As the red sky fades to black, Grandma Laurel and Aunt Heather do glorious battle (or so I assume as I don’t get to watch) with the Legendary Headless Horseman. Aunt Heather brings back the pumpkin head as a trophy, still sinister-looking even with its face holes unlit.

“Did Grandma get the horse?” Mom asks. “Or did you have to kill it?”

“She’s working on it,” Aunt Heather says. “She’s not going to bring it into the village until she’s sure it’s not going to attack anyone.”

“And you’re sure that pumpkin head won’t spring up and attack anyone?” asks Aunt Hazel.

“It’s fine,” Aunt Heather says, setting the jack-o’-lantern aside as it definitely doesn’t still have any flickering lights inside it or anything.

It’s a week into the dark season before Grandma Laurel returns. My actual birthday, not that anyone even notes that. My mom brings me out to watch Laurel ride her new Legendary mount into the village. It’s pure black, with glowing green eyes, and looks absolutely enormous underneath a tiny woman like my great-grandmother. A red aura swirls around it similar to the ones around the devil-goats, marking it as a monster rather than a normal animal.

Laurel waves to her descendants, nieces, nephews, and neighbors as she rides into the village square. “Check out my new friend!”

“Cool mount!” Mom says. “Have you named it yet?”

“I’ve decided to call him Boo.”

Some of my relatives aren’t as enthusiastic about the latest addition to the village as my mom, but everyone seems pretty used to Grandma Laurel’s weird pets. At least this is just a horse, after all, albeit a weird horse. She has apparently brought back things with tentacles before.

My naming day comes with a small celebration, although with most of the family inside the Hearth this time of year, every meal feels a bit like a party anyway. I unwrap a set of wooden blocks, painted brightly in eight different colors. I also receive plenty of clothes, along with my first pair of shoes. Everything fits perfectly, and I hear a mention of an Aunt Dahlia who made them, though I couldn’t pick out her face from the crowd.

And so another Not-Christmas season ensues. I’m able to hum along to some of the oddly altered holiday carols, but I don’t have the words down yet even if I could say them all clearly. I’m looking forward to talking and running around. Being a baby in a strange world has been a bit boring even as it has been simultaneously overwhelming in some ways.

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Aunt Hazel’s twins are born three weeks premature in February, but by tradition, they aren’t given names until a week after their full term date. It’s a little eerie hearing people talk about “the boy” and “the girl” while carefully avoiding saying an actual name for either of them.

On March 3rd, 731, we celebrate their naming day and formally induct a healthy pair of fraternal twins into the Hearth. The girl is named Willow, and the boy Griffin. A naming ceremony is conducted in the hearth in which everyone that’s here touches the baby and says their name. I don’t really remember this having been done for me, but I was still pretty disoriented at the time and my senses weren’t at 100% yet.

At least I can take part in this one, although I hope calling them “Wawa” and “Gaga” doesn’t mess anything up somehow. I’ve been here a year and four months and I still have no idea how the System actually works.

“You’ll be getting a new sister soon, too,” Mom says.

I tilt my head at her in puzzlement and poke her in the belly. “Sisi?”

Mom chuckles. “Well, not from there, obviously. One of my old adventuring buddies got pregnant but she’s a long way from her own Hearth, so I agreed to adopt the girl so she can keep delving.”

My mom always talks to kids like adults that can understand her completely. Aunt Hazel is full of baby talk and positively coos over her newborn twins.

“Let’s go meet her, shall we?” Mom says. “She’s staying at the guest house until the baby is born. Sadly, she won’t be able to attend the naming ceremony since outsiders aren’t allowed inside the Hearth.”

I’m walking a bit by this point, but my little legs can’t go very far yet unaided. Mom lets me walk as far as I can out of the Hearth until she has to pick me up and carry me across the village square.

There’s a heavily pregnant woman sitting in front of the inn’s hearth, sipping a cup of tea. Her complexion is darker than anyone I’ve seen around here, clearly marking her as a foreigner. Mom plops me down on the bench next to her.

“Hey, Halima!” Mom says. “This here’s my son, Drake. Drake, this is my friend, Halima Khobar Zephyr.”

