Rain fell in scattered sheets like waves of shattered glass against the barren rock, filling the air with a cacophonous pitter-patter. My chest heaved for breath beneath the tightly overlapping plates of my armor as I held my spear leveled at the defeated enemy, point gleaming with a few drops of blood. My foe lay on their back before me, held up only by their elbows as their red eyes glared at me out the narrow slits of their visor, defiant to the end as a knight should be.
“Remove your helm, soldier. I would see the face of my foe before I kill you,” I said over the tempestuous clamor of the rain, breath fogging out between the visor of my helm.
Slowly, the enemy lifted one gauntleted hand, undid the clasps holding her helmet in place, and, with obviously fading strength, tossed it away to tumble end over end off the edge of the cliff and into the sea far below.
“Just kill me already,” my opponent said, whipping back her head, sending her long golden brown hair streaming through the air behind her as she jutted her delicately shaped chin towards the bloodied point of my spear.
I am ashamed and abashed to admit it, but staring into her glowing green eyes I froze, my heart beating in my chest like thunder in the rainstorm. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever had the honor, nay, the privilege, of laying eyes upon.
I fell to my knees in the mud beneath me, dropping my spear in my sudden awe and forcing away my own helm to meet her steely gaze with my own eyes, slowly drawing the dagger from my side and offering her the hilt. “I apologize, my lady,” I said to her, my voice barely audible over the roaring winds. “But to slay one such as yourself, it would be the gravest of sins. Please, I beg of thee, take this blade and run me through so that I must not suffer the agony of living in a world without your beauty.”
As she stared at me in that moment, our eyes bridging the physical and metaphorical distance between us, I felt as if time itself had stopped. I was as content as if I were back at home, lounging on the porch of my grandmother’s cottage in my favorite dress as the sun beamed down happiness around me. I was ready to die with no regrets.
A tide of emotion washed over her face, indiscernible to my pathetic, low-born eye, a story of so many words yet I was too much a dullard to decipher even one. “How could I strike down a woman such as you,” my enemy said, restarting time once again as she rose to her feet and strode towards me with a graceful purpose that made me shudder with anticipation down to my bones.
I half feared, half wished she would plunge her knife into me, but instead she dropped to one knee and reached a gauntleted hand towards my face, and what she said left me speechless. “You are as radiant as the greatest of the major arcana, the world, the lady of light herself. To slay one such as you would invite the heaven's wrath upon my head, a wrath which I would surely welcome with open arms if only to be with you in death how I wish we could have been in life.”
A single tear fell from my eyes at her words. She ducked her head towards mine, and my heart began to race, our breaths fogging the rapidly closing distance between our lips, and just as she-
“Hold on just a, um, a, uh, what’s that word again?” the clearly drunken man sitting across from me said, cutting me off mid-sentence. He was, quite thankfully, my favorite kind of drunk, bubbly but not sloppy, the kind of guy who just becomes very genuine and full of fun, you know the type, I’m sure. “ Oh. Minute, that’s right,” He said, trying and failing to snap his fingers before continuing, ignoring the failed snap and my raised eyebrow, “That all sounds pretty and all, but it's all a croc of shit, ain't it? There's no way you could ever hold a sword with arms that spindly.”
I opened my mouth to give a haughty but snappy retort, mildly offended, when someone slammed another ale on the table for the man, interrupting me before I could begin. “It is indeed, lord adventurer,” the brilliantly beautiful barmaid, my wife Síle, said, sliding the man another ale, and giving me a wry grin. I rolled my eyes at her and sighed as she went on. “Truth is, we both ended up at a mutual friend's party and had too much to drink. We woke up the next morning in a stranger's bed, not a scrap of cloth between us and mutual sporting hangovers that could have knocked a bull on its ass. Three weeks later we went to the temple and got these.” She held up her arm to show the marriage blessing wrapping around her arm like a black tattoo, elegant designs within the band forming a perfectly unique pattern matched only by my own blessing.
I let fly another sigh and slumped forward, chin meeting the palm of my upturned hand with a soft slap, my previously bursting proverbial sails now slack from the sudden lack of wind, stolen by my gorgeous wife’s honesty. “Honestly, Síle, can’t you let me have at least a little fun? Besides, my stories are the best!” That earned me an eye roll from Síle, but the smile said it was the good kind, that flirty, ‘you’re a dork, but I somehow love you,’ sort of look.
