cloth dropped from her back.

  “The Serfs! What if Min-woo finds out where I’m staying!? I need to warn them!”

  “It may be too late,” Morkal said.

  Guilty of once again dragging the Serf family into danger, Jessica had to at least try. She couldn’t leave them to die because of her mistake.

  “I’m going,” she said, drawing the blanket around herself like a cloak.

  “We do not believe this is wise.”

  Despite the warning, Morkal did not stop her as she slipped out the door and into the moonless night. A symphony of crickets deafened her and the oil-black darkness blinded. Only the pungent stench of ozone kept her grounded, warning her of a storm looming in the dark.

  Origins: A New Beginning

  by Cosmic Aurora

  What You Can Expect

  - Rational Protagonist

  - Some Slice of Life

  - Some Mystery / Psychological Themes

  - Substantial Character Growth, Both for MC and Side Characters

  - A Story that Starts Fast but Slows Down

  - Well Developed World and Magic System

  - 1500-2500 Word Chapters

  - No Instant Overpowered MC

  Release Schedule

  - 5x week (only for Advent) Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Sun @ 14:00 CET