Ranthia left Hexara’s home bright and early two mornings later, practically shoved out the door by her girlfriend who was scrambling to make it to work before she was late. Ranthia just laughed and snared Hexara for a final kiss.
“You’ve got time!” Ranthia reassured her.
“Not all of us are as fast as you are.” Hexara mock-grumbled.
“I could carry you there, if you want.” Ranthia offered with a salacious smile.
“…I do, but no! My coworkers would never let me live it down.” The woman refused, even as she adjusted her hair with her own Skills, trying to tame her still-wild curls.
Ranthia shrugged, then offered her girlfriend a second final hug, kiss, and a teasing bit of wandering hands before Hexara laughingly swatted at her and made her escape. Ranthia watched the woman go and enjoyed the view, before she grudgingly tried to return her thoughts to what she wanted to get done.
Or maybe she just stood there daydreaming about her girlfriend for a while.
A bath came first. Hexara was willing to slather herself with scented oils and ointments for her workday, but Ranthia had the spare time to indulge in the public baths.
Almost every city that Ranthia had ever spent time in had one—or occasionally more—main markets where most of the shops and stores were located. Ariminum was ridiculous enough that a centralized market would have drawn impossible crowds, no matter how they scaled it up. Instead, almost every street—at least those that weren’t narrow alleys—was lined with stalls and permanent stores were scattered throughout the city. There was probably, at least at one point, some level of logic about what shops went where, but centuries of development and population surges had pushed logic firmly out back and knifed it to death.
Almost anywhere you went in the city, Ariminum was more market than not. And those markets were chaos incarnate. Being spread out made the streets passable, though most stalls had a line and there were crowds everywhere, which sometimes interfered with traffic a bit.
Ranthia wasn’t really feeling up to anything serious, so she had just kind of wandered the city half-heartedly shopping throughout the day.
Ranthia was, once again, in the middle-good district (and she still wasn’t sharing that identifier with anyone). The district was large, and she hadn’t really gone through this section of it before. There was a fruit—and miscellaneous goods—stand that had a painting of a young girl with a word written under it that either read as ‘hero’ or ‘evil’ (not that Ranthia still believed that she needed further reading and writing lessons, even as evidence further accrued). Next to it was a stand that sold various knickknacks and bits of art about some Sentinel named Dawn, not that Ranthia paid it much mind.
Next to that was a place that sold the most sauce-laden bamboo skewers of meat—no vegetables—that Ranthia had ever seen. She had five and zero regrets, not even when the wily shopkeeper sold her a small moist towel at an absurdly marked up price when she realized how filthy her hands and face had gotten. Some men were destined to go far in life.
Thieves were just… part of Remus. Ranthia was at a high enough level—and armed enough—that many of the kids didn’t even try to go after her, though she still had to swat the odd wrist. If she walked around in finer clothes—or her eventual armor—there was a risk that some of the higher-level thieves might try to target her, at which point she’d really get to test the limits of [Combat Awareness]. But Ranthia currently enjoyed a relative anonymity that just made her an unappealing target. It made the thieves ignorable.
Which was why Ranthia was vaguely surprised when she happened to notice the kid that cut through an older woman’s tunic for her hidden purse. He snatched the purse without the woman even noticing, but what drew Ranthia’s attention the most was just how… sad the woman looked.
Ranthia accelerated and easily caught the kid. Before he even had time to protest—he wasn’t even unlocked yet, the kid had taken her purse with pure skill—Ranthia had taken the purse from him and shoved a handful of coins into his hands to replace it.
“Check your marks more carefully, kid. Take a good look at her. People that are already drowning in misery don’t need more piled on top of it. Look for smug or haughty instead in the future, okay?” Ranthia quietly urged him, while he stared dumbly at the coins in his cupped hands.
The kid, at length, nodded before he scurried off toward a narrow alley. He cursed every time a coin shook free from his pile—Ranthia had probably overdone that a bit—but had the sense to make his getaway instead of trying to go after a few lost coins.
Ranthia watched him go, then steeled herself before she approached the woman.
“Hi, ma’am, here’s your purse back.” Ranthia politely offered, holding the bag up so that it was plainly visible.
“You didn’t need to go through all of that trouble, young lady. I wasn’t going to stop him, but I appreciate—” The woman began to say with a hint of a smile.
At least until a guardsman rushed up and got into Ranthia’s face, his hand on his club.
“I. Saw. That!” The man bellowed as he tried to stare down Ranthia.