“Nah, girly. Ain’t no story as good as a true story,” the drunk said with a lazy grin, drawing my attention back to the burly giant of a man who was now swaying in his booth, hiccuping every couple of words. “Tha’s what my good ol’ ma told me anyhow. Say, wanna tells me the true story? That one sounds interesting.”
I sighed a third time, waving my free hand at the man. “Nah, it's not that good. Besides, I barely remember most of it anyway. It was kind of a whirlwind romance.”
“Shame,” the man said, then downed half his ale in one gulp, setting it aside with a hearty sigh. “Love a good ol’ fashion love story, I do. If you remember it, promise you’ll tell me. I would real’ love to hear it for truth an’ all.”
“Well, ah,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck, thinking it was unlikely I’d ever see the man again, so what the hell, I could pretend to be friendly. “What's your name again?”
“Borgen,” he said with that same lackadaisical smile as before, slurring his name slightly so it sounded more like ‘Boorgen’.
“Well, Borgen, should I recall such a boring, simple, and frankly foolish tale of normalcy and boringness, you shall be the first to which I write of it. Should I ever learn to write, that is.”
“Mairenn,” Síle said, drawing my attention. “Don’t you have that thing with the association soon?”
I glanced out the window at the shadows stretching across the cobbles. “Shit,” I said, sliding from the booth and springing to my feet. “Sorry, Borgen, seems that I must be away. Peace be to you, traveler, and may we meet again.”
“Seeing ya, ands good luck on that written exam, things a bastard,” the large man slurred out, reminding me that he was an adventurer and soon to be my peer despite still that dumb as fuck grin plastered to his face. It would have been cute had he not been over four hundred pounds of pure muscle packed into an eight-foot frame. Ah, who am I kidding, he was cute as fuck, like a puppy if puppies had buzz cuts.
“And, you, my dear, I will be seeing later,” I said to my wife, giving Síle my usual farewell kiss. We were so long about it that Borgen cleared his throat to interrupt us. I ignored the fucker, flashing him my favorite finger which rewarded me with an amused grunt. She was my wife, and, damn it, I liked kissing her.
We separated and Síle smiled. “Take care,” she said, one hand on my arm, then pushed me towards the door. “Now, go, and don’t be late. I don’t want to hear about how badly you fucked up for the next three weeks.”
Against my will, I gave her my goofiest grin, as I backed out the door and out onto the street, that woman was just too good at messing up my brain. I just stood there for several moments, blinking at the gathering rain clouds above as I tried to gather my thoughts into working order again. A carriage hurried past, drawing my attention to the sound of horse hooves on the cobblestone which finally broke through the fog of my mind. The interview. Right, better get on with that.
Glancing back up at the sky my heart sank as I realized that I was indeed going to be late. The sun was high in the sky, disappearing behind a black billowing storm front. Well, fuck me, I supposed. I dashed off, practically sprinting down the road before my lungs burned in protest and I was forced to stop, gasping on the side of the street. By the arcana, I thought to myself, I should really take Síle up on that offer to join her for those weekly yoga classes.
Recovered, I set a more reasonable pace towards the association hall, arriving just as the temple bells tolled the thirteenth hour. Perfect, only thirty minutes late, practically on time given my record. The elderly desk clerk eyed me over the rim of her thick-lensed horn-rimmed glasses as I entered the vacant lobby, straightening the stack of papers in her hand with a hearty thump atop the desk as I approached.
“Can I help you?” She crowed in a flat voice that spoke to the depths of her hatred towards life itself.
“Absolutely,” I said in as perky a tone as I could manage, just to see her frown dip even further, her sagging, wrinkling cheeks curving inward like the clay walls of a river slowly falling in on themselves. “I’m here for the selection exam.”
The old woman sighed, her whole body shuddering as she closed her eyes and pointed one gnarled finger with a nail that was an inch too towards a door to the left of the desk. “Take the door on the left and follow the hall to the end,” she said, not looking at me.
“Thanks!” I said, almost skipping away as the hag gave another weary sigh and muttered something I couldn’t quite make out.
I did as the old hag said, walking down the hall until it ended in a broad stone door, then pushed past it with a bit of effort, well, actually, a shit ton of effort if I’m honest, and strode confidently into the final vestibule, ready for my life to truly begin. A fun word that, vestibule. Kinda sounds like a vested mule, which, well, I’m sure you don’t want to hear me ramble on about that story.
