She was on her way. Tatius and Pupius awaited her in…
Albu…? Amph…?
Damnit, she knew this one.
Either way, they were in the capital. It had taken nearly eight years since the men deserted the legion before they decided that it was safe enough to return. Ranthia also suspected that what they truly wanted was to get her there, to give her more opportunities.
Even if she had nearly bungled that permanently, thanks to [Distorted Likeness].
The men had done so much for her, and she looked forward to reuniting with them and catching up. The Guildmaster had warned her that her journey would take roughly a season of travel, but she was confident that she could move much faster than that!
Ranthia was finally traveling the roads of Remus, free and unconstrained with no convoy, no schedule, and no traveling companions. It was liberating; it let her explore when she felt the need, stop when she wanted, and just relax while she enjoyed being herself.
It also was incredibly, soul-crushingly dull.
She had started talking to herself within days, especially when she practiced with her mirror images. That was fine, perfectly normal even; she just wanted to hear something that wasn’t ambient nature noises. As one does.
Over a week of travel later, the most interesting thing she had seen was a courier that blew past her in the opposite direction. The man ran with the wind—literally—at his heels at speeds that Ranthia wasn’t able to match. She knew it was a hyper-specific specialization, but she was still jealous.
She traveled, usually at a jog. Sometimes she went into an all-out run. She sometimes—okay, often—wished that she could just throw mirror images out at the edge of her range and shift to them, repeating the cycle as swiftly as she could. If she ignored the obvious channel speed delays and mana issues, she had no doubt that it would have been her fastest mode of conveyance… aside from the minor detail that it’d leave her real body behind. She had absolutely zero desire to find out what would happen if her real body was left outside of the range for [Scattered Reflections]. She had far better things to do than to invent new, creative ways to commit suicide through gross stupidity, especially when she lacked the ability to even try it.
She camped when she felt tired or like making a stew. Fortunately, rabbits were relatively commonplace throughout Remus, so her campfire-cooked meals were, more often than not, rabbit stew. It was the little things that made life worth living. When she slept, she made sure she rigged up her camp cooking equipment as a perimeter alarm, no Skill required.
Unfortunately, mirror images that she created seemed to refuse to stay active throughout the night while she slept. So, no fake watch to disincentivize things that might mean her harm. Technically this meant that she was vulnerable to anything smart enough to bypass her traps, like say more of those war goblins (probably). Practically, she was mostly confident that [Combat Awareness] would give her warning even while she slept.
The skill had proven its value during the incident with the wolves. She had heard wolves howling in the nearby woods, but she ignored them. Her inherited knowledge was absolutely certain that wolves never attacked humans because they were smart enough to recognize the danger humans posed. If not for [Combat Awareness], she would have been caught completely flatfooted when the pack came at her from four directions at once.
Wolf stew wasn’t nearly as tasty.
As the weeks trickled by, she missed baths most of all. Sex was nice, but baths made you feel like you could tolerate your own existence. Sweat, grime, and dust accumulated and built on itself. Odors had developed, commingled, and bred aggressively. The odd stream or small pond that she cleaned up in helped only a little, and they were often much too far apart.
At least she had rabbit stew most evenings.
Night had all but fallen when Ranthia finally found a good clearing near the road. Another day’s travel was done.
…At least until she noticed the mushroom circle at the edge of the clearing. Slowly and carefully, Ranthia backed away while she looked everywhere except at the mushroom circle. Once she got back to the road, she resumed walking, briskly. But not running.
The beautiful moons were out, so it was a lovely night to walk the roads and get as far as she could from the potential presence of the fae. Once she was far enough that she assumed it would be inoffensive, she took out one of her iron camping cookware pieces and cradled it against her chest while she, finally, indulged in the urge to run.
Distance. Precious distance.
Her plan had been to skip the other towns along the way to get to Ariminum faster. She was eager to see Tatius and Pupius again; it had been roughly half a year since she saw them off and the promised reunion was so close. But she abandoned that plan; after enough weeks on the road her fondness for the men had lost out—completely and unequivocally—to her desire to have a real bath and clean her disgusting clothing and armor.
