Cadfael tapped his foot on the marble floor with a mixture of nerves and impatience. He took advantage of the shadowy hall to glance at his fellow chosen Inheritors. All of the others were looking up at the stage, the soft blue light outlining their somber expressions of determination. Even Lilcia was standing with some measure of decorum, that little twerp.
Sighing, Cadfael hung his head and wondered for the millionth time how he'd gotten here.
Although he put on a cool front, he was sort of freaking out. In all 17 years of his life he hadn't ever expected to be somewhere like this. Sure as the 4th son of the "Great Grimsel Servis" he wasn't exactly a stranger to extravagant events - with all the typical aristocratic pomp and posturing they entailed - but those usually ended with him being shooed out of the main hall so as not to embarrass the family. They sure as hell never ended with him being dubbed a legendary hero. Not to mention that this ceremony involved a lot more of a weird "mystic ritual" feel to it and the way the hall had descended into shadows all of a sudden was creepy as hell.
It had all come as quite a shock that the vagabond of the family was chosen. Besides the new girl he had been the last one to arrive and that was precisely because they hadn't divined he was a candidate until just a few days ago. His father hadn't even seen it worthwhile to perform an augury on the possibility. Of course, none of that stopped him from welcoming his dearly beloved son back from his travels with open arms when the Empress' knights came knocking.
Cadfael's head was still spinning from the rigorous orientation he'd had in the span of a few days. Like anyone else he'd heard stories of the Zodiacs as a kid, sure. Heroes of the realm, the elite knights of the Empire, blah blah blah. But he'd never seriously considered someone like him could be a possible candidate and he'd forgotten most of it, so there was a lot he'd had to brush up on. He'd much rather "study" swords or cards than history that wasn't supposed to have anything to do with him. But after he'd been chosen he had no choice but to read up on exactly what his responsibilities would be.
And honestly? It didn't seem great. Sure, adventuring on the budget of a small nation seemed pretty awesome, but you also had to do some crazy extreme stuff too. If you actually read the legends and myths about all the previous heroes, past the flowery language, a lot of them had died pretty fucking grim deaths.
"Morella Kilf, consumed within Draconian maws". Eaten. "Arin Mullis, beguiled by crystalline touch". Petrified. Hell, one of them was "blighted by mucilaginous prison" which he was 99% sure just meant that they'd died to some kind of common slime. Reading the history books until his eyes watered, he could just picture an epitaph within a dusty tome 100 years later: "Cadfael Servis, his wits lost to annalled past".
Cadfael sighed again and fiddled with the pommel of his sword, watching the way the reflected blue light gleamed in its crystal point.
It's not exactly like he could just choose not to become one of the heroes though. He might die to some terrible monster as a hero, but if he didn't become a Zodiac after having been chosen his father would literally kill him. So he'd bear with it and if he somehow made it out alive in 50 years then maybe he'd enjoy a nice, long retirement.
His thoughts were interrupted as the glowing stage roared to life again. In a pillar of blue light the girl who had arrived just as the ceremony was starting reappeared on the stage. There wasn't anything different about her but she exchanged a few quiet words with Elder Ptoly up on the stage with a smile before heading back down, so he figured things must've gone well. He didn't really know what he was expecting to be different really.
Cadfael gave her a small wave and a smile. She waved back, but seemed a bit distracted. Oh well, anyone would be fairly distracted after being blessed by what is essentially a god. He was still satisfied when she came back to stand next to him in the line-up as the next aspirant walked up to the stage. Or clanked up to the stage, given that it was the knight who chose to go next. That guy was still a complete mystery to Cadfael even after spending a few days getting to know everyone.
At least the new girl seemed even more clueless about this whole thing than he was. She sounded like she hadn't even known what she was doing here and earlier he'd practically had to drag her towards the stage. But that couldn't be it, right? Sure, she seemed kind of confused and she'd arrived pretty late, just minutes before the ceremony started, but it's not like they could've just kidnapped some peasant off the street at the last moment. Chances were she was some noble or something and she'd just been kept separate from the rest of them for some political reason or another prior to today. That didn't really explain why she'd looked so shocked when she entered the grand hall, but maybe she was a Nadir and hadn't attended such a large event before. They tended to be a bit on the sheltered side.
