Penelope was lost.
Right after leaving the Elder's office she'd turned down one hallway only to be met with a dead end and immediately she knew she would have a rough time of it. While normally she had a decent memory for directions she had been a bit too overwhelmed by the fantastical nature of the place to really pay attention to the path they were taking as she followed. This all resulted in her spending nearly twice as long wandering the halls as she had spent going to the meeting in the first place. At this point the sunlight refracting through the murky, watery windows had slowly faded to a deep orange hue.
How big is this place? Maybe I should have asked Mr. Jacoby for help back. An image of the man's scowling countenance popped into her mind and she screwed up her face in displeasure. Nope. Getting lost is still better. At least this place is interesting… Even if most of the halls look identical. Penelope sighed and sped up her pace again, hoping desperately she might by some miracle find her way back to some sort of a landmark.
Occasionally she would knock on some of the heavy wood doors in the halls, but it seemed like most of the people in this wing of the building were busy elsewhere, likely attending to other duties after the ceremony. She had at last given up hope and resigned herself to a slow and brutal death by starvation when she heard a voice calling for her from down the hall.
"Lady Morris! Lady Morris!" She turned to see a young man running towards her, his feet clip-clopping along the ground at a frantic pace. As he approached, Penelope realized his skin was covered in dark gray fur and guessed that he was of the same species as Lilcia. She wondered how many of those types of people were in this world, or if there were even other types of non-humans.
He wore a plain black jacket and had a hat similar to the sort of hat that Robin Hood's always depicted with. His overall appearance looked very well-kempt and even his fur had a luster to it that would have made a shampoo model jealous. Most importantly, at least in Penelope's opinion, he had a small blue bauble pinned to his chest.
I'm saved!
He abruptly stopped a few feet from her, panting with his hands on his knees. "Ha… Lady… Ha… Morris."
"Hi!" Penelope excitedly addressed the short man-creature-person with an awkward wave. "Um, are you my, er, retainer… person?" He nodded from his hunched over position, still breathing quite hard.
She brightened up at his assent. "How did you find me? I can't even find me," she joked.
The retainer paused to catch his breath, then eventually stood upright, though his legs were still quite wobbly. Penelope found the furry person's dramatic display of exhaustion extremely amusing.
When he was finally ready to speak in full sentences he answered with a bright, clear voice befitting his adorable appearance. "Hello Lady Morris. My name is Archie Roux. I have been assigned as your retainer for as long as you find my performance to your satisfaction." He gave her a deep bow, though seemed to have some trouble straightening back up afterwards. "While waiting for you in the great hall Elder Ptoly sent me a message that you may be lost and informed me of your location. It's getting late and he'd like you to be escorted straight to your chambers."
Penelope was a bit disappointed that she wouldn't get to speak with the other heroes in the common area, but looking at the fading light out the windows she supposed it made sense.
Archie noticed her frown and chirped up. "Not to worry though! Tonight's dinner will be served directly in your chambers so that you may have an evening to acquaint yourself with your roommate!"
"We have roommates? Isn't this place a bit large for us to be sharing a room," Penelope laughed, gesturing nebulously to the halls that she'd gotten lost in for hours.
"Ah! Elder Ptoly also informed me that you might need remediation as to the structure of the Zodiacs." The small, furry man recited as if from a textbook. "The Zodiacs are a tightly knit band of heroes that have been bound by the shared fate of their Inheritances throughout the ages. Through life-or-death battles and perilous journeys they forge inseparable bonds and can quite often become companions for life! As such it is of the utmost importance that you acclimate yourself to living in close proximity with one another and begin to form the foundations of your budding relationships as quickly as you can"
Penelope nodded as he spoke, covering her face with one hand to stifle a smile. Honestly, that sounded amazing! Inwardly she was squealing with delight imagining all sorts of possibilities for adventures with her fellow Zodiacs.
"So… What are your other responsibilities as a retainer?" Penelope asked, shifting the subject so as not to get too excited.
Archie seemed excited to seize on the opportunity to talk about his job. "Plenty of things. Us retainers have the honor of acting as your personal assistant, guide, stylist, nutritionist-"
"Nutritionist?" Penelope cut in.
