Welcome to Kelric 1_The Fellwood Saga

“I’m sure you don’t want to be here, but you’d best get used to doing things you don’t want to do. It will stand you in good stead the first time the goddess uses your mouth to laugh at an adept.”

An unknown vessel of Mhyrra to an unknown successor

6th Saril, Spring, 375th Year, 84th Era, 2nd Age (2 days later)

Nathan drifted in the fuzzy space between sleep and waking. As he drew closer to clarity, he pulled the sheet tighter around himself. Why would he want to wake up? He wasn’t in pain here. Wait, something about that thought… he… he wasn’t… in…

Nathan opened his eyes, then immediately squinted at the painfully harsh glare. It took his eyes almost two minutes to adapt to the light, which seemed odd. Especially given that the light wasn’t that bright in the end.

As he waited, he took a quick glance at himself with his aethereoception, discovering that he had both a soul and a spirit. Even his mind now followed the simpler design that he had seen in others, rather than its original tangle.

Once he could see, he took a moment to marvel at the mural of a desert painted on the ceiling. It was so detailed that it could have been a photograph. Then, he closed his eyes and relaxed back into the bed to luxuriate in the sensation of not being in pain.

He wiggled his fingers just to prove they existed, took slow, deep breaths just to revel in the feeling of air flowing into his lungs. Even the faint sensation of his heart beating in his chest felt incredible. There was nothing quite like six months of total sensory deprivation to make you appreciate the small things in life.

He stayed that way for a while, until a light cough drew his attention to the right. There, sat a middle-aged man. He had the same caramel skin and slightly off facial features as Mhyrra, though they seemed less… polished somehow.

“Good afternoon,” the man said in heavily accented nocturnal. Nathan’s gut told him it was an Albic accent, which was more proof that skills provided some kind of instinct.

“Hello,” he replied in the dialect of Albic that felt closest to right, “how… long have you been there?”

“Since before you awoke,” The man replied in perfect Summerwall Albic. “I have been waiting for you to wake so that I may inform the Lord Elder and his guests.

“Now that you are up, I will do so. There are clothes in the dresser and a bathroom through that door,” he pointed to a door on the left side of the bed. “When you are ready, you will find a selection of dishes in the main room.”

The man turned to leave, then paused and turned back, “Ah, where are my manners? I am High Initiate Marius Lerrain.”

“Nathan Fellwood.”

Marius nodded in response before leaving through the room’s second door.

As Nathan cast off the thin sheet covering him and tried to get up, he felt the world begin to slowly spin. He sat back down on the edge of the bed with his eyes closed.

“Nothing’s ever easy,” he muttered to himself as he got up again and made his way over to the dresser, one hand always on the bed or the wall for support. Once he reached the dresser, he took out a pair of trousers and a top which were both made from the same thin, white fabric as the bedsheet.

He could understand why they used that material. It was so hot that Nathan was sweating just from slowly moving around the room. Hoping that it was summer, he made his way over to the bathroom and left the clothes by the door.

The room was about half the size of the large bedroom, so it was still fairly palatial. It was decorated with stone of the same pale green and had another desert mural on the ceiling. After admiring the décor for a few moments, he moved further into the room to investigate the tapless sink.

As he moved in front of the mirror set over the basin, he got his first look at his new body. He had the same brown hair and eyes that he remembered from Earth. The same bland, kind of forgettable face too. But it was his face and he’d never take it for granted again.

With a bit of trial and error, he managed to get water to flow from the sink by tapping the small disc set into the stone behind the basin. When he touched it, a stream of water manifested in the air above the basin before swirling onto a second disc at the bottom of the sink, where it disappeared.

It occurred to Nathan, as he looked from the purple glow on the two discs of metal to the impossible flow of water, that for the rest of his life the first truly magical thing he had ever seen would be a sink.

Turning the flow off, he made his way over to the shower in the corner of the room. There was a large bath as well, but he figured it was best not to take too long.

A bit of fiddling later and he had another impossible flow of water falling on his head. There were two grooves carved into the metal disc in the wall, one that controlled the rate of flow and one that changed the temperature. Annoyingly, the temperature had been set to whatever the lowest setting was when he first turned it on. If he hadn’t been awake before, he definitely was after that.