Immediately upon entering the room, I was stopped by a man in a long brown coat the color of goat shit wearing a scowl that could give the desk lady a run for her money. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” He asked, voice like the hammering beat of a bass drum, or grancassa for you educated types.
“Mairenn Crowe, sir,” I said, imitating his serious tone, puffing out my chest and giving him a half salute. The way that scowl of his deepened into a frustrated and furious glower was so damn perfect I couldn’t help the grin that split my face. “Here for the association selection test, sir.” I said the last tilting my head slightly to the right with a half-cocked smirk.
“You’re late,” he said, the words practically a growl. “You might be able to get away with your antics in another city, Ms. Crowe, however, the Gaulben chapter of the association expects better from our adventurers.”
“Right, right. As should be expected, of course. Firstly, it’s actually, Mrs. Crowe, thank you, and I do so apologize for my tardiness, sir, however, there was a poor band of school children crossing the road a few blocks back, right in the path of a runaway carriage, and, well, you see, sir, how could I, a fine prospective member of the adventurers association, just turn a blind eye to such a tragedy in waiting? I tell you, sir, I could not. I charged into the street without hesitation, heedless of the danger, pushing all twenty-four children out of the way with my might and slipping beneath the carriage with such grace-”
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“That’s quite enough,” the man said with a sigh, holding up one hand and pinching the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as if against a rising headache.
“So,” I ventured after he was silent for a minute, drawing out the monosyllabic word with an obnoxious drawl. “Where's the lady with the box that grants me my blessing and sets me on the path to gold, gods, and glory?”
“You’re not here to be an arcana damned envoy, Mrs. Crowe. We don't deal in gods and glory here. The only things that matter to us are gold and looking damned good while earning it.” He said the last pointedly, as if doubted I was capable of such a trifling feat.
I felt the grin on my face sharpen at his words. “Oh,” I said with a downright scandalous chuckle, a well perfected specialty of mine. “I promise you, sir, I look damn good doing just about everything. Just ask my wife.”
The man stared down at me, then sighed again, a common response to my magnificence, I’ve found. “Just take a seat and wait for your name to be called. And for future reference, being late does not look good to anyone.”
“Guess you’ve never heard of being fashionably late, have you, Sir,” I said with a wink and a wave. “Well then, see ya around.”
I made my way over to one of the several rows of chairs set out in the center of the room. By my best estimate, there were probably a good dozen or so people sitting in the old chairs, each of them shifting about uncomfortably. I sighed as I sat down, doing my best to get comfortable in the poorly padded folding chairs, but as we all know, that is truly an impossible task.
One by one, a fine-looking lady called people up to enter a side room, taking close to five minutes per person to get to the next in line. It felt like they were taking hours to process us all. I began shifting around in my chair as the minutes ticked by and the metal seat became more uncomfortable. I tried crossing my legs, uncrossing them, bringing one leg up, putting it down and bringing the other one up, bringing both up, spinning around, turning upside down and hooking my legs over the back of my chair as I checked out the well sculpted backside of the woman sitting two chairs in front of me… But, arcana damn me, there was just no way to get comfortable. It was, perhaps, the truest form of torture I have ever experienced, and I’d once gone drinking with my father-in-law.
After hours, one in truth, but it felt longer, like space and time itself were stretching to prolong my suffering, I heard the fine-looking lady calling my name. “Mairenn Crowe?” she called into the room, her voice as sweet as a tinkling bell in winter.
I lept to my feet with a pip to my step and crossed the room in a blink, a smile on my face, ready to get this shit over with. The lady gave me a somewhat forced grin in return, though it almost looked more like a grimace.
“This way,” she said, gesturing for me to follow her as she turned back towards the side-room door. I followed at her heels like a puppy, anxious energy building under my skin like a subdermal blister ready to burst across my whole body. I know, gross, but I honestly couldn’t think of a better way to describe it.
We stepped into the most anticlimactic box of a room I’d ever seen in my life. It was literally just a white-walled room with a metal table in the middle, two of those arcana-damned folding chairs on either side of it, and a plain wooden box with a round hole on one side sitting atop it. I did my best to stifle my disappointment, but the other woman must have caught on because she gave me a knowing smile.
“That’s a somewhat normal reaction to the blessing chamber,” she said. “At least you didn’t faint.”