The effect was, perhaps, mildly ruined by the fact that he was almost a full head shorter than the teenager, despite being at least thrice her age.
“…Good for you?” Ranthia replied. She was openly baffled as to what his problem was. She was returning someone’s stolen possession!
“You released a proven thief into the population of our city, I’ll see you in chains for this!” The man raged.
Ranthia’s ire was stoked, and she raised herself up, ready to retort.
“And what do you think you’re doing? What’s your name and which guard outpost are you stationed with?” The older woman suddenly cut in, stepping around Ranthia while she glared at the man.
“Uh, I, what?” The guard mumbled, caught completely (…) off-guard.
“My husband is with the Praetorian Guard and I’m sure he would love to investigate why a guard not only stood by and did nothing while I was robbed, but also saw fit to accost the fine upstanding woman that actually made things right for me.” The woman was all glares.
“Er, well, that’s… she let the thief go…”
“And is she wearing the uniform of a guard?”
“No?” How was the man uncertain about that?!
“Then she should not be expected to do your job for you. Go on, off with you!” The woman demanded, with a wave of her hand.
The guard hesitated.
“If the Ariminum guard expect Adventurers,” Ranthia stressed the word as hard as she could, “to haul thieves in, then post a decent bounty—a live bounty—on their apprehension.”
That finally broke the man, he just turned and walked away—quickly—having clearly decided to wash his hands of the matter.
“Oh, that was nice. I guess you didn’t need my help after all.” The woman announced with a hint of a smile.
“Eh, I still appreciate it. I’ve been arrested more than once since I got here, and your intervention helped me cool off.” Ranthia replied while she relaxed her posture.
“Honestly, it was just a kid! Oh, I’m Julia, by the way.”
“Ranthia.” Ranthia gave her name in response, despite the woman’s name blowing right past her mind and out her other ear ungrasped.
“I really should thank you for your little act of heroism though. Oh! I know, you simply must come over for dinner!” The woman’s smile grew slightly more earnest and hopeful.
“Oh! Um… I’m flattered, and you’re attractive, but I think there’s a bit too much of a gap between our ages for anything like that right now.” Ranthia stammered. She had no interest in being the plaything for some spoiled wealthy woman!
The woman blinked twice, before she started to laugh, surprisingly uproariously.
“Oh, you are bad, I love it! You remind me so much of Artemis,” a hint of sadness returned though she laughed right past it, “but no, I actually was offering dinner. And now I simply have to introduce you to my husband too.”
“Er…” Ranthia was practically radiating discomfort by that point.
“Just dinner, I won’t even get naked to cook.” The woman promised with a laugh.
“Okay, now you’re just messing with me. Fine, just tell me where to go.” Ranthia decided, with a sly smile.
“Oh no you don’t, if I let you out of my sight you’ll no-show and hope you don’t run into me again. Come along, I only have a couple of items to buy, then it’s straight home so I can start with dinner.” The woman insisted.
No good deed went unpunished, it seemed. Ranthia just sighed and agreed to follow the woman.
Ranthia found herself seated at an unfamiliar table in an unfamiliar kitchen while she watched the woman bounce about while she cooked. Four places had been set initially, though shortly a fifth had been set for Ranthia.
“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” Ranthia offered for the second time.
“Quite sure, don’t you dare get in my way. If you need something to tide you over, it’s probably about time to replace the mango in the bowl anyway.” The woman’s answer was strange. When she said the first sentence, she pointed a wooden spoon (menacingly?) at Ranthia and seemed to be enjoying herself. But for whatever reason the offer of the mango had the woman in so much misery and pain that it practically flowed out of her.
“I’m fine.” Ranthia assured her.
She was not touching that mango. They weren’t her favorite fruit—too sweet—but it clearly had some sort of meaning that she resolutely refused to pry into. She had boundless curiosity, but curiosity and grief got along about as well as rival tomcats that eyed the same narrow beam of sunlight.
Ranthia simply stayed quiet and watched the woman cook until a new voice called out.
“I’m home!” A masculine voice called out.
“We’re in the kitchen!” The woman called back.
“Hey mom, hey da—… —You’re…! No, you’re not dad or my sister.” The young man’s excitement flared then immediately froze over and his eyes narrowed in suspicion all in the span of about a heartbeat of his arrival in the kitchen, his gaze fixed on Ranthia.
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Before Ranthia could snark, the woman spoke up.
“She’s a nice young lady that saved me from a thief, I invited her to dinner, so be nice.”