Several minutes later, wearing the clothes he’d found in the dresser, Nathan slowly made his way into an expansive living room. A collection of chairs, sofas and tables were arranged around some sort of metallic hollow in the middle of the room.

There was a small library in the corner to his right with more chairs and a set of bookshelves, a kitchenette and dining area to his left and what looked like a lab or workshop in the far-right corner. The far-left corner was an open area of smooth stone, for some reason.

Looking around, he spotted a set of plates, loaded with food, on one of the tables in the middle. Not having eaten in literal months, Nathan set about devouring everything in sight. Some of the dishes seemed fairly normal, there was a selection of sandwiches filled with everything from not-beef to not-salmon.

There were so many seafood dishes that, even distracted as he was, he managed to register that they were probably near water. The weirdest dish he found tasted like curry and southern fried chicken had gotten married and then adopted a bunch of prawns.

When he was half way through the surprisingly good southern fried prawn curry, he heard Marius cough for the second time that day. Looking up Nathan saw a group of six looking at him with varying degrees of amusement.

Three of them he recognised as the most powerful of the people who had tried to help him. The strongest was indeed some kind of flying jellyfish. The fourth was obviously Marius, and the final two looked like young and old versions of Mhyrra, though only the older had the paper eyes.

“I don’t recall giving you a minor realm for a stomach,” the elderly woman, who was presumably Mhyrra, said.

“Yes, well, if you hadn’t eaten in six…” Nathan paused as he realised that none of the languages he had learned had a word for months, “in two seasons, you’d probably be quite hungry as well.”

Mhyrra laughed at that, though the rest seemed slightly uncomfortable. “Right then, I think it’ll be easiest if I handle the introductions,” she said as everyone sat down around the hollow.

“You know me, and presumably Marius, already. I’m inhabiting one of my vessels called Margret Almarin, and this,” she gestured to the younger version of herself, “is Violet Kesridge, her successor. Before you ask, no they’re not related. These are Lady Elder Maria Haelend,” an older woman in elaborate blue robes, “Ledal Ancient Dantor Elin of the fairies,” the jellyfish, or rather, the fairy, “and finally, Lord Elder Joseph Ashbourne, the man who summoned you.”

The old man Mhyrra was gesturing to, froze for a moment at his introduction, and looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Did you have to be quite so blunt?” he asked.

“Why Elder Ashbourne, don’t you know? Running roughshod over the intentions of immensely powerful beings is one the perks of being a god,” she replied. “But in all seriousness, what did you want to do? Spend half an hour dodging the issue only to end up doing what I just did?”

Nathan felt a brief flash of irritation from Elder Ashbourne’s disturbingly strong aura before both the aura and irritation vanished again.

Looking at Nathan the old man said: “I don’t imagine it will make much difference, and frankly I feel a little disgusting even saying it, but the only reason I performed the ritual which summoned you was because I was cursed to do so.”

“Ah yes, because now that my anger and frustration at being ripped out of my own reality and functionally tortured for two seasons no longer have a justifiable target, I’m sure they will dissipate on their own. Because that’s how emotions work,” Nathan replied, his sarcasm tangible enough to touch.

Elder Ashbourne grimaced and let out a heaving sigh. “I cannot even begin to understand what you have gone through, nor can I apologise enough for putting you in that situation. What I can do is ensure that your needs are met.

“As such, though I know you won’t really understand what this means at the moment, I would like to offer you a position as a beneficiary of House Ashbourne. There would normally be restrictions and stipulations involved, but in your case I will waive them. Which essentially means you will receive a sizable monthly stipend and political protection for so long as you choose to take it.”

“That sounds pretty good, honestly,” Nathan said. “But setting it aside until I can get a better idea of what it actually means, I really should be angry right now. Or distraught, or… something. I was ripped out of my world with no hope of…” He paused, and turned to look at Mhyrra. “I got a bit tunnel visioned when we first met, but I assume that going home isn’t on the table.”

“The ritual plucked you from a random world, I wouldn’t know where to send you. And filling a gap of knowledge on the scale of a potentially infinite multiverse would take more sentiment than exists in all the realms combined. Not even the Host could do it, let alone me,” the goddess answered with a shrug.

