PART I - THE GIRL FROM CADAVILA BY THE RIVER
Two days travel south from Imor, at a place where a small tributary merges with the Great River, sits a small village known as Cadavila by the River, or simply Cadavila. There’s nothing particularly special about Cadavila by the River. People live their lives there, growing up and growing old, generations living lives over the course of decades. It’s a convenient village, right where the caravans coming north from the Great Oasis need to stop to rest. It’s quiet, some might even say idyllic. Families prosper, children frolic, and nothing much of note ever really happens there, as it should be in such a place.
Pride Llalanuras was one of those Cadavila families going back generations. The husband, while a Scholar by class, was a sometimes blacksmith by trade, and a sometimes odd-job-doer, helping out neighbors and friends. He perpetually had a happy aura about him, enhanced by an always worn smile. His wife was equally as joyful, although now a little slower, a little rounder, and a little worn down from years raising their seven children. There were six girls, the oldest long past ready to marry off to start a family of her own, and the youngest, a boy, still only the never-slowing age of seven.
But Cadavila by the River did have something a little odd about it. While technically straddling the River, extending almost equally into two kingdoms, the village had pledged itself to Imoria, where so many others of their kind lived. Those inhabitants, nearly eight-hundred of them if you included the surrounding farms, were almost entirely Beastkins. Not just any Beastkins, though, but a rare sight here. Magically created descendants of the great cats that inhabited the scrub plains far to the west, nobody was really sure why the first of the Cheetahkin people came to and founded Cadavila by the River. Some said the history goes back to when the Beastkin were freed in The Escape, nearly five-hundred years, while others weren’t so sure it was that early. It didn’t really matter much. Beastkin didn’t live nearly as long as the other races, so true history tended to quickly get turned into the loosely oral kind, and eventually became vaguely-accurate stories to be told when gathered together.
Jesca Llalanuras, the eldest daughter of Pride Llalanuras, sat on the roof of their small home, hiding from her mother. Jesca couldn’t handle her mother right now, it was too painful and she needed a break. Her father was holding it together, as were her siblings, but the matriarch was an absolute wreck, alternating between quiet tears and loud sobbing.
Two days previous, the Village of Cadavila had held a lottery. Far to the south and the east, the Kingdom of Imoria was under assault, and the village needed to provide eight conscripts. Many were surprised it had taken this long for the decree to come to Cadavila, but it had come finally. So, all those able-bodied between the age of sixteen and fifty gathered in the center of the village, where someone important made a speech that wasn’t very good and that nobody listened to. Instead, all eyes were focused on a simple leather sack sitting on a table.
Inside the sack were three-hundred sixty-five perfectly round and identical stones, of which three-hundred fifty-seven were white and eight of them were black. Speech concluded, one-by-one, those three-hundred sixty-five that were eligible snaked their way forward, reaching into the bag and removing one of the stones. The first black stone was pulled out almost immediately, the thirty-year-old father of three from one of the outlying farms getting the unlucky draw and his wife immediately breaking down into sobs. Her stone hadn’t been black, at least. As the line wormed on, six more were chosen, now leaving only one.
Somewhere in the early-three-hundreds, four from Pride Llalanuras came to the now-much-lighter sack of stones. Jesca’s father drew first, followed by Jesca’s sister, the second oldest. Then, with trepidation and a pounding heart, Jesca drew out her own stone, and her mother quickly drew one after her. The family had all agreed to reveal their stones to each other at the same moment, to be together if needed. The four looked at each other, holding their fists tight and not wanting to see what the fates had bestowed upon them. It was only after a harsh order from the speechmaker needing to know the results, so to keep things moving, that they all opened their paws. Jesca hadn’t been selected, seeing the white stone, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Her father and younger sister both had white stones as well, and you could see the same relief on their faces. The three turned to Jesca’s mother, seeing the black stone in her paw, which was just beginning to tremble.
“Well?” called the speechmaker.
In a flash of Cheetahkin speed, before Jesca’s mother had really even registered what was in her own hand, Jesca grabbed the black stone, replacing it with her own. “I’ve got it!” Jesca called loudly, holding it up for everyone to see, the crowd immediately letting out an audible sigh of relief for those that hadn’t yet drawn their own stones.
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Jesca awakened from the dreamlike memory, realizing where she was after a moment, and taking a deep breath to center herself. It was dark, as expected, but she could see just fine now thanks to her Enhanced Senses giving her Darkvision. It was such a strange way to look at the world, though, with so little color. Just greens and grays in a hazy monochrome, seeming to lack any life. Still, she could see it was dark, and see that on the ground, asleep on a thick blanket, lay her Bonded Companion, Artemis, the unicorn foal she had somehow become a surrogate mother to.
