2/24/20xx

Eternal Fantasy Online, NA Server #413

Lethwan City’s Automated Market Row, i.e. “AFK Avenue”

“Thank you for your business!” I exclaimed with a smile, and while I wouldn’t have minded if the dark knight ignored me as he walked away, the wave he gave me back had me grinning all the harder. You don’t usually see that kind of courtesy from anyone who had the skills and coin pouch to be wearing such elaborate armor. I’d love to befriend a person like that; I’m sure he’d be a lot of fun to party up with. And if we really hit it off, I could invite him into the guild.

Ugh, the guild. I had been pleased as anything last month when Dedric had appointed me as the new assistant guildmaster. The Thunder of Orren had been my home and my truest companions for the last two years, and being advanced into this new role within the guild felt like the best confirmation I could ask for that they valued me just as much. But guild drama has never thrilled me, and Lucretia had left some big, big shoes for me to fill. That woman had loomed larger than life in more ways than one, and her setharian height and templar physique was only a tiny fraction of her presence.

Unfortunately, while the dark knight’s name was visible plain as day just above his head, he’d never introduced himself, and I’ve never been so crass as to break any of the unwritten rules of names. Besides, if he was basing here in Lethwan, maybe we’d happen to run into each other later out at the Favordark Mines or the Cerovinth Pathway and form a party then. My impression was that he was a bit higher in level than me, but both dungeons had proven themselves to require more teamwork than strength, and stranger things have happened. For example, Renault had made purchases from me on no fewer than seven occasions before he bothered to introduce himself to me. I might think him timid or shy or maybe even interested in me, except now I know him well enough to know that none of those things are even remotely true. I might have been more hurt by that last bit if I didn’t now consider his husband Amethyst one of my best friends.

Okay, guild drama or not, maybe I was missing my guildmates juuust a little bit. I thought of closing up shop, but… Despite three days of steady sales, a little over half of my merchandise on display remained. My latest run of the Favordark Mines had netted me quite the haul. The party’s tank had asked for a break when we finished clearing out Shaft #7. I think he knew I was a crafter when he asked, and would be pleased at the chance to collect more dark ore from the walls than I would normally get to nab during a run. I did wind up offering my first picks of the boss loot to our other two party members as a “thank you” for keeping watch for the Favordark crabs that continually come to lurk in Shaft #7 while I was preoccupied. But my efforts were rewarded with nine, count them, nine shards of midnight-quality dark ore. Between that and everything else I’d gathered on the trip, I had enough raw materials to make some serious upgrades to what had been trash loot gathering dust in my inventory. Sure, I may be saying so myself, but the resulting spread was something else.

So I wasn’t exactly hard up for gold at this point, and my sales so far had certainly swelled my coin pouch further. But the market lived by its own peculiar rules, trying to ensure everyone got fair access to booth space when they wanted it. I only had this spot until I decided to leave or a week passed. After which, if I wanted to sell anything further, I’d have to submit a new application for a booth. The wait was never terrible, but you got assigned to whatever booth opened up, and the one I had now made for prime real estate.

Not so much for the sales, admittedly - nothing could really outperform the auction house for a quick sale, although the margins there tended to be razor thin. But manning one of the market booths involves a lot of standing around doing nothing; it could easily get dull very quickly. This booth, however, had clear lines-of-sight to the teleport plaza, the quest board, and could see most of the inn’s common room by the simple virtue of being directly across the street from its doorless front entry. A little downtime between sales? Who cares! For a booth like this, the people-watching opportunities were endless.

Adventurers sure didn’t limit themselves to just exploring dungeons. About one in three of us seemed to be obsessed with charting brave new territory in fashion, too. Courageous as I had proven myself in facing down the twisted and terrible fiends that stalk the dungeons deep with nary a twitch, these fashionable adventurers one and all wore outfits far too daring for me. But as a crafter, as a creator of the gear catering to other adventures… Knowing what worked and what didn’t, what was in and what was out, was very much my business. Plus, watching the sheer variety go by was infinitely entertaining.

It wasn’t just the clothes, arms, and armor, either. Lethwan was a city firmly devoted to adventurers, all adventurers, regardless of race or faction. Thenok, ridovan, humans, myrluk, quentars, setharians, elves and more besides walked past showcasing the diversity of Thersia in all its glory. Even a hedrex like me would always just be one more face in the crowd. I don’t exactly mind standing out, per se, but I hadn’t realized just how rare hedrex were in the city of Nurmon when I chose to begin my adventuring career there, and it had left me with one or two uncomfortable memories. Earning the coin I needed to leave for somewhere better had been my goal and reason for improving as an adventurer in those earliest days, more so than the threat of death fighting monsters in the fields.

