The rest of the day was spent drinking and talking with the other players, catching up on what information they’d already figured out about the game. The three of them were an odd bunch, the hyper Quick, reserved Fan and driven Magda. I guess when there are only five known players in the area you make due, their fourth had made for the legion camp yesterday to try and persuade them to return their support to the town. From what I gathered it was a bit of a mess, with the Legion soldiers being only a temporary station and wanting ships to return home while the townspeople were permanent transplants who wanted to fortify their town and wait out whatever was going on behind their walls.
Either way, without the Legion soldiers to ward off the elves they weren’t going to be able to utilize the old lumber camp. Even if they did get the soldier’s support the most likely scenario was that once enough lumber was retrieved to rebuild a small fleet they’d pull their support. I picked this all up from Magda who had seemingly laid claim to the town by helping the mayor and council make their decisions like getting the slaves to start digging for the wall. Either way it left me with a lot to think about, as I called it an early evening and made it up to my room. Ard was surprisingly absent after our talk outside, but I figured he’d show back up tomorrow.
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I woke up the next morning before dawn, stretching out in the too small bed pressed up against the wall in my room. My body protested at the early hour as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and forced myself to get up and get dressed, there was still a lot I wanted to see to while the town was quiet. Quietly making my way down I slipped past the kitchen servants out into the walled in courtyard, only to find myself beaten by another. Fan was already in the court yard this morning, stripped out of her armor as she practiced with a pair of short swords. Moving to the side I found a barrel to sit on and watch as I’d already been seen. The retired true pro was a marvel to watch as she ran through various forms that all seemed to blur together to my eye. As she finished with a series of high kicks and wandered to grab a drink of water I got a chance to look her over. With soft features and curious brown eyes she had an innocent look that made you think she was someone who needed protecting until you took in the rest of the picture, the knobby calloused hands of a fighter and lean muscular body that told you she could handle herself better than most.
“No one is usually up this early, and I don’t really want an audience.” She said staring at me over the top of her cup.
“Sorry about that, wasn’t planning on staying to watch but it was really impressive. I’m actually just about to head out.” I raised an eyebrow trying my best disarming smile. “Unless you feel like giving me a few pointers on fighting.”
“No point, I saw you fight yesterday.” She set the cup down, picking up her blades again as she stalked back to the middle of the yard.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I complained
“You’re twice my size, and honestly not nearly agile enough to do what I do. Look you want my advice? Stick with what’s working for you, you’ve got good fighting instincts, and a real savagery that’ll carry you further than trying to emulate me.” She stated matter-of-factly as she started in a new set of exercises.
I was a bit taken back by her last statement. “What do you mean savagery? So far all I’ve done is fight for my life and panicked the whole way.”
She stopped her exercises short, stalking over. “Is that what you think you’ve been doing, I watched you brain that manimal yesterday and stomp on the other to finish it off. Even if you didn’t notice it, I did, it probably didn’t even register to you. You just put down a threat and moved on, no hesitation. Look at the others, they picked things to keep them away from such things and you just waded right into it. You could have tried to back off when you lost your weapon, but instead you just kept going. Stick with what works, it’ll keep you alive.” Turning her back to me she walked across the yard to continue.
I was lost with my own thoughts as I forced myself to get up and head out to the street just to avoid making it awkward. I wasn’t a killer, I was just doing my best to survive, besides what does it matter how the things died. Her words kept rattling around my head as I wandered the quiet early morning streets. As I shook myself out of it I found I’d stumbled into a market street. Merchants were moving about in the slowly rising sunlight, setting up stalls and tents all along the broad road way. Strolling down I peeked inside at the various offered wares, all sorts of food, clothes and weapons were on display. Not surprisingly silk seemed to be popular, living up to the town’s namesake. Towards the end I found what I was looking for, a small dark purple tent with a flap open to the street. Inside were piles of books and tomes stacked upon each other, wandering in I started to look through the texts.
“Something I can help you with son?” came a raspy breathy voice from the back of the tent as an old bearded man rose from a chair hidden behind a large plank laid across stacks of books in a makeshift counter.
“Uh yeah, actually I was looking for magical tomes. I was told that you could use them to find you affinities.” I questioned, walking over towards him.
“Aaah, of course. You must be one of the newcomers, usually kids in the empire test their affinities as teens. Here give these a read.” He said in a jovial tone, pulling out a stack of books of various colors and sizes from a pile next to his chair.
Picking the first up I flipped it open and started reading, well trying to read at least. I could understand the words but every time I got more than a line in they all seemed to jumble up and slip from my mind. Setting it down I tried another, this one with an opal set in the cover. It was the same as I flipped through each book in the stack growing more and more frustrated each step of the way. Reading was something I loved and here I couldn’t even understand a single sentence. Setting the last down with a huff I looked up at the man who watched me with a curious look, his lips pursed tightly.
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“So what does this mean, that I don’t have any magic?” I asked desperately
“Well yes, or more aptly that you don’t have any of the base magics. A rare thing, usually everyone has one affinity that speaks to them. Let’s try one more thing.” He mused as walked back to pick through another pile behind his counter. “Here it is, try and give it this a read.”
