CHAPTER ONE [PART ONE]

The Citadel

103 Years Since the Citadel's Founding

Year of the Void-Scarring Talon, Month of the Egg.

“Good morning, Prospective Freelancer 3451!”

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I woke up again. Or became conscious. Or whatever you want to call the post-transitory period between being a living breathing thing and being data. My body was gone. It no longer existed.

Someone knocked on the door, a steady rhythm.

“Good morning, Prospective Freelancer 3451.”

It was only then that I even tried to open my eyes. I’d been holding them shut, still remembering the expectation of some horrid bit of pain. Whatever feeling I last had, I couldn’t remember it now. I glanced around. The room was a modest bachelor, sufficiently furnished but not all that spacious. Though it could hardly be called a prison, I still felt caged in, with only the window on the door to mark any sign of freedom.

The knock, once more.

“Good morning, Prospective Freelancer 3451.”

I stood up and gingerly walked over to the door. I tried looking through the window, but whoever was behind the door was invisible, or more likely, short. When I did open it, I saw a four-foot robot standing in front of me. Though, that didn’t seem an adequate categorization for the being, at least not in so far as a typical image of a robot goes. A golem would be a bit more accurate. Something unnatural or artificial, and I thought that without any offense intended. I stared, taking in every inch of the ‘golem’, nearly stunned into silence by the sight, until I remembered my manners.

“Good morning,” I replied, eschewing the obvious questions that came to mind about the origins of my greeter. I didn’t want to be a bore, plus I had a healthy amount of paranoia guiding my every word. What do you do when you wake up in a brand new world, with only the knowledge that you’re meant to be a god to guide you? Am I immortal? Can I be hurt? Is it best to keep the nature of my origins a secretive matter? “Don’t I get to pick a name?”

“You will be referred to by your processing number until you’ve completed registration with the Freelancer Academy of District 42 at which time you’ll be given a title.”

“Right,” I said, though I hardly knew what that meant.

“I trust your journey here was without any trouble?”

I didn’t answer him. Instead, I found my eyes gazing away from the construct and towards the mirror, and widening as I spotted my reflection. I wasn’t sure whether I felt thrilled or horrified. I wasn’t staring at a human.

“What am I?” I whispered.

“Pardon?”

“What are you?” I tried to recover. Questioning what they were probably made more sense than questioning what I was, even if I feared it’d be misconstrued as being rude.

“That’s a complicated question.”

“And probably inappropriate. I’m sorry. It’d be better to ask: who are you, and why are you here?”

“That is a much simpler question. I’m a freelancer undertaking a contract for the Union for prospective freelancer on-boarding. You should have been warned, but sometimes these things get overlooked. I’m here to help you get comfortable as you prepare for admission as a student of Freelancer Academy of District 42.”

“Freelancer Academy?”

It paused, as if unsure how to deal with that question. “The academy you were admitted to. The reason you’re here.”

I thought she’d said I’d be a god? There’s a pretty significant gap between student and god. I’d spent more than my fair share being a student already. Even so, I judged it best not to voice my demands at godliness.

“Right. The academy. Uhm. Do you happen to have a name, then? I imagine you don’t merely go by numbers, too?”

“My Freelancer title is Burst.”

“Burst?”

“Correct.”

“Is that usual?”

“In what way?”

“Is that a common name?”

“For whom?”

“Uhm. Your kind?”

“My kind?”

It was odd being on the receiving end of this sort of conversation. Usually I had the pleasure of making others feel guilty about asking after my origins.

“Sorry, I’ve never met anyone like you.” Or like me, for that matter.

“It is true, the qhimphal homeworld do not have artificial bodies, from what I’ve researched. Although, that research returned scant little. Very well. No, my title isn’t all too common for constructs, or at least those who were constructs before they were freelancers. I was fortunate to receive one that could pass as being independent of my identity as a construct.”

“Were you born a construct?”

“No one is born a construct, strictly speaking.”

