The system was bullshit.
Dice’s hooves beat a steady rhythm as they fled the clearing, salvage in tow and in Kodak’s arms. He held the strange, noiseless baby tight, hoping that he wasn’t being too rough with it. The kid scared him, sure, but he wasn’t an awful enough guy to turn around and leave it behind.
He’d let the village sort out what to do, talk to the Wisdom about it at least. Besides... he eyed his status warily, his eyes drawn to the new title that was relentlessly pinging, searching for his attention.
He wasn’t sure he had the option of leaving things alone.
Congratulations! Acheivement unlocked: Lost, now found Congratulations, title earned: Surrogate
Lost, now found (acheivement reward): +10% bonus to tracking skills, +5 luck. You will find what you need, or what needs you, more often. Surrogate (title effect): You have chosen to take on what someone could not. So long as you raise and protect your child, +25% learning speed to all caregiving and guardian skills, +5 to all stats. (WARNING: unequip pentalty!)
Equip new title? Yes No
Kodak had heard of people forced into taking quests or titles that the system seemed to have a strange interest in. But he'd heard of it in stories, it happened to heroes or in ancient history. Not to salvagers for small towns that barely made it through winter.
He tried to ignore the flickering of his system and considered muting it until he got into town, before deciding against it. It would be annoying and distracting but he didn't want to miss it if something changed.
He hoped something would change, and rode hard.
Kodak paced outside the Wisdom’s tent, holding the child firmly in one arm. It was a small thing. Cute too, now that it had fallen asleep. He’d been that way himself when he was young, the constant rhythm of the horses had been his father’s favorite trick to lull him to rest. He stared at the front flap of the tent as he paced, preparing himself for the answers that lay within.
His eyes caught on the strange objects the Wisdom hung by the entrance, hoops of metal with feathers hanging from them. His father had called them dream catchers. The wires that spanned the metal hoops were a constantly moving web. Forming new shapes, briefly coming together to evoke images, ones of his father’s face, then flames in a too familiar pattern. He winced. His dad had said that the dream catchers would show you what you dreamt of, so that you could face it even when you couldn’t remember.
His mouth formed a firm line. He needed no reminders. Besides, he was here for the future of the town - the future of the odd child in his arms, not his past.
He’d heard of towns nearby trying different methods of divination than their Wisdom liked to use, stranger ones to his mind. Tales of a village burning a fox and somehow gleaning the future from its corpse. He’d even heard an old story passed down of a place that would ask a young lad, he thought the kids name may have been Jeeves, their questions and would do whatever he suggested. As the story went, that hadn’t ended well for them. But he’d never heard of anything more reliable than asking your luck. Your luck wouldn’t give you what you wanted, but if you asked, it would guide you to what you needed.
Sometimes that was better.
Divinations that would give you whatever you wanted tended to be distracted, unfocused things that would slowly poison a Wisdom. They’d become lost in the deluge of information, indulging in pointless questions and answers every moment of the day. Constantly connected to their divining instruments. That’s the danger: too much information. Too much staring into the abyss. It would change you.
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Kodak sighed, he’d ridden Dice hard to get here and shouldn’t be wasting time like this. He felt bad for the old girl, but she’d get a treat and a good rest once they were done. He patted her absent mindedly with his one free hand and made some reassuring noises before he finally peeked into the Wisdom’s small structure.
He found her sweeping up just inside the canvas flap humming an old village song to herself as she worked. He cleared his throat twice roughly to make sure she'd notice, since she claimed to be hard of hearing these days.
“Ah, Kodak. How was the scouting?”
Her voice was like velvet and she grinned up at him with a smile that had most of its teeth. He remembered when it was the other way around, when he was just a boy staring up at her. Age had been kind to him that way, it didn’t hurt that it seemed like she was shrinking these days. Or at least hunching over more. Still, this was no time for reminiscing, he didn’t know what had been in that clearing but he needed to make sure it wouldn’t come here next.
He held out the child, still swaddled in its fancy sheet.
“I found this. I’m not sure what to do with it. Something killed its parents, and I need to know if we’re next.”
His voice came out gruffer than he’d meant it to. Colder.
She snatched the child from his arms, he was shocked by her swiftness and strength. She cradled it gently and dangled a gnarled finger playfully in its face. Despite the child remaining asleep, she seemed satisfied. She closed her eyes and smiled slightly before saying,
“She.”
“She?” He replied.
“Not it. She.”
Then the Wisdom slowly lay the girl down on the back table before spinning back towards Kodak. Intensity burned in her eyes as they met his, they were an intelligent steely gray and even as everything else about her aged they stayed young. They stayed fierce.
“Do you feel lucky? Boy…”
The word boy sounded almost disapproving, as the woman’s scratchy voice crooned out from within the tent.
There was a weight to it, something he didn’t usually feel from her. Not when she’d scolded him for stealing her freshly made cookies, or even when she told him how serious it was to choose to be a fire mage. No, he’d only heard this weight from her once before. At his fathers funeral, when she said the last rites. They were words heavy with meaning, but with magic too. Words that could move the world.
He gulped, then said the only thing that he could,
“Yes.”
Consent granted I'm feeling lucky! searching... searching... found!
He regretted it instantly, but what other option did he have? He didn’t know what to do with a child, and no matter what answers the Wisdom gave him that wouldn’t change.
He was barely a man, for all his survival skills and his fire magic. He realized the crone had the right of it, he was still a boy. He clicked his tongue, annoyance flaring up in him. His damn weak will! That was why it had taken so long for him to take after his father! Maybe if he had commited sooner then he would still-
No.
Those maybes led nowhere good.
He knew better than that now.
He breathed out slowly and looked back to the Wisdom, she’d moved to her side table. Her withered hands began to drag across an old board of matte black metal, pushing a silver circle to golden letter after golden letter.
S-E-A-R-C-H
T-H-E
C-A-R-R-I-A-G-E
There was a pause. He thought he saw the crone’s wrist twitch, but couldn’t be sure. Her presence in the room seemed to grow larger, more imposing. The small candle in the tent behind her rose up, throwing her shadow at him. The dark board started to glow and hum with a strange buzz. Odd blue light spewing out of its seams.
R-A-I-S-E
T-H-E
G-I-R-L
The hum reached a crescendo, the sound growing into a steady whir before suddenly the sound and light cut off. The lack of sound filled the air with the pressure of silence until the Wisdom gradually bent over, further than her usual hunch and began a slow wheezing cough.
The spell was broken, and so were his hopes. He muttered,
“I was afraid you’d say that.”