Well one way or another, he was more than happy to serve as her guide if she needed one. He was a gentleman like that. It totally had nothing to do with how he found her wide-eyed confusion adorable. Nothing at all.
They waited for a minute or two in mutual silence. She was muttering some words to herself under her breath. He thought he heard her call up her status a few times and figured she was probably looking at the blessing she'd gotten.
They probably weren't supposed to speak during these waiting periods but honestly, what else were they supposed to do? He gave her the occasional glance out of the corner of his eye and started working up the nerve to speak. Just as he opened his mouth to say something, she spoke first.
"Hey, um…" she whispered in a hushed tone, leaning towards him.
"Cadfael," he replied in a chipper tone with a debonair grin.
"Um, hi Cadfael." she said his name slowly and carefully, like she was tasting how it felt in her mouth. His heart skipped a beat. "I'm Penelope. Ah, but I guess you probably heard me introduce myself earlier." She laughed nervously and got quiet again.
He smiled, taking up the lead. "Hello Penelope. Did you have something on your mind?"
She shifted in place. "Um, well I was just wondering if I could ask you something?"
"Anything! I'm an open book." He looked towards her expectantly.
She nodded and looked towards something in front of her with a frown before speaking slowly. "Well… I was just wondering… What does 'HP' mean?"
He froze.
----------------------------------------
…Why is he looking at me like I'm an idiot?
Penelope met the flamboyantly dressed boy's flabbergasted gaze for a moment, waiting for him to answer her question, but when it became clear that he was just going to keep staring at her like that she huffed and awkwardly turned away.
Even if she didn't know some obvious things, at least her name wasn't literally Cad-fail. Seriously, his parents must've hated him to give him a name like that.
After Aulia had blessed her, she'd given Penelope a few brief commands to try out to summon guiding Messages. She'd said it was important for understanding the world she'd found herself in. From her understanding, it was a bit like using voice commands to navigate a menu in a video game.
The first command she'd tried was pulling up her status screen. Penelope didn't exactly play a lot of games, but for most of the stuff displayed there she was fairly confident that she could guess what it meant. She was even reasonably sure that 'HP' usually stood for "health points" or something to that effect. That being said…
She looked at her status window again.
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Name:
Penelope Morris
Level:
1 (0/3)
Race:
Human (Non-Manabound)
Celestial Attributes:
[Notification Pending!]
Class:
Initiate of the Rat (Tier 0)
HP: 0/40
SP: 43/50
MP: 3/70
Status: Normal
Constitution Attributes (3): 0 FP
Vitality: 4
Endurance: 5
Physical Attributes (3): 0 FP
Strength: 4
Agility: 7
Mental Attributes (3): 0 FP
Intelligence: 8
Intuition: 7
Skills:
[None]
Talents:
…Isn't 0 HP, like, really bad? Like, she-should-be-dead bad. She figured SP had to stand for stamina points and MP was something to do with magic. The fact that MP was steadily ticking up from zero made sense in that case since she doubted she had any magic prior to appearing in this world. But her HP hadn't changed at all even though she was looking at it for a few minutes now. If that had something to do with health it probably wasn't good.
And although it was one of her highest stats, what's with intelligence being a single digit number! She was definitely more than twice as smart as she was strong! The more Penelope glowered at her status screen the more she felt insulted by everything on it.
"Uh," Cadfael finally seemed to wake up from his stupor. "HP stands for health points," he said rather flatly. His face was flushed, no doubt with secondhand embarrassment at her lack of knowledge.
"Ah, right. Thanks," Penelope said gratefully, even if she'd already guessed that. She shuffled awkwardly and tried to think of some way to reclaim her shreds of dignity after having asked such a basic question. She figured that whatever happened after this ceremony they'd probably all be spending a lot more time together and she didn't want him to think she was some sort of an idiot who didn't know the most basic things about the world she now found herself in. Regardless of what her intelligence attribute said.
Penelope began to wonder if she should maybe ask why her health was stuck at 0/40 when Hu reappeared on the stage in a flash of light. Before he could even take a step to leave the stage Cadfael bolted forward. The knight paused for a minute and watched as Cadfael rushed up the steps past him before giving a questioning tilt of his helmet towards Penelope. It took every ounce of her willpower not to bury her face in her hands and start crying.