Thankfully, as much as I enjoy crafting, my real talent is in healing. I’m not just referring to the fact that I’ve mastered spells like Healing Circle, Cure Moderate Disease, or The Song of Life - anyone can do that. But I don’t just know how to use them, I know when and why. I can manage my magic better than any other healer I’ve met. I wish I could say better than anyone at all, but Guildmaster Dedric has elevated slinging fireballs to an absolute art form. I may not be at his level yet, but I hope to be there someday. And I’m sure life is less boring knowing that I still have room to grow, new heights to aspire to.

Aww, raven’s dung. And now I’m back to thinking of guildmates and boredom again. Sure, I would really like to see them, in theory. But Renault and Amethyst have been a rock solid duo since I met them. Yet now, Renault has been openly considering leaving the guild. Amethyst doesn’t want to, but he will if Renault does. So he wants me to fix things, by convincing Dedric to kick Freya from the guild for her homophobic comments. Which I’d be fine with, sort of, except this isn’t what I was hoping being the assistant guildmaster would entail. Or at least, that it wouldn’t be the first thing I’d have to deal with.

I mean, first of all, sure, Dedric and I have known each other since he invited me to join the guild. And I really look up to the guy, I do. But everyone has their blindspots, even your heroes I guess, because he and Freya aren’t just friends, they’re the best of friends. And they have been since they were children. When they started adventuring, they did it together. I just don’t have the kind of personal connection with Dedric I’d need to ask him to kick his own best friend from the guild.

I did at least talk to him about Freya, asking if he could reign her in. It’s not exactly behavior I enjoy, either, even if her words have nothing to do with me. Dedric, though, says that Freya’s just saying it to get a rise out of people. Which might be true - the public gay bashing has been something new from her, but her giggling at the anger of others is decidedly not. She once spent two weeks I’d rather forget, following me around the guildhall making “catgirl” jokes and mewing noises. Good thing I’m not the sort of person who holds a grudge, and might, say, trick her into buying some trash swords at 1000% above market rate. Or repeatedly use my authority as the guildhall crafter to dump all the possessions from her room into the guild storage, just as soon as she managed to claim them and set them back up again. I mean, those things did happen, it just totally wasn’t me that did them. Dum de dum, nothing to see here…

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Anyway, I would love it if, one way or another, someone could corral Freya and get her back in line. I honestly don’t know how Lucretia managed to keep things together as well as she did. I really wish she’d left me some notes. I’d ask her directly, except Lucretia didn’t just quit the guild, she hung up her sword and quit adventuring altogether. I’m not even sure where I would go to begin looking for her at this point. I wish her all the best, but when adventurers cut their ties to retire, they are obsessively thorough about it.

I’m also not convinced that Freya is really the reason Renault wants to leave The Thunder of Orren. He’s never shown a thin skin before, and I got some hints that he was starting to think of moving on weeks ago, before Freya opened her mouth. I half suspect Amethyst saw that, too, but he doesn’t want to leave and would like to believe Freya is all there is to it, or at least the last straw. That if we could shut her up, nothing would have to change. I get that. I love these guys, all of them, although I could totally do without Freya. But I love them most when we’re getting along: no taking sides, no drama.

Maybe I’m the one who should be thinking about moving on. But towards the guild or away from it? Argh, stupid brain, getting all maudlin. Look! A myrluk in peacock armor, with a rainbow cape, plaid boots, a feather boa and rhinestone glasses! Wow, someone has no taste at all. Okay, I get that if you were born in a swamp, you might long for a bit of color and shine in your life, but she did not hold back at all. Phew, but she did make me laugh, and maybe that’s what she’s going for. If so, I salute your bravery! Or I would, if I didn’t have a booth to staff.

*****

I wish I could say that I enjoyed the remainder of my week in the market. But sometime later that day… I don’t know exactly what happened. I have no direct recollection of it all. Just a sense of… nothingness, maybe. Not that I have memories of a sense of nothingness, of some empty void. But something deep, deep, at the very back of my skull and the bottom of my mind, where I fear to let my thoughts dwell, it whispers to me, and what it whispers to me of is: *Nothing*.

*****

When I opened my eyes, I was in a stone-walled room lit by flickering torchlight. Four hooded and robed individuals rose from a floor covered in mystic symbols and the arcane geometry of a magic circle. So about as normal as normal as could be, really. I wasn’t familiar with this particular room and if these were mages, the cut and color of their robes was one I hadn’t seen before. But as well-traveled as I am, I had yet to see everything Thersia has to offer. And while I had never seen or heard of summoning magic that worked on people before, both summoning magic itself and teleportation magic are as old as dirt, and the last vestiges of the spell fading away was very easy for my practiced eyes to read. So I wasn’t exactly having a hard time putting two and two together.

