It would take me about two hours to get to the edge of the western forest. I used that time to take a good look at my character sheet to see if there was anything that I might have missed.

Name: Drakon

Race: Half-elf (Revenant)

Class: Necrolord

Level: 5

PP: 4

Stats:

Str: 8

Dex: 15

Sta: 9

Int: 11

Will: 9

Cha: 10

HP: 450 (4.5 HP/min) (5% life steal on hit)

MP: 450 (4.5 MP/min)

Skills:

Light armor (5)

Medium armor (1)

Sword (5)

Riding (2)

Spear (5)

Shield (2)

Longbow (5)

Archery (5)

Paths available:

Revenant LVL 2

Zombies LVL 2

Heavy armor

Skeletons LVL 2

Command LVL 3

Way of the Bow

Defender LVL 1

Dual wield LVL 1

Two-Handed fighting LVL 1

Elf LVL 1

Vampire LVL 1

Inspiration LVL 2

Rat-slayer LVL 1

Improvised defenses LVL 1

Abilities/spells

Summons Moira. 2 hour cast time. One of the few spells where you can start the cast and then go do other things. Moira will appear next to you after the 2 hour time finishes. Cannot be cast if Moira is already on this plane of existence.

Passives

UNITS

<2/2 slots filled>

<10/10 skeleton Shield-maidens>

< Odins’ blessing. 5 Skeletal corporals that have the power of speech.>

<2/2 Zombie panthers>

The number of paths available to me at this point was mind-blowing. I would need to think really hard about what to use my last four points on. Maybe the next few days of relative quiet would be a good thing.

I planned to rest at the edge of the Forest until dark and then travel at night. My thinking was that I would be able to avoid more trouble that way.

The trip to the forest edge was uneventful and I quickly made camp. The next couple of hours I spent meditating and trying to recollect the last battle in more detail. I remember that the life-steal didn't seem to work when I had my bow or when I was uninjured. It obviously only healing up sustained wounds, not giving me temporary hitpoints. Once it came to the final hand-to-hand combat though, being able to regenerate so much against low-level enemies was really useful. It wasn’t until I got tired and slowed down that I couldn’t keep up and they finally took me down.

As night fell I broke camp, mounted Tobias, and headed westward again. The trees were so thick here that the panthers were able to climb them and keep up by silently jumping from branch to branch. In the darkness, it was really hard to see where they were.

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The next few hours saw my mind wandering again. It hit me that I was alone for the first time in my life. First my adoptive parents, and then Grim had always been around. Thinking of Grim, it made me happy that he finally found someone else. He and I had always been a duo. After getting to Storm Cove it wasn’t easy for us. The first two years we were in communal housing in the harbor, until the school was done. As half-breeds, we didn’t really seem to fit in with anyone else. Grim especially got into a lot of fights when people made fun of him. As his blood-brother, I saw it as my duty to protect him so I got my ass handed to me a few times as well.

By the time the school was built we were both a bit wild and always getting into trouble. Grim’s temper getting worse and worse. It wasn’t until we were around twelve at the time and caught stealing from the local pastry shop that it turned around for us. As a punishment, we were both put to work for a few weeks working in the shop. Grim found his love for cooking and was able to release a lot of his tension that way. Over the next couple of years, he got odd jobs working at bakeries, butcher shops, and any other establishments dealing with food across town. The only payment he asked for was to learn any recipes.

He quickly became the favorite of all the old ladies in town as they all tried to teach him their best recipes, trying to outdo each other. I myself focused more on my studies, now that I didn’t have to worry about Grim so much. I threw myself into learning about geography and history. Other subjects didn’t interest me as much and I spent a lot of time at the back of the class with some book about heroic deeds of the past hidden in my textbook.

We made camp again just before dawn. This time of year and this close to the equator days and nights were both about twelve hours long. The next two days and nights the only exciting thing that happened was that I finally unlocked the heavy armor skill.

