Tomorrow. 9 AM. Same time, same place.
That was what was on the note Qwyliss sent to Vlss, with no further explanation. Vlss was a bit peeved by all the cloak and dagger nonsense Qwyliss insisted on using, as it made any sort of contact inordinately difficult, but he had to admit that it had been useful for the past few meetings he had. He was starting to gain a reputation as an eccentric thinker, and if Seress told it true, stories about him were starting to spread, even if he was only known in them as “that drake with the funny ideas about leveling”. Vlss thanked his ancestors that his name wasn’t in them; stories about him weren’t exactly conducive to keeping a low profile. At the least, he had never brought up his ideas about leveling with his father, so he wouldn’t know that Vlss was in Zeres just by hearing those stories. When he told Qwyliss about all of this, his former tutor had immediately insisted on more covert communication and meeting in out-of-the-way places instead of more public ones where anyone could overhear them. As part of that effort, they had an increased level of operational security, hence the note.
Vlss folded the note in question and tossed it into the fire, watching it burn. He had nothing to do and nowhere to be in the next few hours, so he decided to look at the paper while it burned. If you asked him why, he probably would have responded with “Why does anyone stop to enjoy the little moments in life?”. But no one was there, and so he sat, seeing the flames lick at the paper.
He gazed at the paper, watching it turn from pristine white to earthy brown, curling at the edges. It was one piece, and every moment that passed, the paper had less structural integrity, until it was only barely holding itself together by one thread. The edges of the paper had already turned black at this point, with the brown moving in towards the center. The curling was so extreme that the paper had nearly folded in on itself. Then the thread snapped. The paper broke in two, causing a brief flare with sparks flying every which way. Then the paper settled deeper into the fire, the black moving in further with an ever-shrinking uneven circle of white. The pieces broke up even further as the fire ate away at the vital thread that kept it in the shape it was, until the pieces could not be seen as paper, but only as black flakes with the tiniest bit of white in the center. He saw small, tiny bits of the pieces flake off and move upwards with the warm draft up out of the chimney and into the night sky. He sat there for a while, watching the black pieces get smaller and smaller, until he could no longer see the pieces, until he could not tell the difference between what once was the note and the piles of old ash already in his hearth.
He swept his hearth after the fire had died down, scouring the ash from the stone worn smooth by the fire and the living around it, until it was no longer coated with soot and black dust. He slept that night dreaming of flames licking at his scales and warming his blood, while parts of him fell away and rose as dust, leaving him a black husk of what he once was.
___________________________________________________________________________
Morning came unannounced, catching Vlss flat-footed. He grumbled as he rolled out of bed, opening the shutters and letting the sunlight wash over him. After checking the position of the sun to make sure of the time, he threw on a tunic and rushed downstairs to get some breakfast.
The innkeeper looked up from washing his mug when Vlss threw 4 silver on the counter, the coins clattering loudly. He cocked his eyebrow, unamused. “I ain’t your servin’ boy, little lordling. You look like a fop in those clothes and you act like one too. Now what do you want?”
“You got any of that beef stew from last night?” Vlss was panting from the effort of taking the stairs down two at a time.
“You’re in luck, boy. Got some idling on the stove.” He went into the back and returned with a bowl of stew, steam rising off it in curls. He set it on the counter in front of Vlss. “Enjoy.”
Vlss wolfed down the stew so fast he barely tasted it and offered a cursory “thanks” as he rushed out the door. The innkeeper looked after him, mildly bemused, and shook his head.
“Young people nowadays, always thinking that life happens elsewhere and not where they are.” He sighed and went back to polishing one of his many mugs.
___________________________________________________________________________
Vlss looked around the city center, searching for a sign of his former tutor. He’d cut it close, waking up as late as he did, but he rather preferred being in a rush to being half asleep for most of the day. He was not a morning person, as his father had found out after repeated embarrassments. Upon seeing Seress, he walked over to her, planning on asking her where Qwyliss was.
“Heya Vlss,” Seress turned around to face him. “You know where Qwyliss is? He said to meet him here…”
“I was just about to ask you the same question. You don’t know either?”
“Nope,” Seress shook her head. “His note just said to be here at this time.”