Even if she almost got arrested by guards that mistook her for a runaway slave when she strolled up to the gates stinking and filthy. Or, at least, the guards referred to it as ‘almost’ arresting her after they held her until someone in charge finally noticed her level and the [Mage] tag and allowed her to present her Adventurer’s Guild marker.
At least the guard that had been stuck watching her paid for her bath. …Which was more than a little insulting, honestly, but her miserly instincts and her desire to be done with the entire ordeal metaphorically beat her pride senseless and left it twitching in some mental alley, temporarily forgotten.
She encountered a group of travelers that had set up camp for the night and were bound for the direction she had just come from. The group welcomed her by their campfire, and she helped them to touch up the vegetable soup that they had started to prepare for the night ([Soups & Stews] had been mortally offended that they had mixed all the vegetables and were going to dump them in at the same time). Their number included a [Bard] that sang for them that night. The first song had been decent enough, even if Ranthia rolled her eyes hard at the notion of the damsel that couldn’t survive without some flighty man beside her. The next song though was one that she knew and loathed. That accursed song about her hometown, Perinthus, and its plague; the song that omitted the [Healer] entirely and barely even mentioned the Rangers that saved them all.
Ranthia found she had no patience for the song and called it a night before she ended up inflicting violence on nice people. It wasn’t like the [Bard]—weirdly wrapped in fine bamboo cloth from head to toe—or his stupid harp was to blame for the song.
Traveling across Remus alone sucked. Ranthia swore up and down that she would never travel so far alone again.
Amaus joined Ranthia on her journey every now and then. It was decent practice to control his image and make it convincingly keep pace with her as she sped up or slowed down. But it was also just… something to think of and keep track of, which made it unappealing for constant use. She still tended to generate him next to her if she thought she heard anyone coming her way or that she was approaching someone’s campsite. A ‘husband’ made life easier.
And she really, really didn’t want to deal with encountering others with a duplicate of herself around. Twins existed, but they seemed to be quite rare in her experience. Low rates of occurrence plus the mortality rate of kids painted a grim picture for their odds.
Though she came to regret Amaus’ existence one night when she encountered two women who were trying to break into being traveling merchants, with a few bodyguards. One of the women, still quite attractive even if she was somewhat older than Ranthia preferred, showed clear signs of interest in her. But it seemed like it was ridiculous to introduce your ‘husband’ to someone then, later that very evening, invite the woman to share a bedroll. What could she even say to excuse it? Would the woman have expected Amaus to join them? How would that even possibly work? It wouldn’t!
In the end, Ranthia decided it was better to just deprive herself and live without a—no doubt wonderful—night of pleasure. To add insult to injury, the campsite was next to a nice, big pond and the merchants had sold her some new delightfully scented oils. Ranthia actually felt clean and attractive, yet she still couldn’t enjoy life’s little pleasures.
Ranthia grumbled herself to sleep that night, holding a grudge against the wholly fictional male-ish image that sat nearby, out of sight from anyone else. That way there was no risk of anyone noticing it when he vanished at some point after Ranthia finally fell asleep.
It was a dark and cloudy day and Ranthia swore she heard the sounds of an Ornithocheirus’ call on the wind. She opted to move her campsite under the dense canopy and stayed in place for the day.
The Guildmaster had been right, unsurprisingly. She had set out right when summer began to peak, and the days were already growing cooler. The leaves had been growing more colorful for several days before Ranthia finally arrived at her destination.
With most cities in Remus, even the decently large ones, there were limited signs of civilization until you reached the walls. Farms dotted the surroundings on approach to a city, but there was the rare farm out in the middle of nowhere too (albeit, often abandoned). Still, for most towns it went from wilderness to increasingly frequent farmsteads of varying fortification and quality, to city gates.
With the capital, the crowds on the road were the first sign that something was changing. There were scattered farmlands, but as she got nearer there were numerous other buildings—including an entire complex of unknowable purpose—beyond the city’s walls.