Setting down a thick yellowed vellum scroll he gently spread it out as the dry hide crinkled under the movement. Leaning in a started to read the scroll, surprisingly it came to me easily enough, though it didn’t seem anything like a spell. It was more like a recipe, pigments, angels and a slew of other things all finished with symbol notated like a paint by numbers. The symbol seemed so familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it. Suddenly it came to me, the door down in the chitterer’s cave, it was the little hook ended x. Looking back through the scroll I pieced it together, the directions where on how to carve and color the symbol, along with just how to mix the pigments and what extra ingredients to add.
“I can read this one, I’ve actually seen that symbol before!” I exclaimed excited at the prospect of not being completely magicless.
“Well that is surprising, I don’t think I’ve seen a runic primalist in decades.” He slowly rolled the scroll back up.
“A runic primalist? If it’s so rare does that mean it’s powerful, forbidden or something?” I tried not to raise my voice in excitement too much.
“Hmm, what’s that? No no son it’s not forbidden or powerful it’s just frowned upon out and about in civilized nations, so most people don’t bother testing for it anymore. Not everyone wants to cutting themselves up to carve scars into their skin and carrying tomes full of humanoid skin around, and those that do don’t want to advertise it.” He gently scolded me.
“Oh…wait, humanoid skin? Like people and elves? And what do you mean carving scars into their skin?” I jumbled out my words in panic as my excitement turned to apprehension.
“That’s how it works son, primal magic is the first magic practiced in this world. It was cast through blood and raw emotion. Overtime the various races each refined magic into something much more controllable with incantations and potions. A few cultures stuck with the old ways though, gaining greater control in their craft by carving runes into their body and powering the spells through those. It’s a nasty business. I don’t even know why I still have this thing. Here take it.” He shoved the scroll of what I now feared was human skin into my hand. “Maybe out here on the frontier you’ll get by with it, but you’ll have to do it on your own. I don’t have anything else like that and the mages guild will kick you to the curb if you go asking them about it.”
I took the scroll, holding it gently like it’d crumble if I squeezed it to hard. Giving my thanks to the man I left at his insistent ushering. Wandering around the market I was left with even more thoughts on my mind, here Fan was telling me I had a savagery in me and the game seemed to think scarification and human skin scrolls were a good fit for me. Finding a bench near a small gardened tree I opened the scroll again reading through it slowly now that I knew what it was directions for.
Congratulations you have learned the spell primordial gauntlet! This is a level 1 scaling runic primalist spell.
Quickly pulling up my character sheet I found the runic pramalist skill on my sheet, though I couldn’t find the spell. Then I noticed a small tab on the bottom, focus on it a spell list swapped over in place of my character sheet.
Primordial Gauntlet: Forms a large clawed gauntlet over the casters inscribed arm providing a natural weapon, this gauntlet uses the unarmed combat skill. Cost: 200 Mana ongoing.
I had magic! Sure it wasn’t going to get me out of the fight more, in fact from the looks of my first spell it’d get me deeper into the fight, but I had magic! In fact, I think I figured out more than just magic, this game wanted me to be some primal savage and outside they wanted me to be a villain, well maybe I could give them a bit of both. Jumping to my feet I sprinted back to the Inn as the sun cracked over the horizon fully. Inside people were rising for their day, and sitting down to eat breakfast. Ignoring them I ran up the stairs two at a time, pounding on Ard’s door. The elf answered in a long night shirt, eyes still half closed in sleep.
“What, what do you want?” he mumbled as he leaned against the doorway
“Ard, how quickly can you offload your goods so we can head back?” I inquired still excited as things were starting to come together.
“Well I’ve got a middle man who I deal with in town here so once I give him what we’ve got and collect my payment for the last load I can go. I thought you’d be staying here with your new friends though.” He snipped under his breath at the end.
I was left blinking for a few moments at his comment. “Is that why I didn’t see you at all last night after we arrived, you thought I was just going to leave you here and run off with the other adventurers?”
“Well sure, why would you want to come back out into the woods with a couple of elves when you can be here saving a town and being a hero.” He grumbled on, sounding a bit embarrassed at being upset.
I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of how much the thought of me leaving affected him. “Ard, first of all. I’m not a hero, I told you I’m here for one reason only, to get things ready for the rest of my band. My friends, my actual friends and I’d like to think that we’re actual friends too right? Besides you and Tai were going to be my first new recruits.”
My smile seemed to catch on with him as he returned it, the sleep finally clearing from his eyes as the happy Ard I knew returned. “Damn right, best looking friend you’ll ever have. I can have everything off loaded and be ready to go by this afternoon.” He said excitedly, moving to push past me and get started.
I grabbed his arm for a moment, pulling him to a stop. “Ard, don’t you think you should put some pants on first? And do you think you could pick me up a few things while you’re offloading? I’ll make sure to pay you back.”
He stopped cold looking down at his bare legs before heading back into his room, throwing off his night shirt leaving him naked as a jay bird. “Pants, offloading and shopping. I can’t wait to see Tai’s face when we get back, he thought you’d stay in town too. So what’s the rush all about anyways?”
“We’re going back up the mountain, and I’ve got an old lumber camp to burn down on the way back.”