I looked at the towers stretching into the sky above me. The sun was rising on the other side of them, casting a deep shadow across the endless line of people waiting to enter. I looked behind me to see if I could see where the shadow ended, but it trailed far enough that it stretched beyond the wall of magnificent blue sparks that we were all fleeing from.
I looked at those around me and saw that they, too, appeared to have left everything behind. No more than a rucksack or small chest. Perhaps those that came to the city sooner had had the luxury of delivering their belongings ahead of them.
The line continued slowly sliding forward like a glass on an uneven table. I’ve been waiting in this line for days now. The towers at night are beautiful, dazzlingly colored and shining. Early morning, though, I felt crushed under the size of them, each a dark black six-sided obelisk stretching so high that I couldn’t really see where the top of them were.
I was near the front of the line now, walking into a large opening on one side of the thinnest tower. There weren’t any other entrances to sneak through, I had checked. The last thing I need is to break into the city and end up stuck in a dungeon for the remainder of the world ending. I glanced back at the walls again. They looked so beautiful from a distance, even knowing the death they cause to every creature they touch.
Finally, I was reaching the front of the line. The entrance was enormous and surprisingly well-lit on the inside. The city’s workers ushered people along into orderly little checkpoints. They all wore the gold-trimmed white robes and tunics that were familiar to anyone who had interacted with the Grand Council. Luckily, I’ve never drawn so much attention that their enforcers came to me, but I still feel on edge being around them.
A chirpy little woman approached me. “Welcome to Suriya! Please follow me,” she said, gesturing to one of dozens of tables. I strode over, casually looking around and taking note of the positions of apparent guards out of habit. The moment I was by the table, the chirpy woman was off to guide another.
The table had a large crystal reader, basically a slab of expensive enchanted glass, sitting upright on the edge closest to me. On the other side was a very stern-looking woman with what must be thousands of sheets of paper next to her and a stack of scrolls nearly as tall as her sitting directly behind.
The woman had on the same colors as the others, but with a distinct long sword hanging at her hip. Definitely a guard. She narrowed her eyes at me. Seems she can read me too. Her scrutiny passed, replaced by apathetic formality.
“Fill this out,” she said plainly, gesturing in the air to have an illusory screen appear on the crystal reader. She simultaneously shoved a blank form into a slot in the back of the reader.
Ch1 Origin [https://i.imgur.com/e0Y1Hyj.png]
The default choices they had made sense. Not that everyone in the world is from only ten places, but most people were from these general areas. My eyebrows furrowed. Western Wilderness? That’s basically just a giant jungle of monsters and mayhem. There’s no way there are enough people from there to warrant that being a normal choice.
I rescanned the choices, the names didn’t conjure a location, just an impression of them. Trilland: soggy tree lovers. Floating Mountains: miners and misery. Talaysai: desert and fish. Mius: currently standing there. Lazica and Arracan: war-torn because of each other, good weapons though. Sky City: pompous, good targets for some quick coin. Himaho: idiots, scared of magic and possibly their own shadows. Deep North: bravely psychotic sailors.
Khosim. Home. My heart had a small pang. Wasteland. Empty streets and dead animals. Same as all the others now, I suppose. I channel a small amount of magic energy to my finger and select Khosim. The screen changed automatically. Fancy. Enchantments for such a simple-seeming thing are surprisingly complex.
Ch1 Job [https://i.imgur.com/erKw1J3.png]
Well then. I didn’t expect to see my entire culture and society boiled down to two professions. Seeing the screen I could only picture the sorceror who made this looking at me and saying “so do you build things or do stuff?” and being perfectly satisfied that I would fit into one of the categories. How could half of an entire country be made up of mercenaries for hire?
I actually am a mercenary.
But that doesn’t mean everyone else in my country is!
I quickly tapped the mercenary option and the screen changed again. Very fancy. Figures they would have only the best enchants in the last city in the world.
Ch1 Name [https://i.imgur.com/OBfd2wc.png]
Oh. I glanced at the guard woman. Seems like she could have asked instead of making an enchant just for this, but maybe excess is the normal for them.
“Faelen Stregone. F A E L E N S T R E G O N E.”