Then, finally, right as the crowds on the road had come to a complete stop, Ranthia saw the shantytown that had cropped up around and grown out from the outer walls.
Ranthia had experience with lines. A few people were sometimes ahead of her if she had ill timing with her approach to a food stand or entering a decent city.
She had never even imagined that lines could be scaled up to such an extreme. It was moving, but there were so many people ahead of her—and already queueing up behind her—that the movement was staggered. She hated it immediately.
Not that hatred fixed the problem.
While she waited and tried to make sure Amaus didn’t get jostled, Ranthia entertained herself by admiring the walls of the true city. The stonework gleamed white in a way she had never seen before from other towns, and they also completely outclassed every other wall she had ever seen. She wasn’t even sure if every town wall from every prior town she had ever seen stacked together could make as tall and thick and just… so much wall as even just the portion of the wall that she could see from her place in line.
The capital was absurd.
Even more impressively, the walls were also properly manned. There were guards armed with bows patrolling the walls and manning the towers. Legion armor was intermingled with the more familiar drab armor of the guard too. It was almost imposing, but the strong defensive presence probably reassured the people that lived within the city or in the shantytown.
At least that explained why there was so much civilization beyond the walls, though it boded ill for an Adventurer’s options in the region. Still, the Guild here was supposed to be the largest in Remus, so surely there had to be something.
One eternity later, Ranthia finally had Amaus’ body step forward when they neared the front of the line. She knew life would be easier if he spoke for them, but she wasn’t confident in her ability to handle the process by shifting between the bodies. She could only hope that [Echoes Reflected] would behave, it could be inconsistent.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Name, purpose of visit?” The guard asked in a tone that suggested he had uttered the exact same phrase a few hundred times too many already that day.
“Amaus and Ranthia. We’re B-Ranked Adventurers with the.”
Godsdamnit don’t drop the rest of the words! Bad [Echoes Reflected]!
“Guild, moving to the capital.” Amaus finally concluded, his masculine voice turning oddly shrill towards the end.
Ranthia’s eyebrow twitched slightly as she resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands. Instead, she retrieved the carved, inscribed wooden block that was her proof that she was a member of the Adventurer’s Guild. The guard barely flicked a glance at it. Though his eyes did flick to her knives when her cloak parted to reveal them.
“Any contraband or other objects to declare?” The guard asked, pointedly.
Ranthia blinked at his tone.
“All we have is our equipment, our weapons are registered with the Adventurer’s Guild?” She replied, confused.
The guard seemed to gesture with his eyes to her clearly Legion-issued knives.
“Nothing you’re not supposed to have?” He prompted.
“They’re family heirlooms, you can check the registration with the Adventurer’s Guild.”
The registration meant that her elaborate—and corrected—backstory about her knives would never be heard by anyone other than Tatius or Pupius. But it saved her a lot of effort. If the Guild had the knives registered, the legal presumption—as it was explained to her—was that the knives belonged in her care. It seemed ripe for abuse, but she supposed that was why the Guild self-regulated so aggressively.
“Fine, not my problem. You may enter.” The guard replied, obviously eager to be done with her.
“Actually, could you tell us where to find the Adventurer’s Guild in town first?” Ranthia requested.
“No.”
“What? Why not?”
“Not my job, move along.”
Ranthia leaned forward and stared pointedly at the guard.
“…What are you doing?” He asked after a moment.
“Memorizing your face so that, in the future, if you ever need to hire an Adventurer for any reason, we’ll know to give you the worst price ever.”
That wasn’t how anything worked, and the guard likely knew as much. But Ranthia felt like being a bit of a pain in the neck in the face of such pointless rudeness.
“Fine, cripes. I finally see why my sister always spoke so poorly about your kind. Here…”
The directions were convoluted, but Ranthia successfully memorized them—oh if only names came half as easily—and entered Ariminum at long, long last.