“Right. So, I was ripped out of my own world with no hope of return and now, sat in front of the man who did that to me, intentions aside, all I can think about is how much I want another sandwich,” Nathan said, the lack of any real concern in his voice exemplifying the problem.

The two elders both frowned and closed their eyes, and Nathan felt a pulse of mana from the fairy. Mhyrra, though, got up and started poking him.

He tried to fend her off but, in spite of her aged vessel, she was much faster than him. If anything, she seemed to find it funny. She finally stopped after nearly getting him in the eye.

“Well,” the goddess said, sitting back down, “there’s not a problem with your alignment.”

“That’s nice,” Nathan replied while rubbing his eye, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re incredibly annoying?”

“No, they haven’t.”

“Seriously? Why not?”

A massive grin split Mhyrra’s face. “Because, if I really wanted to, I could kill every living thing in all the realms with a snap of my fingers.”

“Is that a joke?” Nathan asked. Her grin just grew in response. “Oh… Well, that is a pretty good reason. You are still very annoying though.”

“It’s going to be so sad when you know enough about the world to be afraid of me,” she said, laughing.

Nathan was about to respond when he was interrupted by the musical voice of the fairy. “If you’re quite finished behaving like children, I believe Elder Haelend has found the answer.”

The woman in question looked surprised for a moment, as everyone’s attention shifted to her, before her face became a blank mask.

“When you first entered Kelric,” she began, “your mind was both collapsing and being torn apart by lightning. Elder Ashbourne stabilised you using regeneration magic. However, because you had no soul, he had to use your record in the ideal plane as the basis for regeneration.”

“Sorry to interrupt already, but I have no idea what the ideal plane is,” Nathan said.

“Right, that makes sense.” Elder Haelend paused for a moment before continuing. “Reality is divided into three planes. The material plane, which is what you see and touch and generally perceive as the world. The spiritual plane, which contains souls, minds and spirits. And finally, the ideal plane, which contains a perfect and complete record of all information that exists, woven from strands of fate essence. Mages with a high level in restoration magic can use that record as the basis for guiding the restorative process, which is what Elder Ashbourne did.

“While we were working to save you, one of the divination mages, people who can directly observe the ideal plane, came up with a theory that part of you was lost in the transition between worlds, causing your record to be incomplete. We could never prove it either way because your mind was so alien that we didn’t really know what was and wasn’t supposed to be there. However, now that your mind is essentially human, I can clearly see that you are missing many parts of your emotive and instinctive nuclei.

“What that means,” she continued, in response to a look of confusion from Nathan, “is that most of your emotions will be quite muted by comparison to what they should be, and under some circumstances they may simply be absent. It’s difficult to know which ones will actually be missing but, with a bit of luck, you’ll have kept the good ones.”

“That… explains a lot,” Nathan said. “Still, at least I seem to have kept sarcasm. That’s a win.”

“There is one other effect you need to be aware of,” Elder Haelend added.

“Oh, is there? I should have known. It always gets worse.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“One of the parts missing from your instinctive nucleus pertains to self-preservation. So, while you no doubt have a rational desire to continue living, you won’t have the instinctive fear of death that you should. It’s something that you’ll need to account for when you make decisions.”

“Great, so not only am I a psychopath, I’m also a lemming,” Nathan said, well aware that no one knew what he was talking about. “It’s stuff from my world, don’t worry about it,” he added in response to looks of confusion from the group.

“It isn’t directly relevant to your question,” Elder Haelend continued, after a moment, “but you are also missing a few parts of your motor nucleus. That will affect your sense of balance, hand-eye coordination and the ability of your eyes to adapt to changes in brightness. However, I can fill in those missing parts over the next few days. I can’t do anything for the missing parts that affect your personality. Since I don’t know what should be there it wouldn’t qualify as healing. Personality alteration is very much illegal, and for good reason.”

“Yeah, I had noticed the balance and light stuff,” Nathan responded. “Is there anything else I should know about?”

“There might be one other thing,” she replied after giving it some thought. “I don’t know how serious it will be. There’s never been a case this extreme. But you might find that your memories prior to today are fuzzy and difficult to access. Assuming your species has a similar developmental cycle to humans, you should have about twenty years of memories compressed into two days of existence sentiment.”

