Amon was here to find anyone from his village, living or dead, but hopefully living. His first move was to go to the ruling district, meet with someone from the church of the healer, and ask about people from his town.
Amon had instructed Oscar to follow him but Oscar had run off after reaching the main gate. Amon couldn’t follow Oscar with his stamina and speed, so he let him leave. He considered telling the adventurers to watch out for him, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
Amon's first mission was to go to the adventurers of the town, the adventurers would recognize him and let him throw around some of his weight with the church of the healer. The Adventuring Society branch of the region was smaller than the branch of similarly sized towns, this was due to low density of magic in the region. Some of the adventurers in the region were given the specific task of defending Duke Reylan; there were three different parties that each spent about a week defending him.
During his stay there Amon’s father had ignored the adventurers, while Amon himself made friends with them, The building itself was as large as the town Amon grew up in. having five total stories, but much of the land it occupied was spent on a field, where either a bazaar would take up, or adventurers would gather both before and after a large adventure.
The building was constructed as a building surrounding a courtyard, having the main entrance being a gate set into the building itself, it gave the impression of entering a kingdom complete with the same greyscale bricks.
As a normal rank Amon had no way to sense the auras of things around him, however he could feel a sort of static electricity in the air, he felt similarly during the monster wave, however that felt more chaotic, less organized. To the adventurers of the area, or anyone that was an essence user, the guild branch would light up like a beacon. Across the street from the Adventurers society branch was the region's Magic Society Branch, which looked less like a fortress and more like a college campus, complete with different wings containing different areas for different types of research, experimentation and cataloging.
Amon entered the courtyard, and made his way to the main building, getting stopped multiple times on the way, enamored by the different essences, weapons, armors, and other miscellaneous magically enhanced curios. He stopped for longer than he thought he would at one of the awakening stone tables. He understood the way essences worked, every person could absorb three essences, magical artifacts that imbued a person with the magic of a specific thought, in his case might. After all three essences were absorbed, another essence would appear in front of you, a confluence. Confluences were supposed to act as a bridge between all 3 of them, Amon had considered a lot of different confluences, Might was a very common and flexible essence, according to Amon’s visits to the Magical Society over 15% of all essence users had the might essence, which didn’t sound like a lot, but there were hundreds of known essences.
The reason Amon had stopped in front of the awakening stone tables was because of what they are. Each essence awakens an ability upon absorption, however each essence can have a total of five. The way you get the other four is through awakening stones. If Amon could buy 4 of them, he’d have a full essence already completed. Awakening stones were similar to Essences, each containing the power of one specific thought. The closest to an Awakening stone he'd ever gotten before this was when he bit into one.
It was around a year ago, when Amon’s father had bought stew from the market. He heated it up, and then served a bowl for himself and one for Amon. When Amon had gotten a spoonful he hadn't looked at it, and accidentally bit into a hard rock. At first he thought it was a bone from the broth, however after looking at it, it was a small brown crystal, about the size of his thumb, he could barely see through it, by the time he realized what it was his father had taken it from him for himself. It was an Awakening Stone of the Feast, most likely the most common one there is, due to its simple requirement of just being good food in the area.
If he bought essences however he only needed to buy two, and he’d be Iron rank. Iron rank is the first time you’re actively considered magical, you just need to have 3 essences and your confluence, next comes Bronze, which is the height of normal people, if someone trains everyday to be fast, but has no essences then they will be about equally as fast as a higher Bronze rank that hasn’t trained their speed. Silver is when things go from human to superhuman, if a normal rank weightlifter challenged the weakest Silver Rank to an arm wrestle match, the weightlifter would lose every time. Amon had never in his life seen a gold ranker but knew about a few, meanwhile he didn’t even know the names of any Diamond Rankers. Along with power, ranking up also makes your life last longer, and it also progresses your proximity to a so-called “Perfect being” which as far as Amon knew just meant that when you ranked up you got more attractive. What Amon didn’t know is that it also slowly turned your insides into more of a magical complex then a physical body, instead of needing water, food or air, your body just needs mana.
Higher ranks mostly subsided entirely on Spirit Coins, Spirit coins were made out of crystalized mana, and had 6 different forms: Normal, Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Diamond. 100 Lesser Coins equals 1 Iron, while all the others are on a 10 to one ratio, meaning if you had 1 Diamond Rank Coin, it had the same buying power as 10 Gold, 100 Silver, 1,000, Bronze, 10,000 iron or 1,000,000 Lesser. A good rule of thumb is that the average job for any adventurer is going to pay them 50 of the coin of their rank. The meal that Amon was given yesterday was probably worth about 5 iron coins.
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Oscar knew that Amon would find the survivors better than he could. Oscar had no idea where to start, while Amon had a plan that he was explaining to Oscar, Oscar had tuned it out but got the idea that it was fairly decent. Oscar instead started asking around for the old battlefield. No one he asked knew it was a battlefield however they did talk about a meadow that was in the direction the book said the battlefield was in. According to the locals he would get there a bit before sundown, enough time to set up camp.