The directions led Ranthia through a long, winding path that had many detours that Ranthia was virtually certain were wildly unnecessary even while she walked them, but they did, ultimately, deliver her right in front of the Adventurer’s Guild. Her respect for that particular guardsman went up several notches, it was impressively smooth work to give her such awful, roundabout directions on the fly. A good bit of minor chaos!
“Eee! This is it—I’m finally going to get to see Tatius and Pupius again!” It was hopelessly girlish and would have been mortifying had she not been clad in the anonymity of the city crowds, but Ranthia just couldn’t help but to enthuse to a wholly unresponsive and unimpressed Amaus.
She made him smile, but it came far too late. Worse, the smile just looked downright creepy. Ugh. She made a note of that problem with his image and stopped the smile before someone summoned the guards to deal with the obvious psychopath about to go on a killing spree.
Ranthia shuddered, her gleeful, bubbly mood ruined. Some sights were cursed.
She left Amaus out of the way near the entrance—Ariminum was so densely populated that there was nowhere she could safely erase or reform him privately—and made her way to one of the clerks. Fortunately, this time, there was no line, though other clerks (so many clerks) had other people they were dealing with. The perks of a larger guild operation, she supposed.
“Yes, how can the Adventurer’s Guild help you, miss?” He asked, bored through a thin veneer of politeness.
“B-Ranked Adventurer, Ranthia, transferring from Sardonia. I have my guild symbol and a letter of introduction for your Guildmaster here.”
She produced the two items and set them down. She expected that the man would most likely just set aside the scroll for now and it would end up on the Guildmaster’s desk sooner or later. She had carefully pried up the wax and read the scroll out of bored curiosity during her journey, but the letter was so enthusiastically complimentary that Ranthia still felt weird and embarrassed about it. She had been so flustered at the time that she nearly botched reheating the wax to reseal it, but fortunately she managed to salvage the Guildmaster’s personal seal.
The man nodded and started to process things when he abruptly paused in his tracks. He mouthed something to himself, then grabbed another scroll from elsewhere beneath his counter and checked its contents.
“You, go get the Guildmaster!” The clerk yelled to another man nearby, who nodded and left.
Ranthia blinked, suddenly nervous.
She hadn’t even done anything! …In Ariminum, at least!
In surprisingly short order, Ranthia found herself herded into the local Guildmaster’s office. The man was a [Mage] for his primary class, at a surprisingly high level, though not quite at the level of her prior Guildmaster. The man was reading the letter of introduction that she had brought, which she had completely missed someone grabbing, and she swore she saw his eyebrow almost imperceptibly arch upward more than once.
Two other nervous clerks were in the room, though they stood back near the door.
“Hm, yes. Welcome to Ariminum. I’m certain you will be a wonderful addition to the Adventurers under our banner here, for as long as you stay.” The Guildmaster began, though he seemed to pause after that for several long moments before he resumed speaking.
“Unfortunately, I do have to be the bearer of some bad news. The two who were sent ahead of you, whom I understand were relations of yours, died during a mission two months ago.”
What?
“What happened?” Her mouth asked, disconnected from her mind.
Her mind was absolutely not working at all. She felt like someone controlled her body with [Reflective Motility], not that the skill handled speaking (nor was [Echoes Reflected] so reliable, clearly). But her mind just felt like it had broken and scattered into nothingness, so it couldn’t possibly have driven her entirely reasonable question.
“We had a big mission come in, a dangerous creature that had attacked a major business a few days’ journey beyond Ariminum. It was roughly level 600, as I recall. It was an A-Ranked mission, and I sent a dozen of our best at the problem. A few returned, but the survivors were able to confirm that the others perished. Unfortunately, those two were among those that perished. In addition, nothing could be recovered of them. You have my sincerest condolences.” The man was entirely too calm and professional.
“Where is the monster that did this?”
Now that question Ranthia could get behind. She would avenge Tatius and Pupius—gods, they couldn’t really be gone, could they?—if it was the last thing she did.