The crystal reader lit up briefly and the choices I had selected were freshly written by the enchant onto the blank form.
The woman grimaced at the form. “I need to scan you as well.” She pulled a small crystal ball from a green padded box and tossed it into the air by my head. I couldn’t tell if she was powering it or if it had internal energy, but it circled around me quickly a few times at different heights and landed back in her hand. “Does this look right to you,” she asked flatly.
The ball produced a perfect full-size illusion of me. Bronze skin, green eyes, messy long black hair. I really need to get that shortened. Heavy stubble that might be leaning toward actually being a beard. Plain dark robes over leather armor, tight hood, short sword on my left hip, dagger on my right, bow on my back. I tap each of them out of habit of ensuring they’re close at hand.
“Yeah, seems right,” I said. Did she do that scan because of my background or is that done to everyone? I glanced around, several others were receiving scans. Looks like it actually is everyone. She tapped a small part of the ball and a tiny piece of it slid out from the center. She rolled my paperwork around it, bound it lightly and tossed it with ease perfectly on top of the giant pile of scrolls sitting behind her.
“You’re free to go in now,” she gestured roughly to the side. “Talk to the people over there.”
I headed through the doorway at the far end of the room and finally entered the city proper. My pace slowed when I saw the other side. A wide expanse ringed with buildings. The center of the tower was open, offering a view straight up the center of the building. I could see a few balconies here and there, but mostly it appeared to be windows of what I assume are apartments.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
The next thing I noticed after the enormity of it is that there are people everywhere. Everyone seemed to have somewhere to be right now with how fast they were moving. There was a constant hum of people’s steps, talking, and some sounds I couldn’t quite identify yet. Possibly some enchants that had regulation illusory sound built in.
There was a group of sorcerors set up at a stall to my side. That must be who the woman had been gesturing toward. They still had the distinct white gold robes, but also had rings of turquoise complimenting the gold to signify they are somators, body sorcerors.
I had only really been to somators for healing broken bones. I could never afford any of their modifications to muscle or mind. Why am I talking to them again?
"Hello, welcome to the city," the somator I approached greeted. His tone was definitely more cheerful than the guard woman. "Here are some complimentary supplies." He hefted a large bag onto the table. I'll just grab it for now and check what's in it later. “It looks like you’ve already been assigned an apartment to stay in! You’ll be up in 11296.” He pulled a small key seemingly from the air and handed it to me. It had 11296TH stamped on it. He sure is moving through everything quickly. "Would you like a mindlink installed," he asked me casually.
"A mindlink?" I couldn't help but question it. That's an insanely versatile enchant that would easily cost 100,000+ drachma. Or wen. Or whatever they called coins in the city. Satang, I think.
"I can install one for you very quickly. It won't be connected to anything yet, but it'll give you some neat interfaces. The newest model will help you learn faster, too!" His positivity is infectious.
"Let's do it." I should probably have put more thought into the decision, but advanced magic is so tempting and this guy was really excited to help.
I sat down in a sort of backwards chair he led me to and leaned forward, putting my face through an opening in the front. I couldn’t see him, but I heard him shift behind me and begin his process. I could feel my pulse quickening, but I focused on keeping my breathing even.
Installing a mindlink requires opening the skull and placing a small enchant in a very specific spot in the brain. Normally I wouldn’t want a random person opening any part of me, but I was pretty sure he wasn't going to kill me in the middle of a public square.
Body modification magic, one twig on the somatic branch of magic, is something usually reserved for the most powerful: master sorcerors, high guards, criminal bosses. Simple modifications, like one-time increases to musculature, mental acuity, or even height, were straightforward and could be found in every back alley, medical ward, and schoolyard. This, however, wasn’t just getting the body to push itself closer to its natural limit, this was true enhancement. Run faster, jump higher, perform magic with less thought or energy. You can even activate enchants from a distance with only a thought.
The only person I’ve personally known with body enhancements was a friend back in Khosim. He never talked about where he came from or how he ended up on the streets as a plain mercenary and thief. But, he had to have come from money. He said he had enchantments embedded in his arms and legs that kept the bones tougher and muscles stronger. He had the physique of a prime soldier and I never saw him break a bone, so I think he was telling the truth. It was always hard to read him, though.
