Homesteading in a fantasy world

"Well, what are you guys waiting for? Let's move," I said to David and Mirhit. "Omar, follow me. Let's get the fires going." I walked out but stopped before I turned the corner. " Mirhit, don’t tell David what’s going on, OK?" I got a quick nod in return, so I continued to walk.

The sauna was directly connected to the town hall, but it was a separate building at the back, so it took us a little bit to get close to it. Before we made it, Omar spoke up, "I don’t really know what you’re up to, but I am actually really curious about what a sauna is. I’ve never heard of it."

That was hard to hear. "You will soon find out. We are almost there, so I guess I can start explaining a bit." During the short walk to the door that opened to the sauna, I was able to give a brief explanation.

"OK, now I’m actually interested. That sounds amazing, but for some reason, I think you make it sound a lot better than it actually is." I didn’t dignify that with an answer and just opened the door and walked inside. I found the lantern and lit it up to reveal quite a cozy sitting room that was obviously designed to handle a wet environment.

"This was the resting room I was telling you about, and through that door should be the heating room." I walked there, opened the door, and then I heard Omar speak. "Wait, have you actually ever been here before?"

I lit up the heating room and replied, "Nope, but the design should be familiar." The sitting area was quite big and could easily fit 10 people, which was nice as this was designed to be bigger than my sauna.

"OK, this actually looks quite good, but I’m still a bit sceptical," Omar said, and I guess I can understand. It honestly sounded a bit crazy if you didn't have experience with it: sitting in a heated-up room close to the boiling point of water to get relaxation and enjoyment out of it. I never actually thought about it like that, and it did sound weird.

"As you can see, there are two heating elements. The one with the stones on top is the main one, and you throw water onto it. That turns to steam, and it feels quite wonderful when the heat rolls over your skin."

Omar listened quite attentively as I explained, all the while stacking wood into the furnace from the stack that was kept in this room. There was also a fire flint hanging on the wall, but I used my own to start the fire.

"Now, I don’t exactly know how this works, but I was told that this heating element works faster than normal. So, in about an hour, everything should be heated up, but we also need to start the second heating element."

I walked closer to the entrance where there was a huge cauldron set into the furnace, but it was currently empty of water. "While this also helps heat the room, it’s mainly used to boil water. I need to get it full before I start the fire. Luckily, it seems that there’s a pipe that is directly pointed into the cauldron, but I’m not seeing a way to open it up so the water can start filling the cauldron."

That was quite curious. Was there a way to make the water flow somewhere else? I started to look around, but then Omar took a step towards the pipe and ran his finger along it, which then started to spill water. "It's quite the standard enchantment for a spa. Haven't you come across it before?" Omar said, smirking.

"No, I haven't, but thanks for showing. It would have taken me quite a while to figure that one out," I said, chuckling a bit. I tested it out a little; you just had to run your finger along the pipe to close or open it.

That was actually quite wonderful. I should inquire about this a bit more; it might be quite helpful back home to make some things easier. As I started to make a fire for the second time, David arrived. "You made it here fast," I told him, but it seemed he was fiddling with a device in the adjacent room before he poked his head in.

"Yeah, I took my own supply of tobacco. What actually took time was getting the owlbear into its traveling housing. So, while I’m not against all of this, I’m a bit curious as to what Mirhit couldn’t tell me," David said, just as I had gotten the fire going.

"Do you perhaps have a writing utensil I can use?" David looked at me, a bit worried, but eventually nodded and handed me a pencil. I took out my notebook, ripped a few pages out, and then started to write on them, keeping what I wrote hidden from both of them.

When I was finished, I began to rip the papers apart, making sure that I wouldn’t tear through the things I had written. Both of them looked at me as if I was crazy. "This madness has a point to it. On one of these pieces of paper is written the real reason why we are here, while the others also state a reason, but they are not truly correct." After saying that, I walked to the center of the room and threw the pieces of paper up into the air.

Nothing really special happened; the papers flew in all directions but stayed quite close to me, as I didn’t want them to fly too far away. As they began to fall back to the ground, one of them took a different path, drifting closer and closer to the open furnace door.

While it was a close call, it was sucked up by the fire and burned away. "No way," I heard Omer say as he quickly began to look through all the papers on the ground, using some abilities. In less than 30 seconds, he had finished and cursed out loud.

"Sorry, David, I guess you'll need to wait a little while longer. But know that we are quite fucked, as the answer was burned up by the flames and that’s not a good thing." I closed the furnace door and picked up the papers while Omar was still in shock, and David had a worried look. When we were all in the resting room, Omar quickly took out his pipe to start smoking, having a distant look in his eyes. Yeah, that test was truly unfortunate.

"So, shall we play some cards?" My words broke both of them out of their musings, and Omar looked at me as if I was truly insane. "What are you talking about? We shouldn't even be sitting here; we should go and notify everyone."

I took out a pack of cards and started to shuffle it, but before Omar could speak again, I interjected. "So, David, let's play some regular poker for coins, of course. But half your bet will be covered if you want the answer to why we are truly here."

"Why do I have a feeling that I’m going to lose a lot of coins?" David said, and finally, Omar didn't look at me as if I was mad. Instead, he gave me an approving nod. It was at this point that Mirhit burst through the door, both of his arms full with four baskets that all had food or drinks inside of them.

"What wonderful timing! Bring them over here and take a seat to we were just about to start a hand of poker." There was a moment of hesitation before Mirhit did what I asked, and we started to play poker.

Whenever David decided to bet for the answer, we were quite certain that he had excellent or good cards. But no matter how good our cards were, the three of us all put down our five cards so we could pick up five new ones. We saw some crazy hands, and each of us except David had at least gotten one royal flush.

We played for quite a while before we finally called it quits. The reason we stopped was because David had managed to get four of a kind, and the three of us got royal flushes of different suits to beat him. "OK, if this doesn’t confirm it, nothing does. Those bastards have luck on their side, and they don't want anyone to know what they're doing."