“Umm whats a cycle?”

  “That is a good question for an Outworlder. We would need a frame of reference and then a lot of math I suppose”

  “Ok…and do we have any of that?” I queried.

  “I suspect not. “ The smug bastard had the audacity to be amused by that. He continued on.

  “ I think ill give you the basics. Are your peoples familiar with the motions of the heavenly spheres?”

  Oh god, I’m stuck in a geocentric era. I thought to myself. If so, I'd has to watch what I said lest I get burned at the stake as a heretic. I wasn't worried about Mord, though; if he wanted me dead young, Mord would have done it in the training room.

  “If by ‘heavenly spheres’ you mean the planets and the stars, then yes. We are very aware. We also figured out that not only is our planet not the center of the universe, but neither is our sun.” I was maybe pushing it a little. Mord’s smile and what appeared to be satisfaction put me at ease.

  “Good….good. Here I was worried that your people were burning heretics at the stake for saying the plane revolved around the sun”

  “That common?”

  “It was a good deal of time ago……oh? Your people did it, too?”

  “Yep.”

  “Such stupidity.”

  “Double yep yep.”

  “Ok, then this should be simple enough. I will keep it academic. If your people understand planetary motion, then…here we go. Andalisa, that is, the planet, has a steady rotational period broken into twenty-five ‘hours.’ I won't break it down further as I don't think we have a good frame of reference for that. Groupings of five days are called a ‘week’, and five of these weeks make a ‘month’. Andalisa has an elliptic orbit around our star, called ‘Helio’. Our months are grouped into five blocks of five called ‘Seasons’, and five seasons make a full ‘Cycle.’ Questions?”

  “I think I got it. We use similar notation for our time periods.” This got Mord thinking for a second, after which, he piped up.

  “You read one of the skill books in the gift of knowledge. These books can translate the language of unfamiliar words and phrases. Though we seem to be conversing fine, it's likely already affecting how you think and speak. This is good. It will help you thro……” About halfway through his explanation of language, the details hit me. Even if a local ‘hour’ was much shorter than Earth’s, which I doubted due to planetary dynamics, their ‘Cycles’ were almost two years, and nobody had visited this place in fifty of them. A whole century had gone by since Mord had a guest before I showed up. I felt my stomach start to turn. ‘Turn’ was not the right word. I think it stayed put, and everything else started to spin.

  In the spinning, I reached for the only real and solid object I knew was in the room: the table.

  Thankfully, it was not an illusion. A hand on the solid wood surface kept me upright as my head hung below. I tried desperately not to hurl.

  I failed.

  As I stood back up, I wiped my hand across my mouth, wishing for something to wash the taste out of my mouth. My hands slid across the table and bumped into something.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Ah….an interesting choice. And alas, that ends our lesson….goodbye.” I barely heard Mord’s words and turned just in time to see him wink out of existence.

  “What choice?” I muttered to the room. I turned around and saw it. On the table, one of the three leather sacks remained. And just my luck, it was the smallest of the three.

  It was all too much. I collapsed to the ground. I almost landed in my own vomit, but some new instinct veered me off course at the last second. I was grateful for that.

  I don’t know how long I sat there waiting for the world to make sense again. I broke down a few times. Mostly when I thought about how long I might be stuck in this dungeon. A hundred years since anyone visited; how many more before they found my corpse? Even if the recovery room could keep me going, I wasn’t going to live forever. On the bright side, I’d likely go insane before I died. Even If I could get Mord to talk more often, I wasn’t a starship engineer, and there were no buxom babes to wake from hypersleep. I was royally fucked.

  It still took me a few more hours before I got over myself and stopped worrying. I couldn't change what was only how I reacted to what was. I took a deep breath and ran my hands across the hafts of the blades at my sides.

  “A century or not, this place has good loot. People will always seek out good loot.” Speaking of loot reminded me that I had some. I walked back over to the table and picked up the bag. Even though it was the smaller of the three, it still had some heft to it. It was enough that I severely regretted not giving myself a belt when I was back with Vex. Truthfully, I was more focused on easy removal than adventuring utility at the time. Nope, I still didn’t regret it. I could still see her face smiling at me. I was tempted to try and remember more of our dalliance but figured I didn't need any more sleepy time.

  Back to the bag at hand, I untied the drawstring and opened it. To no one's surprise, it was filled with coins—lots of coins, lots of different coins. I started sorting them.

  It was a fun little distraction. These coins were of vastly different shapes, sizes, and even colors. There were several that were more uniformly round and gold in color but still had different designs on them. I started to stack and sort them on the table. I figured I had a few hours before I had to hit the stairs and trigger a reset, and after everything, I needed a distraction. Treasure is always a nice distraction.

  All the coins had that nice solid feel of currency, and there was a certain appeal in holding a stack of gold coins. It was like ten heavy poker chips, and they made a satisfying ‘click’ as I riffled my finger across them. I quickly realize a pattern. I had ten of every coin. Nine even stacks of ten. Ninety coins. I couldn’t help but grin. I was confident that the majority of stacks were gold. If I were home, I would call this a small windfall. Here though? I had no idea. Looking at the coins closer, they were not the same outside of general size and being made of precious metals. The designs and weights all differed. If I were looking at this back on earth, I would say the coins all came from different countries.

  I played with the coins for a good hour and committed their basic designs to memory. There were no markings to make out words or even denominations. I went to put them back in the sack when I noticed that a coin had slipped to the side when I dumped them all out. I only caught it by chance out of the side of my vision and only because it didn't quite perfectly blend in with the wood table. It was trying very hard, though. Once I got a closer look, it was almost like it knew the gig was up, and it slowly turned back to a dull purple in color, with a flat, oval egg shape and a perfect hole bored in the middle. Honestly, it looked more like a rock than a coin. As I held it there in my hand, I noticed it started to shift in color if I held it very still for more than a few moments. This coin felt special. It felt like it had power. I started looking fervently for the others. This place had an odd symmetry about it, and I wanted my stack of ten magic rock coins.

  Despite what Mord had said about time, or perhaps in spite of it, I searched until I was so hungry I could almost not stand. I found nine of the rock coins fast enough, but the last one evaded me for what felt like days. I forced myself not to sleep and to keep going. I searched the table up, down, and sideways. I ran my fingers along every inch of the floor. I tore the bag apart, looking for it, with it both flat on the table and again on the floor. I even used it as a broom to try and sweep up the missing coin. I would pause every hour or so to recount my coins to make sure none had disappeared, or coin one hundred was hiding in the stack.

  I eventually gave up despite knowing that I would be locked out of this room forever. I needed to go. Mostly, I needed to not die. Malnutrition and dehydration are a bitch. I placed the coins back into the sack, tied it to one of my belt loops, and proceeded to the door handle.