--- Lilian Weaver ---
Lilian was sitting at a table in Rumor's Mill and talking to a friend.
After decades of adventuring, and after she had had the bright idea to use a real picture of herself as the cover for her books, it was normally almost impossible for her to go anonymous in a metropolitan place like this.
Biomancy made it relatively easy for a person to hide by just changing their appearance, but unfortunately people knew that and had millennia to adjust to this. Many people knew divination spells that could detect what a person used to look like. This was very important for guards to be able to catch criminals, who could otherwise go into hiding far too easily.
There was a whole arms race about this, just as there was for lie-detection spells. Whenever law enforcement developed more sophisticated ways to discover magically disguised or altered people, criminals and spy organizations alike developed more effective countermeasures against them. Naturally, there was also money to be made in selling the less powerful variants of these spells to civilians.
Fortunately, Lilian had acquired an extremely powerful disguise talisman during one of her adventures. It had been used by Oruk's special forces during the Great War, and it made a mockery of modern divination spells. This allowed her to spend time in public without being swarmed by fans, and without scaring away people who realized that being in close proximity to Tonos' chosen could very well be dangerous.
When she wasn't anonymous, some places actually kicked her out because they quite sensibly believed that her presence might cause an incident. She understood their reasoning, but it was not like she had any choice in the matter. Besides, she was quite certain that the number of people that Tonos involved in his plots did not depend on her behavior. If she became a hermit, Tonos would still kill people as part of his plots, she just wouldn't be there to prevent the worst of it.
Unfortunately, it was quite difficult to get people to believe that. When the Interim Council caught wind of her presence in Northpass, they actually requested her to leave the city as soon as possible. She explained why that wouldn't help, but was ignored. So she decided to ignore them in turn. What were they going to do? Kick her out by force? That would be very likely to trigger just the type of incident that they were trying to prevent.
Of course, it also helped that she was ridiculously well connected, due to all the people she met in her travels. She mentioned to the Interim Council that she had expected Northpass to be much more hospitable to outsiders, since she recently talked to Nuala who said she really enjoyed the place. That had gotten them all to shut up. It seemed that the council still remembered well what happened the last time the Old Power visited their city, and thought that the arena of Kharn was not large enough. It was quite unlikely that Nuala would actually care if Lilian complained to her, but it was not like the council knew that.
So she had ended up with her disguise in place, sitting in Rumor's bar, with the council quietly tolerating her presence. Rumor was an old friend of hers and had no problem with her at all. But regardless of the quality of her disguise, Lilian knew that there was always one more factor to determine whether or not she would be recognized: What did Tonos think would make for a better story? So far at least it looked like her evening was going to be boring for once, but she knew well that Tonos might just be trying to lure her into a false sense of security.
Intellectually, Lilian knew that Tonos probably did not actually do that on purpose, and did not care at all what she thought of the situation. But emotionally, it sometimes felt cathartic to imagine herself in an antagonistic relationship with the god whose curse influenced her every waking moment.
In order to be better prepared for whatever strange event he might have in store for her today, she had chosen a seat in a secluded corner, with a good view of the entrance. She wasn't the only one to do so. Rumor's Mill was frequented by experienced adventurers, and virtually every table had at least one person watching the entrance, just in case. You could usually tell who in a party was the easily distracted wizard and who the vigilant scout just by their seating arrangements.
That was why she noticed immediately when Team Nundru entered.
Atrog was greeted by a large chunk of the bar patrons. She had read up on her most recent saviors, and while the rest of team Nundru was relatively unknown, their paladin had made quite a name for himself. He had been running with a group of older adventurers for years. When they retired, he started doing odd jobs and joined various other teams, but never for long. Most of the missions he took on were the charitable kind, with only a few very well-paying ones mixed in. When Galanys and Rania joined him more or less by accident, he apparently decided it was time to start a new team, and hired Balron as well.
She did not recognize the fifth person on their team, but from context that must be the shapeshifter Dov Shan. She looked like a strange mix of dragonborn, human and elf.