“Then-”

“My apologies. But perhaps we should focus on the bigger picture? I appreciate your inquisitiveness, but there are much more interesting things to see around the district, particularly on this day.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I could sense they were tired of speaking about themselves. If they were a guide, it might not be all that unusual a line of questioning, which probably doubled how bothersome it was. That was assuming many of the other prospective freelancers were as clueless as I was.

“Shall I begin?”

“Begin?”

“Your on-boarding?”

“Oh. Sure. You have my complete attention.”

“Let’s talk about the next month until you begin your time as a student at the academy. You should be aware that in the second to last week of the month, you will have to take several examinations that will determine where you fit in at the academy along with choosing which path you’ll be placed in. If you’re not already certain, it’s not a bad idea to do some cursory research beforehand. You will also get to meet the other prospective freelancers both for your year, and for your representative house. On the last week of the month, there will be a few opportunities hosted by the academy for you to bond with the other students.

“Between now and then, you’re free to do as you would like across District 42, though we ask that you do not leave the parameters of the district until you have completed registration with the academy. Worry not, there will be plenty of activities around here to keep you busy, and the academy doesn’t frown upon independent studies or contracts if you need extra funding, of which, likewise, there will be plenty of opportunities within the boundaries of the district. You’ll find many other future academy attendees wandering the district as well, it would be a good idea to build connections if you get the chance.

“Your stay here has been paid for along with basic necessities such as food, aura, and furnishings. You’ll be transfered to one of the boarding rooms once you’ve finished processing. You will have a stipend above all that for entertainment purposes. You have also been provided a one of a kind Freelancer Watch. Make sure you keep it with you at all times. It’s been designed with durability in mind. You will be able to find all of this information, including specifics about local events on our district social channels. Do you have any questions before we move on?”

I only understood about a quarter of that. “Freelancer Watch?”

“May I?” they asked, gesturing to enter the room.

I moved out of the way, though still cautious. They walked over to the small shelving beneath the bed and pulled it open. They picked up a hard box and passed it over to me.

“Your Freelancer’s Watch. It should recognize your aura and open.”

I hesitated. Aura? Some measure of energy or mana or chakra, or whatever else you wanted to call it? Constructs, and I reminded myself looking in the mirror, anthropomorphic platypuses. Magic wasn’t all that unusual a possibility. I felt myself getting giddy at the idea. Then reminded myself about the bigger issue, Burst assumed I should know how to use aura to open the box. Did my people - qhimphals- know how to use aura? Was the capacity to use aura inherent in everyone?

“How do I…”

“Channel your aura into the box?”

“…Yes.”

The construct’s expression was impossible to make out, with only his words and its intonations giving me a glimpse into how they felt.

“Don’t worry, it’s simpler than you think. Your mind is complex. You move your fingers without much thought of the many intricacies of moving fingers, correct? It’s intuitive. Aura is much the same. Hold the box in both your hands, concentrate on it, imagine yourself shifting energy from your fingers into it.”

The explanation seemed too vague and I had a hard time believing it would work, but I had barely a chance to doubt Burst’s wisdom before the box unraveled, revealing the watch, which was more forearm brace than any watch I’d ever worn.

“Easier than I thought.” I must be a natural. Or a god. I’m supposed to be a god, aren’t I?

“Yes. Most everyone is capable of that much.”

“Oh.”

“Are you familiar with-”

“The watch? No. Well, I had something similar once, but, no, I’m not familiar.”

“I see.” They didn’t sound surprised. Giving up all pretenses of hiding my cluelessness was probably the smarter decision at this point. “It’s meant to be rather intuitive. The academy receives students from across the Known Infinite. It wouldn’t be doing it’s job if everyone needed individual assistance to figure out its watches. Give yourself some time to get used to it, and if you’re still struggling, I’ll pass on my contact info before the end of the day but I bet you’ll get the hang of it easily enough. Now that we have the important formalities dealt with, why don’t I show you around town? Are you dressed?”