I reach over and poke Halima’s huge belly. “Sisi?”

Halima laughs heartily. “Yes, little Drake, that’s your future sister in there.”

“When are you due, anyway?” Mom wonders.

“The Hearthkeepers say it should be about a week but wouldn’t be surprised if she decides to come out any day now,” Halima says.

My future sister isn’t in a hurry to come out, and we wind up holding her naming day on March 25th. In a ceremony echoing that of the twins, she’s given the name Juniper. She’s dark-skinned, but not as dark as her birth mother. Probably has a local for a father, maybe even one of my many uncles.

Halima leaves again shortly after the naming ceremony. She’s an Epic-rank Cleric and her party is expecting to meet up with her to delve a dangerous dungeon on the other side of Tempest Domain.

There’s some Hearthkeeper magic that helps with breastfeeding that I don’t really care to think too much about as I’m happily eating actual food by now and never going to be a mother nor a Hearthkeeper. I still haven’t quite decided what sort of class to aim for, but I know I want to go out and delve dungeons and not just take care of the Hearth and feed everyone.

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The addition of three more little babies has made the already-lively Hearth even livelier. Sadly, I’m going to need to wait a bit longer before they’re terribly interesting to interact with. I’ve been working on puzzles and games to try to unlock more skills, but there aren’t any other kids my age to play with. The closest is Burdock, who is about to turn seven in September. There’s some preteens, as well as several teenagers who are away most of the year attending a boarding school so I only see them during their winter breaks.

This is a big deal, because when a child turns seven, they get to pick their first class. I’m glad to get at least one chance to see how that works before I actually have to deal with it myself.

Burdock loves animals and is one of the few people willing to go near Grandma Laurel’s creepy horse and the devil-goats the village keeps. Sometimes he brings critters he finds into the hearth, much to Aunt Myrtle’s dismay.

“No spiders in the hearth, Burdock!” Aunt Myrtle says firmly.

“Grandma Laurel says it’s a tar-match-ora, not a spoder,” Burdock protests.

“No tarantulas in the hearth, either,” Aunt Myrtle adds. “Also no rats, no bats, no squirrels, no snakes, and in fact, absolutely no live animals whatsoever. Any animals found in here are getting eaten. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, Aunt Myrtle,” Burdock says, drooping as he takes his magenta tarantula and leaves the hearth.

I’m going to need to climb the central tower and find our plaques near the top in order to figure out exactly how he’s related to me. I’ve seen his mom but I’m not even sure what her name is. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that she’s probably named after a plant or bird like everyone else here seems to be. And I think I might just be strong enough now to make the climb. I just need to slip away and make it to the stairs up when no one is looking who might say that babies who are a year and a half old shouldn’t try to climb towers.

It takes a few tries, but on the day of the Beer Festival when most of the adults are out celebrating beer, I finally make it to the stairs without any aunts or uncles intercepting me. I’m rewarded for my efforts with a system box.

Your Subterfuge (Sneaking) skill has increased to level 2.

The spiral staircase runs up the interior of the central tower, and I need to stay low to avoid being spotted from below. The steps are too high for my little legs anyway so I have to half-crawl up the stairs.

The upper floors are mainly used for storage, and there’s a dumbwaiter to help move heavy barrels and crates to and from the kitchen area. It might have been easier to use that to get up the stairs, but there’s also more eyes on it. Also, I’m really hoping to unlock a skill for this. I’m almost disappointed that I didn't get a skill for walking. I guess the skill system considered that too basic to count as a skill.

After climbing up only a single flight of stairs, I have to sit down and rest for a moment and take a breather. My Max Stamina is only 2, so this might take a bit. I hope nobody notices me missing, but my mom is probably deep in a pint by this point. While I catch my breath, I notice that there are murals on the walls, but the floor is cluttered with so many containers that I can’t make out what they depict.

