“Like... have babies with a Human?”

Rita leaned around to look at her. “Are you kidding?” She folded her ears down. “You’re not kidding. We can’t. That’s why,” she said. “Felis can only have babies with another Felis. Lycanth can only have babies with other Lycanth. Same with Humans and Elves. That’s why all the Elves are gone. Teal was her own cousin several times over. We did what we could to keep her safe, but she just got distracted by all kinds of things. Next thing we knew she was in a tree.”

“How old was she?” Astra asked.

“Twenty-nine.”

Astra bit her lips together and didn’t ask anything more.

Getting her clean took much less time than she was expecting with two of them working on it, but she was surprised she wasn’t bald by the time they got her tail brushed out.

Clean and in laundered clothes, Astra realized that she felt a million times better, and followed Rita out of the bathhouse.

“Do you know how to cook?” Rita asked as they approached another building in the opposite direction from the bathhouse. The kitchens were a building that had three stone walls and one wooden one that folded aside, leaving it open to the street.

It was a pleasant temperature inside with the woodburning stoves going. There was a Human woman, who looked around fifty with long, dark hair tied in a tail down her back. She was already at work chopping some vegetables.

“Some,” Astra admitted. “I have Chef Skill up to three hundred, but without my Menu, I can’t Craft meals.”

“That’s no problem, dear,” the Human woman said. “I’m White.” The woman handed over an apron instead of offering her hand. “What kinds of foods do Immortals eat?” she asked.

Astra looked around. “You’ve got the ingredients for steamed buns,” she said when she spotted the wooden bowl of proofed dough. “We would just need to make the filling. There’s Boar from last night still, right?”

“Oh yeah! We were going to make that into a stew,” Rita said excitedly and pulled Astra over to the pot to look at the beginnings of the stew.

Taking a taste of the stew, Astra nodded. “We can combine them to make steamed buns. It’s good easy to transport food.” Her next problem would be the basket in which to steam them.

Searching through the kitchen, she finally came up with a pot and basket situation. “Improvisation. Hope it works!” Astra said.

She then showed White and Rita how to make the dough circles and fold the buns. All three waited impatiently for the first batch of buns to finish, but once they did, they each tried one. Astra fully expected failure, only to be surprised when it was amazing. Excited by the new recipe, White and Rita started rolling out more dough circles and Astra filled them, setting up an assembly line of buns in two steamers.

Then Xander appeared, looking disheveled but alert.

Feelings welled up in her again at seeing his face. Deciding she didn’t want to deal with them, she instead gave him some buns and sent him away.

“He is such a stud!” Rita said and giggled. “You’re so lucky.” The redheaded Felis swished her tail excitedly. “I don’t know if I’d be able to control myself if that was tucking me into bed.”

Astra flushed and went back to folding filling into the dough.

“Thank you so much for helping make breakfast,” White said, “These are amazing. What level is your Chef Skill?”

“Just over three hundred,” Astra said.

“Wow! You put some work into that!” Rita enthused.

Flushing again, she looked away shyly. “I like Crafting,” she admitted.

“If only we could hog her all day,” the younger Felis women lamented.

“She’s got to work on the Skills she got yesterday, Rita.” White shook her head. “Speaking of which, I see Glen on her way now.”

The tabby Felis smiled at Astra as she entered. “You ready to get started leveling your new Skills?”

“Yeah,” Astra said and took another steamed bun.

Glen took one as well and bit into it, her ears popping up in surprise. “Wow, this is amazing!”

“You made these?” Glen asked in astonishment.

“Behold!” Rita said, displaying a steamed bun with enthusiasm. “Level three hundred steamed buns!”

“Three hundred?” Glen demanded, her ears folding back. “That’s a lot of time you could have been using to level more useful Skills.”

“Now Glen, don’t yell at her,” White admonished.

Glen shook her head. “We’re heading out to the forest now. We don’t have much time to waste.” Taking Astra’s arm, she pulled her out of the communal kitchen and towards the trees up the slope.

With little choice, Astra stumbled after the woman.

Once in the trees, she released Astra’s wrist, but only because the path upwards wasn’t wide enough to continue dragging her. “That man with you. What’s his name?”

“Xander,” Astra said.

“He seems rather cold, doesn’t he?”

Shrugging, Astra said, “Yeah...”

“Why keep him around?”