The trees were getting larger and larger, and by the third day, we were now surrounded by giant redwoods. The lowest branches were still about 50 or 60 feet above the ground, too high for the panthers to easily get to so I had them just flank me and Tobias on the ground. The trees themselves were 20 feet in diameter at the minimum and I saw somewhere the trunk was at least 100 feet wide.

By the end of that day, we came upon an even stranger sight. An ancient city right in the middle of the woods. And I meant that literally. The trees had grown straight through buildings. A lot of rusted metal embedded into tree trunks, stone walls pushed out of the way and crumbling. This must have been one of the cities that were on this continent before the last disaster happened. With all the tree growth it was hard to say if it was abandoned or destroyed on purpose.

I decided to camp out for the night in what looked to be either a destroyed temple or a government building. The space was about 20 by 30 feet and had two rows of partially broken marble columns down the middle holding up what remained of the roof. A tree was starting to grow right in the middle of it.

I slept for about two hours when a voice woke me up. When I opened my eyes I found that I was no longer asleep in that structure but standing before a throne. The person on that throne was a giant of a man with a wolf cloak around his shoulders and a patch over one eye. At his feet were two giant wolves and two ravens were purchased on the top of the throne itself. At his side stood a beautiful woman. She radiated this feeling of motherly warmth, and when she glanced to the side at the man on the throne you could see the love she had in her eyes.

“Welcome to my abode Drakon.” The figure on the throne stood up and walked over to me. “As you might have guessed it is I, Odin. As you went to sleep in one of my temples it was the perfect moment to meet face to face so to speak. Don’t worry your body is still down there, this is just in your dreams.”

He then gestured to the woman “This is my lovely wife Freya, her handmaidens are the Valkyrie. It was she who approved of Moira’s request to become one of your companions.”

He then bent down and whispered in my ear. “Take good care of her, Moira is one of her favorites and even I am afraid of my wife.”

I then asked “so why am I here” to which Odin replied “I just wanted to thank you for what you have done so far. Your dedication to your friends is admirable. I also wanted to tell you that with the gifts you and your friends have received my debt to your mother has been re-payed. I will not tell you what the debt was as that was between me and her.”

“So do you want me to become one of your disciples or clerics now?”

“No just the fact that you keep Moira safe and let her and her unit practice their faith is good enough for me.” He smiled “Besides another has laid claim to you.”

“Laid claim? What does that mean?”

“It means that when your soul finally makes its way to the afterlife it is one of the other gods who will look after it. I can't say much more, he will find you, or you will find him when the time is right.”

I thought to myself, this is why I don’t like gods, they speak too much in riddles for my taste.

“I have one more thing to show you.” And he motioned me to follow him to a window. “The fields down there is where the gathered souls of the honored dead fight amongst themselves all day. With the fallen rising up the next day to do it all over again. Training for the day the true Ragnarok arrives on this world and they are needed to stop it.”

“Why are you showing me this,” I asked, looking out at the thousands upon thousands of figures battling it out below.

“Your mother is down there amongst them. She has already risen in the ranks to become one of Freya’s chosen. In another millennia or so she might be able to become one of the Valkyrie. I just wanted to let you know so you would be proud of her. Even though she is not your birth mother. In her heart, you are her son.”

With that he left me standing there at the window, looking out to see if I could maybe get a glimpse of her. I must have stood there for what felt like hours before finally waking up.

I first thought that it was a dream when I felt something around my neck. It was a lightning bolt on a chain. Odin’s holy symbol. A small note was next to me saying: This was your mother’s, she wanted you to have it and give it to someone you care about. Signed Freya.

I decided then and there that I was no longer Drakon of house unknown. It didn’t matter anymore who my birth parents were. My mother was Marion Mercet. So to honor her I decided that from now on I was Drakon of house Mercet.

And with that, I broke camp and moved out of the city on my way to hopefully make it to the dungeon before daybreak.