“All done!” the somator announced.
That was fast. My mind had barely had a chance to wander. That was, what, two or three minutes? I touched the back of my head. No blood or scars; this guy was good.
“How do I use it?” I asked.
“It’s connected directly to your mind, so it can tell you about yourself, it’ll automatically route some of your thoughts into visuals if you’d like, it’ll keep track of time and some aspects of your health and magic. You can even start to make a visual map of the areas you know. Any of that can be turned off by just thinking about it.” He leaned in close and whispered, like he was revealing a deep secret. “A trick for that is to think of anything it does as being a switch you can flick on and off. It’ll make an illusion of that for you and then you can control it really easily.” He winked. The cheeriness was almost pushing onto annoying, but I found it kind of endearing. “The biggest feature, though, is that as you achieve more with it in, it’ll integrate more deeply and begin enhancing you mentally and physically. You can grow faster now than any other time in your life. You're one of the first ones to get that feature too!”
That’s a lot to take in. “Right, thanks,” I said, trying to process it all. “I’m going to go find my apartment now.” I needed more room to think. I started walking toward the center of the tower. I always feel most comfortable in the center of the crowd; it provides some anonymity when you're part of a flow instead of a lone island on the side.
Picture the switches in my mind. It took less than a moment of thinking for a big gray box to appear in front of me. It had simple switches for each of the things the somator described to me.
Ch1 Menu 1 [https://i.imgur.com/VxmNLpy.png]
Is my mind too simple? I knew this is what he said to do, but seeing it presented in front of me like that almost felt silly.
Well, I definitely want the health and magic information. A map would be interesting, too. I don’t really want the time constantly in the corner of my eye. “Thoughts” is so vague. I guess I’ll do it for now and see what that looks like.
Ch1 menu 2 [https://i.imgur.com/ITVzsi1.png]
I was satisfied with my choices. Go away. The screen disappeared at my thought. Now I had a few different symbols in my vision. I turned my head side to side and they stayed perfectly in the same relative spot. It felt like I had on a hat that had something hanging off of it. It was surprisingly easy to focus on it or ignore it without interrupting my ability to see in that area. In the top left of my vision was a half-blue-half-gray hexagon with two bars sticking out of it: a red one on top and a green one beneath it.
Ch1 Health [https://i.imgur.com/DhkMGv9.png]
To the bottom right of my vision was a circle with some vague lines. Oh that must be the doorway I came out of. That’s the walkway in front of me. Got it, it’s a simple map based on what I remember of the area. I think the somator had also said that the mindlink can “tell me about myself.”
Show me myself. An illusion of myself in my current outfit appeared in front of me. Not quite what I was going for, but a neat feature. Show me my…information? A new gray box appeared in front of me.
Ch1 Info [https://i.imgur.com/SznrTGC.png]
Now this is actually interesting. My attributes. I guess that’s innate abilities? These…are not what I would have guessed. Low Strength? High Wisdom? A 6 in Charisma?! I am not that dislikeable! The others seem right, I guess. I just don’t think of myself as having such stark weaknesses.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I had always prioritized agility and precision over brute strength. I was ok with magic but not phenomenal. Wisdom was odd, but I had always been a fast learner. I don’t really like talking to people, so maybe that’s what the Charisma was about.
I wonder if it can show me even more. Show me my skills.
Ch 1 skills [https://i.imgur.com/UM1SSeW.png]
I can’t say any of this surprises me. High Thievery: I definitely picked up some tricks on getting into buildings and getting items off of people. Very good Ranged: I was pretty good with a bow or sling. I had never made a wand or other focus tool, or really tried to craft or smith anything, so low Focus and Fabrication.
The advanced magic, though. I blinked a few times at it. It felt like there was something in my eye trying to look at my skill levels for those. I don’t know how to do anything related to those skills, so maybe I just don’t have a level in that yet? I decided I would figure it out some other time.
Go away. The screens all disappeared. I needed to figure out where my apartment was so I could get settled. Words popped up in the top right of my vision: New Quest: Find your apartment.