Coming back to life was not a feeling that many experienced. Certain incredibly lucky or wealthy individuals would be able to afford the service, where it can be bought. This was not the rebirth of a magic borne from humans though, and the process was different. Apparently, the ritual to be raised from the dead is painful, torturous and cruel.
Killian felt as though he was waking from the most luxurious bed. A feeling he had no reference for, but was enjoying all the same. He imagined someone coming to wake him, and he continued the fancy by telling them no. Then the person in his imagination poked him in the face, and reality got blurred.
Finally opening his eyes, groggily, Killian saw a fairy. He hadn’t seen one before to recognise it, but the silhouette was striking. A tiny frame, standing about a foot tall, with slender insectoid wings. A shock of red hair and a lazy smile filled out the creature’s features.
Giving himself a moment to convince himself that he had actually come back to life, Killian closed his eyes. Reopening them, the fairy was still there, if slightly more confused. Definitely alive, and definitely looking at a monster.
Growing up in Sanctia DaVaux, Killian had never even seen a monster, let alone spoken to one. It was a shame, he thought, that he’d start a new life and be killed straight away. Though as the seconds passed and his vitality remained untouched, his confusion only grew.
“Hello?” The fairy said, their poking was not getting the reaction they wanted.
“Hi,” Killian replied cautiously. “Are you planning to eat me?”
The fairy laughed hard at that, spinning over himself in the air as he doubled over. Killian noticed with some interest that the wings weren’t actually connected, they seemed to be made with magic of some kind. Killian started to get annoyed, the fairy was laughing like he was the punchline to a joke.
“Is it that funny? Monsters eat people.”
“Well, the nasty ones might, but I’ve never met a human before. I mostly eat fruit, anyway.” The fairy was clearly interested in Killian, but it’s attention was also stolen by every moving thing in sight. Killian looked around too.
He had awoken in a strange place. All of Killian’s life had been surrounded by stone and people and noise. The trees that surrounded him were quiet. They loomed and covered more than the squat buildings that made up the lower tiers of Sanctia DaVaux. It wasn’t quiet, but Killian was used to listening for information in a crowd. The chaos of the forest around him was intimidating in it’s novelty.
“Well, that’s good, I don’t eat fairies.” Killian took the chance to stand up, though his head spun a little. His display came back into focus and the world alighted with information that would have taken years to learn. The names of plants appeared as he looked at them, telling him names he’d never known before.
Most interesting was the small page of text that appeared next to the fairy.
-Creature-
|Fairy|
A docile race of nature loving tricksters. While no race can be generalised, these shepherds of the forest are rarely anything but jovial.
Disposition - Neutral
Killian’s general understanding had been that anything which wasn’t human was as likely to kill you as anything else. This information was startlingly different from what he and everyone he knew growing up thought of the “monstrous races”. The text and the fairly goofy being drifting up and down before him gave him cause to question that.
Philosophy would have to come later, as a new icon appeared in Killian’s vision. An envelope with a question mark on it. He focused on it, and a new page appeared.
-Quest-
|So It Begins|
The journey may have a thousand miles, but it starts with a single step.
To have power is to have freedom.
Before you can choose, you must first grow.
Objective: Find and attune to your first Aspect
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Yes / No
“Aspect? How would I even find one?” Killian asked out loud, not expecting a reply. Killian had heard the word in passing. Killian’s education had been rugged, painful and dangerous. Formal is not an adjective which would fit alongside the others, though.
-Help-
|Aspect|
An Aspect is a crystal, filled with a specific type of mana.
An Aspect bonds to one of your five attributes.
Aspects start at bronze rank and through use, can increase in rank.
As rank increases, so too does power.
“Oh. That wasn’t too helpful. Thanks anyway?” Killian realised he would definitely look like he was talking to thin air. The fairy was looking at him with a sense of curiosity and pity. As though Killian were some newborn trying to walk for the first time.