The journey to the Meadow left a lot of time for introspection, which quickly turned to self hatred. “Useless”, “Deadweight”, “Undeserving of life” were all self given titles. If only he was stronger, if only he was faster, if only he was smarter, if only he had an essence, if only, if only.
Oscar arrived at the meadow and quickly re-awoke, noticing a strange object in the sky. It looked completely alien to him, about 10 meters above the ground, threads of glimmering rainbow light forming in the air, dancing. It was utterly beautiful, it was the single most beautiful thing that he’d ever seen. He decided to not put up his tent, and just sleep directly below it, looking up at it as he fell asleep.
He awoke about an hour before dawn due to 2 objects falling from it, one landing directly on his stomach, it felt like getting punched. The two items ended up being glowing cubes, each being slightly larger than the palm of his hand, one was swirling with silvery light, there was always also one thread of red swirling around all the others, looking like a quick animal darting through a forest made of silver. The other one Oscar didn’t like looking at, it was darker than the night sky. It made him feel like if he fell asleep next to it, he wouldn’t wake up.
When he touched it Oscar felt something he hadn’t felt for a long time. When Oscar was a boy, his father trained him often for the new water ceremony. One of these tests involved Oscar's father pinning down a rabbit and handing Oscar the knife. 3 whole times Oscar returned home with clean hands, not having been able to kill the creature. Oscar’s father was never disappointed in him, always telling him that he could do it next time, and on the 4th time he was right. Oscar cried for days but his father never chastised him for crying, if anything he loved that he felt remorse for the kill, he kneeled down and put his hand on Oscars shoulder, and looked him dead in the eye before saying
“I’m glad you were able to kill the rabbit, but I’m even more glad at the tears you shed for it. We are not better than the animals, we are one of them, and we must respect one of our own. I still cry at every kill I make, and I make sure to treat the dead with respect.” Touching this cube made him feel the same as when he saw the rabbit’s pelt stain with the tell-tale crimson of blood.
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Oscar resolved to wrap it in a cloth before touching it. The feeling was still there, but it was muted, and as he put it in his bag, it faded almost entirely, like a murmur in the back of his mind. He decided to read from his book before heading out, he had a lamp but decided to use the silvery Essence he had, it produced a faint light, but Oscar had his eyesight trained since he was young. His father would turn around a painting, or a written sentence for a brief instant, and he would have to recite everything he saw, so his eyesight was better than most. He read “You have found two essences, Spear and Death, I’m confident you can figure out which is which. Return to Shran, and go to the Adventurer’s Society there, show it to the first person you see, and say “I found a death essence, I’d like to turn it in”, then when given the choice, choose to sell it, buy the Swift and Adept Essences for as cheap as you can” This was the most straightforward piece of advice the book had left for him ever.
Oscar rolled up his sleeping mat and hung it from the bottom of his bag, he had the rest of the food he had hunted before going to sleep, and then went back to the village, he was tempted to go back to sleep, but the Death essence scared him too much to turn his back to it, and he had already gotten what he came for.
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Amon had some money from his house, a bit more than 5 bronze worth, but he knew his father usually stored much more, several silver at least. He eventually did get inside the building, after considering buying pretty much everything he saw. When he got in he saw the party he had made friends with last time he was here, they were up a flight of stairs on the high-iron / low-bronze level of the guild. The levels of the building are all split up by rank, the bottom floor is the predominantly Iron rank area, Then its Low Bronze, High Bronze, Silver and then the top floor is reserved for Management, there were only a handful of jobs every month on the Silver level, so adventurers of that level usually just took a lot of bronze rank jobs at once.
Amon was stopped at the entrance by a bookkeeper who looked Amon up and down and then said “state your business outsider” Amon was quick to reply “I’m here to see those adventurers up there” “Ordinaries aren’t allowed up there, wait until they come down.” The bookkeeper said, not looking up, he then pointed at the chairs opposite him with the other end of his pen. Amon read the man's nameplate as ‘Hugh Mann’ Amon sat down and pulled out a book, he began writing in it with a pen of his own.
The adventurers didn’t come down for another hour or two, but when they did, one of them recognized Amon, and stopped to talk, which was good because Amon himself had been engrossed in writing down information in the book he had. Amon asked the adventurers to help him with the Church of the Healers, he didn’t explain the whole situation, just that he needed to throw some weight around, and having an adventurer by his side would help.
Amon didn’t know this but the one that stopped and recognized him, Agra, was a member of the church of the healer herself. She agreed to help him so long as he explained the whole situation on the way there, to which he complied, or at least tried too. He started crying after they were already on their way, he kept talking about how he regrets running, and how the one person left from his village hates him. Agra wasn’t properly equipped to deal with this level of emotional turmoil, however there were members of the church of healing that specialized in something closer to emotional healing, and Agra knew many of them closely.
Amon ended up spending the night in the church of the Healer. They had ample room for him, although the lodgings weren’t the most comfortable.