Lilian reflexively started thinking why they were here. Not as in "What motivates them to be here?" but as in "What narrative reason could Tonos have for making me meet them?". Few things in her life were ever a coincidence. She mentally went through a list of possibilities, and while there were a number of very concerning possibilities, none of them struck her as likely.
Only one thing did not add up. Why was her friend Maru here? She had encountered her entirely by accident this afternoon, and the two of them had decided to catch up with each other in the evening. That probably explained it. Most likely Tonos had arranged for the two of them to meet by accident, just to maneuver Lilian into this bar at the right time. In her experience, this sort of maneuvering happened quite often, and in this case she was glad for it, because it meant that there probably wasn't anything nefarious going on with her friend.
She waved at team Nundru, but was largely ignored due to all the other attention the team received. Fortunately, Rania the shaman noticed her and dragged the rest of them over. Through her keen hearing she could just make out the words "that Mysterious Stranger wants something, we should check it out" coming from the elf. She was impressed. That one had good instincts.
"Hi, I'm Lilian." She whispered to Rania once she was close enough that other patrons wouldn't overhear. "You saved me from that basilisk a few weeks ago, and traded me a potion for a Mystery Item. Please don't blow my cover, I don't want to have to sign autographs."
The elf looked surprised at first, but then she nodded at her once and moved to join her at the table. She did not exchange a single word with her teammates, but they all joined as well without asking any questions.
"Is that the telepathy I have heard about?" She asked.
"It is!" Rania responded with a smile. "It's great. Makes us look very cool and mysterious when we all just move as one without talking to each other."
Lilian had to agree. It was a subtle but striking effect. A team normally needed to work together for years before people knew each other well enough to pull off something like this. Knowing that they were actually talking to each other through telepathy made it somewhat less impressive. She could only imagine how disturbing it would be for their enemies if they could wordlessly communicate like this in the middle of combat.
"You must be Dov, correct?" She asked the fifth member of the team.
"Yes, I am. It's a pleasure to meet you. I've read your books, but unfortunately I don't remember anything about that. I'm amnesiac right now." The woman responded with a smile.
"Amnesiac, 'right now'? As in, you know you will get your memories back, and it doesn't concern you?" Lilian asked.
"That's right. It's a long story, but I caused the amnesia myself, and I'm going to be better than before once I get my memories back." Dov replied.
Well, that was a new one. Lilian met people with plot-induced amnesia on a regular basis. Tonos was fond of people like that, presumably because it made it easier to make the story work out as planned. But she had never met anyone who knowingly removed their own memories. It was a little worrying. What terrible hidden backstory could a person have, to take such steps?
"Allow me to make introductions." Lilian said, pointing at Maru, the tiefling woman sitting next to her. She looked very fit and was obviously well used to combat, but unlike Atrog and Balron she was dressed casually instead of being armed and armored. Lilian herself looked unarmed as well, but that was only an effect of her disguise talisman.
Being a tiefling was a medical condition that sometimes afflicted a child if their mother interacted too much with infernal energies. It could lead to significant physical changes. Maru had blue skin, as well as horns and a tail. In some cases it also affected the afflicted individual's magic. In less developed societies, the tiefling were often seen with suspicion or outright hatred.
In contrast, Orukian society was pragmatic as always. They actually considered the slightly altered way the tieflings' magic worked a minor competitive advantage instead of a flaw, simply because of the law of supply and demand. Their magic was different, so it was harder for them to master it because of a lack of teachers. But chances were good that if they did master it, they would find some niche where their magic was more efficient than anyone else's. By exploiting that niche they could sometimes get very rich.
Tieflings also suffered damage to their bodies. Infernal energies were quite harmful, after all. This was a big problem for the poorer among them. Fortunately for her, Maru lived in a country with widespread biomancy, and she earned quite well as an adventurer. Regular biomantic healing was not a great expense for her. She could have chosen to replace her looks as well in order to appear more normal, but she actually liked the way her horns looked and the blue skin matched her horns better aesthetically.
"This is Maru.” Lilian introduced her friend. ”She is a knight and a summoner. We met about a decade ago, when I got abducted by a devil-worshiping cult. She was one of the cultists. They thought that being tiefling would somehow make her better at summoning a devil, so they had her lead the summoning ritual."