“Idiot? What’s that?” The fairy looked up and down, copying Killian. “Oh, that was helpful, thank you!” The fairy finished his copying routine and looked at Killian happily.
“It’s Killian, not Idiot, thanks. What’s your name?” Killian accepted the quest. It sounded like magic, and that was all he was interested in at the moment.
“My name’s Jol, why are you all the way out here, Killian?” Jol asked happily, as though conducting an interview.
“I’m actually not sure where here is. I sort of just… woke up here. Where am I, exactly?”
“You’re in the forest!” Jol said unhelpfully.
“Do you know which forest?” Killian had little hope of that, fairies probably didn’t even call things the same.
“That’s silly, Killian. A forest doesn’t have a name,” Jol spoke slowly, as if to be better understood. “A forest just is.”
Holding in a sigh, Killian smiled instead. A lifetime of keeping a situation passive was not an easy thing to shake. He agreed with Jol, and asked if Jol would like to join him. When Jol asked where Killian was going, Killian just chose a direction and started walking.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Killian’s clothes remained unchanged, he noticed gratefully. The boots he wore felt comfortable and familiar. His dark blue clothing looked cleaner than he’d ever had it, but the coat, shirt and trousers were his. Looking at the clothes, each piece of clothing simply said “Common clothes” with little extra information.
Genara had been honest when she said she couldn’t give him a boost to help him get started. He thought wistfully of some fine god-made magic staff that shot great fireballs around. Killian had once managed to sneak into a festival, and the fire mages had been particularly skilled. He assumed. They were brilliant to behold, either way.
He had slowly been working his way through the different icons and information that his Display afforded him.
His profile page remained unchanged. His attributes, Aspects and abilities all empty. There was an equipment page that showed in no uncertain terms that he was destitute. This page showed an outline of his body, with some room around it. Picking up a large stick, the large stick appeared in his right hand. The same happened with a stone, but not a leaf. It appeared, to Killian, to only be things that could realistically have use as equipment. He decided that made perfect sense.
The final page he had access to at the moment was his inventory. Not quite sure he believed what he was seeing, he had experimented. Anything of a certain size, which Killian hadn’t discovered an upper limit on yet, could be placed into his inventory. The items within were stackable. He found that having similar dimensions was helpful.
Looking, he had picked up around 10 sticks and 15 rocks. He simply had to touch them, while desiring to bring them with him, and the prompt for them to go to his inventory would appear. Killian was literally salivating, constantly having to close his agape mouth.
He was not necessarily a thief at heart, but the ease with which he could remove someone from their valuables would always be good to improve. With this ability, it seemed that he might just have become the most capable thief in the world. Possibly the best carrier of cargo too. There didn’t seem to be a weight limit to his inventory, instead there was simply the item limit.
Turning his back and making fake vomiting noises, Killian dropped the collected stones and sticks from his inventory. Jol, the only audience he had, found this incredibly disgusting and hilarious. That left a few assorted herbs and flowers he had picked, which he decided to keep, and the condensed mana from Genara.
Killian decided to finally sit and think. He had been walking, Jol floating along beside him, for hours now. The sun had dipped considerably and it was beginning to get dark. Jol, apparently, kept himself warm with magic, charged throughout the day by the sun. Killian wondered if he was already feeling the same effects. Realistically, the information from his Display, along with his inventory power were incredible magic.
Still, though, Killian thought stubbornly, it’s not the magic I’ve wanted to use.
Jol continued to pepper Killian with questions, which he was now wearily answering instead of the happily answering he had managed earlier.
“If you met a goddess, why did you leave? If you could fly, do you think you would be as fast as me? Why do you think your skin is less glowy than mine? Have you ever eaten a bug? Would you win in a fight against a really big cat?”
Killian answered each question, mostly with yes or no. He pretended to be stricken when admitting that a really big cat would probably beat him in a fight. Then, a thought occurred to Killian
“Jol, let me ask you a question.” Killian realised he should ask, “Do you know what an Aspect is, exactly?”