I looked down and wasn’t sure whether to blush or not. I was ready to be forthcoming about my obliviousness but best not tell them I have no idea if qhimphals even wear clothes. I looked around and opened up the narrow-looking closet, hoping there’d be something to wear inside. If there wasn’t, I’d have to embrace immodesty and deal with the consequences of walking around nude when they came. Pray this wasn’t a world where public indecency would be punished via execution. Inside the closet, there was a plain white gel boxed within a transparent plastic-like container.

Burst waited a moment, as if gaging whether I recognized what I was looking at or not, before they’d proceed to explain. “It’s a symbiotic suit. Once you unpack it and make to wear it, it’ll change itself to match your shape. The symbiotic suit will connect to your watch, and you can choose the look of your recreational uniform from a limited selection from there.”

“Uniform. I thought I was done with uniforms.”

“You’re at liberty to wear what you will. The uniforms will make it easier to identify fellow students and can serve as beginner armor for freelancers. It’s better than what most in-transfers arrive with.” They waited a moment. “Will you try it?”

I reluctantly reached for the suit. I wondered if something had gone wrong in my transferring into this world. And this was a trap, and the trap’s pivotal moment would be my putting on the suit, forever indebting myself to something or another that had gotten their hand on me during the transition. Something had gone wrong, and this was the decisive moment where I should’ve been more suspicious - or at least had the will to act on such suspicion, for the will to be suspicious wasn’t something I lacked. I grabbed the symbiote, deciding that if my enemies had been this elaborate in trapping me, it wasn’t me being naive, but the world deciding to get clever, and those enemies probably deserved to be rewarded.

I grabbed it and nothing happened. Naturally, I had to remove it from its packaging first. Once I reached inside, the symbiote latched onto me, and I resisted the urge to pull back, though barely so. It wrapped itself around me quite snugly, the gel-like feeling turning to a solid sort of leathery-feel from sole of the foot to fingertip to neck.

“You’ll be fine without a helmet, correct?”

“Uh…”

“Sometimes the information we get can be off. Clerical errors and the like. And we don’t realize before it’s too late. Your info does say qhimphals should survive in this climate, but…”

“Wouldn’t I have died when I opened the door?”

“Your apartment is warded, of course.”

“Warded?”

“You’ll have much to learn,” it said, the faintest hint of resignation in its words.

That I did. “So. What do we do? Does our smart watch have that sort of information?”

“How did you get here in the first place without figuring out if you could breathe the air or not?”

“Well. I. Uh.”

“That’s alright, I know better than to pry. We do receive prospective freelancers from recently uncovered worlds, it’s just… you seem to know as little about yourself as you do about the world of freelancers.” They said nothing for a moment, as if waiting for me to clear things up, but I opted against it. I remained similarly silent. “Why don’t we experiment, then? You step outside, and we’ll see what happens.”

“That doesn’t seem safe…”

“Are you going to stay here forever?”

“What about my watch idea?”

“You can’t just look things up on watches. Magic has its limitations, they’re not genies. We have dictionaries and encyclopedias for that sort of information.” I wondered if genies were just a fictional thing in this world or not.

“Fine, fine. I’ll just step outside. I’m actually pretty confident that I should be alright.” I’d seen a duckbilled pink-furred figure when I looked in the mirror. An anthropomorphic platypus, I’d decided. There might’ve been some sort of creation process during the transferring and I’d forgotten about it after completing it. It wouldn’t surprise me that I’d think being a pink-furred platypus would be a good idea. Or maybe the world… this… game… knew that this was the sort of thing I’d ‘create’ inherently, and so, it adjusted accordingly. So be it, I’d lived long enough as a human, and I’d be content never seeing another one ever again.

In any case, my awareness of what I likely was in turn brought me some comfort derived from the vague confidence I had in anything duckbilled probably being able to breathe on earth. It didn’t say much for anything duckbilled being able to breathe on whatever this was - the Citadel, it’d called it - but it made me more confident than not. I stepped a foot out of the room, and whatever ward there was, I did not feel, and then I passed through it completely.