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Oscar made it back to the town in mid morning, Oscar eventually found the adventuring society branch, he went in and the bookkeeper asked him “State your business outsider” Oscar reached into his bag, pulled out the cloth-bound Death Essence, and just said “I found this, I’m here for the reward” The bookkeeper’s eyes went wide in recognition of the cube. He directed Oscar to a door near the stairwell, “There’s a lift over there, take it to the top floor.” Oscar became confused “Can I take the stairs?” Hugh’s reply was just to look at Oscar like he was crazy, and sure shrug and say “Do what you want”. Hugh soon learned that Oscar didn’t know what a lift was, let alone how to operate one. On his way to the stairs he got a few weird looks, as he was carrying the cube just out in front of him, in plain sight for everyone to see.
As Oscar reached the top of the stairs he looked over the railing, and saw all four floors below him, the open concept of the building allowing him to look down at everyone there, and a few people to look up at him. When he was young he got weird looks like this often, his skin color was a fair amount darker then the other people in the area, most people in the village had slightly tan skin, while he was best described as a deep sepia tone, his hair was a fair amount darker as well his eyes were best described not as hazel, but as copper, they had a metallic sheen to them he’d never seen in any one else’s eyes. His father taught him to braid his hair, one of the only things he taught him that wasn’t from the village. Come to think of it Oscar hadn’t bathed or washed his hair at all in days. He hadn’t considered it before, due to having many other things to focus on, but he probably looked the part of a man who lived in the woods. Also was this place organized by attractiveness, why were more attractive people higher up?
Oscar looked in a picture frame nearby and looked at the glass, trying to find himself in the reflection, after looking hard enough he eventually found himself, and he was just as haggard as he thought he would be, he took a sniff at his own underarm and wretched at the scent. He quickly realized whoever he had been sent to talk to was most likely very important, and decided to try to take a bath first.
His house didn’t have running water although he understood what it was, due to Amon bragging about it at school. When his family wanted to clean themselves they usually took a sponge bath, or a few times a week just bathed in one of the creeks of the area. Sadly he didn’t know any rivers or streams in the area so he decided to do the most embarrassing thing he could, ask to take a bath in a stranger's house.
“Can I take a bath in your house?” Oscar asked Hugh after descending the stairs, “What? No of course not, I don’t know you” Hugh replied. It was a shot in the dark anyways. “Just use the bathroom, there’s a faucet, use that.” Hugh replied after the moment of silence. One of the few non-camping pieces of gear Oscar packed was the sponge his family used. He took a sponge bath in the bathroom and changed into the singular change of clothes he had. It was a simple drawstring shirt and hempen pants. He forgot to pack a pair of extra socks, a mistake his mother would never have allowed him to make.
He looked in the mirror, and saw himself for the first time since before everything happened, he noticed that his eye’s while still had the same metallic sheen, the colors behind seemed much more muted, and tired. Oscar knew it was because of that day, the things he heard, the things he smelt, his knowledge that the people he loved were dying, and there wasn’t anything he could do. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even on Amon’s dad.
Oscar found great serenity in braiding his hair. While braiding he felt like he was one with the world, thinking about a lot but not remembering anything afterwards, his hair was past his shoulders, and he actually liked it to be a bit shaggy out the back, however the front of his hair was also just as long. He put his hair in a low ponytail, and then put the hair coming down in front of his ears into his braids, it usually didn’t spend too long on his braids, but he splurged himself today, making sure every move was practiced and deliberate, the opposite of his normal self.
He went back up the stairs, surprised no one interrupted him, he was in there for over 30 minutes. He opened the door at the top of the stairs and saw two guards posted there, when he flashed them the cube, they opened the doors, revealing a large room behind them, A woman was sitting at the desk, piled high with papers, with her hand to her head, it was obvious that she had not slept for multiple days on end. Before Oscar got to his own business he decided to inquire about what she was doing, the nameplate on her desk read: “Head of the Adventurer Branch: Bellan Orleth”
She didn’t look up from the paper she was writing on before saying “I’ll be alright, leave the Essence over there” she jerked her head towards a cleared spot on her desk. She rifled through her desk before lobbing a sack of coins in the desk. Oscar didn’t realize until now that he hadn’t said anything about the essence on this floor, he had no clue how she knew about it.
Before questioning it for too long he left the essence there, and took the bag of money, quickly opening it as he turned to leave. Inside the bag he found 50 Bronze Soul Coins, as he descended the staircase to leave and excited through the door, he was greeted by a market having been put up in the time he was inside the building. He asked around for the essences his book mentioned, purchasing the swift essence for only 10 bronze, the adept was a considerable amount more expensive, the cheapest one he could find was 26 bronze, only 14 coins left for him which was more than he’d ever even seen in one place, for his 16th birthday his parents had given him 1 bronze, which had lasted four months. One look at a fruit stand and he knew that living in Shran would be considerably more expensive than his village.
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Amon was leaving the church of the healing in the morning when he noticed Oscar leaving the adventurer society. He pointed him out to Agra, who walked up to him, and said “The survivors of your village are in the church of the healer, I can show you to them if you want.”