To distract herself from her embarrassment, Penelope decided to try out the next suggestion she'd been given on navigating the status menu. Scanning over her status sheet, she tried concentrating on the mental attributes section of the menu. Nothing happened after a moment, so she tried moving onto the other attributes, then onto the skills and the talent sections. When there was still no response she began to worry that she was doing something wrong. Finally she tried to concentrate specifically on the
[
Reading it over, Penelope's high hopes were dampened as she realized it was just a simple description of the talent. It honestly wasn't as amazing as she thought a blessing might be. The Zodiacs were basically gods, so she was expecting some sort of god-like power. Maybe a laser-beam.
Instead, a lot of the description sounded like it just made her a little better at using whatever "skills'' were. Which, given that she currently had none and didn't know how to acquire new ones (let alone "Ruler-type" skills), was a little bit of a disappointment.
Still, at least she had confirmed that she could inspect some of the particulars of her status screen further. Penelope tried to check if any of the individual stats or numbers could be investigated in detail but none of them brought up a notification. Apparently even the status window considered the meaning of something like "HP" to be self-evident.
She did get a notification when she focused on her class which she eagerly read.
[
Oh, guess that's the "aspirant" part of the "hero aspirant". So I'm basically on a trial period for being a hero for now until I get this Vestige thing?
She felt a bit deflated after looking at both of the parts of her status that actually had to do with her title as a legendary chosen hero. They both seemed to have some stringent limitations to them and weren't as flashy as she was hoping from a world of magic and fantasy.
Still, it was pretty cool to see it all written out like that. And proving herself didn't sound all that bad. That's what a hero does after all. Come to think of it, chosen heroes are all about being the underdog and cleverly turning small, inconspicuous advantages into something amazing, right? Looking at it from that light, maybe it wasn't so bad.
She just had to resolve herself to leverage her options and become someone awesome! She was eager to do that.
Suddenly the glowing stage flashed up in a column of light again to reveal Cadfael, surprising Penelope. Both her and Hu had taken a lot longer to get their blessings. He exchanged a few words with the man with the eye-robe on the stage, but then instead of immediately walking down from the stage, Cadfael paused and looked at Penelope. For a second, a dark cloud passed over his face and there was a strange intensity to his gaze. Something struck her about the way he looked at her in that moment, and time almost seemed to freeze as she met his piercing eyes.
It was oddly different from how he'd acted prior to walking up onto the stage. Steadier, more gathered. She felt like he was looking right through her. Unconsciously she shivered.
But just as quickly as the moment came it passed and he flashed her a carefree smile and a wave, hopping down the steps two at a time. The switch was so quick that she almost thought that she'd imagined anything was strange. Penelope still took a second to recover, then gave him a forced smile and stiff wave back.
Well that was hecking weird. But maybe it was just my nerves. I guess.
Cadfael came to stand next to Penelope as the next teen climbed up onto the stage. There was an unspoken tension between the two of them. With the apprehensive atmosphere, she didn't feel comfortable continuing experimenting then and there and dismissed her status window with a thought.
"There's no need to be embarrassed about not knowing what HP stands for." He suddenly spoke. His tone was light but he kept his eyes fixed on the now empty stage.
"Oh!" Penelope had almost forgotten about the whole health point fiasco. In the back of her mind she screamed about him bringing it up again. "Um, thanks."
"But," he continued as if he hadn't heard her, "I would hold back from asking questions like that in the future. You wouldn't want to draw too much attention to yourself." He looked at her with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. The unnatural blue lighting cast a harsh shadow over his taut lips.
She gave him a curious look. "What do you-"
"All I'm saying," he interrupted, "Is that it's sometimes best to not reveal too much of what you do or don't know. A lot can be determined from one's past by the questions they ask." Cadfael gave her one last meaningful look, then turned back towards the stage.
Her heart thumped in her chest. Even as the candidates continued approaching and exiting the stage one-by-one, Penelope had stopped playing with the Messages. Instead questions had begun rampaging through her head. Did he know where she'd come from? How? Or maybe there were others like her and he'd just guessed. Maybe his Zodiac patron person had told him? A million possibilities were swirling in her head, but one thing was clear.
He had just given her a warning.