“He’s pretty to look at,” Astra admitted. “And I can’t make him leave.”

Glen abruptly stopped, turning to face Astra. “You have no feelings for him?”

Flustered, Astra picked her nails, feeling her ears going up and down as her tail twitched nervously. “I—uh... well...no?”

The woman sighed. “You should work on hardening your heart. Men like that will only hurt you.”

Folding her ears down, Astra frowned. “True...”

“Come. We’ve no time to waste.” Glen started climbing the slope again.

* * *

It felt amazing to be clean and fed. Once he was dressed again, he took his smelly armor out of the bathhouse with him and headed back to the kitchens. The two women from before were there, but not Astra. “Where’s Astra gone?” he asked.

“Glen took her for training,” the younger woman said.

Xander consulted his directional sense. She was up the mountain by a mile, but her health was fine. He nodded and turned, heading towards the weapons master’s place.

Entering the courtyard, he found the old man working on cleaning Astra’s armor. Approaching, Xander sat down across from him and took one of the brushes and soap.

“This is some fine armor,” the man said. “I’ve never seen such quality before.”

“Astra made it,” Xander said as he got to scrubbing the lake and mud out of the leather. The quality was the only reason why it wasn’t absolutely destroyed.

“Tell me about the world?” the old man asked.

Xander glanced up to find the man wistfully staring at him. “Of course,” he said. “I’ve been to Aesir, Vanaheim, and Nifelheim. Which city would you like to know about first?”

“Oh—ah... Aesir.”

“Aesir is built along the northern shoreline and a nearby island. It is the city of water, sheltered by Leviathan. There are approximately five hundred thousand people living in the city proper and another hundred thousand scattered across the farmlands beyond.”

The poor man’s jaw had dropped. “I couldn’t... imagine that many people!”

Xander smiled. “Aesir is one of the larger population centers,” he said. “There are smaller villages scattered around the forest between Aesir and Nifelheim, beneath Vanaheim. Aesir’s biggest draws are the aqueducts and fountains, the early architects adored columns and marble, thus the public buildings have one or both of these aspects.”

The man sighed, closing his eyes. “I dreamed of getting to see the outside world... I’d dreamed of becoming strong enough to get through the forest and mountains and find out what the rest of the world had gotten up to.”

“Perhaps it is still possible,” Xander said, although he wasn’t sure how. It would be a major undertaking to make a safe path through the Dark Mountains to the closest population center. However, now that Astra had attuned to this Soul Stone, getting back and forth would be that much easier for him and Astra.

“Tell me of the others!” the old man asked.

“Vanaheim, the city of Air rests in the hands of Caelum,” Xander said. “Is suspended upon floating islands over the forest. It is the ancestral home of the Elves and Avians. The population is also somewhere near five hundred thousand, though I haven’t been there in some time. Their architecture consists of trees bent and hollowed out. The great roots hold the floating islands together and serve as roads for those without wings.”

“Do people fall off?” the old man asked in wonder. Despite his distraction, his hands were still moving, working the dirt out of the various straps of Astra’s armor.

“Occasionally, but safety nets have been installed to prevent anyone from reaching the ground below,” Xander said. “Nifelheim, Terra’s city of ice and mountain has two levels and each distinct from the other. The actual population is uncountable. Estimates place it around eight hundred thousand.”

The man’s hands stopped. “Uncountable?” he gasped.

“There are so many tunnels and the Kobolds do not understand the concept of numbers. Asking them to self-report how many of them there are in a warren is... asking too much,” Xander said. “The city above is coated in ice, as the chilly winds have set frost upon the walls of buildings for eons, burying any original stonework in meters of ice. The glacier has grown so much over time that the original streets of the city above often count as part of the city below. New buildings of ice are built atop as needed, but only the Giants have the ability to resist the bitter cold and thus prefer to live there, as opposed to the underground where the Dwarves and Kobolds make their home.

“The city below is as brightly lit as Aesir on a clear day, despite being below the mountain. Their cavern ceilings stretch hundreds of meters high, every surface carved with ancient Dwarven artwork. The city center is a warren of structures built of stones hewn from the living earth, creating a confusing maze should you wish to go into the residential section. There are tunnels that expand further into the mountains and below, wherein the Kobolds make their nests.”

Xander smiled slightly at the old man’s wonder.