Author’s note: To Whom It May Concern: I hope you take no offense from my story and continue to read as I will make no promises except for growth and a lack of intent to offend.
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Chapter Three: Learning curve
“Graveborn stoning fool!” I shouted, not caring that I was mouthing off to a god. “Stone you and all of your kind! Why in Gorith’s ovals would I ever want to be born as someone’s women?! I would rather be sent to the Ovals of Judgement right now than become some frail little creature that is lucky if it can do anything by itself! You tail-whip! Why should I even play in your little stoning game in the first place?”
I continued to rage at Leo as he stared at me impassively, clearly waiting for me to calm down, just like all my old advisors learned to do. It made me all the more angry as it let me know that I was being manipulated.
While one did not simply talk rudely to a god, right now this one simply did not care.
I hated not being in control. Honestly, I knew from the beginning that if these beings had a desire to they could have simply shredded my soul instead of giving me even a semblance of a chance to fight back. I had no choice and no other option than to comply with their whims and play their game. The fact that I wanted to live again was also a factor, but less so than the knowledge that, even if not stated, I had no choice.
I really hated the idea of some random old man marrying selling me off the second he could afford it.
Just as I started calming down again though I realized that the so called ‘first’ change Leo had talked about had probably been made after the second, meaning that should I get… should I get v-violated (I shivered inside) there would be an even higher chance of pregnancy.
If the thought had not been so chilling I would have exploded anew.
Finally venting enough that I no longer saw red I realized that this was getting me nowhere I waited for Leo to explain whatever possible blessing he could give me to balance out this curse.
After a long while Leo finally took a deep breath and began speaking “I think that you are too smart not to know what could happen should you try not to play, however I will tell you anyway.” Leo paused to look me directly in the eye. "You will be reincarnated, you cannot stop that, if you chose to live your new life then everything you do will be apart of the game. If you chose to die than that means that you lost the Game, even if you die at your own hand."
Letting me take that in he then turned to the new comer. “Allow me to introduce you to Anton, who will be your teacher. You see those changes were not actually curses-” holding up his hands to forestall my quickly rebuilding anger he continued. “They were, however, impactful enough to merit balancing actions, which,” He smiled, “I control.”
Feeling a small bit of hope try and fight back the anger I forced myself to listen.
Leo continued. “As a balancing effort, I said that you would need a personal edge for the Game in balance for the memories and skills from your male body having to adapt to such a drastic change. Therefore your actual abilities have already been determined and you were given an advantage, he,” Leo nodded towards Anton. “…is your advantage. He will teach you about your new body and more importantly, about your new specialty before you are reborn.”
Leo looked briefly at something off in the distance. “Now,” Leo clapped his hands and grinned like a fiend. “You might have noticed that you can remember your previous life perfectly?”
I flinched and my anger disappeared completely as the Guilt threatened to come back. Leo, on the other hand, gracefully ignored my suffering and carried on.
“This is because your life is imprinted on your spirit, preserving the memories as they happened. Of course your earliest memories will just be blurs as your eyesight developed so I do not suggest-” As he was talking I felt myself instinctively check those earliest memories, lots of blurs and some arguments that seemed to be about me, but they were not completely understandable. “-looking back at them too often. I also say that because some younger memories are best forgotten altogether.” His eyes took on a distant look again before his grin turned a little feral. The sight of which made me feel a little on edge. I was not scared; I was just suddenly more aware of the fact that he was a god and I was a very fragile… shade.
Leo, however, seemed to be enjoying whatever he saw in the distance though as when he continuing speaking it was a little bit faster than before, getting more excited as time went on. “You have an almost unprecedented opportunity to learn and mix technologically learned knowledge with the power and capability that magic grants. Anton will teach you for 25 days, during which, time will move much faster for your body than you, 100 times faster, to be precise. As a result, your lessons will stop just before you make the connection to your body. During this time you, in your spirit form, will not need sleep and will be able to remember everything perfectly. Even when you go to your new body you should be able to remember everything you have learned here, perfectly.
“This means that you will be able to learn centuries of advanced knowledge in a few weeks, although what you do with this knowledge is your decision. Now I need to go beat some fools who are trying to kill your birth mother. Do you have any questions?” Leo finished, looking like he was about to have a lot of fun.
