And I say "beings" for a reason - one of the prisoners was clearly not a man, or rather not a man. Perhaps, he could be mistaken for some Neanderthal, as they are usually depicted in history books. This was promoted by rough proportions of a powerful body, and bony face, from which something wild and primitive was blowing, but the image was sharply broken pig's nose. Such a flattened, large and wide nostrils, which a man does not see in a terrible dream. Another difference was the ears - big and pointed, as well as the hair.
If his partner had a natural robber, I'm sorry, a har hard-on overgrown with eyebrows, unhaired and dirty, as well as the majority of people that I met here, then the "Neanderthal" himself had little hair on his face and those grew quite liquid sideburns. The last fact that proves the thief's inhuman origin was the blood, which tastes very different from the human, and for the worse.
And it was pleasing. No, it wasn't that blood was shit; I've been used to eating worse lately, but that there are no people in this world who are common enough to be present in a gang of bandits. It's nice, you know, to get confirmation of the reality of your own hopes.
Unfortunately, the beginning of the interrogation has made my mood very bad, once again reminding me that if things are going too well, wait for Lady Good luck to step up. My experience of telepathy left much to be desired and I was well aware of it, but knowing my own incompetence does not help much when there are no other options. I'm not a linguist, a polyglot, or even a good speaker who can catch the smallest shades of emotion in my conversation partner. In general... I was too afraid of repeating the first experience of opening someone else's memory, and as a result, I just burned his brain, without any use.
With the second victim I had to be much more careful, using simpler methods of work of an ordinary linguist than psionics, and this is hard labor if you do not have a specific education. For example, how do you understand if the name of the thing you show me says or sends it to hell? It seems to me that without empathy and opportunity, even if it is crooked, but I could hear other people's thoughts, I could spend two months and two years being carried away. I can't even imagine how ordinary people cope with a completely new language.
Ooh, how many times have I thanked the Great Darkness for making me such a good vampire! And how can I not thank you if you clearly understand with all your gut that without her help you would bend over for the second day? And even kind of received an answer, only from this answer for ten minutes forgot how to breathe.
And she was just wondering if her son had made such a fuss about me, suddenly touching my consciousness and disappearing at once, finally giving me some kind of emanation - I don't even know if it was a thought or something, but with fantasy it could be interpreted as a giggling. When I realized that it was a giggle, I forgot to breathe again, and I stood there for twenty minutes until my head started to blur from lack of oxygen.
So, coming back to the results of the effort. First of all, this world was indeed named after Toril and was by all accounts the same Toril I wanted to go to. The news took a few pebbles of poods off my soul and even made it easier to breathe.
The man I grabbed was Alof, and he was a real robber - he stabbed some neighbor in a drunken fight a couple of years ago, so he went on the run. His partner was a half-orckee. Natural. He came from a seaside town in the east.
The forest in which I found myself was called the Storozhev Forest, which was located on the eastern edge of the vast desert of Anaurok, through which passed an important trade route connecting some lands in the west, of which my interlocutor knew nothing, with the local states. The road where I caught Alof was part of that road and was located at the southernmost tip of the forest.