I stood in a small classroom, while I waited for one of my students to bring me a flashcard. Their face was blurry, and indistinct. Their clothing, and even gender would change at random. When I was handed the white piece of cardboard, the child spoke a word that sounded garbled to my ears. Apparently it had been correct, because I knelt down and gave them a high five.
Once they had returned to their seat, I checked the time on my phone. Like the word on the card and the faces around me, what it actually said didn’t matter. It was time for a break. The television in the corner was playing one of the children’s favorite cartoons before I could even reach for it. I was tempted to sit down and watch it with them, but I needed some coffee, and I’d have to hurry if I wanted to finish it before the class started up again.
When I stepped through the door to rush to the teacher’s office, I was outside, walking down a busy city street towards nowhere important. My home, probably. That’s right! My girlfriend was coming by today. She wanted to teach me how to cook some of the food from her hometown. I turned to go into a convenience store. Maybe I’d buy some of those little ice cream cups she liked for our desert.
I went inside and stood in line while I waited for the train to arrive. The metro was always packed this time of day. When it finally pulled into the station, I politely shoved my way through the people exiting so that I could board. I knew there wouldn’t be any seats available, but hopefully I could find an empty corner to sit down in.
There was a sound. Someone was calling for me. I turned, and was standing on the edge of a forest near a white wooden house with a large tree out front. An orange colored stream formed a boundary for the yard. I knew it wasn’t a normal color, but we lived near a coal mine, so I was used to it.
A noise behind me made me turn. Flock was perched on one of the lower branches of the tree. It was a robin, but I knew it was actually flock. She kawwed. Respawn day was coming, and I had to get ready. I needed prepare the defenses. I rushed to the backyard, and into the tool shed to find anything that might help.
I woke up.
Even asleep, I had been vaguely aware that I had been dreaming, but not quite lucid enough to consciously think about it. I hated dreams like that one. They weren’t nightmares, but they didn’t feel like my own. They were like someone else’s memories had been squeezed together, pulped in a blender, and then shoved into my head. It didn’t help that they occasionally mixed in with parts of my current life.
So far, the closest thing I had found to a pattern in what I could or could not remember was that the more personal it was, the less likely it was to be part of my memories. Proper nouns also seemed to be a problem. Sometimes the name of a story or song would float into my head, but anything important had been wiped clean.
I was fairly sure that anything that would have come back to me already had, so the remaining gaps were there to stay. My mind was not an open book though. Or maybe it was. Like an old photo album sitting in the attic until some external event reminds you that it’s there, a large portion of my recollections were gathering dust in the back of my mind because they had never been important or relevant enough to think about.
In some ways, the dreams were nice. It was good to know that my old life hadn’t been wasted. I hadn’t been someone, but at least I hadn’t been nobody. I still didn’t know his name or how he had died, but he had seemed happy while he lived.
But he wasn’t me. Not anymore. He was a template. A framework mindset that had helped me get started. Even now I relied on his knowledge, and I was thankful to have it, but I was Indigo and he was not. Half the reason I stuck to a female body was because I didn’t want to try and cling to the past.
Luckily, dreams being dreams, they faded quickly and I was more than willing to let them. Trying to dwell on my old life was futile at best, and an easy road to depression at worst.
Like most people, my days started with waking up. Unlike most people, I was waking up underneath my bed.
I wasn’t hungover, having been smart enough to eat my fill, drink plenty of water, and not fight the urge to vomit the night before, but my mind was still foggy enough that it required a bit of effort to remember how I had managed to use a bed incorrectly.
The second tavern we had gone to was a bit on the lower quality side, if I was anyone to judge. After another few hours of eating, drinking, smoking, and failing to hit on people that we were actually attracted to, we had called it a night. I may have been under my own bed as opposed to in someone else’s, but I’d still call it a successful outing.
Haylen and I never actually made it to the brothel. By the time we stumbled out of the tavern, we were both very much aware that paying for sex would be a waste of money. Most likely, we would have passed out before we had even done the deed. Instead, we paid a late night wagon driver to give us a ride back to the monastery.