My birth mother? I thought. I might get to have a mom? Trying not to panic and miss an opportunity for more information I held up my hand, stalling Leo from leaving. “How urgent is her situation?” I asked, deliberately keeping my voice level.
“She has another two or three minutes before she will be in eminent danger and I will be forced to leave, however I have not had such a blatant excuse to fight in eons.” Leo said, seeming to practically quiver with desire to go and punish the offenders.
In that case I have about a minute to ask questions. “What is my family’s finance and social status right now?” I asked, trying to concentrate on what else might be relevant and ignore what it would mean if I took too long thinking about it. The idea of growing up with a mother was… odd. My stomach seemed to be churning in unease.
“Above starvation level, your new family practices the newer farming methods fairly regularly so they can support themselves easily enough. Socially speaking they are commoners, freedmen more specifically, although they do own enough property to start rank climbing into the lower nobility.” Leo did not even have to think about his response and simply stated it, giving me less time to think.
“How big is the family? How many kids and what are their sexes?”
If he was surprised that I was asking about the family, especially given my past, Leo did not show it. “Currently your parents are both alive and health with a total of five children so far, one boy and three girls who live with them and a boy who was apprenticed to a traveling mage in the past year, no other family beyond the immediate household.”
Probably only time for one more question for now. However my mind was having trouble coming up with more important questions than the ones about this new family. Thinking about it, my family really was not important in comparison to the questions I could be asking about the Game instead. Still, my head was filled with questions about a group who I was only going to know for a few years. Why should I care that the mother is in danger? When did I become so weak? I deliberately brought back the vision of teclao poison and my graveborn with a knife in his lung.
Cold rage began to flow through my body and I finally began to concentrate on the Game again.
Something stood out immediately. “Last question Leo, how does learning medical knowledge help balance out me being born a woman?”
“That depends on how you use it. Your talents will develop towards healing as you grow up, however you can learn to specialize in anything. In theory the knowledge you will be taught could even allow you to become a male again in your next life. If you do not ask someone else to do it for you.” Leo’s grin widened to inhumanly wide proportions at my surprise and he stopped moving altogether.
I had seen corpses move more than Leo did for the half of a second before he seemed to turn sideways, becoming thinner and thinner, as if he was a piece of parchment being turned sideways, until he disappeared entirely.
Still trying to figure out what Leo had just done I turn to my new teacher, Anton, who was walking towards me with a thick book under his arm.
I raised my left hand for him in greeting and started to introduce myself before around a thousand pages of writing was casually tossed in my direction.
I caught the tome and blinked before I Looked at my teacher and saw an unsympathetic face. His voice was also ice cold.
“Call me Anton, it is not precisely my name, but that is what I am used to. I will be preparing your practice area over the hill there.” He gestured to a mountain nearby. “You will read this from start to finish and then find me as fast as you can. It is called a dictionary.” Tapping the book he continued. “Please remember that you do not need sleep or food or breaks. Also please note that you only have a limited timeframe to learn these so you should try to finish it within the next few hours…” He paused and began floating up into the air.
Instinctively I reached out to try and grab onto him and prevent the cold little man from leaving, but I could not get a grip and felt my fingers slipping on some odd invisible armor of some sort.
Confused I ended up calling out to him as Anton reached around two meters off the ground and kept going. “Hold there! I have many questions that need answering, starting with the language are these books in.”
Anton stopped floating off for a moment to answer me. “Do not worry about the language it is spirit speak, you can touch the words and learn the meaning. Just like how you and I can keep talking now despite our different languages.
Now find me after you are done!” He shouted just before literally flying off to the other side of the ‘hill’ he mentioned before.
I blinked before replaying the conversation in my head. I belatedly realized that his mouth did not match up to his words as I heard them. He had been speaking an entirely different language and I had not noticed until just now. Checking my memory again I ran back through part of my conversation with Leo and realized that he had been speaking the same language as me.
A Nalk talks to me in my own tongue and the human who was supposed to teach me talked to me in a different one. It made sense in my head, however it still felt so odd.
I took a breath and sat down with the book on my lap. Questions would have to wait, there was a lot for me to learn and I could not help but wonder just how much I could learn in twenty five days. Even with this new ‘perfect’ memory of mine.
The memories of the Guilt came back for a moment before I shoved them down again and took several deep breaths. I needed to concentrate.