The young man seemed cowed by the threat implied by the wooden spoon and nodded, before he muttered something about washing up and fled.
Something about the young man was familiar, but Ranthia hadn’t had enough time to place it before he retreated. She could be patient though.
Another man arrived, this one older, and brushed right past Ranthia without noticing her until he reached the woman and stole a quick kiss from her. He paused after that, frowning.
“Bad day?” He asked.
“Oh, it was just when I was healing Olivia, she made a comment about our daughter being gone. Ever since then my mind has been terrible and focused on the fact that it’s been longer than last time now.” The woman replied.
“She’ll come home; don’t you worry. I have faith in her.” The man reassured the woman, followed by another kiss.
Ranthia desperately wished she had taken a Spatial class so she could have teleported straight out of the room. She felt like she was spying on something private and meaningful. Something she couldn’t possibly—and didn’t want to—understand.
“I know, it’s just… Oh, I’m being so terrible; we have a guest my love.” The woman suddenly pried herself away from her husband.
The man blinked and turned around, spotting Ranthia for the first time.
Ranthia just blushed and fought down the sudden—ridiculous—impulse to dive under the table and hide.
“Oh! Um, my apologies, I hadn’t seen you there.” He quickly gave his wife a look.
Ranthia wasn’t exactly familiar with the couple’s private expressions for quiet communication, but what the fuck expressions were fairly universal.
“She valiantly saved my new coin purse from a thief.” The woman explained, with a note of pride in her voice.
The man beamed at Ranthia.
“[Mage] at a high level… Ranger?” The man guessed.
“Adventurer.” His wife answered, with a hint of mischief in her voice.
A disgusted groan came from the young man just before he entered the room. Immediately Ranthia finally placed his face, assisted by his disdain for her career.
“Guardface #7!” Ranthia suddenly exclaimed with a grin.
“Huh? …Wait, no… You’re that pushy bi—!” The man started to retort, only to suddenly yelp in pain.
The woman had rushed over and walloped him with her wooden spoon. And Ranthia was judging him more than a little at how much he seemed to suffer from such a trivial hit.
“Marcus Themis Catonus, don’t you dare insult a guest under this roof!” The woman snapped, with a glare that rivaled those she had given the guard in the market.
The young man muttered an apology and, all too soon afterward, the four were sat around the table with freshly cooked food laid out in front of them. Somehow Ranthia had ended up next to the guard guy, while his parents sat across from them side-by-side.
It was hard to miss that there was still another plate and place left vacant, on the other side of the younger man. No food was placed there, but the mango in the bowl was next to it. A place meant for someone that wasn’t present.
And, if Ranthia had inferred the situation accurately, a place that would go unclaimed until the family finally truly accepted their loss and grieved properly.
The meal was modest, but it was still tasty, even if Ranthia was still slightly not ready to eat after her saucy skewer feast. She had enough social sense to know that eating was absolutely the right thing to do in the situation though.
“So, an Adventurer? You must have all kinds of stories. How far have you roamed out?” The man asked.
Right when Ranthia had bitten into a surprisingly chewy bit of meat, naturally. Hurriedly she used a bit more speed and strength to chew through it.
“I’ve seen nearly every corner of Remus at this point.” Ranthia answered noncommittally. She wasn’t fond of telling stories, especially not when the bulk of them were currently so painful to dwell upon.
“She’s new in town. I was on duty when she arrived.” Guardboy added.
“Oh, you certainly seem to have caught my son’s eye. Hm, you are fairly close in age…” The woman looked between Ranthia and her son with a calculating expression.
“Mom! No! I have a girlfriend!” Guardboy loudly objected.
“So do I!” Ranthia piled on after a moment of indignant sputtering.
The woman was plainly pleased with their reactions and mischief sparkled in her eye while she struggled to keep her laughter down.
“Tiberia is fine, but our guest is lovely too.” The woman added.
“…Nona. Tiberia and I broke up last week.” Guardboy admitted quietly.
“And I’m only interested in other women!” Ranthia retorted, before she bit into a potato.
The woman was going to respond to her son, but she nodded at Ranthia and let the topic drop. The group ate in silence briefly—awkwardly in Ranthia’s case—before the man attempted to shift the topic.
“Dinner is fabulous as always. This is why I married you, love.”
His wife smiled at him and the two flirted through facial expressions as they drew closer together until, at last, their son interrupted them.
“Please stop embarrassing me so much when we have a guest!”