Nathan took a moment to check. He skimmed through his memory palaces, then checked the memories from Earth that weren’t missing.

“It is a bit slower than before, but everything’s still there, clear as ever. Maybe that’s because I have level ten enhanced memory.”

The group just stared at him in silence for a moment.

“Did… Did your world have a system as well?” asked Elder Ashbourne, sounding more than a little confused.

“No. My understanding was that high levels of pain, challenge and danger combined with my times ten multiplier to sentiment production caused me to level very quickly. Surely it shouldn’t be that surprising that I have several level ten skills and abilities.”

Elder Ashbourne leaned back in his chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose, and muttered under his breath, “Several level ten… I don’t know where to begin…” He took a deep breath and looked back at Nathan. “This would normally be considered an invasion of privacy, but would you mind showing us your complete status?”

“How do I do that? No, wait, I’ve got it.”

Much like every other aspect of the system, it just happened when he wanted it to. Rather than appearing in the back of his head, his status had manifested as a clear pane covered in black writing, reminiscent of a game menu. It felt like glass as he plucked it from its position, floating in the air, and handed it to Elder Ashbourne.

[Status]

Name: Nathan Emmanuel Fellwood

Age: 0

Species: Human (Void-walker)

Realm: Mortal

Level: 0

Strength: 4 (4/10)

Agility: 2 (2/10)

Vitality: 10 (10/10)

Tempus: 10 (10/10)

Scope: 10 (10/10)

Stat Points: 0 (0)

Achievement Points: 2

[Class/es]

3rd Grade Available

[Skills 8]

Aura Perception 1st Lvl 10

Language 1st Lvl 10

Mathematics 1st Lvl 10

Mana Control 1st Lvl 10

Memory Technique 1st Lvl 10

Multitasking 1st Lvl 10

Reading 1st Lvl 10

Visualisation 1st Lvl 10

[Abilities 9]

Echoes of the Barren Cosmos 1st (Innate)

Enhanced Aethereoception 1st Lvl 10

Enhanced Memory 1st Lvl 10

Enhanced Time Perception 1st Lvl 10

Insomnia 1st Lvl 10

Isolation Tolerance 1st Lvl 10

Lightning Resistance 1st Lvl 10

Pain Tolerance 1st Lvl 10

Trauma Tolerance 1st Lvl 10

Since nothing stopped him from opening his status in his head as well, Nathan took the opportunity to look through it. He had an age now, which was nice. The fact that it said zero suggested that it was an automatic reading from his history node. Maybe there was a way to change that somewhere, he’d never gotten around to looking through the settings menu. Something to investigate later.

The change to species was odd. The humans of Kelric were clearly different to those from Earth or he would never have had any problems to begin with. Maybe the two worlds’ species of human were similar enough that the system considered it a reasonable translation. The people he’d met so far seemed to back that up, fae and fairies aside.

The final change he found, ignoring the extra strength since he had already known it would be there, was that he now had classes available.

He didn’t know why, primarily because he didn’t even know what classes were, but he figured he could take a look at what was available before asking how they worked. That, as it turned out, was more effort than he could have reasonably anticipated.

Once he willed the class menu to open, he was faced with a list of classes that seemed almost endless. They were arranged into sets, most of which seemed to be based on his various skills and abilities.

Each one had dozens of first grade classes, all of which were bizarrely specific. Reading was especially bad. Not only were there classes ranging from Illegible Reader, which specialised in reading bad handwriting, to Upside-Down Reader, which was both self-explanatory and useless, but each class had a separate version for every language that Nathan could read in. That multiplied reading’s several dozen first grade classes to several hundred.

Thankfully, the second and third grade classes seemed to be less specialised. There were only half a dozen classes for each of his skills and abilities in the second grade, and only one each in the third.

Of course, there were dozens more classes that weren’t based on his skills and abilities. They covered a variety of things like dealing with fae, gods or just new environments. He even saw a set of classes related to producing more sentiment. Although, the third-grade class of that set might have been a bit of a mixed blessing if it was truly all encompassing.