Opening the book I looked down at the foreign writing. It was an oddly surreal experience. After all that I had gone through, mind reading gods, carpets, reincarnation (to be enacted soon enough), and that icy teacher of mine, this book confused me the most.
All the writing, all the pages, were the same size, shape, and completely impersonal. The pages for example were the same size and did not stick out from the other pages in the slightest. The words also ended on an invisible line a set distance from the page’s edge. I knew some very good scribes, however this level of precision, over so many pages, was almost inhuman.
In fact, I wondered if it was indeed an inhuman creation. Perhaps one of the gods created it? No, they would not need to write anything down, they may might not even have a written language. Why else would you need to develop writing than to remember things in the past? An immortal with a condition even remotely close to my own would have no such troubles.
Hesitantly I flipped through the oddity and wondered which way to read it. My so called ‘kingdom’ had been a diverse center of humanity by the time of my death and I knew that the direction to read in depended on the language. Ovals, maybe it did not matter, flipping to one end I looked for a corner to begin reading.
Finding the black symbols I reached out and touched it.
Suddenly I understood what the text meant. It was as if I had been suddenly shown a drawing, given a detailed explanation, and been shown a real example at the same time. It was unnerving, but interesting in its own way.
Slowly at first, but with my curiosity pushing me faster and faster, I ran my fingers over the odd words and began learning in earnest.
During this time I noticed two things, first, that many of the words were not explained. For example, I knew that the word magnetic referred to the tendency of certain things to attract certain metals like iron. What I could not understand was how this MRI thing used it to help understand the human body. It simply was not explained, despite the fact that there were other words which referenced it and even gave me a mental picture of what it might look like, which did not help at all given its enigmatic appearance.
Second, I noticed that the entirety of the beginning of the book I read was nothing except complicated rules on how to string the words in the book together properly to make sense. Which was also an oddity since I thought dictionaries were only supposed to contain the definitions of words (the book itself even agreed with me) and yet here I was obviously learning a new language instead of just being taught in that spirit speak language.
Regardless, I continued to ‘read’ the book through my fingers as quickly as I could.
When I was almost done, I noticed a now familiar presence approaching. I looked up at Leo who came gliding down from the red sky.
He looked content so I guessed it all went over well. I resisted a surprisingly strong temptation to ask about the woman he saved and ran my fingers over some more words.
As I turned one of the last few pages Leo spoke. “That was always one of your greatest strengths, you should not deny it.”
I blinked and looked up. “Deny what?”
“Your curiosity. The one thing that made the biggest difference in your previous life, even more so than Gorith’s blessing.”
I just barely managed not to flinch at the mentioning of the Guilt and concentrated on the current conversation, replying nonchalantly as I looked Leo in the eyes. “I do not see how being a curious person affected my life all that much. Besides I have a book of new knowledge to indulge myself in. What should I be curious about?”
Leo stared back at me with impassive eyes for a moment before speaking. “Perhaps I should rephrase that, instead of being curious you seem to have a never ending desire for more information. Gorith’s blessing kept you from forgetting the value of the lives you were ending while your…” He paused seeming to search his mind for something, at which point I checked and realized that he was still speaking in my own language. “…voracious appetite for knowledge is what kept you ahead of others, no matter the field. Between the two, you could attract and keep your followers, which is what made you different and…” Leo paused again to emphasize the next point. “…Given that and your past there should be no way that you do not want to know more about your mother. The only mother you will know from either of you lives at that.”
I stared into Leo’s eyes resolutely, however they seemed to be trying to drill a hole to my soul. “I never had a mother Leo, I was a literal graveborn, someone who seemed to come out of the ground without family or origin.” I took his gaze and returned it three fold. “I have no interest in this birthmother of mine beyond how her life will affect mine.”
Leo blinked and his eyes took on an almost pitying look which annoyed me. “If you actually believe that then you might not survive this next Game. Even if you are flexible for an older human you have to be able to adapt or you will die.” Leo shook his head, breaking eye contact and started floating backwards and up into the sky. “You only have twenty-five days here, you should try learning to fly, it will help you accept that your old limits do not exist here. Once the heart reaches the midpoint in the sky you can count one less day you have before you leave.”
The heart? I blinked and Leo pointed behind me, causing me to turn around. Rising up just over the horizon was a giant heart. So that was what I heard in Leo’s study? I turned back around to ask about it, but Leo was gone.