From there, we had gone back to our own rooms, and I had…
“Crawled under the bed? But why?”
In a pinch, they were a decent place to hide from zombies, but I was fairly certain that even drunk me would have known that there weren’t any undead in Orlis.
There was a jingle from the bell on my doorknob, and I remembered. Drunk me had made the right choice. I was hiding from something much more terrifying than zombies.
“Indigo? Are you awake? It’s time to get up. I’ve let you sleep long enough.”
It was Haylen, here to drag me down to that deepest pit of hell known as “sword practice.”
“Shit! Don’t move. Maybe she’ll go away. And if she comes in, we’re already hidden, so as long as I don’t make any noise, I should be safe.”
The door opened, and I heard the foul demon enter my room.
“Double shit! But we’re still safe. We’re still hidden, and she hasn’t noticed we’re here.”
“Indigo, come on.”
Did she think I was still asleep in bed?
“Your feet are sticking out from under the bed, Indigo. And I can see your toes moving, so I know you’re awake. Don’t make me drag you out from under there.”
“Shitfuck! Haylen you beast! Why must you torment me so? Do you see nothing wrong with teaching a two year old how to swing a sword? Are you really so much of a monster that you’d willingly turn me into a child soldier?”
“Five more minutes,” I groaned. “Have mercy.”
Maybe I could stretch it out to ten. My heart wasn’t ready, and I’d need a lot of mental preparation before I could handle the upcoming torture.
“It’s already noon. And we’ll be eating lunch first. I think that’s more than merciful enough.”
Truly she was a heartless woman without compassion. But she had said that magical word, ‘lunch,’ and my willpower was overridden, forcing me to obey her commands. Despondantly, I crawled out from my happy place.
I was able to reassert a minor amount of control over the situation by taking a detour to the bathroom. Still, I didn’t linger or try to stall. That would only reduce the time spent on food, and would likely increase the amount of time spent being Haylen’s punching bag.
Lunch today was a fish stew, and for that I was grateful. My head might not have been throbbing from the night before, but my stomach was still a bit sensitive, and wouldn’t have been able to handle anything to heavy.
The meal ended all too quickly though, and when I walked out onto the practice field, Haylen was waiting for me.
Unexpectedly, she sat me down next to the racks of practice weapons, and started with a lecture.
“I’ll skip most of the usual speech,” she said, “because I think that you of all people already understand the responsibility that comes with carrying a weapon. So instead, I’ll get right to the details.”
She paced back and forth, and she spoke with the tone of authority. At first I was confused. Wasn’t Haylen still in training herself? Then I remembered that she was an officer in the militia, and that she had likely given this same speech to a hundred other people.
“There are as many fighting styles as there are swords. Techniques that work well with an arming sword won’t always work with a longsword. The same thing applies to if you’re using a shield, a buckler, a parrying dagger, or if you have nothing in your offhand at all. Some kingdoms, I have heard, have schools that teach a single fighting style and discipline. We will not be doing that. Standardized fighting styles are for people that fight with a standardized weapon against other people doing the same. That’s fine for a duel, but a complete waste for real life combat. Your sword is rather unconventional. Maybe somewhere in the world it is common, and there is a person who has mastered its use, but I am not that person, and you are not that person. We must start from the ground up, and find out what works best for you.”
She pointed at the wooden weapons stacked next to me.
“A live sword in the hands of an untrained person is a danger to everyone around them. Choose a practice weapon, and we’ll start working with that.”
After giving Snowflake its first few test swings, I picked out a wooden sword that resembled a rapier, but Haylen tossed it back on the rack after only a brief glance.
“Snowflake is a fencing weapon, true, but it uses the arm more than the wrist. Practicing with a rapier would only hold you back. Don’t pay as much attention to what the sword looks like, and try to find something with a similar balance.”
I looked back at the rack upon rack of practice weapons. If it was made of metal and could be used to hurt someone, the paladins had a wooden version of it sitting there. Narrowing down my options was easy, but it still took longer than I expected to find something that felt right.