Ranthia just watched and ate while the three interacted. So, this was what a family was like, she decided. It was the warmth that she had never gotten to experience in her own lifetime—unless the [Paladin] had fared better—with everything that had happened.
And yet…
And yet it was so familiar.
Dozens upon dozens of memories of being gathered around the fire with Tatius and Pupius while they teased one another and joked around echoed.
Just hold it together, you are not going to break down in front of strangers over something this stupid. Ranthia all but silently screamed at herself. Even as she failed.
The three trailed off their familial banter as one by one they noticed the blubbering Adventurer shedding tears openly. Ranthia was too focused on trying to stop them to even be mortified at being caught crying.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” The woman had stood up and walked around to where Ranthia sat.
“S-sorry, I just… I guess I don’t have a lot of experience with family stuff. And stupidly it reminded me of my party, that I recently found out had passed away before I even got here and…” Ranthia hadn’t meant to say any of that.
Then when the woman wrapped her in a hug, she definitely didn’t mean to cling to the woman and sob into her tunic. And yet…
“Shh, it’s okay. Tell me about them.” The woman—Julia, her name was Julia—gently encouraged.
“Tatius and Pupius. They were… Adventurers that took me in when my mother abandoned me when I was a child. They taught me everything they knew while we fought and travelled together. We always liked to just… bicker during down time, a lot like that. But they came here ahead of me and by the time I was ready to travel, I found out they had died on a job that some Sentinel finally resolved. I hadn’t even been here, and I should have. They needed me!” Ranthia’s floodgates were opened and she just… let it out.
Of course, in reality, she was a bit hard to understand through her utter misery.
“You poor dear. I’m so sorry about your fathers.” Julia continued to soothe and console her.
“Neither of them was my dad! They were just… nice people.” Ranthia rebutted.
“Oh honey, blood doesn’t make a family. Themis isn’t related to either of us by blood, he was… someone our daughter rescued, that we decided to make part of our family. Family is what you choose, and I’d say those men sound like they definitely qualified.” Julia explained with limitless patience.
Ranthia just blinked. She pulled her face out of the woman’s sodden tunic and just kind of stared blankly at the son and then the father.
She hadn’t even noticed. She hadn’t even questioned it. But… the kid looked even more unlike either of his parents than she had with Tatius.
But their bond… Their status as a family was undeniable.
Ranthia’s waterworks started up anew, and she didn’t even care. Family… She had never even dared to consider it; she hadn’t had the context to realize it was okay to wonder. Had she truly possessed a family?
And yet, she would never be able to ask them if they agreed. It was a common theme in stories spun by bards, where the hero(ine) never knew what they had until it was gone. Ranthia had always considered the notion absurd, it was nonsensical for someone to not know what they had.
And yet…
In the days since her impromptu dinner with the nice family, Ranthia decided that she was profoundly grateful to them and, simultaneously, hoped that she would never, ever run into any of them again. The lesson that they provided her was invaluable. But her mortification was absolute, at least once she stopped crying.
Gods and goddesses, what was wrong with her? She had better self-control than that!
Still, she had refocused on thinking about her new girlfriend to lift her spirits and then she had done her test fitting for her armor. And the time had finally arrived.
It was time to pick up her new armor.
Ranthia stared at her reflection in the mirror as she moved experimentally in the work of art. With apologies to Hexara, Ranthia’s heart had found a second true love. The armor fit her perfectly, which, well, yes, it was literally made for her. But it was incredible!
The leather over her torso had no shoulders, so it gave her absolute freedom of movement. The design work on it was subtle, yet exquisite. The straps were easy to manage. It was comfortable, even with her arcanite vest worn beneath it. The skirt gave her freedom of movement that rivaled her men’s tunics, and the studded leather strips that made it up offered protection. The bracers had incorporated her arcanite, with the three largest stones on either side sticking out decoratively, while the rest were beneath the leather.
The knee guards were unexpected and Ranthia had been dubious about them when she saw them, but… They worked. The leather offered some protection for her freedom of movement and the leatherworker’s expertise allowed it to do so without impeding her range of motion. They were even comfortable!
The armor was darker than the leather of her belt, but she saw no reason to replace it over something so silly. The belt had served her well, and it promised to continue to do so. The contrast actually wasn’t half bad either.
“Well, what do you think? You going to say anything or are you going to keep gawking at your own reflection?” The armor maker prompted with a frown.
Right, he needed to get paid.
“I absolutely love it and have zero complaints. Let’s head to the temple and get you your money!” Ranthia answered with a dazzling smile.