I wondered what he meant, but that warning of his left my blood just a bit colder.
Finishing the book quickly I stood up and checked the heart, which was about a quarter of the way into the sky, before looking at the mountain that my new ‘teacher’ was supposed to be on the opposite side of.
Holding the book tightly I closed my eyes and imagined floating off the ground. After a moment I felt an uneasy feeling in my stomach and my heels seemed to start rising off the ground. As I felt this I inhaled sharply and opened my eyes to see how I was doing.
It was hard to tell if I was just standing on my toes or actually floating somehow, although the fact that most of my weight was off my toes was a good indicator. In the end however I fell back to the ground on my heels without leaving the ground.
Annoyed, I tried again. I spent some time standing there almost, but not quite, levitating in place.
Eventually I tried a different approach. Picking up the book and protecting it as best I could in my arms I started to run. The idea was simple and relied on the old adage of walking before running, with flight added in after running.
Concentrating on how everyone except me seem to be able to fly I jumped up as high as I could, only to reach a large stone’s height before coming back down. I kept running as I landed, trying to keep up my momentum and I jumped again, to similar results.
Cursing under my breath I realized how old I had gotten before my death. Although everyone said that I acted like someone much younger than my years, my body had still gotten older – yet another curse from my lack of mana – so I had become weaker.
Now though, I was dead, which meant that I did not need to breath. I did not need to tire. I did not need to be bound to the dirt.
Pressing one foot deep into the dirt I imagined myself launching up into the air.
For a moment it even seemed to work as I rose up into the air at least twice my height.
As I fell back to the ground however I lost my balance and went sprawling into the dirt, making sure to land on my back to protect the book.
It might not have been my book, but all books were rare and sacred things to be treated with respect.
I stood up and spat dirt out of my mouth while checking on the book to make sure that it had not taken any damage. After I saw it was fine I felt anger well up in me. There were many things in my life that I could not change. Even back when I was alive there was only so much that I, or anyone else, could do or change, my accursed lack of mana being the most obvious of these.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Now however, I could fly, I knew I could because of the examples the other two had given me of their own flight, yet I was having trouble. If I had the ability to fly, the capability to do something, I wanted to be able to do it. Being physically (or spiritually?) able to do something and yet not actually being able to do it reminded me of politics. There were few things I hated more than playing mediator for the selfish, egotistical, tail-whipped individuals who managed to even exist in a mountain society ruled by bandits!
I started running again, calling up more memories to push myself harder, (still protecting the book naturally) before I leapt up into the air again. This time I rose up to around four times my height. Not enough. When I landed I absorbed the entirety of the impact with my legs instead of rolling, simply because I knew I would be able to. Not pausing however I barely finished my landing before I launched myself back up into the air again.
My anger abated somewhat over the sheer exhilaration of rising higher into the air with each jump, although I still was not flying.
I also managed to minimize my impact when I came back down, crouching alone should have killed me given how high I was dropping from, but I landed the same every time. Launch, fall, absorb the landing, and relaunch. Each time aiming a little higher and jumping a little farther. In shockingly little time I was scaling the mountain that my new grump of a teacher, Anton, was supposed to be on the other side of.
Due to the nature of the mountains surrounding god’s spear, my old home, I was used to climbing mountain slopes. In fact those slopes, cliffs, and valleys were so familiar to my people and I that a mountain like this was already familiar to my feet. I heard that sailors who had their sea feet would understand the feeling, but I would not know, having never even seen a sea in my life or after-life.
Still, climbing this mountain was different than anything I had ever experience in life, not because the mountain was different, but because I was different. I bounded up the mountain in incredible leaps, ignoring most of the tough terrain as I launched myself higher and higher until I was in sight of the peak.
Ignoring everything else I pushed myself and launched once more, aiming for more height than ever before, I wanted to reach the top with this next jump.
I did.
Part of me wanted to howl, I had not felt so young and alive in years and I was actually dead! The rest of me however immediately asked two fairly important questions. First: why did I go over the mountain when there was a now, fairly easy to see path around it? This mountain did not even have clouds or large amounts of snow near the top so I could not blame my decision on poor visibility. By the Ovals, the other side of the mountain had been barren, even if this side was green, I really had no excuse.
Arrogance is weakness I reminded myself.