"You were a devil summoning cultist?" Atrog asked, clearly concerned. Lilian was glad the man was only concerned and did not immediately jump to conclusions like so many heroes tended to do. She was pretty sure Tonos deliberately chose idiots to empower, because it led to more drama when people started fighting instead of talking things out.
"I was." Maru admitted.
"In her defense, she was a teenager at the time." Lilian added helpfully. "You know how impressionable those are."
"Yes, teenagers are the worst. I'm glad I never was one." Galanys joked.
"Me neither!" Rania added.
Galanys was probably trying to lighten things up by making that joke, and Lilian was glad for it. Devil worship was a serious crime, after all. Rania's response however was slightly concerning. It sounded much too earnest.
"It turned out that Maru did have a talent for summoning, but not in the way the cultists expected." Lilian continued. "She ended up summoning an angel. The cult did not last long after that."
"You summoned an angel?" Atrog exclaimed in surprise.
"I did. I was trying to summon a devil and I got an angel instead." Maru replied. "Best mistake of my life. Unfortunately I have never been able to repeat that. I can still summon weaker celestial beings, but not an angel."
"Still, that's very impressive." Atrog said. "And you were very lucky to get a merciful one, since you survived despite being in a cult."
Angels were very powerful, and quite difficult to summon. Their personalities were built from the benevolent and good parts of humanoids, but they still varied greatly in their behavior. Some of them were purely good and would not hurt a fly. Others believed that justice was more important, and killed evil-doers. A very rare subset of angels even believed that the ends could justify the means, and did not hesitate to kill innocent people in service of the greater good.
"Actually, that angel was not a merciful one at all." Lilian added. "It killed all of the cultists except for Maru. It even killed three of the hostages for 'having evil in their heart'."
After that, Atrog looked at Maru with new eyes. "That's amazing." He said. "You must be amazing. Surviving that is the best character reference a person could ever ask for."
Maru blushed.
"It was a lot of fun.” Lilian said. ”I don't think I will ever forget the look on the cultists' faces when she summoned that angel. Fun times."
She smiled as she remembered that minor adventure of theirs.
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"We may be remembering things differently." Maru responded laconically. "I seem to recall more screaming in terror, and less fun."
"Adventures are never fun while you are having them." Lilian responded sagely. "But they are fun to think about afterwards, when they are over."
Rania suddenly looked like she had slapped her, and Lilian did not understand why.
"In any case. I should introduce the others." She continued. "This is team Nundru. They saved me from a basilisk a few weeks ago. Atrog, Galanys, Balron, Rania." She pointed them each out in turn. "And Dov, who wasn't with them yet, when they saved me."
"Dov is very plot-relevant." Rania suddenly said. "She is a psychic dragon princess adventurer quest-giver who is a totally new species! That's a lot of specialness for one person."
Dov looked deeply embarrassed at that. Lilian was kind of worried. That description sounded like a Mary Sue, and those were some of the most annoying people to deal with, in her experience. Well, nothing could be done about it if that was the case, and maybe she was wrong, so she would give the woman the benefit of the doubt.
"A quest-giver?” She asked. ”Do you have one for me too? I have a backlog of open quests, but it never hurts to add more."
"Please don't encourage her." Dov responded dejectedly.
"Wait a minute." Maru eyed Dov critically. "I just remembered reading that a princess by that name joined a group of adventurers. So Rania wasn't joking and you are really a princess?"
"Yes." said Dov. "But please don't bow or anything. I'm here to be an adventurer and get stronger, so please treat me like anyone else."
"Right." Maru said, clearly conflicted. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, all of you."
What an unusually formal greeting. It looked like Maru was now no longer relaxed, because high nobility was present. Lilian reprimanded herself for not predicting this. She had encountered so much weirdness in her life that she sometimes forgot how social status worked among ordinary people.
Many of her acquaintances were sufficiently powerful that they viewed social norms as quaint little rules that they didn't need to concern themselves with. Her life experience had taught her how to schmooze nobility and fast-talk her way out of sketchy encounters with city guards, since these were everyday events for her. But meeting people over a drink, without some great calamity on the horizon, was a rare occurrence for her. As a result, her understanding of social norms was a bit off in these situations.