“That’s strange,” Vlss remarked, “You’d think someone who cares about punctuality as much as he does would be here by now.”
“And here I am.” Qwyliss’s voice made them both jump as it came from behind them. Vlss and Seress both whirled to see his grinning face. “I apologize for being slightly late. I had to avoid some of your father’s guards while coming here.”
Vlss’s blood went cold. “My father is here?”
Qwyliss shrugged. “Maybe. But I think that he’s just sending some of the household guards to every Walled City to search for you. I don’t think he’s actually here right now. Last I heard, he was in Salazsar negotiating his payment for help in some minor battles against Fissival. At the very least, I know he hasn't heard the rumors about you here yet. If he did, he’d be turning this city upside down.”
Vlss breathed a sigh of relief. “Ancestors, you had me worried there for a second.”
“Don’t let your guard down now,” Qwyliss warned, “Now would be the worst time for you to let something slip within earshot of anyone. Everyone here has somewhere to be and something to do, but the streets have ears. If anything makes its way back to your father’s guards, that’s it for you and me.”
“Right,” Vlss sighed. “I know that we were never really free of him, but for a while, it felt like we were, and it would have been nice to pretend for a little longer.”
Qwyliss nodded in sympathy. “I do too, Vlss, but it’s over now. You’re too notable for your ideas for us to meet in places like that cafe anymore. Come on, let’s go somewhere with less people.”
“Where are you taking us?” Seress glanced over her shoulder at something in the distance before turning back to Qwyliss. “It’s not anywhere dangerous, is it?”
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“No, it’s not dangerous, but it is a place where people know to keep their mouths shut on anything that happens or is said there.”
“Huh?” Seress tilted her head. “Why would they keep mum?”
“I’m wondering the same thing—oh.” Vlss’s face changed as he realized where Qwyliss would be taking them. “How long have you known about it?”
“About where it was? Since the day I came here. About who I was?” Qwyliss shrugged, “Since I was fifteen and I realized I liked your father and your mother as more than just friends.”
Vlss blinked. “I’m…not sure how to react to that. I thought they were just people who liked the same type of person they were.”
Qwyliss shrugged. “Most of them don’t really know what to think of me, to be honest. Some call me a degenerate, some envy me for being able to pretend I’m not who I am. Most of them just think I’m weirder than they are.”
Seress could no longer contain herself. “How could you not tell us?! Why didn’t you tell us?”
Qwyliss motioned her to quiet down. “I know you’re feeling a bit betrayed, but this really, really, is not the time or place for it.”
Seress fumed. “Fine. But you’re going to tell us everything when we’re there.”
“Of course.”
___________________________________________________________________________
The hallway was warmly lit, with the smell of lavender incense in the air. Vlss could hear moans in the rooms off to the side and the sounds of lovemaking wormed into his ears despite his best efforts to ignore them. He could see that the noise made Seress visibly uncomfortable and decided not to make a joke at her expense about it. He followed Qwyliss as they made their way through the building, and looked around when he entered the bar proper.
It was tastefully appointed, much more so than Vlss was expecting for an underground hideout that harbored the rejects society could not, would not, accept. The lighting was muted here; there was enough to see by, but it wasn’t so bright that you could see the scale crevices of the drake sitting across from you. The light was colored in muted yellow tones, and the furniture was tastefully carved Pallassian oak, all of which gave Vlss the impression of a quiet place where people could leave their troubles behind and unabashedly be themselves for a while. The patrons seemed to agree with him, given that they were talking animatedly about who they liked fucking and who they wanted to fuck next. For Vlss, it was a mild shock for him to hear about such topics discussed so candidly. He imagined it would be much worse for Seress, and one glance at her face proved him right. Shock warred with disgust on her face as she passed by the patrons. Qwyliss looked back at her, pulled both her and Vlss aside, and spoke in a low voice. “I know it’s a shock for you to hear these topics discussed so openly, but you need to keep in mind that they can’t talk about this in public like Drakes who aren’t Turnscales can. This is the most private place they can talk about these things in. So, I ask you to keep this in mind as you hear more. We clear on this?” Seress and Vlss both nodded. He smiled. “Good.” He walked up to the bar counter and slid 8 silver across the counter. “A Bloody Amentus for me and lemon water for the two behind me please.”