After skimming through the list he had plenty of questions, but they weren’t a high priority. It would be ten years before he could take a class, and that was assuming that he somehow became ageless.

From what Mhyrra had said, it wasn’t overly likely. Fariel had never even brought it up. Still, at least the sliver of hope he had would give him something to do.

At some point in the few minutes he’d spent looking at his status there had been a short burst of mana, though he’d barely felt it. He assumed that it had something to do with the copies of his status screen that everyone present now held. They were each staring at their glass panels with various combinations of amazement and disbelief. Even Mhyrra seemed surprised. The only one he couldn’t read was the fairy, who was a floating ball of purple light.

After a few moments, Elder Ashbourne looked up at him and said, “I see you’ve finished your own inspection. I imagine your class list must be rather expansive.”

“You could say that,” Nathan replied. “I take it that most people would not have so many options.”

“Indeed not. Though you should be able to unlock higher grade classes without much trouble.”

“Not that it will be relevant for at least a decade, if ever, but what exactly are classes?” Nathan asked.

“Now that is a difficult question to answer,” the elder said, pausing to think. “How much do you know about sentiment?”

“It’s magical gubbins that the system uses to change us.”

“Well,” Elder Ashbourne replied, chuckling, “You’re not wrong. Sentiment is one of the five magical elements. Neutral sentiment exists everywhere, and constantly assimilates the thoughts, beliefs, feelings and perceptions of every living thing in a process called charging. This process generates various kinds of charged sentiment, which have the ability to warp reality. The system uses our training related sentiment to grant us skills, abilities and improved stats.

“Classes however, use different kinds of sentiment, the sentiment of ambition, passion and competence, to provide us with three things. Stats, class bonuses and class powers. I doubt I need to explain what stats are.” Elder Ashbourne paused, looking to Nathan for confirmation.

“I know the basics, yes,” he replied.

“Good,” the elder nodded. “A class bonus then, is a percentage boost to a given thing, which you receive per level. The bonus can be to something as mundane as skill at cutting vegetables or something as rule breaking as the sharpness of a bladed weapon. Naturally, the higher the grade of the class, the broader and more useful the class bonus will be. Class powers, on the other hand, are essentially just abilities derived from your class, though they work slightly differently.

“When it comes to the difference between grades, to greatly simplify the issue, the most significant divide is between the first three grades and the last three. The first three grades are referred to as the template classes. The reason is quite simple. Template classes take small parts of your sentiment and fit them into a pre-existing class template.

“This has two notable drawbacks. First, because not all of the relevant sentiment is used, the classes are weaker, providing smaller class bonuses and fewer class powers than a true class. And second, template classes tend to level slower.

“If a cook has a class that specialises in cutting vegetables, they can only level by cutting vegetables. On the other hand, a cook with a higher grade, more general class would be able to level by doing any cooking. It should be fairly obvious which cook will level faster. Of course, if you are wealthy and dedicated enough that you can spend all of your time cutting vegetables, then you can level at a rather extreme pace.”

“So how do the last three grades work?” Nathan asked.

“True classes, as they are called, take all of the relevant sentiment you produce, all of your drive and passion and skill, and fashion it into a small number of classes that are unique and perfectly suited to you. True classes, unlike template classes, are not just a compromise based on what you’re somewhat good at or slightly passionate about. They are a manifestation of purpose, of the things that give your life meaning. Though, of course, if you are missing even a small part of the three components of a class, you’ll never get above grade three.”

“How can you be so confident that I will unlock higher grade classes then?”

“Well,” the elder said, stopping for a moment to gather his thoughts. “Ambition is the most important component; without ambition you can’t train your stats and skills, let alone unlock classes, so you clearly have that. Passion is almost ubiquitous, everyone enjoys something. The issue most often comes from competence.

“We are not all good at what we love, and we do not always love what we are good at. In your case however, with the skills and stats that you have accumulated, in combination with your ten times multiplier to sentiment, you could easily become competent at anything. So long as you have something you enjoy, acquiring a fourth-grade class would take a few years of training at most.”

While not particularly applicable now, it provided Nathan a small measure of comfort to know that if he did, by some miracle, succeed in becoming ageless, the next step wouldn’t be nearly as difficult.