My Second question this reasserted itself as I crested my jump. As I had managed to jump clear over the peak I now had to ask myself an obvious question: Where exactly was I going to land?
After clearing the peak I kept going and overshot by quite a bit. Naturally I was not nervous at first as I had been surviving insane falls for the past little while, however as my momentum kept increasing from my freefall I started to worry. From what I knew and understood of this world I could do whatever I imagined, however I was having as much trouble imagining my surviving this fall now as I had earlier with flying. I was not even sure if I could die right now, but I did not want to test it. From the peak of my jump I had been falling for around ten seconds and still had a way to go. Fortunately I was actually coming up on the tree-line fairly quickly and could more easily imagine surviving a fall like this with some tree help.
In normal situations of course this would have been absurd, but given that I was falling from hundreds of meters above the peak of a mountain, I felt that belief was important.
As I fell I reached out my right hand to try and catch some of the branches speeding past to surprising results. Specifically, instead of my shoulder popping out I actually slowed down noticeably before the branch broke. Belief is power I thought grinning.
Of course, this thought was immediately followed by the reminder that arrogance is weakness. As I reached out to grab another branch I neglected my hold on the book and it was almost torn out of my hand before the branch broke again and let me land, hard enough to make my knees buckle, on the ground.
Dusting myself off I decided to take a more relaxed approach to finding my teacher. I jogged a good bit of the way down the mountain, only occasionally jumping down some cliff faces to save time.
It did not take me long to clear the woods.
“Stones.” I groaned as I reached the edge. There, on the border between where the mountain ended and sprawling plains began, was an army waiting for me. Thousands, upon thousands in neat and tidy rows could not be anything else except an army. It did not matter why they were there, even if they were waiting for me, as meeting an army, in any of my lives, would usually result in the Guilt coming to pay me a visit at some point. Never a good thing.
Of course, I did not even get an opportunity to regret my luck for the book I was carrying suddenly flew out from under my arm and towards the mass of men standing in formation. I could cast far-sight from this distance, but I too far away to get any real information for the duration that my mana would last. I would have to get closer if I wanted to use less mana.
Suddenly my options were very limited. It was possible that my teacher was over there with the army and I was simply scared concerned over nothing. However I could not help, but be paranoid about the situation. I had been jumping all over without a care and that was foolish. I was king only yesterday, what happened to my self-preservation instincts? Then again, besides Regus, no one had challenged me for a few years now…
Regardless, I only had a few options now as I estimated a distance of just over a thousand meters from me to the army downhill:
-Run and hide (high likelihood of failure, curtesy of the book and their numbers)
-Run and wait for that teacher of mine to show (relatively high likelihood of failure)
-Charge in swinging (stupid)
-Walk in and hope everyone is friendly and this was the practice area Anton mentioned (…)
-Walk out like I own the land and bluff (?)
…I crouched low and jumped hundreds of meters into the air, managing to somehow arc gracefully midway through, before coming down and landing in a crouch a few hundred meters away from the first ranks. I was surprised how well I had managed it, but I hid it as best I could. Standing up straight I walked with my best, ‘I am the king,’ stride.
I quickly realized that it was both well performed and pointless, the lines of people did not move in the slightest. As I strode forward I cast far-sight and could also make out other details, like how only some of them had weapons and armor. Most of them were also just standing about with no particular military stance. In fact, as I got closer they began to look more and more like puppets. Odd, adult sized, fully clothed, and disturbingly detailed puppets. Not only did each seem to have their own unique, if fake, face there were a blinding array of different ethnicities. Some of the figures were also vary clearly women.
I had barely closed to a hundred meters or so when my teacher decided to make his appearance. Flying in rather quickly while holding the book that had flown off earlier under one arm. I paused and waited for him to arrive while I scanned the crowd of lifelike dolls, trying to determine if they were based off anyone I knew, to no avail. Even with my far-sight spell, I could not see all of them, the ranks went on for quite a while.
“I had actually hoped that you would fly in,” Anton announced, coming down a few steps in front of me. I checked in my head a confirmed that he was speaking in the language from the book, not spirit speak. “Though I am impressed that you made yourself younger, so I will admit that you might have a chance at surviving.”
