Opening her eyes to the small room Emily took a look around, she felt like she’d woken from a deep rest. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed but it had to be at least a full day. Alex was still fast asleep, but Emily knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to the land of dreams at this point.
Climbing out of bed was a horrid experience, but when her feet touched down on the warm stones Emily smiled in satisfaction. Moving around, she began doing her stretches as she loosened her fatigued muscles. Just as she was moving into her third form she spotted Alex’s boots over by the fireplace. Emily slowed and thought it over.
At this stage, she didn’t think he’d run from her but it never hurt to have reassurances. Glancing toward him, he looked like he was still asleep. It made sense though, he was still recovering from a heavy injury, even if he’d tried to hide the fact.
Moving toward the pair of boots, Emilt wrinkled her nose at the damp smell coming from them. Pulling up the sole inside the boot itself, Emily made a small cut along her thumb and let a couple of drops fall into each shoe. Replacing the soles and putting them back where she found them, Emily rubbed her hand on her pants in distaste.
Hard part done, she reached into her chest and called to her blood, sending a small amount of power into it to prevent it from drying out. At this point, she hardly had the strength to fire two bolts, but this technique took almost nothing as long as she wasn’t using it. It acted as a compass of sorts, her blood calling out to her. If Alex should ever escape her, Emily would be able to track him down, the method had its limits –Namley if he got too far the blood would be unable to reach her– but it was the best she could do right now.
Just before Emily stepped back to continue her stretches, she heard a voice from behind her.
“What are you doing over there?”
Emily didn’t look back and grabbed a log from beside the fireplace.
“I was just about to start a fire.”
“Mmm… leave it. We have some things to do and get. Did you have your first sleeping?”
Emily turned to look at him, tossing the log aside as she did so.
“Yeah, and I got quite a few options.”
Emily went over the choices she’d gotten baring Void plagued, Alex frowned when she told him of Scarlet sister though.
“Be careful to hide the fact you’re Godstriken, even if you don’t slot it may still cause us difficulties. What did you even do to get it?”
Emily shrugged her shoulders neglecting to answer so he continued.
“Explorer and Swordswoman are both incredible, the fact you have Cyclum touched is a mystery to me, you must have impressed them. If I were you I’d slot that one as my active.”
Emily shook her head.
“Not happening.”
Alex’s eye twitched.
“...Emily don’t mess around here, once you slot an active you can’t change it till you rank up again.”
“What? I thought you said I could change them every day?”
“Those are your passive slots, and you can change them even in your waking hours, but your main title can only swapped out again when you’re rank twenty-five, and we don’t know how long that will take”
Emily glanced at the ground in thought.
“Well… it's off the list, what about Scarlet sister? That one at least felt interesting.”
Alex was sitting up now, and he looked conflicted.
“...I’m unfamiliar with that one but it doesn’t sound good. You have a ton of other good ones you should take those instead, most people only get one or two titles at their first awakening.”
Emily crossed her arms and leaned against the fireplace.
“You said I could slot my passives now if I wanted? How?”
Alex was glaring at her but released a breath.
“You make the conscious decision to change to those, you’ll feel it clicking into place when you get it right. If you don’t do it in your sleep though it’ll take a couple of weeks of practice and you’ll-”
Emily focused inward and reached out toward the stars in her mind, they came rushing towards her at breakneck speeds and settled at the base of her neck, sinking into her bridge.
She could almost feel the stars moving in her mind, arranging themselves into words.
Passive slot filled: Explorer - Increased learning speed when engaged with new environments.
Passive slot filled: Performer - Increased learning speed when studying others—replication based on understanding.
Letting out a breath Emily spoke.
“Done, that felt incredibly fluid, should I feel any different?”
Alex frowned.
“How did you… You know what, it’s not important. We should get going. We’ll talk more about this on the move.”
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Emily moved towards her own set of boots and began getting ready. When they were both dressed they made their way out of the room. Alex locked their door with a simple-looking key and they headed over to Ashe’s room.
The moment they opened the door they saw the bed was empty, its covers strewn halfway onto the floor. Ashe’s things were gone.
Emily cursed, they’d locked the door to prevent her from getting out, but they’d underestimated the woman. Just hours ago she’d been on the verge of death, how was she even moving?
Alex followed Emily in and shut the door with a serious expression.
Emily looked around and spotted a scrap of ill-matching cloth amongst the bedsheets. Moving over to it she grabbed it, there were some words scrawled on it in splotchy charcoal, so Emily threw it to Alex to read out.
‘Thank you for saving me, my lips are sealed.’
Emily frowned and looked about the room, glancing at the desk with a discarded stick of charcoal on it, she shook her head in frustration.
“Don’t even think about saying I told you so.”
Alex grunted.
“I wasn’t, I have a good handle on what type of person Ashe is, so we should be okay, she won’t say anything.”
Emily narrowed her eyes at him.
“And what makes you so certain.”
“Experience. For now, we should speak to the matron, and see if she knows anything.”
They left the room untouched and headed up the set of stairs. Emily kept calm and watched for signs out of the ordinary, though she wasn’t too sure what the ordinary looked like. If Ashe had told the guards, what would happen next? Would they storm the place to apprehend the Blood Mage?