The barkeeper eyed him warily. “Coming right up sir.”
Qwyliss motioned for Vlss and Seress to join him at the counter as they waited for the drinks. As Vlss took his seat, Qwyliss turned to face him and asked, “”Do you remember what we talked about last time?”
Vlss nodded. “Last time we talked about Red Classes and a special subset of those that seem to transform the holder into monstrous things. That one got really heated and I’m glad no one else was around to hear it. It wouldn’t have been received well.”
Seress shuddered. “I’m never going to think about Classes the same way ever again after that conversation.”
“Right, so Vlss, what else you got for us today?”
“Classes again, but a different aspect we didn’t discuss earlier.”
“Oh?” Qwyliss leaned in closer, “Do tell.”
“Yes,” added Seress, “I’m interested too.”
He cleared his throat. “So, Classes and Skills lead to people being too specialized in their chosen field. They reach a high skill ceiling that can’t be replicated and takes a long amount of time to reach an equivalent level of skill.”
Seress frowned. “I don’t see how that’s a bad thing. Everyone should strive for peerless excellence in their chosen field.”
Qwyliss held up a hand. “Vlss thinks it’s bad because it increases opportunity cost. Is that right?”
Vlss nodded. “Yes, it makes the opportunity cost for every choice you make extremely high, sometimes irreversibly so. It makes everyone double down on their decisions and makes the sunk cost fallacy not a fallacy. No one thinks about changing or restructuring their life in a major way here unless they’re levelless, which is a real shame with how much lost potential there is.”
“I don’t think that’s too much of a price to pay for people reaching heights of skill they wouldn’t be able to otherwise,” said Seress.
“I concur. However,” Qwyliss looked around to see how many were paying attention to the conversation and was pleasantly surprised to find that no one was, “you don’t think the higher skill ceiling just means lost potential, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” Vlss answered, “It also leads to the idea of willful ignorance outside your field. It raises the skill floor. People think you need to be an [Engineer] to build trebuchets with blueprints when a person without the class could do the same thing perfectly well. It results in this weird environment of being hostile to learning outside your own field, especially if you might gain a new class from it. That leads me to another one of my points, the soft level cap is bad for us. Classes raise the skill ceiling to high heights that would take a long time ordinarily, and the soft level cap makes it so that only the truly insane or the long lived get to reach those heights. It’s an additional barrier to mastery that makes achieving true mastery in anything inordinately difficult, especially since your mastery would be bespoke to you and that makes it harder to determine whether you’ve achieved it..“
“Well, what does mastery matter anyway?” Seress asked, “it’s excellence most people strive for anyway. Mastery’s a far-fetched dream for most anyway.”
“Mastery is excellence,” Vlss answered, “You can master something while still knowing that you have more to learn. It’s the idea that you’re skilled enough in something you can consistently and reliably produce or reproduce something worthwhile and new in that field. Classes make that threshold of mastery higher, and the soft level cap means it takes a lot longer than it otherwise would to reach it. It discourages people from picking up new skills because they know that they will never achieve mastery, or that they will at the cost of leveling their main class.”
After he finished, there was a pensive silence. Seress was the first to break it with, “I still think that it’s a worthwhile tradeoff for bespoke excellence.”
“And I disagree with that,” Vlss responded.
“I think that’s enough for today,” Qwyliss broke his silence to interrupt the two before it could get heated again. “Vlss, thank you for sharing your thoughts today, it was most informative. I think we should leave off for that now though, our drinks are here.” As he said that, 3 glasses slid down the counter into Qwyliss’s waiting arms. “Now, I know you’ve not had lemon water before, but trust me, these lemon waters are unlike any you’ve ever tasted…”
___________________________________________________________________________
When Vlss went to sleep that night, he heard a voice in his head.
[System Conversationalist Level 20!]
[Skill Change - An Outside Perspective -> A Metanarrative Perspective!]
He sat bolt upright in bed as the truth of his existence crashed into his mind all at once. He clenched and unclenched his claws as he tried to process the crushing weight of his newfound knowledge. When it looked like his inner turmoil was over, he broke the silence with a voice laden with sadness heavier than the ocean he loved.
“Oh. So that’s how it is.”