"Of course! Proper nutrition is essential to any good warrior, mage, or ruler! Aside from giving you constitution experience in and of itself, a good diet helps to recover your health points and gives the stamina necessary for even the most basic of actions! In preparation for my role as your retainer I've read numerous treatises on the importance of proper protein balances…" the impassioned retainer continued to rant about food for a good while as she did her best to nod along and pretend to find the subject interesting. Penelope wondered just how long he had been trained for this role with how much he could talk about such an innocuous subject involved with it.
Eventually a thought occurred to Penelope and she interrupted Archie's speech about the most nutritious varieties of country cheeses (apparently it was something called Fell Blage) to ask a question. "Hey, how did, um, the 'Elder' know where to find me anyway?"
Archie gave her a curious look. "Oh, he simply located you with divination magic, Lady Morris. Elder Ptoly is an expert at divination. Well, he's an expert in all arcana, but he's especially exceptional at divinations! He's obviously a member of the Zodiac synod first and foremost, but most of the time when we're not preparing for the Inheritance ceremonies and events he works in the crime and public safety division of the city council."
"Huh. I guess that makes sense with the whole…" Penelope gestured at her eye and then pantomimed a flowing cloak.
Archie looked at her in confusion for a moment before his eyes widened and he laughed. "Haha, yeah! That thing gives me the shivers something awful," he replied brightly.
Penelope smiled back. She was glad to know that it wasn't just her that found it a little unsettling.
While they continued to chat, they slowly moved from the blue wing of the building towards corridors with the bright, golden color of the original hall that Penelope had appeared in. Archie explained that the blue hall was the administrative wing of the building while the golden hall was where the common areas and transportation hubs were located.
After winding through a couple more passages, they ascended another large spiral staircase and entered a much homier-looking large circular chamber. Instead of the familiar marble, the walls and floor were a dark mahogany wood that made a satisfying thunk with each of Penelope's footsteps. On the floor lay an enormous gold and blue embroidered rug, atop which stood several expensive looking chairs and couches set up in front of tables for multiple small parties to sit together. The entire scene shone in the pale yellow light of the great chandelier hanging overhead. There were 6 doors inset along the curved wall and Penelope guessed that this was the dormitory commons.
"Right this way Lady Morris," Archie said, walking towards the nearest door on the left side of the wall. He produced a small, golden band from a breast pocket, then held it up to the lock. From seemingly nowhere a small nova of white light flashed over the lock, leaving Penelope blinking away dark splotches from her vision.
"I've primed the lock to key directly into your mana signature!" Archie proudly proclaimed. "If you'll please just move your hand here."
Penelope followed his guidance to place her hand atop the lock. They both waited for a few seconds, before a troubled look passed over Archie's face.
"That's odd. The lock runes should have registered you by now. I'll have to see if I can find a wardsmith to take a look at that tomorrow. For now you can simply use a spare passkey instead."
He handed Penelope a similar ring of bronze metal. Examining it for a moment, she slid it on her wrist like a bracelet where it fit like a glove. The action earned her a funny glance from Archie, but it looked cool so who cares. She pressed her wrist to the lock and turned her head away so as not to be blinded again, but this time instead of a flash of light she could hear the clicks and whirs of mechanisms shifting inside the door. With a final, satisfying clunk the door unlocked and Penelope pulled the door open a crack.
"If you'll excuse me, I'll take my leave now to go prepare your meal and give you some privacy with your roommate." Penelope nodded and with that Archie ran off, presumably towards wherever the kitchens were.
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She took one last deep breath and without further ado entered the room.
Contrary to what she was expecting, instead of a small, cramped bedroom the chamber she entered was even larger than the living room in Penelope's house. It was lit by more crystal lanterns on either wall which hung over a mirrored set of ornate wooden desks and a pair of bookshelves. There was a large dining table set out in the middle of the room and a pair of couches towards the back of the room. No beds were to be found, although Penelope figured that the doors to either side likely led to individual bedrooms.
It was overall far beyond the college-dorm style of accommodations she'd imagined and looked much more like a penthouse apartment.
The girl in the white flower dress was standing at the far wall in front of a large mirror. As Penelope entered, she whirled around to face her and flashed her a gentle, airy smile, her prismatic eyes shining in the light. "Hey roomie!" she called out cheerily.
