The expansive wasteland of the Arctic Desert covered twenty square kilometers at least. With spring fully in season, the clouds would lazily float overhead with the sun making use of their aloofness to send warming rays of light to the ground, making glittering white snow in every direction when the sunlight would squeeze into openings between the occupied skies. Creating rays of light that looked like bridges into the heavens. Continuing until the ground meets the horizon. Majesty, at least before the six hundredth time making the expedition. Occasionally, due to the heat from sunlight, the ice underfoot would crack or nearly break into the glacier with you standing on the spot only moments ago. If watching your favorite color of paint dry on a fence, while random drive by shooting happen would be entertaining or fun to you then crossing this natural physical barrier to the sea would be a wonderful experience. Resentful, and cutting icy wind would try to work its way through your clothes to freeze whatever amount of skin it could find purchase on. Agatha and me both wore black cotton undershirts with multiple thick cave bear pelts stitched together to make trousers and jackets with dark brown fur hoods being moved aggressively by the merciless breeze at differing intervals depending on the season or the days weather of the walk. One of the few solaces to be had in the daily expedition was talking with Agatha. While she was slightly older than me, she had been out into the bigger world much more. Giving her a perspective lost upon all the new people surrounding me who had been trapped within the confines of our village. Between the crunch of snow underfoot and half yelling to be heard over the fluttering gust of wind Agatha spoke while breathing heavily.
"Today... you will be more focused on trying to connect with... the cold gales themselves, the ice... never lies."
Often times Agatha would get preachy when it came to the spirit of the cold or how important knowing tactics or stances or whatever she could come up with to "mentor" more efficiently. Even going as far as to say how conflicting elements like fire and water "are one in the same". Truthfully, my gut tells me she makes this small talk because if the only things we heard was the weight of the metal spears she carried in a wicker basket on her back for fishing, and the howl of the wind, we would go absolutely and completely insane. Maybe it was the fact I was exiting my teen years in my new body but so many unimportant things got under my skin. The randomness of these testosterone induced tantrum adjacent outbursts only making me more upset at myself for losing control, but I had no other way to outlet. Being classless I could never be so bold in talking with anyone let alone a trained killer no matter how well I think I know them.
"It's hard to focus on anything... when a leviathan could burst from the ice underneath me... at any moment." I spoke completely disregarding my own safety due to my rampant emotions. "It will be even harder to focus... if today's lesson... will be about dodging ...while on the run" she rebutted with a bit too serious of a tone for my liking. We continued on like this for nearly the entire death march if nothing else then just to defend against boredom.
After the jail sentence of bleached purgatory for the kilometers long hike, we reached our goal. A cave filled with ice reflecting the suns ray to create a breath taking light blue cathedral, with chaotic edges nearly approaching spikes yet, somehow nature demanded the frozen water to remain with no truly sharp points. Occasionally, the sun would be covered by the slow-moving clouds intermittently strangling the rays of light to hide the beauty of the entrance to the cavern. The opening descended at a natural yet steep decline carrying the echos of the water being beaten back by the solid ice that rose above the sea level. Walking down and through the cave for only about two hundred meters we were expelled onto a small beach made from the ice meeting the water line. Moving past the exit of the cave by a few centimeters.
"Come on you know the drill by now. Let's have that smooth brain work overtime. Chop chop" she said as she started stretching her arms over head and leaning to one side. Cheap shot by my own personal murderous nanny. "The next dragon we see I'm telling that you discriminate against his kind" I replied while moving a meter up the slope of the ice to be covered by the roof of the cave. sitting down and getting into my meditation pose knowing full well, we will never meet a dragon. "The fact you think dragons would talk to classless prey like you is… disheartening at best, ya know, your teachers are failing you." followed by a splash after a near perfect dive into the frozen waters. She couldn't even let me get the last word in to acknowledge SHE is my "teacher". before her one sided charge into the depths.