Polearms? No. Shortswords? No. That thing? I didn’t even know what it was. Pass. Eventually, after much deliberation I found a relatively thin bastard sword that seemed to fit, although it was still heavier than Snowflake. Haylen gave it a few swings before nodding in approval and handing it back to me.
What happened next was, while not as grueling as I had expected, still a bout of strenuous activity.
The first half was relatively easy. I would swing, Haylen would ask me about the “feel of the motion,” and then she would make small corrections to my stance or movement. We really were creating my own fighting style, and she had me go through a dozen slightly different forms while she commented on what seemed best.
“There are hundreds of ways to swing a sword,” she told me. “Knowing how your opponent fights will help to counter them, but if you don’t understand how your own sword wants to move, then no amount of knowledge will be enough.”
Much to my surprise, the first hour of my lesson was enjoyable, and I spent most of it with a smile on my face as Haylen and I tested the various swings, thrusts, and stances that we thought would work best. If it had continued like that, I would have been looking forward to tomorrow’s lesson.
Unfortunately, the last portion of the training was everything I feared and more.
I would swing, and Haylen would correct me. Then I would swing again, and she would swipe my feet out from under me because they were in the wrong position. Then I would swing a third time, only to barely have time to dodge or block her own incoming strike. This was repeated ad nauseam until Haylen left me lying on the ground so that she could join Corlo for her own sparring practice.
I tilted my head in their direction when I heard the orc’s baritone laughter. Upon seeing my sorry state, he gave me a thumbs up, and I gave him a tired middle finger. This was apparently the appropriate response, because he smiled and laughed even harder before walking into the ring with Haylen. Whether he had delayed their usual bout, or if he simply spent that much time training, I neither knew nor cared.
I didn’t watch. Regeneration or no regeneration, I was tired, sore, and not at all in the mood to do anything that would require me to stand up. If I was in the way of someone who wanted to run laps, they could go around. I wasn’t moving.
Haylen was crazy. She didn’t seem to be a sadist who enjoyed my suffering, but she was still crazy. Anyone who could spend two hours knocking a person senseless and then go on to get knocked senseless herself had to be certifiably insane.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
* * *
The rest of the day I had to myself.
Part of me wanted to go out and help Kearse find whichever animals we’d be using to pull the wagon. I’d be useless for that, but it still sounded interesting. I also hadn’t seen him for almost a week, and wanted to know how he was doing.
Another part of me wanted to go see Mayra and find out if she had received a reply from her parents. At least with her there would be no shortage of things to talk about. I also wanted to sample some more of those pastries her maids had prepared.
In the end, I did neither. Last night’s drinking combined with the sword training had left me too drained. Now that I could leave the monastery again, I didn’t really feel the need. So instead, I spent the remainder of my afternoon digging through their small library.
The church had a larger one, I was told, but going there made me feel uncomfortable. The mages guild likely had another, but it was probably best if I avoided that place entirely. There was another library in the city, a big one, but they apparently charged a hefty sum for membership, and I didn’t feel like spending that much money on something that I’d only use once or twice before I left.
And thus, I found myself digging through the paladin’s rather modest collection of writing. It was decently sized for the time period, I supposed. I had seen smaller, but at the same time, I had also seen individual book stores that we large enough to be their own shopping mall, so it was hard for me to be impressed. It may have lacked in size, but it more than made up for it with the novelty factor. The entire room was about twice the size of my storage space, and everything in it was something that I hadn’t read before.
Why I hadn’t come here during my previous incarceration, I couldn’t say. It had been a stupid mistake on my part. I’d have my own books forever, but it might be a while before I had another opportunity to read anything “modern.”
“I may have to suck it up and get rid of my horns so I can check out some of the books at the church.”
I still wanted to look through some of the old expedition records. Unfortunately, there had been so much going on lately that I kept putting off all the reading I had originally planned on doing when I first came to this city.
But there was a problem. Most of the books in the paladin’s library seemed incredibly boring. I was already tired from my sword training, and attempting to read any of this would likely put me to sleep before I had even finished the introduction. I browsed the selection slowly, hoping to find something useful or interesting enough to keep me awake.