Penelope had tensed up a bit upon seeing the girl who'd stared at her so intensely during the ritual earlier that day, but she seemed to have calmed down a bit and Penelope slowly let herself relax in turn.
"Hi." She gave a little wave. "I'm Penelope Morris. It's nice to meet you."
"I'm Nerris of house Farkeep. The pleasure's all mine." Nerris gave a small bow and then returned to looking in the mirror.
Penelope sat down at the table, feeling her cramped legs crying in relief at the respite. After luxuriating in the sensation for a moment, she looked towards Nerris curiously. "What are you up to?"
"Ah." Nerris finally stopped looking at her reflection and sheepishly walked over to sit at the table. "Still getting used to the new eyes." She gestured at her multicolored irises.
"Oh. You haven't always had those?" Penelope asked innocently.
Nerris laughed. "Nope! The
Talents can do that? Penelope thought. At least the Rat talent didn't come with any strange changes like that. Unless…
"Wait, Nerris-"
"Don't worry you still look perfectly natural. The Inheritance of the Rat doesn't come with any immediate side effects"
"Immediate side effects?" Penelope latched on to her phrasing. "Do I have to be concerned about anything later?"
Nerris shrugged. "Well, quite a lot of advanced talents can lead to physical changes and being the Zodiac Inheritors certainly gives us access to quite a slew of rare and advanced talents. But just as long as you don't pick any of the ones that seem like they'll have a physical effect you'll probably be fine."
Penelope sighed in relief then decided to switch the subject before her lack of knowledge on talents became too apparent. "So how'd you know I was blessed by the Rat?"
"Word gets around fast." Nerris flashed her a disarming smile. "I've already spoken with the others about their Inheritances while we were spending time in the common room. So by process of elimination…" Penelope nodded in understanding before Nerris leaned forward suddenly. "Of course, it may be just as interesting if you're a Nadir as well."
It wasn't lost on Penelope that Nerris was not-so-subtly prodding her for information about her past. She resisted the urge to immediately ask what a "Nadir" was, but, remembering Cadfael's warning, she bit her tongue and held silent. Nerris gave an unsatisfied "harrumph" before leaning back in her seat, dissatisfied.
As she pondered what a Nadir might be, something brushed past her leg and Penelope yelped.
"Ah!" she jerked her leg away and heard a soft, burbling growl from beneath the table.
"Elys!" Nerris shouted and leaned down to pick up a small, white creature from the floor
She began to apologize. "Sorry about my- SCREEECH."
Penelope flinched as Nerris' speech exploded into that same microphone feedback sound that she'd heard prior to receiving the translation module Message. She began to panic that something was going wrong with her translation tool when suddenly-
[ERROR Translation Module Incompatibility Detected: Please manually select a designation for this terminology]
The abrupt notification startled Penelope and as she read it the implications of it surprised her even more. Is this seriously saying I can just name the entire species whatever I want? In the background of her thoughts Penelope could hear Nerris repeat whatever the creature's name was again with yet another ear-piercing screeching noise and she quickly focused on registering the first name that came to mind.
[Terminology registered: Puffkit]
Ok, so it wasn't the best name, but Penelope had been in a rush to make her ears stop bleeding. It looked… sooort of like a cat with the shape of its body and ears. But it was a lot smaller than an adult cat, had deep black eyes like a dog, and was absolutely covered in a soft fluffy furry coat like that of a sheep. There was a bit of an uncanny valley effect given how similar it looked to regular Earth animals, but overall Penelope had to admit that the creature was objectively kind of cute.
Either way she sighed in relief upon getting that unpleasant task out of the way and happily watched as Nerris made cooing noises to her pet and shared some amusing stories about how wild he'd been in her old home.
Eventually Archie returned, along with the woman who Penelope assumed to be Nerris' retainer. They entered empty handed, but a veritable feast of dishes on silver platters floated in a train behind them. It struck Penelope that one of the most casual uses of magic she'd seen today was being used to set the dishes.
It was far more food than Penelope could ever possibly eat, though not for lack of trying as she dug into the exotic new flavors and colorful dishes. Nerris ate in a far more refined manner, using all the various forks and knives provided for their presumed intended purposes. They spoke a little over dinner, but they were both famished after a long day and most of their attention was focused on the food.