She should probably not mention to her friend that Dov Shan was most likely not the most influential and important person here. That role belonged to Rania Mortal, the alleged shaman and Perfectly Normal Elf. Unlike most people, Lilian was quite able to make out the capitalization on those words when Rania said them. She had talked to Rania for several hours on the day they rescued her. Lilian would not have made it as far as she had if she didn't have a finely honed instinct for detecting weird things and figuring out what was pretense and what was real.
She gave it about fifty-fifty odds that Rania was secretly not an elf but something absurdly powerful. She had tried to investigate Rania's background, just like she had done with the others, but she had found less than nothing. Even Rumor the bartender and information broker, who could normally be relied upon to know something about everything, had just said that as far as he knew she was a Perfectly Normal Elf.
In her experience, it was usually a good idea to just play along in these sorts of situations. In stories, a person who discovered a secret before it was the right time to reveal it often suffered a terrible fate. So regardless of the odds, the smart choice was to play along and act as if Rania was very definitely a mortal and a Perfectly Normal Elf.
If her team had seemed like the ruthless and evil sort, that might have been cause for concern. You didn't want an impressionable whatever-the-hell-she-is to fall in with the wrong crowd. But team Nundru seemed nice enough, and Lilian's instincts for detecting hidden traitors did not go off for any of them. So it would probably be alright to just leave Rania be and see what happens. Preferably from a distance, though.
Part of treating Rania like a Perfectly Normal Elf of course meant not paying an inordinate amount of attention to her. So Lilian decided to ignore the possibly supernatural creature in the room, and talked about the princess instead.
"Did you know that I met your parents?" She asked Dov. If she established enough familiarity with the woman, then maybe Maru would realize she was overreacting and start to relax again.
"I don't know whether or not I knew that." Dov replied, grinning.
It took a while for Lilian to parse that.
"Oh, right. The amnesia." She said when she realized it.
"That's weird." Rania added. "Why didn't you write about meeting them in any of your books? I read all of them, and you never mentioned it."
"I don't write about all of my adventures, some of them are secret." Lilian replied to Rania, then looked at Dov. "Your parents saved my life once. I returned the favor a short while later. I asked them not to talk about it because we both used a trick that I would rather not tell the public about. It's good to have some aces up your sleeve that people don't know about, just in case."
Balron vigorously nodded agreement.
"You can ask your parents about it the next time you see them." She continued. "At this point I think the secret no longer matters and it might make for a fun story if you hear it from them."
"Why does it no longer matter?" Balron asked. "It sounds to me like you are needlessly giving up an advantage here."
"Frankly, it's because I'm now strong enough that the trick I used back then would no longer be worth the effort to use. I know that the adventures I write about really don't show it, but I'm actually fairly powerful by now. I'm probably one of the strongest people in the city. It's just that this doesn't matter whenever Tonos decides that he needs me for a story. Divine intervention will ensure that I can't break out of my designated role as a side character.”
”On a related note, did you know that there is a species of moth that is able to eat spell books despite the magic in the runes?"
Everyone shook their heads.
"Neither did anyone else." She continued. "I was the first person in history to discover them. And the reason I discovered them was because they ate my spell book the night before I needed to defend myself from a bunch of cultists that wanted to abduct me. It was quite embarrassing to be defeated by three random guys with iron swords and not a speck of magic between them."
"Funny thing is, I'm not actually being yanked around by Tonos all the time. I just write about those parts of my life because they make the best stories. Whenever Tonos is not working to keep me weak, I can handle myself perfectly fine. One time I was 'rescued' by a bunch of amateurs who ran off without making sure that the other prisoners and myself would make it back to civilization safely. So they ran ahead, and I had to shepherd the others back to the city myself. Some cultists had apparently survived those amateur 'heroes' and tried to capture us again. They were not expecting me to put up a fight. It was hilarious and very cathartic to beat the crap out of them."
She smiled as she reminisced. "Good times. Anyway, when we got back to the city I gave those wannabe heroes a piece of my mind. One of them had the gall to try to bully me into staying silent, so I punched him through a wall."