Genealogy, Heraldry, and History of the Noble Houses of Orlis? I didn’t need to know any of that stuff, and I’d be leaving Orlis soon enough anyway. If I decided to settle down here once the pilgrimage ended it might be worth reading, but that was a big if, and still far in the future.
I hesitated on Orlisian History: Myth or Legend?, but gave it a pass as well. It sounded interesting, but seemed a bit too advanced for me. I would need to learn more of the broad strokes of the Arlonian Empire’s history first. Reading something that debated which parts were accurate this early would just confuse me later on.
Paladin Orders of the Empire: Their Charters, Codes of Conduct, and Political Ties as of 425 IC was further proof that this library was curated towards people with vastly different interests than my own. I wouldn’t be surprised if Haylen considered some of these to be prime reading material.
I hadn’t even made it half way through the selection before I was about to give up, but then I finally found something that caught my attention. Scars of the Empire: A Dialogue on Their Boons and Banes. Dialogues were some of my least favorite forms of literature. They often got rather longwinded, and were frequently used to present strawman arguments. But the title alone had me hooked. Any discussion with a name that stupidly grimdark had to be interesting.
I immediately took it to one of the small tables sporadically placed around the room, and set to reading.
Like most dialogues, it had a small but diverse cast, so it could attempt to show multiple perspectives on a single issue. In this case it was five people, which was actually rather large, and consisted of a priest, a mage, a merchant, a scholarly noble, and a mercenary adventurer.
I chuckled at the introduction. Despite being an entirely fictitious conversation, the author still felt the need to list the characters credentials, as if their made up history would add more weight to their words.
Once the characters started talking though, I knew I had chosen the right book.
Scars, it explained, were places where the fabric of reality was still damaged from the Lost Era and the Ancestor’s downfall. At first I thought they were talking about the miasma and the necropolis, but the author was thorough, and made it clear that I had vastly underestimated how broken this world was.
Scars came in all shapes, sizes, and forms, it seemed. Maybe one was a valley where it was perpetually nighttime. Maybe one was a hill where gravity was twice as strong. Maybe one was a lake where all rain turned to blood. One thing common to all though, was that monsters were more numerous around scars than they were anywhere else.
By the books definition, the necropoli were individual scars, notable for following a pattern. The miasma, while also technically a scar, was often treated as being separate due to its size and danger.
The noble character lived far from any scars, and approached the topic from a purely academic standpoint. I supposed that he was meant to be the audience stand-in, since he was the one asking the most questions and directing the conversation.
The priest and mage frequently argued over the nature of scars, and whether or not they were evil things. The priest felt that they were too much of a danger to be left unmanaged, citing the miasma and necropoli as examples. The mage claimed that the miasma and necropolis were exceptions, and that most scars were only a danger to anyone foolish enough to go inside one unprepared.
The merchant saw scars as being useful, since they were the source of many materials that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Scars in bad locations might force his trade caravans to take a longer route around them, but he had profited greatly from their existence.
The adventurer had mixed feelings. Of all the group, he was the only one who actively went into the scars, and while they provided him with his income, he had also lost friends to their dangers. He believed that most scars were not active threats, but were still a danger to anyone living nearby.
“An interesting choice,” a voice behind me said. “Although, since it’s you, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Father Gregor was standing behind me, leaning at a slight angle so he could better read over my shoulder. Normally, I would have been more startled about someone suddenly appearing behind me, but I had vaguely sensed him entering the library. I had just been so engrossed in the book that I hadn’t bothered to pay any attention.
“What do you think of it?” he asked.
He came around the table and sat down in front of me. I hadn’t gotten to know him very well, and I’d barely seen him since arriving in Orlis, but his calm fatherly smile had a natural charm to it, and I was happy for the chance to talk about a book that I didn’t need to keep secret.
“Not bad. It’s surprisingly well written. Normally, books like this try to push an agenda, but this one seems more focused on actually explaining things. There were some references to places or other books that I haven’t heard of, but I’ve still been able to understand most of it.”