While knowing she meant nothing malicious by her jab I still stared solemnly into my lap while hearing "classless prey like you.." in my head over and over. In order to get my class, I have to hope that meditation will awakens it and the class itself will be something strong enough to free the work camp, or if nothing else then to help me take vengeance on our Drukon overlords. Using the same intent Agatha had showed me as the building blocks for magic I opened my stat menu,
Jayce Eclipse/drukon-human/18
Lvl 0
Classless
Occupation-less
hp
15/15 stamina 20/20 mana 45/45 willpower 20 wisdom 15 strength 10 agility 10
Given how long I have been classless all stats gained were due entirely to discipline and obsessive training. Most normal people didn't use or have mana since it was an unruly and chaotic agent of enslaving magic. Magic was less so one massive natural force rather a culmination of endless different concepts at play all at once. The key to manipulating this tornado of powers was not to. By that I mean you focus instead on singling out and having complete understanding of individual concepts instead of trying to force as much power as possible from the storms of magic that constantly surround us. This is still the easy part of starting the journey to a novice mage. Where this becomes complicated is that all concepts have different aspects, and pulling out more power from these concepts depends on the willpower of the caster. "Magic is shaped by wisdom and fueled by willpower" as Agatha would say. For example, if a compatible fire mage believed fire fueled destruction is the prerequisite to creation. Their magic would make it so. If their intent was to draw on that as an aspect of fire that's how their magic would show in the material word. They would be able to cast fire magic and life magic, with enough time and wisdom they would even be able to defy the laws of true fire and combine those concepts in a class combination to cast both schools of magic using spells which could force infernos to heal allies and destroy foes depending on who the caster deems an enemy. Accepting if I were to recieve a class thit would most likely be a spiritual caster class of some kind I have been training mind just as much as body hence why I was left to meditate rather then follow Agatha into the blistering cold waters.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
This time of introspection was meant to be used for me to connect with the 'spirit' of my body, mind, or world around me. Having not unlocked either my martial, mental, or spiritual class or my occupation, society deemed me as a waste of time and space. Most children had at least one class or occupation by the age of ten. Which they expanded upon with time and different class evolutions. Some classes you could discover by being in certain environments or conditions being met, some you unlocked by praying to deities or pacts with any of the ascended, but mostly they were based around what you practiced or developed. Classes are part of your being, not all classes are based in combat. However, all classes were meant to help in communal or individual survival which naturally meant they were primarily intended to at least assist in conflict. Most classes had a foundation of spirit, mental, or physical. Most martial classes had foundations in the physical aspects of strength, speed, endurance and agility. While mental classes were based more on governing a budding society or tactical application of the martial classed. Spirit classes as a foundation were rare and take the longest to appear naturally. Hence why I was left out in the cold to meditate, we both assumed that spirit must be the catalyst to my starting class since its taken this long. spirit classes were normally made through prayer or by pacts. However, the ones that come naturally through spirit are widely regarded as the most powerful and unique magic focused unevolved Classes. Classes evolve as you grow in level or conceptual understanding with magic, so just because one started a physical warrior class, doesn't mean you can't evolve or meet conditions to incorporate a mental class to combine them into something like a "martial officer" class.
Some classes you could only unlock by performing certain accomplishments, for instance a Draconic knight class could only be attained by surviving a breath attack by a wyrm, drake, or dragon. With the power of the class being dependent on the strength of the dragon that attacked you, and most conditional classes could only be unlocked when you are still classless, with some exceptions but they are few and far between. Some artifacts can give you a class to better match the items. No one knows how these artifacts came into existence or who created them. At least with the knowledge available to me now these questions remain unanswered. Some would say these would be the most valuable to someone who is ill fit for the class they choose. Normally this happens to people who meet conditions for a class but they don't match with the class on a personal basis. Depending on your class you can evolve to greater or different classes once a certain level threshold is reached. The only difficult part is getting your initial class. Classless are generally viewed as forgotten by the gods, or just simply expendable, nothing more than emergency food rations in the eyes of a starving family.
Which begs the question how the fuck do I not have one yet.
After what must have been half a day of meditating, a strong gust of wind brings the spray of the evil, bitterly cold salt water onto my face. Numbness of my nose past its breaking point became a scalding pain. Most classed people from this frozen environment get resistance or straight up immunity to the cold. Another reason why I need this gods damned class to hurry up and let me start my revenge. As my hands cup my face and I exhale warm breath, looking out to admire the many floating islands of ice ranging from the size of a horse to a multi storied building bobbing on the water. Only forty meters away from the few centimeters long nature made dock, the water began to disturb, rippling out in a massive circular pattern, the miniature waves causing the smaller glaciers isolated on the water's surface to bob up and down. Less than a second later the water surface broke again thirty-five meters from me in a straight line towards me from the first disturbance, standing up from my cross-legged position covering my eyes with my hand to protect from the suns glare from the reflecting sea line. I saw the culprit, a grouping of massive bubbles rising from the abyss of the deep waters, maybe two meters in diameter each. Again, the surface tension broke, twenty meters from me now, closer, in fact unsettling close. The frost covered ice under foot began shaking violently forcing me to lose my footing and stumble while standing. Reaching up onto the side of the light blue wall of the cave, I held myself upright as the sun was released from the cloudy sky for only a moment, staring into the now translucent waters. A bone white tail larger than any animal I've ever seen slipped underneath the glacier directly below me. A sound like glass being shattered by a cannon ball mixed with an earthquake was released. Loud enough to be heard for kilometers in every direction. My safe haven of a cove began to slowly creep out into open waters.
Eyes widening in horrible recognition I raced back, sprinting through the cave to hope I could jump back onto the bulk of the Arctic Desert before being dragged to sea with this frozen island. With each foot fall the reality of what would happen should the glacier be brought to open ocean with me still on it started to play out in my mind. None of those scenarios had me surviving as part of the itinerary.
Around halfway through the cave, time slowed to half speed as my line of sight began to quickly descend. Quickly glancing down, while putting more pressure underfoot from sprinting my leg kicked through a thin sheet of ice which cause a domino effect of breaking forcing me to free fall. As time sped back up, an intrusive thought came to the forefront of my mind. Not widely known fact about glaciers, underneath the water they are much, much larger then above. What used to be floor gave way to a lightless, black pit. With no other options I awkwardly nosedived, front flipping with arms flailing into the embrace of the darkness.