“Why would this make someone faint?” I asked, frowning at the statement. “How weak would you have to be to faint from sheer boredom like that?”
“I think it's more that they had such high expectations for the chamber that when faced with the reality it changed the way they saw the world itself, which is just too much for some people to take I suppose.”
I snorted as derisively as possible. “How do you even get a constitution that weak? Or would it be wisdom? I’ll be honest, my education wasn’t the best.”
“No worries,” the fine-looking lady said, sitting on the far side of the table. I sat across from her as she continued. “The system will make it all clear soon enough, and besides, we offer all new members access to basic education free of charge. Now, shall we begin?”
My grin returned in full force. “Fuck yeah, lets get this shit started!”
She smiled back, the way a parent might smile at an overenthusiastic child. “Great. Please, just place your hand in the box. You might feel a little pinch, but don’t worry, it's all just part of the process.”
I plunged my hand inside the side of the box without a second's hesitation, which I quickly regretted. To my surprise, my hand disappeared as soon as my fingers passed the threshold inside the thing as if they simply didn’t exist anymore. I tried to flinch back, but nothing happened, my hand wouldn’t budge. I bit my lip and frowned as anxious energy built up in my chest.
“Please, just relax,” the lady said, placing both of her hands on either side of the hand-stealing box thing. Needless to say, I was nowhere near relaxed, but I did pretend really hard that I was, closing my eyes and forcing my shoulders to ease despite the way my tightening chest made it difficult to breathe. Based on the wry grin she flashed at me, I doubted she was fooled.
A sudden sharp pain assaulted my hand like tiny lances of fire tearing through my palm. I cried out at the top of my lungs, trying with all the strength I had to break my hand free from the blasted box to no avail.
“Miss, if you don’t calm yourself I will be forced to terminate this rite. You won’t be allowed back, and even if you do find your way to another scrying box, you will not be granted a greater blessing. So please, just relax. It won’t take much longer now.”
I closed my eyes against the pain wracking my hand, my gritted teeth making a sound like a wooden box being dragged across cobblestones. Between sharp breaths, I said, “please, tell me the pain means I’m getting a damn good blessing.”
“Don’t worry, miss, this will only take a few more seconds,” replied the lady, who was looking progressively less nice with each passing moment of agony.
Suddenly, several tendrils of black sprouted from the box’s dark entrance and raced up my arm, leaving burning streaks of pain in their wake. I groaned, slumping forward, my head hitting the table with a solid thud as they slid over my shoulder and down my chest, coming together over my solar plexus in a blinding ball of agony that made me regret those eggs I’d had for breakfast.
As quickly as the pain had started, it stopped, leaving me heaving, forehead pressed to the edge of the desk as my hand fell limply from the box to hang at my side. Deep inside me, some part of me knew the pain was gone, but I still couldn’t help but curl up around the limb, my mind still reeling as I sat in the silence.
A few moments of heavy breathing passed before the woman on the other side of the desk cleared her throat with an air of painfully practiced politeness. I jerked my head up, red hair clinging to the sides of my sweat slicked face as I met her gaze with bleary eyes and a heavy, shuddering sigh.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked in a shaky voice, my tone subdued. Not even I could muster up a spark of snark after that nightmare-level shit.
“A blessing,” the other woman said simply, then glanced away. “Admittedly, there is usually a lot less screaming involved, however.”
A tendril of fear built like a knot in my chest at her words. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No. At least, I don’t think it should be. I’ve honestly never seen that before. I’m, uh, still somewhat new here.” She gave me an awkward smile that only increased my unease.
I frowned at the woman who was pointedly looking anywhere but at me. Slowly, I gripped the hem of my shirt and rolled it up just past my navel, looking down at the etheric lines of black outlining the upside-down shaped image of a card bearing an eyeless woman holding a harp looking up at the sky, a sly grin and a single tear the only marks upon her face.
“Reversed?” The association lady said in a hushed gasp from the other side of the table as I pulled my shirt back down. “I don’t… I didn’t… I’m sorry, miss, I’m… so sorry.”
I stared at her blankly as the significance of the image and her words flowed across the suddenly smooth surface of my mind.