Father Gregor laughed, and shook his head.
“I’m glad that you approve of the presentation, but I was talking about the content. What do you think of the scars? You used to live in one, after all. Two, if you include the miasma.”
“Hmm… It’s hard to say. I lived in a necropolis, which this book treats as if it’s a different kind of scar. I agree with the priest, that necropolis need to be managed, but I don’t think they’re evil. Cruel and deeply wrong, yes, but it never felt sentient or aware enough to actually be malicious.”
He scratched at his beard, contemplating my opinion, and nodded for me to continue.
“For the other scars, I still don’t think I know enough to be sure. Things like scars show up in a lot of the books I’ve read, but those were all just stories. They weren’t real. They were just places adventurers went to become stronger and find treasure. This is my first time hearing about scars, and until I see one for myself, I think it would be hard for me to separate the fiction from the reality.”
Father Gregor sighed, and leaned back in his chair.
“It’s strange,” he said, gazing off into the middle distance. “The Ancestors are our history, but their lives are almost unimaginable for us now. It’s almost ironic that they believed ours to be just as impossible.”
I didn’t respond. He wasn’t talking about me, but his comment was too accurate. I was somewhat used to this world. I had long since stopped thinking about how weird it was to wake up and go outside to kill zombies. But over the past few weeks, I had constantly been reminded of just how impossible this reality was. And if Father Gregor could see my old life, he’d probably think the same thing.
“Speaking of scars,” he said, bringing us both back to the moment, “I have something for you. A few things, actually.”
He reached into his robes, and pulled out a folded sheet of vellum parchment.
“This is your salvage permit. I’d recommend bringing it to the nearest church before you make any use of it. That way, they can have you in their records, and you won’t have to come all the way back to Orlis if you need to replace it.”
I opened it, and took a good look. The writing itself was a simple and straightforward declaration that I was legally entitled to enter and loot the necropoli, and that I could be held responsible for any dangerous items I brought out. There were several stamps and signatures on the bottom, and a large embossed watermark on the back.
“Finally! I’m gonna have be careful whenever I put this in my storage. If it ends up on the pile with all my other junk, it’s likely to get damaged.”
“And this, is your citizenship,” he said, handing me a small booklet.
“Citizenship? That easily?”
I hadn’t been expecting to get something like that until after the pilgrimage. In my old life, being made a citizen would never happen so easily.
“It’s standard practice for when we find someone who was lost in in the mist and can’t return home. Usually we give them regional citizenship for whichever kingdom or territory they show up in, but I was able to get them to make an exception for you. It’s only an imperial roads citizenship, but that’s still full imperial citizenship.”
I only understood the first sentence. The rest sounded like a lot of confusing bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo.
“Who’s ‘them,’ and what does ‘road citizenship’ mean?”
“Another department of the church. The nobles rule their individual realms, but the church is largely responsible for administrating the laws of the empire. When priests aren’t preaching, we’re usually pushing parchment.”
He pointed to the hand-sized booklet that I now understood to be a passport.
“Imperial roads citizenship means that you are a full citizen of the empire and can travel freely, but that you have no permanent home. You won’t have to pay any regional taxes, but you’ll likely be charged more at some border crossings or if there’s a toll to enter a city. Once your pilgrimage starts you’ll be given a writ of exemption, so that won’t really effect you until after you’ve completed your trip.”
“And if I decide I want to live in one place?”
“It varies between kingdoms and territories, but most likely you’ll only need to go to the local town hall and they’ll be able to guide you through the process of changing the citizenship. That may take some time, but if you’re living there it shouldn’t be much of a problem.”
I felt a headache coming on. Even as easy as Gregor was making all of this sound, legal stuff was always complicated. I could only hope that I didn’t end up having to deal with some fantasy world DMV equivalent.
He reached into his robes again, and I wanted to cry. There was more?!