"Luckily things have been getting better in recent years. I am starting to get the hang of what I need to do to change my role in the story Tonos is telling. It used to be that I was always the Damsel in Distress, and that meant I would have to be weak. But nowadays I sometimes get to be the Wise Old Mentor instead. I suspect Tonos is finding it more and more difficult to invent scenarios to de-power me, so if this keeps happening then maybe I will stop getting kidnapped entirely at some point. I can only hope."
Most of them were looking at her with a mixture of sympathy and amusement, but Rania looked shocked.
"Oh no! You mustn't do that!" The young elf said. "Wise Old Mentors always die! I thought you knew that!"
"That's a good point, but luckily there are exceptions." Lilian replied with an amused smile. "It's not that being a Wise Old Mentor automatically slates a person for death. Wise Old Mentors only die because their death is the most interesting next step in their plotline. I always make sure to have at least three major unresolved plotlines going on, so that this won't happen to me. For example..."
She reached into one of her bottomless bags and pulled out a strange mechanical device covered in runes, with a skull in its center.
"...I have no idea what this is, and neither do any of the experts I talked to." She continued. "But look at how ominously it glows and how many blinking lights it has, and notice how you can see strange new colors after looking at the center skull. There is no way this isn't important in some way. The best part is that I got this from a mad explorer who gave it to me with his dying breath while reciting an ancient prophecy.”
”Nobody else was around to hear it. This means that so long as I have this, Tonos won't kill me over something stupid like giving motivation to a new hero. If he did, then this perfectly good plotline would go to waste because nobody else knows the prophecy."
"And I'm not going to tell the prophecy to anyone else until I have become important to at least one other open plotline." She continued. "By chaining plots in this way, I can make myself too important to die."
Most of them were now looking at her like she was insane. She got that reaction a lot, and was well used to it. In her view, it wasn't insanity if it actually worked.
"Wow! You are so smart!" Rania said with clear awe in her voice. Even though Lilian was quite used to being called insane, it was nice to see that at least somebody recognized her genius.
"Is that thing safe to carry around?" Atrog suddenly asked, while pointing at the ominously glowing arcano-mechanical device in her hands that had almost certainly driven at least one researcher to madness.
"Um, probably not?" Lilian replied, a little embarrassed, and hurried to put the strange device back into her bottomless bag.
"Anyway," Rania began, drawing everyone's attention, "I learned something from you just now. So thanks for that."
She turned to Balron and said "You no longer have to hold back your mentoring! You just have to make sure you continue to have weird and interesting stuff prepared to deal with anything that comes up! That makes you interesting, and then you can be immortal!"
"Don't worry about it." Balron replied. "I have already prepared contingencies for the event that Tonos sees me as a mentor figure and tries to kill me off."
Lilian laughed at that, and so did Maru. None of the members of team Nundru seemed to find it funny, though.
"That wasn't a joke." Balron said, looking at her in confusion.
She didn't quite know how to respond to that.
She looked around and noticed that their discussion had drawn a lot of attention from people at the surrounding tables. This was far from the first time that had happened to her. Talking about story logic tended to attract weird looks.
"Oh gods." Maru said in embarrassment when she noticed the same thing. "We actually have evidence Tonos is involved. Please don't think we are crazy." She told the closest person watching them.
"Yeah, we are not insane. We had it tested." Lilian added helpfully. "It's just that she hears voices nobody else can hear," she said while pointing at Rania the shaman, "while I firmly believe that I have been chosen by a god to be his herald, even though he never talked to me directly."
Maru and Atrog both sighed and put their heads in their hands in perfect synchrony. It was kind of impressive, as if they had practiced it before.
Rania looked between the two, then told Lilian "Hey, you have the same effect on him as me!"
"Wait a minute." One of the onlookers suddenly whispered to her. "Are you Lilian Weaver?"
She feigned surprise and put on her pokerface. "Huh? Why would you think that?"
"She is known to be in the city, and I overheard something about books from you all earlier." The elven wizard said. "Can I have your autograph?"
"...Fine. But keep it quiet, alright?" She quickly signed the book he proffered to her and handed it back.
