“We do honest work here,” Esme said, heaving, then laughed, “or so we say to make it more bearable. Not like there’s any real dishonesty t’do round these parts.”

The clashing of stone upon a stake punctured her conversation. The blonde was hammering the fence around Eudora’s pen with the kind of care a clockmaker would attend to his gears. And with great effort she was measuring, testing, pulling on the wood, and, where she found joints that had slackened, driving in new nails with precise taps. Inside the cozy pen, hay had been stacked full and a water trough filled to the brim. Under a secured plank roof, Eudora the goat stared out and bleated with the lordly bearing of a sultan among her harem.

Cordelia was beginning to think the siblings cared more about the goat’s living condition than their own.

For her part, she was quite done with anything to do with honest work whatsoever. She sat on a stump, mouth puffed and face flushed. A sickle lay unceremoniously at her feet. But her breathing was the only thing laboring. For what it was worth, the whole ten minutes of it, she had been hay-making. That is, making hay out of grass. Cutting grass, in other words. Another deed to serve the goat.

In their defense - in the goat’s defense - pretty soon there will be no one to take care of it. And if the siblings were to be away for a few days, it stood to reason that they must guard one of their few food sources.

It was only such a foreign thing to Cordelia.

Nevertheless, she had offered to help, only to fail at it. Quite pitiful even for what she had called small steps towards getting used to the new world. And yet it was something she must do and in some minutes endeavor again. She saw it as preparation for living on her own, and if not by honest works then dishonest ones. But while the latter should be of no shortage in any place on earth with more than two people, she would sooner sleep in a barn with any goats than do unsavory work. Or she had told herself. As a sharp pain assaulted her back, she began to doubt her own conviction.

Once her lungs and heart had quieted their protests, Cordelia mouthed some silent words.

image [https://i.ibb.co/pJQgVTZ/CS-2a-2.png]

CORDELIA VON JORMUNGANDR

PATRON: Lord of Serpents and Deception

Orb Progression: 15%

Blessing: Shed Skin

Patron Quest: Gain the trust of the Maiden of God

RACE: Snakeling

Orb Progression: 0%

Alignment: True Neutral

Racial Ability: Snakeling Poison

Power Capacity: 5/5

Attributes:

Might - F

Masteries - F

Endurance - F

Spirit - F

Perception - E

Charisma - C

Leadership - F

CLASS: Temptress

Orb Progression: <5%

Title: -

Power: Silver Tongue, Forked Tongue, Ethereal Beauty, Detect Holy, The Favored (Privilege)

As per routine, a tablet rose out of the unconscious darkness to the realm of true vision. Its appearance was as foul as murder in bright daylight, as eerie as a corpse among the living. But it was harmless as far as the physical world was concerned.

She had no scruple in doing this, and had many times conjured the things since morning. The layout she had memorized, the meanings examined. The only reason to check it now was to observe the changes.

Even as muscles could be built, what the tablet displayed could be rewritten, enhanced upon. The problem was how.

The World Serpent spoke truthfully, it was an easy to understand system, governed by three main aspects: her patron, her race, and her class - whose each progress was marked by the filled content of the respective orb.

The simplest one, and the only one she could tell with confidence as to how it worked, was her patron.

Jormungand, Lord of the Serpents and Deception.

As of now, the only blessing she had access to was a chance-based poison, that may or may not work on humans, and against feys - the real threats - proved no usefulness.

Already the orb had been filled by the completion of her first quest. To develop this blessing, or perhaps earn more, was straightforward. She just needed to complete more of these Patron Quests.

Nay, not quite.

For that was an unhelpful description. A distraction tactic. An elusion of truth.

Refer to it as what it really is. Quests are much too benign-sounding. Missions misleading. The right word should be misdeeds. Nor did the Serpent ever omit this truth in their first meeting. The first of her quests had been telling: “Earn the trust of the Maiden of God.” For what reason but to exploit, harm and betray that one must deliberately earn the trust of a particular person?

It did not take a genius to guess at how one might gain the favor of the Lord of treachery and malcontent.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

And thus this aspect of her corrupted soul was utterly useless. For she would never pursue it.

The second was her race.

Snakeling.

She had no serpentine lower half, last she checked. But by all reckoning these aspects governed her all attributes. How strong she was, how adaptable to magic, and so on and so forth.

She did not know yet how to develop this orb, save for some dark inkling in her head that she dreaded to pursue.

And so, putting that aside.

The third aspect: her class.

The Temptress.

She dreaded the very name of it, what it omened, its provoking nature.

All the same, that it was a part of her nature now was undeniable. And so she must at least venture a look. Yet she could not make sense of it at all. Her best guess was that, as the limits of her body and spirit were governed by her race, what she might do with them lay entirely within the constraints of her class. And nothing else.