“Lastly,” he continued, “a letter of introduction. This is more of a formality than a necessity. If for some reason on your travels you need to talk to someone important in the church, present them with this, and it will help you get a meeting. They may still refuse, but they’ll be more likely to hear you out. I doubt you’ll need it, but it’s still good to have.”
My head was face down on the table, and I didn’t even look at the paper as I reached out and pulled it towards me. Father Gregor ignored my lack of interest, and went on.
“Take good care of those. I know you’ve got a large storage space, so they’re unlikely to get damaged, but make sure you put them somewhere that you won’t forget about them.”
I nodded, having already planned on doing that, but it probably looked like I was rubbing my face around on the table.
Father Gregor stuck around for a little bit in order to catch up on how I was doing. Like Haylen, he felt a measure of responsibility for me, and wanted to make sure that I was adjusting to life outside of Peninsula.
We chatted about my first time meeting an elf, and the sword that Weland had made for me. We talked about food, the different meals I had eaten, and my opinion on Orilisian spices. We discussed the pilgrimage, the things I was hoping to see on my upcoming journey, and some recommended locations from Gregor’s own pilgrimage many years ago.
It was a good conversation, but when he finally left, I felt exhausted. Physically from Haylen’s training, and mentally from all the thoughts bouncing around in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about words like “home,” “citizenship,” and “when the pilgrimage is over.”
Two years was a long time, and I was confident that I’d have a better idea of what to do with myself by then. But two years was also a very short time, and despite having the opposite purpose, the papers on the table only served to remind me of how lost I really was.
I sat alone, staring at the documents, and feeling the minutes pass by, every second bringing me closer and closer to the future.
Finally, I stirred. I put the papers in my storage space, adding in that little extra effort so that they would appear on the desk I had in the corner. I was almost finished with the book, but didn’t feel like reading any more, and placed it back on the shelf where I had found it.
I was tired, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep any time soon. It wasn’t even evening yet, and trying to go to bed now would only result in me tossing and turning while my thoughts grew dark faster than the sky did.
“I think I’ll get dinner at a tavern tonight.”
Being around people would help clear my head, but eating with Haylen would only refocus it on the things I wanted to ignore.
* * *
It was an hour later when I finally set foot in a random tavern.
I had drawn it all out, taking my time changing back into an actual dress, strapping Snowflake to my waist, adjusting the angle of my hatmask, and even putting on a bit of perfume. I wasn’t planning on getting wasted again. Or getting laid. I just needed as much of a distraction as possible.
When I asked for directions to “a nearby tavern,” I frequently went the wrong way on purpose. I wasn’t in a rush, and I enjoyed the walk. It wasn’t until someone pointed to a building across the street that I ran out of excuses to wander and finally went inside.
It was rather crowded, but I soon had a small table to myself along with a mug of beer and a plate of breaded fish that was more bread than fish. My eyes were glazed as I ate. I had wanted a distraction, and it seemed that I was about to get one.
Someone had been following me. I hadn’t physically seen them, but with my third eye being left open, it hadn’t been hard to tell that one of the mental glows that represented a person just happened to have been taking the same aimless path that I had.
I took a bite of the fish, annoyed that my stalker was distracting me from enjoying the flavor. I gulped down a sip of beer, and watched a certain light move up the street towards the tavern. I glanced towards the wall, able to sense the presence on the other side as if I was looking through a window.
They stopped at the door, but didn’t enter.
“Well, what are you waiting for? I’m sure you saw me come inside.”
They remained in place for a moment, and I saw a second glow form next to them before the person moved, and took up a position across the street. The new glow stayed right where it was.
“Magic? Goddammit, Verdis. Are you trying to prove that you’re a total asshole? Because you can stop. Everyone already knows. At this point you’re just making yourself look like a dumbasshole.”
I sighed down at my food. Hopefully there would be time to finish it before shit hit the fan.
“Maybe I should just leave now. Or at least go outside and punch that person in the face.”
I took another leisurely bite of my food, followed by a casual sip of my beer. Outside, the magic was still there, doing its thing.
“Nah. Who am I kidding? Let’s keep going and see what happens.”