"Will do, and thank you for the autograph." He responded amiably. "I have no interest in getting involved in any of the craziness you get up to. In fact, I think I'm going to go to another bar now, just to be safe. Have a nice evening!"
He talked briefly to his friends, and then the whole table suddenly stood up and left. Some of them shot her nervous looks. She resolved to tip Rumor very generously to make up for driving down his business.
After that, they all talked and had dinner together. She had initially come here to talk to her friend, but Maru ended up talking to Atrog and Balron about their shared interests instead. It was mostly adventuring business, discussing their different preferences in weapons and spells. Lilian meanwhile talked to the rest of team Nundru, especially Rania, who was clearly a big fan of hers and wanted to know all the details about the adventures she hadn’t written down and published.
She was quite happy about that. If it turned out that Rania was secretly super powerful, then having her as a fan would be a lot better than most alternatives.
"Oh damn." Lilian suddenly interrupted the conversation she was in. She had just noticed something important. "I just realized that some of my plot insurance may no longer be valid now. There are three heroes who I have given advice to over the last couple of years, in a way where it would not be narratively satisfying if that advice suddenly cut off. So Tonos will be less likely to kill me until I have finished advising them. But the thing is, that might no longer apply because I'm from another universe and I don't know for sure if the version of me from this universe did the same thing."
"What." Atrog said flatly, interrupting his conversation with Maru, to the latter's clear disappointment. "Can you please repeat that."
"Oh, I'm from a different universe." She repeated. "It's one of the reasons Maru and I wanted to talk. To compare notes. Did we not mention that, yet?"
"No, you did not." Galanys said, with a very amused smile. "But don't worry. There are lots of things going on in your life, so I'm sure it's perfectly fine that a little thing like interdimensional travel would slip your mind."
"Now please spill the details." She added after a few seconds. "I really want to hear that story."
"I'm going to ignore the sarcasm because, to be fair, yes I probably should have remembered to mention that before." Lilian responded. "Shortly after you rescued me from the basilisk I started noticing lots of minor details that didn't add up. Some country borders on the maps I saw are different from what I remember. The slogans on Vherdes candy bars are different. Lots of little things like that."
The existence of alternate universes had long been theorized, but never proven. Some oddities of summoning and divination spells were best explained if one presupposed the existence of alternate timelines. A few people throughout history had claimed that they were from alternate realities, but none had been able to offer proof. Neither could she, for that matter. Her life was weird enough that the experts she talked to were not inclined to just take her word for it, not when memory modification was an easier explanation.
There was also the goddess Niphia of course, whose worship was banned in Oruk. The goddess of daydreams, fantasy and wish fulfillment was like the divine equivalent of a drug that made you feel good, but offered nothing of substance. Niphia. Not even once. Despite being generally useless to the majority of her followers, she sometimes empowered select individuals to absolutely absurd levels. Many of the empowered claimed that they were from another universe, where they died, only to be chosen by Niphia and resurrected to save Hyd from whatever danger was going on at the moment. Unfortunately, the chosen of Niphia tended to be some of the most deluded and crazy people around, as expected from her followers. Also, the power they gained usually got to their heads, and drove them even madder.
A few major inventions throughout history had been attributed to people like these, and they claimed that this was knowledge from their homeworlds. Unfortunately, it was impossible to know if that was the truth, or if it was just a delusion caused by Niphia, and the inventions were simply a result of their absurdly boosted abilities. Most academics assumed it was the latter, since every single one of them adamantly refused to act rationally and to just calmly talk about their origins. Instead, they acted like the worst of Tonos' cultists and treated the whole world as a game.
"What really convinced me that this is a different universe was that the guardian golem of Northpass is still standing." Lilian continued. "I asked if they managed to rebuild it after it got destroyed in the War of the Two Eagles. But they said they never heard of that. Turns out, a major historical event just never happened. So I went to the university to investigate. Stuff happened."
There had been that thing with the sapient monkeys and the necromantic noodles. But that had been crazy even by her standards and they didn't really need to know about any of that.
"Long story short, I think the portal of that mad mage in Athar sent me to a different universe." She concluded.
She was met by a deafening silence from team Nundru.
"I take it you have questions. So, yeah. Ask me anything."