As of now the powers she may employ upon numbered five, not counting the useless racial ability. And as she looked deep within there were more hidden things, potentials unrealized. But how she might attain them in addition to what was already there, she had yet no idea.

The only clue was the number denoting her limitation below the racial orb. And so it stood to reason that the progression of this orb governed also the number of abilities she might get under the class orb. But then, what is the use of the class orb? She was at an utter loss.

Without any clear indication as to how she may augment these attributes, experiments remained the only option.

And sure enough, the haymaking had contributed. Compared to the last she checked, the class orb’s bright portion had grown ever so slightly. And yet it was no hopeful amount. For walking around the garden this morning had rendered her as much. And unless she should be content with walking all day and night, for several years, to fill the orb, she would best forget about relying on honest work for anything but living expenses.

She had an inkling of what might help.

“Esme,” she called.

“Yea?” the blonde turned. She had been telling an anecdote about one of Eudora’s many stealthy adventures into the woods. Interrupted in the middle of a lengthy remark of the goat’s wanderlust and its surprising tenacity in the wild, Esme looked full of misgivings, but she kept them to herself.

Cordelia watched the girl carefully while leaving her in momentary suspense. Then, “Had you a first love?”

This staggered Esme. And she stammered to keep up with the drastic shift in conversational topics. “Hah?... Why so sudden? Well, I suppose, it is a common thing among polite ladies, and whatnot, befitting parlors and pavillions, and all like furnished places, to discuss the tender subject...” And no goat. “But no, I haven’t that thing. Ever,” she said decidedly.

“Hmmm...”

Esme narrowed her eyes. “Well, experienced you it, that thing?”

She sat back, lifting her face to some vague spots above Eudora’s pen. “I wonder... there was this boy in my neighborhood. Sorta light of frame, vague of speech. Dreamy, you know the sort?” Esme nodded sagely, which amused Cordelia. “Well, this boy and I were what you may call friends. As friends are often playmates. And never did I think much of it. What I did think, or so believed, was that he was a sort of brother, an older sibling, see. Affectionate beyond what friendship warranted. But was it truly brotherly love? I have cause to wonder now. For it was not what I marked between you and Derrick. But far more solemn, at times awkward, betimes assuring, while a thread of tenderness and longing ran a course beneath the surface of crude jokes... What think you?”

“What I think,” Esme turned away, blushing, “is that it sounds most like love. Or at least the sort as told in the novels.”

“Hmmm,” Cordelia mused, “nevertheless, it is a bygone now. No real need to dwell on it, I suppose. Eudora’s sampling your hair.”

As the blonde entered mortal combat with the animal, Cordelia examined the floating tablet visible only to her eyes.

The class orb had grown brighter, and to be sure, by a significant amount compared to what walking and haymaking had rendered her.

Lies. Falsehoods. Deception.

All contributed to her growth as a person.

How warped.

And yet for all that it had been an improvement compared to honest labors, what afforded by the little lie she told Esme was far from enough. In the grand scheme of things, the whole breadth of the orb considered, it amounted to little more than a droplet in the ocean.

What had been the real deal, which contributed most to the orb’s brightness since she first beheld it in the World Serpent’s realm, was the lie she had told the night before. The greater lie, encompassing a whole fictional life, meant to deceive for purposes grander than for jest. She shuddered to think of what life would be like telling that kind of lie again and again.

But that this orb promised the usage of useful powers was true. She could see somewhat of them, lurking with enticing whispers at the edge of consciousness. For they were tangible abilities of clear purposes that might make her life that much easier, allowed for convenient means to sustain herself in a hostile and unknown world, or different ways to identify dangers and evade them entirely.

To control the mind, to deceive the senses, to attract attention.

All the powers to help her navigate the world with ease.

After all, living is not so simple a matter as just wanting to live. Though once she had thrown it away, she did not forget that even those of more fortunate lives would sometimes find their little places of happiness shattered overnight. Is it wrong then, to give in just a little, just enough so that the sufferings of her past life would not find her even in this place?

It is wrong, if such things are offered by the Lord of Deception, Lies and Treachery.

She shook her head, and took up the sickle. She was no fool enough to think she could outsmart a demon. Better to just not play the game in the first place.

She started. The tablet disappearing had revealed Derrick who had come silently. As he stood there watching Esme’s struggle to fix the stake, in full gleaming armor, the man seemed a stern god of war, at once terrible and admirable, in front of the goat’s veritable palace.

“You are still at it?” Derrick asked his sister.

The girl shrugged.

“Eudora will fare just fine. We must leave soon - something foul in the air,” he remarked gravely.

Esme’s face hardened as she beheld his. Silently she made for the house and her gear. And only then did Cordelia notice what she had missed during her concentration on the various experiments. The forest had suddenly gone quiet since who knows when, no more the sounds of the little creatures of the earth, the rustling treetops and even the distant brook. Something foul was afoot indeed.