I tried not to show any of the surprise I was feeling as I checked my memory and realized that my body had changed around the time I reached the peak of the mountain. I was supposed to by over fifty years old and my magic had not been strong enough to slow my aging much. As a result I looked all of my years and then some when I died. Now however, my body looked like it had back in my prime. It might have had something to do with how young and foolish I had been acting, but I just shrugged. “I always loved learning, flying is just tricky, but I will figure it out before I leave.”
“Ha!” Anton barked a laugh, “you will not have time once we start. In fact, I need you to test something before we really get going.” Anton checked his wrist for what I thought I recognized as a watch, however that had been one of the non-readable words in the book. Which made me curious.
“Do you want to tell me why I had to learn your language?” I asked, torn between acting imperiously and asking like a normal student would his teacher.
Looking up he snapped his fingers and the world spun as a single male puppet appeared, standing relaxed, with a face and clothes that would have gone unnoticed back home. There was also a table filled with a variety of bladed weapons and maces that appeared off to the side. “It was not my language, spirt speak conveys intentions and emotions. I could tell you a lot more than I should or even show you memories if I used it too often.” Anton then nodded towards his puppet. “I want you to kill this ‘dummy’ as many different ways as you can as fast as you can.” Anton declared. “It will regenerate every time it dies so do not hold back. You have five minutes.” As Anton stepped away from his ‘dummy’ I blinked.
"Just non-magical methods I take it?" I asked, indirectly trying to confirm if he had used magic just now. I had not seen anything with my third eye, but he had stoning flown earlier and I have not seen anything then either. Perhaps my third eye was not functioning?
Anton blinked. "Oh right, well..." he shifted and then pulled out a device of some sort. He did something to it with his hands that caused part of it to light up before he spoke into it, but he was not speaking English so I had no idea what he was saying. After a moment he looked back up at me. "Non magical methods first please, I will set up the wards to let you use magic."
I did not move for a moment and just stared at Anton. "Wards to let me use magic..." I stated blandly, staring.
"Certainly. You know that wards are only magic spells anchored to an object or location correct?" I nodded. "Well, it is not like only humans can manipulate mana, so I will set up an area where you will be able to use some mana. Although there will likely be a limit of 5 circles or so."
I could not believe what I was hearing, but he had no reason to lie to me... at least no reason I knew of. "Mana needs food to fuel it. How am I supposed to fuel it as a spirit?"
"Mana needs some energy, when you were alive you- ah!" The world seemed to spin again and 6 spears of a metal I could not identify appeared. Anton picked up one at a time and made a rough circle of around 7 meters across, with the dummy in the center. He continued to speak while he did so. "Mana is an energy that interacts with the existing state of the universe and its 4 fundamental forces. I cannot explain it all to you because you would be able to adapt that knowledge to become far stronger than Leo or the others would accept, but let us just say that Leo let me barrow some technology adapted to manipulating mana.
"For the record though, do not attempt to make these. They have a massive support system to help you use mana as a spirit, you just cannot see it." Anton pulled out his odd device again and spoke in the other language for a bit and then turned back to me, "go ahead and start, it will take a few minutes to charge the area."
Looking at him in disbelief I tried to accept his words as best as I possibly could before I took a longsword and decapitated Anton’s dummy in a single stroke. The head fell off the dummy and instead of hitting the ground, disappeared and regrew back on the dummy, which glowed as it healed. I glanced over at Anton who looked at his watch and then back at me. I understood and turned my attentions back towards the odd devise.
Deciding to go along with Anton’s plan I visited a half-century’s worth of murder and violence on the dummy. Beatings with the maces, vicious thrusts from the daggers, slashes from the variety of swords, and precise magic attacks on the innards of the dummy all caused the glow that I had begun associating with a fatal blow. To my deep and sincere surprise however, by the time Anton called a stop to his little test, I was having trouble coming up with more techniques that would cause instant death. In the end I was even using my hands and feet to find other ways to cause a fatality.
After I was done with that, I reached out and finally felt mana flow into me for the first time since I died. It was a strange sensation to be able to feel and manipulate it again after so long. It was also strange because I was directly manipulating the mana around me instead of using my own supply, but I made it work as best as I could.
I used snip spells, explosive spells, death spells, not suffocation spells because those would take to long, spells that had no official name, but exploded the dummy's head, and more to take out all of the frustrations I had built up dealing with the Nalks in general.
Eventually though, Anton called the fun to a stop.