Once I’m recharged, I start in on the next flight past a few more generations of Corwens. One fancy platinum plaque stands out, the one single member of the Hearth who attained Mythical rank, Verbena the Witch Hunter. I think I heard her name mentioned in one of my Bard uncle’s stories. (I have uncles named Hawk and Falcon. One is a Bard and one is a Ranger and I can never remember which is which.) She doesn’t have a death date listed, so I guess like the founder, Apple, she’s still out there adventuring somewhere.

Green light streams in through a couple of windows to the outside, and there’s a door possibly leading out to a balcony. I strain to reach the doorknob to see what’s outside, but can’t quite get a grip. Fortunately, there’s plenty of boxes up here, so I pull one of them next to the door so I can open it.

The fourth floor balcony has a breathtaking view of the village. I can even see over the high walls out to the apple orchards and countryside beyond. Looking up, I see with some dismay that I’ve only made it like halfway up the tower. Well, let’s see how much further I can get before someone realizes I’ve wandered off.

Another floor, and another. At this point I’m pretty sure that I’ve been gone long enough that someone might be starting to get worried about me. Aunt Myrtle and Burdock’s mom (whatever her name is) were in the hearth and didn’t go to the Beer Festival, after all.

Finally, after climbing seven flights of stairs, I reach the top and the current generation. I find my own entry, and my sister and cousins. My mom and Aunt Hazel were born in 706, so they’re on this floor, but Burdock is the youngest of three and his mom was born before 700, and so will be on the previous floor. Dammit.

The plaques list the names of our fathers and both of Juniper’s parents, but it seems if a parent is a member of the Hearth, there’s just a line leading down to their entry instead. I ran across a couple instances of people hooking up with their fourth cousins, too.

Well, I aim to see the top of this tower before I head back down there to find her. After resting up to refill my Stamina bar, I push ahead to the top. There’s a hatch at the end of the stairs with green light peeking in around the edges.

The hatch is locked. Double dammit. Well, I didn’t come this far to be stopped by a locked door. I carefully slide my butt down the stairs and rummage through the boxes in storage until I find a container of old kitchen utensils. I pick out one that might suffice for a lockpick, and return to the hatch.

Did I ever know how to pick locks before? In five million lives, I must have done at least once. I think hard about it as I mess with the lock. It’s not like I have anything better to do until I get hungry or someone finds me, so I might as well try. I remember playing video games, but I don’t think I learned this skill in my first life.

I keep reaching as hard as I can, which brings up every lockpicking minigame in every video game I played. Nothing from any other lives yet, but maybe I need actual levels in the skill for it.

It’s good enough, the system declares as the lock clicks open.

Congratulations! You have picked an Easy difficulty lock. Skill unlocked: Recollection (Skills) Skill unlocked: Mechanics (Lockpicking)

I breathe a sigh of relief and elation as I push open the hatch. I climb out into the green ‘daylight’. The skymotes are turning orange, so it must be getting late. I’ve been up here for hours.

My rewards for my effort aren’t done yet.

Congratulations! You have climbed to the highest point in Corwen Hearth. Your Max Stamina has increased by 1 and is now 3. Skill unlocked: Athletics (Climbing)

Fantastic. I do a little baby dance and go look out over the edge.

I can see the entirety of Tempest Domain from here. A huge, perfectly circular disc comprises the land beneath my feet, its edges limned with orange light that seems to be coming from somewhere below and to the northwest. Above that point, a ‘moon’ that is clearly another floating island hovers in the sky, lit up in orange as well.

Footsteps approach from the stairs, and my mom emerges from the stairs, looking mildly tipsy.

“Wow, you made it all the way to the top,” she says. “Oh, hey, I got a Deed! Did I really never come up here before? Huh. Nice view. Zenith is pretty in orange. Come on, let’s try to not fall to our doom.”

She scoops me up in her arms, and hopefully isn’t drunk enough that we’re more likely to tip over this way. And she still doesn’t bother carrying me more than one flight down the stairs like that before plopping me into the dumbwaiter.

“Say whee!” Mom says as she sends me on a quick trip to the ground floor.

“Wheeeee!” I cry out as several agonizing floors fly past me.

Totally worth being grounded forever. I still didn’t find out the name of Burdock’s mom, though. Drat.