“Ah, when we were unsuccessful in our attempt to subdue the creature, I informed the business owners, and they petitioned the government. One of the Sentinels, Hunting, dealt with the creature. It’s dead now, don’t worry.”
Ranthia’s heart was crushed. Even vengeance was denied to her. Sure, it was good that such a dangerous beast had been put down, but its demise wouldn’t bring them back.
Not even Xaoc could bring them back.
The Guildmaster asked one of the clerks something, but Ranthia ignored them as she followed the jagged trails of her own fragile thoughts.
After a time, two crates were set down on the desk in front of Ranthia. These were, apparently, the belongings that Tatius and Pupius had left in their rooms, claimed by the Adventurer’s Guild. The duo had left instructions that if anything ever happened to them, their belongings were to be hers. The crates were meant to be shipped to Sardonia but they hadn’t been picked up quite yet. Somehow this was lucky?
Ranthia was fairly certain that word had no place in any of this.
The Guildmaster locked his desk and left the room with the clerks, after he told her to take whatever time she needed.
Ranthia’s hands shook as she clumsily opened the crates. They’d been nailed shut but, impulsively, she threw every free stat point she had into her strength and pried them open with her fingertips.
Her knives could have pried them open more easily, but the thought never quite reached her.
Within each crate rested the little personal items that represented the remnants of each man. The dinosaur bone necklace that Tatius received when the man foolishly lost his temper and told the armorer to just make the best thing that he could out of the ankylosaurus’ backplate when he was told a tower shield would be impossible. A stupid-looking, badly made little doll that had some of Ranthia’s old hair trimmings for hair; probably a gift Pupius had made for her when she was little that he decided to never give her. A few small trophies from past victories. Keys for their temple vaults with [Signed] letters granting Ranthia access to their contents. A few rods of coins and a few gemstones. A few small weapons or old scraps of armor that they had never bothered to sell. Pupius’ lucky tooth: a loose tooth that he had gotten knocked out when he picked a fight with a gang of thugs that had made fun of the 9-year-old Ranthia when she called herself an Adventurer.
Ranthia wept while she handled each of the items and remembered their owners. Men who had meant the world to her. Men who had given her a chance that few on Pallos would have ever considered.
In some ways, it was the items that were missing that hit her the hardest. Tatius’ spear—still attached to that stunningly resilient broom handle that they had all initially scorned. Pupius’ short swords were never the blades of his dreams, but he always secretly whispered his gratitude to the blades after every battle while he maintained them if he thought she and Tatius were out of earshot.
They, like the men, were gone. Forever.
She had no idea how long she stayed in the Guildmaster’s office while she just struggled to experience her turbulent emotions. At times she was so hurt it felt like her body should stop working. Other times it was just a deep sadness that tears failed to capture. Sometimes she was just angry, aimlessly and terribly furious.
It wasn’t fair.
None of it was fair!
She was supposed to reunite with them! They were supposed to tease her about taking so long! She needed to hear Pupius’ reaction to her stupid Slasher of Goblins alias! Tatius was supposed to comfort her by bringing up his own largely self-inflicted title! She had planned out so many little interactions with them while she was on the road.
But they had been gone nearly the entire fucking time!
While she camped and traipsed around like a naïve fool, the men fought their final battle and died. Alone, surrounded by virtual strangers.
If only she had been faster. If she had true speed, she could have made it in time. Had she never taken [Distorted Likeness] she would have been at their side. If she hadn’t wasted so much time feeling sorry for her worthless self. If she hadn’t wasted time on that vapid child that she had somehow believed that she loved.
If only she had been better. If she had been half the woman that she was so damned convinced that she was…
Time passed as Ranthia grappled with her thoughts and feelings. She was battered and expended in ways that were, probably, worse than her most desperate battles.
But, at long last, she put away everything except the vault keys and [Signed] letters.
Someone with the guild waited outside the door, a polite distance away. The man even pulled off a very convincing act that he hadn’t heard her wailing for the bulk of the day, nor that he noticed anything amiss about her anguished, tear-stained face.