“I assume,” Nathan said after a short lull in the conversation, “that you also have a few questions for me.”

“Well… Not quite as many as you might imagine,” Elder Ashbourne said. “As incredible as your status is, it isn’t that surprising given the situation. There are two things, really. First, what languages do you speak?”

Nathan took a moment to order his thoughts before responding. “Nocturnal, obviously, all six federal tongues and every major dialect of Albic. I also know Sioran, every major dialect of Atlantean and most of Eternal. I don’t think I could speak those though, wrong biology. Oh, and I can read and write in all of them as well.”

There was a pause as the group processed the new information. “The combination of language and memory is as potent as ever,” Elder Ashbourne eventually said, “The Sioran explains where the aura perception and mana control came from. I assume that your ability to use those skills is quite minimal?”

“Of course. I barely know what they are, let alone how to use them. Although, I am slightly better with aura perception than mana control since I can compensate with enhanced aethereoception,” Nathan replied.

“I’ll see to it that you get training in that regard at some point. No sense in you having skills you can’t use,” Elder Ashbourne said, nodding to himself.

After a few moments, the elder took a deep breath and clapped his hands together. “Right. I would say this has gone far better than any of us could have reasonably expected. Unless you have any burning questions, I think we’ll leave you to your own devices. I don’t really recommend doing too much over the next week or so. At least until Maria fixes your motor nucleus. But, if you do want to go somewhere, let Marius know and he will accompany you, just in case.

“Oh,” he added, looking slightly awkward, “you… may notice that there aren’t any sharp objects in the kitchen and the balcony doors are locked. Once I get the all clear from Maria tomorrow, that will change. But for now, well, it doesn’t hurt to be careful.”

On that depressing note, everyone got up to leave, saying goodbye as they did. Marius, the last to go, turned to look at Nathan as he reached the door.

“If you need anything, anything at all, you will find a set of platinum discs in the kitchen. Hold your thumb in the center of the one marked summons and I will come.”

“Thank you, Marius. I think I’ll be alright for one day. At the very least I won’t starve,” Nathan replied, looking around at the large quantities of food that still remained.

“Indeed. Do bear it in mind though. And by the way, I recommend you check out the view,” the… butler?... said before leaving and closing the door behind himself.

With nothing better to do, Nathan headed over to the kitchen and quickly found four metal discs sat on a counter. The one marked summons he left where it was. He didn’t want to accidentally call Marius back for no reason. The second, marked lights, unsurprisingly, controlled the lights, allowing him to turn them on and off, and change the brightness.

The third disc was where things got interesting. It was marked fire pit and had two grooves carved across the middle, each with a small divot on the left end. When Nathan placed his thumb on the top divot and slid it across the groove, the metallic hollow in the middle of the room glowed with purple light and a fist-sized flame appeared in the air above it. Moving his thumb along the groove increased the size and heat of the fire, but Nathan quickly turned it back off as it made the already warm room even hotter.

When he pressed the second divot, just to see what happened, a ball of black fire appeared in the same place as the previous flames. It floated there, moving as if someone had recorded a fire in slow motion.

As he walked over to the middle of the room, he could feel the air getting colder. A grin spread across his face as he watched the slowly undulating tongues of darkness. Flaming shadow that burned cold was far better than a magic tap.

Leaving the cold fire going, in the hope of cooling the room down, he switched to the last control, which was marked curtains. He assumed, rightly as it happened, that it would control the massive curtains which covered the wall between the open space and the bookshelves. When he tapped the dip in the middle of the disc, the curtains opened to reveal a set of large, floor to ceiling windows and the aforementioned balcony door.

More importantly though, they revealed the view beyond. He could see why Marius recommended it. Row upon row of descending towers stretched into the distance before him, eventually levelling out into a sea of buildings surrounded by an immense wall.

Beyond the wall everything was so far away that it all blurred together into an endless vista of blue, brown and grey, continuing on forever. The one thing that stood out from the mess was a towering grey pillar which Nathan could only assume to be a mountain of truly ridiculous proportions.

As he took in the impossible, seemingly horizonless view in front of him, the grin that had formed when he found the black fire grew until it started to hurt his face.

“Perhaps this isn’t all bad.”

Status