“Now that’s what I like to hear from my customers! Ha! Lead the way, you can wear the armor. It’s good advertising.” The gruff man beamed with pride.
“So, this is the armor you’ve been looking forward to? It looks great on you!” Hexara was all smiles while Ranthia settled into her chair.
Of course it was a necessary visit to the salon. It had been several days since Ranthia’s hair was last touched up! It most certainly wasn’t just a thin excuse to see Hexara. Besides, Ranthia was eligible for the lover’s discount, so it wasn’t like she was wasting her money recklessly.
“Isn’t it great?” Ranthia agreed.
“Mmm, yes, but I mostly like how it looks on you.” Hexara shamelessly flirted.
“Oh, trust me, it looks good on the armor stand I bought too. It’s not all me.” Ranthia answered with a playful wink.
“I’d ask you to prove it, but I’m at work so I’ll have to watch you take it off some other time.”
Okay, yes, they had probably gone a bit too far in the busy salon. But taking away her discount was just cruel! It wasn’t like either of them had undressed and they would have gotten away with it had Hexara possessed better self-control.
Not that Ranthia had any regrets, not really.
She was going to miss Hexara’s next day off, after all. Now that she had her armor, it was time to do something that she was long, long overdue for.
The journey took three days, but the directions that she had received from the Adventurer’s Guild were good enough to guide her right where she needed to go. The climb up the rocky slope was the hardest part, even if it wasn’t quite sheer. It wasn’t exactly the most graceful act she had ever performed, but Ranthia had enough dexterity to scramble up.
There was no ambiguity about the location, once she reached the right rocky ledge. Ranthia knelt there once she arrived and surveyed the location, her hands placed reverently on the ground.
This was it. This was where Tatius and Pupius had fought and died, along with many others. It… really happened, there was no denying the battleground. There were gouges, shattered rocks, scorch marks, and other little signs that marked where classers and powerful beasts clashed. Yet the greatest proof was the tremendous crater where a huge amount of rock had just been… erased. That was the spot where, allegedly, the Sentinel had slain the thing that took the men—her family—away from her.
Even she couldn’t explain the battle damage. She had so much knowledge about the System—perhaps more than anyone else in Remus, it seemed—but to leave no trace of the beast and inflict such a grievous wound upon Pallos? Gravity would have required a level four digits high. Mountain or Earth might have created the crater at a more manageable level, but then where was the corpse of the beast. It had to be some element she lacked much familiarity with, from either lifetime.
Frustratingly, she couldn’t even identify candidates. Her chaotic knowledge from her past life worked in such a way that identifying holes in its knowledge set—before she stumbled into them with new experiences—was impossible. Not that it mattered much to her at the moment. The mystery was acknowledged, but it wasn’t her focus.
There were remnants from the battle here and there. Bits of rent leather, shards of bone, and crumpled fragments of metal that were unidentifiable. She had no way of knowing if any of the detritus might have once been part of something all too familiar to her, or even if any of it was. Ranthia ran her eyes over every last bit of evidence of the battle and grieved.
Ranthia shed tears over the men. Then, once again, she offered a prayer to Xaoc in honor of Tatius, Pupius, and the other anonymous Adventurers that she had never met—yet had fought and died alongside the most important men she had ever allowed into her life. Ranthia had prayed for her family numerous times, yet every time she saw Xaoc take some of her mana while she made the prayer, she felt a little better. If her god continued to hear and acknowledge her prayers, maybe that meant the two men would be taken good care of on their next pass through the great cycle.
She wished, bitterly, that she had tried harder to convert them to followers of Xaoc. Had they worshiped and loved the great deity as she did, perhaps they could have qualified as angels in Xaoc’s service.
Maybe she wouldn’t have been forced to say goodbye.
She acknowledged the great cycle of life. Aion granted life. Thanatos shepherded souls back to Samsara with gentle hands. All things came to an end.
All things except for her, it seemed. Xaoc had seen fit to make her an exception—sort of—and it seemed that her status made her greedy. While she hoped the great cycle would be kind to the souls of the men, she struggled to accept it. She wanted more exceptions.
But they were gone, and this was meant to be her final goodbye. She had completed her pilgrimage to the place where their lives were spent. She would never see either of them again.
All she could do was carry them in her heart. She was molded by their instruction. She was better than she could have ever made herself, even had she somehow even survived without them.
Whether they walked with her or rested within Samsara while they awaited their next cycle of rebirth, she intended to make them proud. She was their legacy.