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A unicorn. An actual unicorn.
Even after over two weeks, Jesca still had problems wrapping her head around the fact that there was an actual unicorn less than a meter from her. Two months ago she was at home, helping her mother in the kitchen while shooing her younger siblings out of the way. It was a simple life. Calm. Quiet. Perfect. Okay sure, maybe not perfect. Her mother was always a little on her back about grandkids, even going as far as suggesting a few neighborhood boys that might make nice mates. And yes, her immediately-younger sister, who Jesca was sure was courting with half of those recommended boys, teased her constantly about having no interest in said activities. But it wasn’t a bad life. A little aggravating, but not bad.
Artemis picked her head up, her eyes still looking mostly asleep. “Morning now?” she asked telepathically.
“Go back to sleep,” Jesca whispered. “It’s still dark.”
The unicorn foal seemed to snort indignantly in acknowledgement, before curling back into a ball. She needed sleep and Jesca didn’t. That was the curse of the Cheetahkin, needing only two hours of sleep every night. Being the only one of that sub-species of Beastkin here at the camp led to a lot of lonely times, which led to a lot of introspection, which for Jesca, led to a lot of amplified self-doubt. She was a Beastmaster, though, maybe even the only Beastmaster, and she shouldn’t have self-doubt. Jesca groaned, the self-doubt lurking anyway.
What is my level?
She knew what the answer would be without really needing to ask, but she did it anyway out of habit. It would say Silver and then some low number, possibly as high as one-hundred. And then, it would say Bronze followed by another low number, probably around thirty or so, having changed from Iron. A second ranking and number. A second class. Two classes. Something no other person had.
LEVEL: SILVER.097 / BRONZE.031
MULTIPLE SKILLS UPDATED
MULTIPLE PERKS UPDATED
And there it was, floating in her brain like a dry leaf on water, just as expected. Her next tier of her Beastmaster class.
Beastmaster.
She hated that word. She hated that class. She hated the attention and the whispers and the glances and questions and the … loneliness. Jesca was the only one, and she hated it. She didn’t want to be different, but she’d overheard the muttering quiet conversations of Thorn and Reynard and Olin and the other Beastkin trainers and even the other Beastkin recruits. They said she was important. Important to the future of the Beastkin. She didn’t want to be important. She only wanted to be Jesca, a young girl from the village of Cadavila by the River. She knew she didn’t get that choice.
NEW SKILL: BEASTMASTER’S FURY
NEW SKILL: BEASTMASTER’S INSPIRATION
NEW SKILL: CHARM ANIMAL
NEW SKILL: CREATE WATER
NEW SKILL: COMPANION FORM
NEW MELDED SKILL: DISTRACT (SILVER TIER)
NEW MELDED SKILL: ENLARGE/REDUCE COMPANION (SILVER TIER)
NEW MELDED SKILL: ELEMENTAL WEAPON (SILVER TIER)
NEW PERK: COMBAT STYLE - MOUNTED (COMPANION)
NEW OFF-CLASS LEARNED SKILL: SEASON (IRON TIER)
“Really? Ten of them!” Jesca snarled in annoyance towards the ceiling. From what Callie had explained about Symbiotes the night before, about how they were simply passengers living their lives through their hosts, she knew full-well her's could hear her. Closing her eyes, Jesca leaned back against the wooden wall of the stable, her head making a solid thump against it. She knew what would come next. She’d had to endure it the morning before as a Ranger. Now she had to endure it again as … that other class.
Right on cue, the world flipped first sideways and then upside down, before tumbling end-over-end in a thousand random directions at once. Jesca made fists, digging her paws into the simple bed she slept on, focusing her breathing like her friend had taught them in the morning Callie-chi classes. Still the world spun as she imagined the little worm in her head making the final connections needed for her new powers to be revealed.
At least that was how Callie had explained it, or tried to do. Something about ‘pathways’ or … what was that other word she used … ‘circuits’? Some kind of weird Callie word. Whatever it was called, inside Jesca’s brain her tiny passenger was putting the finishing touches on whatever they needed to in order to make her new powers come alive. After that, the Symbiote would go back to strengthening those paths and maybe even coming up with new ones.
Well, that was what Callie said, and with Callie, you sometimes had to be a little skeptical. Her friend was weird. Wonderful! But still weird. Of course, Jesca was weird now, too.