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=System Formatting In Progress=
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“What the fuck?” I asked in a confused half whisper as the box appeared in the corner of my vision. “Is this what the system looks like? I always imagined it’d look more like pages in a book or something. This is just… Weird…” I refocused my eyes, doing my best to avoid thinking of the little box of letters, only to find the association lady leaning out the door talking to someone in hushed tones.
“Excuse me,” I called to her, making the woman flinch and jerk away from whoever was outside. A moment later the man in the goat shit coat from earlier poked his head into the room and scowled as our eyes met. I was beginning to believe that expression was the only one he knew how to make.
“You,” he said, his tone already full of exasperation.
“Me,” I agreed, raising one brow. “At least, that’s who I was last time I checked.”
The man sighed. “You can go, Jellaine. I’ll take care of things from here.”
“Thank you, sir,” the woman said with a deep bow then rushed from the room in a storm of rustling skirts and anxious glances. The door clicked shut behind her and the man loomed over me like some sort of overbearing statute.
“Wanna sit?” I asked him, gesturing towards the now vacant chair across from me. He was silent for a long, unblinking moment, then grunted and crossed the space in four long strides, dropping into the seat with more grace than I suspected possible for a man of his stature.
“I imagine you have some questions,” he said as he settled back into the chair, resting clasped hands on the table between us.
“Should I?” I asked, thinking of the upside-down card tattooed above my belly button. The more pictured it the weirder it looked, like a dark stain in an otherwise pristine washrag.
For a moment the man narrowed his eyes, then glanced at the door and shook his head slightly. “She didn’t explain, then?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“All I know is the blessing hurt like hell and freaked her out for some reason. Come on, spill the beans already. Am I dying or something?”
“No, not exactly,” the man said. “It's just, you were not given a blessing, miss…” he glanced down at the papers on the table beside him. “Mrs. Crowe. That thing inked across your skin is not a blessing, it's more like a curse.”
“Arcana damn me,” I said sourly, letting my shirt drop and crossing my arms. Of course, something like this would happen. “How do we fix this?”
“Fix it?” The man asked, suddenly confused. “There is no ‘fixing it,’ miss. You simply live with it. Once bestowed no blessing can be removed except by the hand of the arcana who bound it to you. I’m afraid you’re stuck with your new ‘gift,’ as it were.” He looked almost pleased as he said it as if my sudden suffering were bringing him an undue amount of pleasure.
“So, what now? Do you send me off with the other new recruits on some training program where we learn to use our new powers and grind out some levels fighting low-level monsters, or do you just send us out into the world to figure it out ourselves?”
A hint of a grin flicked up the corner of the man’s mouth as I finished speaking, the first thing besides a scowl I’d seen on his face so far. “I’m sorry, miss, but you will not be joining the ranks of our organization. I’m afraid those marked with the minstrel’s curse are simply too much of a liability for us to risk bringing you into the dungeons.” He gave me a shrug as the line of my jaw firmed with sudden outrage. Unfortunately, he went on before I could raise my burning objections.
“We will, of course, compensate you for your time and provide you with a rite of requisition that you can show to any of the clerks at the royal treasury to grant you a small stipend of money, enough to tide you over whilst you come to terms with the unfortunate event and find employment elsewhere.” That said he dropped a large pouch of coin onto the counter with a hearty thud. “Consider this the first installment of that stipend. Someone will be by your place within the next month with the rite itself.”
I blinked several times at the man, then spoke slowly. “So you're saying I can’t become an adventurer?”
He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. And should you go against common wisdom and attempt to adventure without a permit you shall be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which includes everything up to execution should you so much as a step within ten feet of a dungeon, this city’s dungeon especially.”
Grinding my teeth in frustration, I saw no other option. If they wouldn’t let me become an adventurer, then I just had to somehow force them to make me one. It was my destiny, after all.
Slowly, I pushed back my chair and stood, snatching up the coin pouch. “Well, it’s been nice, but I better get going. Don’t want the wife to worry and all that.” I moved towards the door, opened it, and stopped just at the threshold. “Oh, and fuck you too,” I said, aiming a middle finger toward the man, prompting him to scowl one last time before I slammed the door shut behind me with a satisfying crash and stormed out of the building, giving both the lady outside and the elderly clerk at the front desk a taste of wrathful finger as I passed.
The moment my boots hit the cobbled streets outside, a crash of thunder shook the sky and rain crashed down all around, soaking me to the bone in an instant as if the gods themselves couldn’t help but mock me.
Just. Fucking. Wonderful.