Hello! If you're reading this, I... Well, I actually have no idea who you'll be. I don't even know if "reading" is how you'll access a memory crystal like the one I'm using to record what's happened to me. But my story so far has been so strange, I want to share it with someone. Someone besides Servitor, that is.

Until six months ago, I was just an ordinary 15-year-old student adventurer, like the kind you'd find anywhere. I had a dull life, going to adventurer school seven days out of the ten day week, learning the basics of magic and armed combat, practicing dungeon navigation and monster identification, and learning about the history of our world. 

Moving up to Senior Curriculum on my fourteenth birthday had been good for me. Overall. From the start, I got surprisingly good marks in Healing Arts - at least, they seemed to surprise my parents and teachers, who'd given up expecting me to excel at anything - and one month in, on a class dungeon crawl, I even acquired the second named skill of my life. 

"'Enhanced Potion Formulation'?" I stared at the fog-magnified image of my status screen, my heart crumpling in my chest. "But that's only a C-rank skill!" 

Magister Benzoledek chuckled, and combed his silver beard with his fingers. "Now, now. It's not as bad as you think, not at all, not at all."

My shoulders hunched and my face flushed. If that sounds like I wasn't in control of myself then, that might be correct. It hadn't been my intent to blurt out that ungrateful-sounding comment, either. "I - I should be grateful for whatever gifts the beneficent gods choose to bestow. As I am grateful for your help, Magister."

He surprised me by waving this away with a hand. "Not what I meant, Rheen my boy, not what I meant." Using both arms and straining, he pushed himself upright in his overstuffed armchair. 

From the bookshelf that he'd had me drag over earlier to put his tools within arm's reach, he plucked a little crystal vial, and from it he released tendrils of smoke, the same purple as his dressing-gown. The smoke snaked through the crystal fog he'd summoned earlier, and formed two arrows. "Look more closely." 

I leaned forward, squinting a bit. The glowing rectangle of the status screen was a plain white, as was most of the text it enclosed - reflecting my novice status. (I tried not to look at my Haggle stat, which remained the embarrassing red it had always been.) The new changes to my status screen - the two stats that had gone up, and the new skill I'd acquired - were so new, they were still gold, and hadn't yet faded to white, as they would with time. Because of their newness, however, they were also blurry, which is why I'd needed the Magister's spell to magnify them. 

Highlighted by the two purple arrows, I could now see a slender line of gold I hadn't seen before. Unless I was mistaken, it ran from the last rune of my new skill, down the side of my status screen, and back again to the last rune in "Take The Good With The Bad," the E-rank skill I'd gained on my naming day, when I was still a tiny baby. "They're... linked? What does that mean, Magister? I've never seen that before. Or even heard of it."

"Very rare, very rare," he said, "but very good, my boy. In every case of linked skills I know of - save one - the adventurer who possessed them achieved feats that no one had foreseen." Thoughtfully, he took a sip from the little crystal vial still in his hand, swished it around in his mouth, and blew out a purple smoke ring. "When did this skill of yours develop, lad?"

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I thought back to our recent crawl, in a nearby goblin cave. The red blood spurting from Al-na-rayh's arm... "One of my classmates was wounded pretty badly. I went to apply the salve and bandages... and then, for some reason, I thought of some mushrooms I had foraged in the outer part of the dungeon. And somehow, I just knew that crushing the spores into the salve would make it heal more effectively."

"And did it?" 

"Yes, impressively."

The Magister nodded, sagely. "Ahh. Those red-black mushrooms with the sheen to their domes, eh? A species first recorded by Sylvaus in the Second Age of the Dragon, according to the lore. Studied them myself when I was about your age - though, of course, there wasn't much left to be discovered about them by then."

"Oh, it wasn't those. It was the grey mushrooms with the dark spots. You know, with the caps that are shaped like this?" I traced the sorceress' hat shape in the air with my fingertips.

He sat bolt upright in his armchair, this time without any puffing or straining. "Sayst thou what?"

"Eh?"

"You're certain, boy? No chance you're misremembering?" It was disconcerting to see the Magister, a man seemingly designed by the gods to slouch, displaying intent and energy. Before I could even reply he was hammering me with half a dozen questions, demanding the exact appearance of the mushrooms and where they were growing and what instinct had prompted me to collect them in the first place.

By the time the barrage of questioning ceased, each comb of his fingers through his beard was so vigorous, it dislodged a miniature flurry of curled silver hairs. "Gods, benificent gods. A species that's been around since the First Age of the Troll, and it's finally discovered to have a useful purpose. I must be in on the study of this! I shall get funding from the University, I'll personally lead the expedition - no, wait." He stared down at his own sedentary bulk, ensconced in the armchair. "That would mean getting up, wouldn't it?" Desire and horror warred in his face.

He took a deep breath and looked at me. "Well, first things first. You wondered what it meant for your skills to be linked. I think this is your first demonstration of what it means. You say you picked the mushrooms without a purpose for them in your mind. Just so. The purpose existed! But it was not in your mind, instead it was recognized in the nascent nexus of your skills. 

"That is my belief, anyhow - that your discovery of a new healing agent would not have happened, if it were not for the two of your skills being linked. If past experience is a guide, it's likely just the first of many discoveries ahead for you."

This seemed like an awfully good lead back to the question I'd had earlier. "What was the one like?"

"Eh?" The Magister looked up from the notes he was jotting on a wax slate. "The one?" 

"Well, you said that in every case you know of except one, having linked skills meant a lifetime of great achievements. I hoped you could tell me about the one exception." The idea of being the second exception, of having this potential and not achieving what I should with it, bothered me a surprising amount.

In turn, the fact that it bothered me so much bothered me. I mean, one hour ago I hadn't even known that the skills on our status screens could be linked together. Now I felt an intense need to be as amazing as that implied. Or, perhaps, the need was to be amazing in the eyes of others? It was the first time I realized that my desire to meet people's expectations might not always be healthy for me.

"It was quite tragic," said the Magister, face grave. "He had such promise, it should have flowered over a long and productive life. Instead, he made a... a terrible mistake. Was it simple carelessness? Was it impatience? Was it arrogance and hubris? We will never know. But his mistake must not be repeated. Promise me that, young Rheen." His gold eyes pierced me with their gaze.

"I... I swear I will do my best, Magister," I got out through a dry throat. "Tell me, please... What was his mistake? So that I may avoid it."

"He... crossed the road. Without looking both ways. And was run over by a hippogriff-pulled cart."

"... Oh."

"Promise you shall not repeat his mistake!"

"Oh. Yeah. Er... I pledge to... look both ways before crossing the road. Forevermore." It did not quite have the ring I'd hoped for, but it seemed to ease the Magister.