At some points Penelope was tempted to feed a scrap of food to the puffkit which was staring up at her with puppy-dog eyes, but not knowing what might be poisonous to the creature she used all of her force of will to only feed it a few scraps of the most innocuous bits of food.
After dinner was over Nerris and Penelope bid each other and their retainers goodnight before retreating to their separate rooms.
Penelope looked over her bedroom, but aside from the fireplace and large, glassless window it was a fairly standard bedroom. There was a door on the left wall and Penelope looked at it wondering what it might be for a second before a realization struck her and she dashed towards the door, throwing it open.
She nearly jumped with joy upon seeing the inside of the small restroom. It was a fantasy world with actual toilets and running water! The day could not possibly get any better.
After washing up in the restroom, Penelope moved to the window. It was quite dark outside, and though she could see the twinkling lights of a city below it was still much darker than the city she'd grown up in had ever been at night. She squinted and tried to look at the horizon for any flashes of purple lightning in the distance. But she saw nothing in the impenetrable night.
It made her uncomfortable to think that the dark cloud she'd seen earlier and its massive, mysterious denizens might be lurking somewhere far away in that dark. Still, eventually she managed to pull away from the window and distracted herself by flopping onto the bed face first, not bothering to change into the sleeping wear that had been laid out for her on a chair.
Before she got too tired, Penelope decided she ought to sit up and play around with a few of the other commands Aulia had told her about for interacting with the Messages.
She first tried the "Log" command, which popped up a scrollable history of the Messages that she'd received that day. Penelope looked through it absently, stopping at one of the earliest messages she'd received.
[Multiple Celestial Affinities Found: Select your primary attribute? Y/n]
She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should accept the message prompt, but eventually she dismissed it again along with the others. Whatever "Celestial Affinities" were, they seemed kind of important since there was a whole slot in the status menu dedicated to them and she didn't want to accidentally mess up a selection if she had to make it right away. Hopefully tomorrow's lessons might give her more information about affinities.
There weren't too many other commands, but Penelope tried pulling up each section of her status screen individually just to try it out. There was her base attributes screen which included the affinities, level, class, and name sections. Her ability screen showed both her stat points and talents/skills, seeming to show every way that the messages would be able to track and boost her natural abilities. Lastly, her current condition displayed her health, stamina, and the magical points that she currently had as well as any abnormal status conditions she might have. The MP value had continued to increase throughout the evening, but she was pleasantly surprised to see that her health points had finally increased above 0.
HP: 2/40
SP: 25/50
MP: 57/70
Status: Normal
Penelope wondered for a moment if she'd done anything in particular to make her health go up. It was possible that it just ticked up naturally and just had a really slow rate of generation. She recalled that Archie had gone on at length about the health benefits of food, but he hadn't really talked any precise numbers of how much HP that was supposed to help you recover. Still, having any points in the value which she normally associated with indicating how dead you were was a significant relief.
Eventually she grew bored of navigating through the glowing screens and closed them all one-by-one, laying back and readying herself for sleep.
The bed itself was exceptionally cozy and even radiated with a slight warmth; Penelope groaned happily as she melted into its silken sheets, letting all the tension and exhaustion of the day roll off of her. She could already feel herself starting to drift off and she sluggishly curled the sheets around her to swaddle herself up for the night.
"Huh. I guess they are aliens actually. Or, well, I'm the alien here I suppose." Penelope chuckled to herself and shifted in her soft sheets with a contented sigh.
Suddenly, she bolted upright. "The thrift store guy!" She'd just remembered the old man who had been prone on the floor of the store that morning with the gray creature on top of him. There'd been a flash of light behind the counter right before it sprang at her. Had he been teleported here too? If so, where was he? That thing supposedly just was some kind of "emissary" of these Zodiac people. It wouldn't have killed him right?
Penelope slowly sorted through the flurry of questions, dismissing most of them off-hand. She started calming down and settled back into bed, nestling her head into the cool, thick pillows and trying to forget about her worries. There wasn't anything she could do about it anyway. At the very least nobody had mentioned a mysterious old man also showing up here unannounced. He probably had just been knocked out for whatever reason.
"Good luck thrift store guy. I hope wherever you are out there you're ok," Penelope murmured as she slowly drifted off into a peaceful sleep.
He was not, in fact, ok.