I looked over at Anton him at that point and noted his pensive expression as he stared at me. For a small while he did not speak and it was only his watch beeping at him which interrupted his thoughts. Which was just as well, because by that time I was tired of waiting and starting to wonder exactly what he was thinking about while staring at me for so long.
“What do you want me to call you?” The question caught me by surprise and I gave my name without thinking.
“DeMorte”
The reaction I got was odd, Anton looked at me like I was trying to fool him. “DeMorte Tyrentus, technically, but if you want me to call you by your first name that is fine. Although I thought that your people preferred last names.”
I blinked and groaned, Tyrentus was a title that became a person’s final name if they died as a ruler without passing their lands onto their blood descendants. To think that I would become a Tyrentus. Stones. “Yes, DeMorte will be fine.” I rubbed my temples and sighed.
“Well DeMorte, let me reintroduce myself, I am Anton, and this-” He gestured towards the huge mass of puppets. “-Will be your subject of study for the next 24 days.” My expression must have given away my confusion as pointed skyward.
The heart was just reaching its zenith in the sky when it seemed to beat silently. At that moment I notice that it was suddenly difficult to breathe and I grabbed at my collar trying to get more room to breathe.
Turning back to Anton I saw that he had a look of mixed pity and something else. He only said one thing that I could understand before my legs started giving out: “Happy birthday DeMorte.”
* * *
Cycle 3070 AF: 13th cycle of the rule of King Mis'les
In a nameless village's birthing hut:
Elizabeth joked that she could always tell when one of her children was born because the midwives stopped paying any attention to her.
“Done.” The simple statement was punctuated by a baby’s cry in the small shine.
The old midwife quickly and expertly blessed the girl under Hoh, the goddess of water, before passing her to Elizabeth.
Taking her new daughter carefully Elizabeth smiled, she knew it would be a girl, although her husband had been skeptical. "Bella." She whispered quietly. "My beautiful Bella."
She had insisted on the water blessing as the water goddess always protected newborns best.
“Bella.” she repeated, louder to the midwife, her smiling growing even larger.
The old midwife simply nodded and called for one of her youngers to take the news to the father who was waiting in the village tavern with his friends.
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Back at their home, Bella was crying. While in a newborn this was not surprising, the strength of the crying and the unnatural paleness of the child had her parents worried.
Death was not unusual when it came to newborns, but this child seemed to go from peacefully sleeping to screaming for no reason. Given that Elizabeth was very familiar with children, having undergone more than a few births, the sudden changes were even more confusing. It was not food, warmth, feces, fever, or clothing. Even one of the neighboring village elders, known for his wisdom, could not understand.
In the end Elizabeth ended up sleeping with the child in the barn as that was the only place where it seemed to act normal.
While she had grown up sleeping, as most peasants had, with the family animals, times had changed. For her it happened after her marriage, but it had occurred for others too over the cycles. Still, she had grown used to having a barn to separate the livestock from her family. As a result, it was discomforting to have to once again sleep with animals instead of her husband. Although, she was more than prepared to live with it for as long as necessary on behalf of the child’s sake.
Fortunately though it did not take too much longer to figure out the problem. After a few days Elizabeth realized that Bella was only crying around the house and when they were standing downwind of her father. Wondering if it was a smell, a quick test found the cause. Pipe smoke. One of the most profitable crops the family grew was a plant, called traxico, which greatly relaxed those who burned and inhaled its smoke. The father was an avid enough smoker that the house and his clothes smelt badly of the smoke and would cause Bella to react horribly.
When they realized this, there was a mixed reaction as the father was saddened by his new daughter's clearly weak constitution, but happy that the problem had been found. He offered to sit with the child and blow the smoke in the newborn's face until she built up a tolerance for it, however, Elizabeth, who hated the smoke herself, overruled him.
She did not ask him for much, he was a good man and a good husband, but when it came to their children, she would not give.
Official standards of society said that a woman should listen to her father and husband and always obey, however most people only did that in public. In private however, any husband foolish enough to ignore his wife's opinions would pay for the mistake eventually.
The father stopped smoking in the house immediately and then stopped altogether over the next few years. Although it still seemed that it was not enough from his new daughter's view as she seemed to hide from him as she grew up. Even when Bella started speaking, she would never call him father, but instead call him 'sir,' 'stinky man,' or by even by his first name.
It was the first, but not the last of the eventful years that would surround the young girl named Bella.