With the last dregs of her willpower, Ranthia got permission to leave the crates safe with the Adventurer’s Guild for a few days, until she got her own vault sorted out at the main temple. She needed, desperately, to store the mementos where they would be safe.
After that she got directions to the nearest cheap place to sleep, with vague ambitions of finding a better place to stay once she rested. That done, she thanked the polite, professional clerk—almost as an afterthought—then made her way out of the Guildhall.
Amaus still waited where she left him. …And damnit, at some point he had stopped blinking or making the motions that suggested breathing; hopefully no one noticed. Not that she had the energy to deal with it if anyone had. She just reapplied those actions, then had him follow her as she left.
She really, really wanted a hug. But she knew better than to hug her own mirror images. It felt weird and risked breaking them, in exchange for no real comfort. It wasn’t worth it.
Though she desperately wished that it was.
Ranthia wanted to just go to that cheap inn and pass out, but she knew that getting access to their vaults would wreck her all over again. So, instead, Ranthia glared up at the still high enough sun and made her way deeper into Ariminum. The temple district was easy to see, at least.
She’d have been impressed with the architecture had she been able to feel much of anything.
At the temple, Ranthia once again was forced to rely on [Echoes Reflected] as she and, mostly, Amaus went through the process of getting a vault. No, neither of them were currently citizens. Yes, they needed a new personal vault. No, they didn’t have a vault in another city. The process had been tedious and annoying, until another question caught Ranthia completely off-guard.
“And which of you is the head of the household?”
“…Wait, what? It would be okay for me to be the head?” She asked, with her own body.
“Naturally. Emperor Augustus has granted women equal opportunity to become citizens or lead households, with all other rights and responsibilities so associated.” The temple clerk replied.
“…So, I could get a vault myself, even without him?” She pointed at Amaus.
“Naturally.”
“…Fuck. Can I start over?” Ranthia asked as she wearily dismissed Amaus from existence.
After an entirely too long conversation with both the city guard and members of a Ranger team that apparently never left Ariminum, Ranthia found herself let off with a stern warning to never impersonate another person again. The fact that Amaus had never actually been a person was the only thing that prevented her from staying in prison, apparently, though some of the guards still wanted to charge her with attempted fraud.
With that unpleasantness done, Ranthia returned to the temple and met with a different temple clerk and finally got her vault at the temple. The clerk even arranged to have someone retrieve her crates from the Adventurer’s Guild, which saved her from having to figure out the logistics. It was completely worth the small fee.
Ranthia was exhausted, but she still had one more thing to take care of.
“I’ll also need to get access to these two vaults, here are the keys and…”
Ranthia just wearily stared at the formerly oh-so-nice clerk as he waved the guards over.
“A known fraud risk is attempting to gain access to other vaults!” The man shouted once the guards neared.
For some strange reason, it seemed that she had become untrustworthy in the eyes of the temple’s vault personnel.
Getting arrested twice in one day in a holy temple was almost too much of an insult to bear. At least a runner from the Adventurer’s Guild straightened out the mess far faster than her first stint behind bars.
Tatius and Pupius had left her a surprising sum of rods. Considering it had barely been half a year, the duo had clearly done very well for themselves as Adventurers. Tatius even had a pouch partially full of knuckle-sized arcanite gems in his vault. She had the contents of both vaults moved into her own, then returned their keys to the temple.
It was only on her way out of the temple that Ranthia realized that much of the funds had probably been hazard pay for their final disastrous job that claimed their lives.
The coin became even more bitter after that.
Essential tasks done, Ranthia found the tavern and decided that it wasn’t too disgusting for a night. She rented her room, scrubbed her body with a bucket of murky water, prayed to Xaoc on behalf of the long-dead men, ate some of her trail rations, and then called it a night. She was torn between feeling emotionally raw and emotionally numb, and she was completely wrung out.
Welcome to Ariminum. Grave of the only people you ever dared to care about. Home to guards that will eagerly arrest you, even multiple times in a single day. Packed with entirely too many people. Also, the prices for everything sucked.