As it turned out, the note was telling the truth, because when they entered that same warm common room, they were greeted by the sight of people moving about the place in a relaxed manner. To her, the room held a different feel from last night. The people here were the same but Emily seemed to notice more. A small shrug here, a genuine laugh there, or even an early drunk swayed. Details that Emily would have never noticed last night stuck out to her now. Their small life-like actions were easily repeatable, all it took was a thought from Emily to mimic them.
There was only one difference and that had to be the title she’d just slotted.
It wasn’t like she suddenly became more perceptive, rather she knew what to look for and how best to go about emulating it.
Emily couldn’t tell what time it was outside, but judging by the amount of time they had slept, it had to be early afternoon at least. Several patrons were milling about the bar getting orders from Hester, but other than that, nothing jumped out at her.
Alex headed straight to the Alewife and spoke to her while Emily hung back, he handed her a couple of coins and then headed toward the door.
They made their way out onto the streets, the sounds of a busy city assaulted their senses.
When Alex stopped on the corner of the main road he turned to her.
She left late yesterday evening, chances are if she had called for the guard we would have been surrounded, I’m glad too because I like this inn.”
Emily was relieved and annoyed at him in equal parts, but Alex didn’t seem worried about any of this.
“We’re going to have to head down a couple of levels to get what we need.”
Emily nodded absent-mindedly, watching a cart laden with small animal pelts go past.
“Sure… and what would that be?”
“The basics necessities, rations, tools, a tent if we can afford it.”
Emily was reminded of their loss of Cupcake to the burrows, he had a tarp they’d never even used.
“Ooo and maybe another winter mule? Cupcake Two Point O.”
Alex frowned back at Emily as he began walking toward the center of the keep.
“You know, you are going to have to explain some of these expressions one of these days.”
Emily snorted.
“So now you’re interested in where I’m from?”
Alex looked ahead and weaved in between the throng of people.
“Not at all, it just feels like sometimes you don’t know that you’re not in that place anymore.”
Emily shot him a dry smirk but didn’t say anything.
She knew better than anyone that this was not her world, but worrying about it wouldn’t fix anything. Moving forward was the only path left to her.
The duo traveled down the main road seeing all manner of vendors and city life. Emily's new title seemed to be working in overdrive, as she could make out the different gaits in people's walks. Some were rushed and focused, she pegged them as working class, while others seemed to hold a more steady rate as they guided their animals down the street. These were people she could only assume lived comfortably. Emily only saw a handful of the last group. They were relaxed and carried with them a certain poise to their movements and unlike the other two groups were in no rush at all. Emily made a mental not them as the moneybags of society and if they needed the odd spot of cash then she knew where to go.
There were several food stalls on the way but when Emily asked why they didn’t get their rations from here Alex just shook his head.
“This food is way too expensive we need to get closer to the farms.”
Emily still had a fair bit of coin but didn’t see anything wrong with getting a deal or two. It was half an hour later that they got to what Emily decided to call the core of the keep. They exited the tunnel lined with shops and homes, only to enter a massive domed structure with a single titanic collum rising up out of the center of the space. The top of the stone dome was easily fifty stories high. As they approached a large railing Emily looked over it into an equally large pit dropping down further still. Emily could just make out the base of the collum as the ground below moved with countless people working down there.
Warm draughts of wind rose up and out of the pit, hitting the dome and then filtering out through the many passages lining the walls on each level. The keep seemed to be several donut-shaped levels stacked on top of one another.
Looking at the amount of space around them, the keep could easily house over fifty thousand individuals. The level they were on seemed to corkscrew downward gradually, descending deeper into the earth. If Emily had to think of the structure as a whole, she imagined it would look like a bolt welded into the mountain range.
“Come on, keep up, we haven't got much time.”
Emily looked at Alex’s shrinking back as she rolled her eyes and followed after him.
Their descent was made through packed walkways and choked alleyways. Emily dodged out of the way of a merchant with baskets of sand only to trip over a two-tailed lizard creature. The thing promptly hissed before scampering away into a nearby drainage pipe. As far as she could tell, water seemed to come from somewhere above and trickle down towards the base of the keep.
They had dropped three levels and Emily could see they had only traveled about halfway down into the pit. She also noticed that the lower they got the more scarce vendors became. People's clothes looked to be made of much simpler fabrics with more browns and greys. It didn’t take long to recognize they were entering the section of the keep where hard labor was done.
At the same time, she noticed more of a guard presence in this area. They stood at busy intersections, emblazoned with their reddish strips of cloth poking out of every gap in their leather armors. The people near them seemed to shy away as though afraid to disturb them.
Those that she did see, were posted up near banners made of brilliant crimson fabric with the same symbol that Emily now carried on her body.
Emily got Alex's attention and tilted her head in their direction, as though asking a question.
Alex glanced at them and then lowered his voice.
“Tagrin’s hands, they’re here mostly as a formality. The lower levels are where they put a majority of the criminals to work digging deeper into the rock. Luckily as long as we don’t cause too much of a stink, they won’t care what we do down here.”
Emily hummed at this information.
“Who is this Tagrin guy?”
Alex shook his head.
“Long since dead, but he was the original Castellan that set up the keep. Oh yeah, that reminds me, remember to save one of your passive-”
Up ahead, someone screamed at the top of their lungs.
Emily's eyes fell on a line of people chained together, one of them had collapsed in the street and the nearby guards did not like this at all.