What was really freaking me out was how I couldn’t read anyone’s name. The air above their heads was empty. Just… nothing.

“Congratulations, Lady Elutria! You’ve succeeded in your summoning.”

“Hold your praise, Rudolpho. The goal was never just to summon ‘anyone’, but to summon someone of value. Do not praise me until we know what it has to offer. You there, what do you have to say for yourself?”

The second speaker pushed back her hood as she addressed me directly. Blonde locks spilled forth as she did so, providing a messy contrast to her sharp blue-eyed gaze. “This is a woman who doesn’t mess about, never a detail out of place” implied her face and tone, while her hair continued to loudly proclaim “untamable rat’s nest”.

As to my own hair, her haughty attitude was raising those on the back of my neck in an uncomfortable way. But I’ve met a lot of unduly arrogant people over the last few years, and sometimes their arrogance is actually justified. Plus I’ve never been all that fond of conflict myself. So I kept my voice as level and friendly as I knew how, smiling as I answered her back: “Hello, I’m Secia Aetherborn, assistant guildmaster for The Thunder of Orren, headquartered in Lethwan. Did you mean to summon me?”

I’m not sure what this Lady Elutria had expected me to say, but I got the impression I had just gone off script. But while I was examining her expression, another of the mages had lowered his own hood. He had the lined, well-creased face of an elderly man who’d spent much of his life smiling. I think he might be Elutria’s “Rudolpho”, but without being able to read his name, it was hard to be sure. Why couldn’t I read their names??

“Oh ho, how marvelous!” he exclaimed. “This is the first time I’ve witnessed a summon who understood what we were saying without needing to actively learn our language. And you don’t appear to be confused by the idea of being summoned at all. Marvelous, marvelous. Well met, Secia Aetherborn. Have you perhaps been summoned before?”

He just broke one of the unwritten rules of names! I’d introduced myself, and he’d used my full name without introducing himself back! With their names already failing to appear where they should appear, this was putting my hackles up way more than just talking about me like I wasn’t here, or as if I was an object instead of a person (although I’m not really fond of that, either). Still, Rudolpho struck me as someone who maybe let academic interest run away with him, forgetting social courtesies when fascinated, so I tried to calm myself and give him another chance to make right.

“No, I’ve always traveled by my own power before now, so this is fairly new to me. I’d love to know where I am. And I’m sorry, but while I mentioned that I’m Secia, you are…?”

But either he didn’t pick up on my prompting or they were being deliberately rude. Instead, he turned to Lady Elutria and remarked, “She is fascinating, my lady. I’ve backed fourteen summoners in their rituals, and been witness to at least thirty more. Her natural speech with us, her familiarity with magic, her overall demeanor… I don’t know what world you plucked her from, but if she doesn’t fail any of the usual tests, such a world might be a valuable addition to the Atlas of Souls. Do you recall it clearly enough to make such a record?”

“Hmph. Worry not. Her world may have been deeply hidden in the folds of the Mysterium, but it felt of lightning and tasted of ash, smelled of tea and tin, and had the fragility of a soap bubble. And it shared its particular pocket of the Mysterium with a void world, of all things. It stands out well enough from its peers to be easily identified, if it truly has anything of value to offer us.” Glancing at me and giving another disdainful sniff, she added, “Unlike you, I’m not so easily impressed.”

Should I say something here? It kind of feels like it would be okay for me to start getting really upset just about now. But… I just felt more out of sorts than anything else. Maybe some side effect of the summoning? The best I can put words around it was a sort of hollowness inside. Fatigue, perhaps? Whatever it was, it was disquieting in its own right. I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly passive person before, but some part of me, perhaps some instinct I’ve never noticed before, encouraged me to wait. Making the important choices was for other people to decide, and deciding whether or not to pick a fight with someone was a very important choice.

“Hey! I thought you could understand us. You will follow behind me or things will get unpleasant for you.”

Startled, I looked about. While I had been distracted by my thoughts, the two technically-still-unnamed mages, the elderly man and the young woman who had been speaking to me so far, had moved to the room’s only apparent entrance. And at least one of them was displaying the impatience of youth (or the arrogant entitlement of bad nobility). The remaining two silent-so-far-and-also-very-definitely-still-unnamed mages had slipped backwards until they were up against the walls, almost but not quite behind me and out of sight. And one of those two was beginning to channel magic, even if they didn’t seem to be doing anything with it yet.

Decision made for me, I hurried to catch up to my… summoners? Jailers? New friends? I wasn’t sure just how to think of them yet, but that was probably a choice I didn’t need to rush.