Memory becomes Tradition becomes Law.
These words were carved into the stone above the entrance to the College of Memoirs, one of the most powerful organizations in the world, if not the most powerful. And oldest.
Kingdoms rose and fell with the passing of the years at the speed it took for a kraken to digest a big prey (a few years at most), people great and small were born and lived their lives, cities had been built and fallen into dust, and yet the College still stood. It had been there before the arachne came, and it is still there to this day, a lighthouse in the dark to remind people of the gods’ will.
A true pillar of tenacity.
Nero, a member of the College of Memoirs, walked up the entrance stairs of the House of Memories, the place where the College’s true magic happened.
He was an old man in his seventies, his gray hair cut short, his sea blue eyes sharp as a blade yet kind as a smile. They say that wine becomes better with age. The same had happened with Nero, or so he liked to think.
The only difference between him and a bottle of good wine was that, sadly, he was tired. Oh, so tired. In a world where people usually died at the age of sixty (if they managed to survive the wars and monster attacks), he could be considered positively ancient.
Well, he sure as Airm felt ancient. His spine and joints shouted as much whenever he moved too much. Or slept in the wrong way. Or… well, you get it.
Nero walked inside the House of Memories. The single entrance door creaked on its hinges, while the wooden floorboards groaned under his weight. A grand entrance room greeted him. The walls were filled from top to bottom with paintings, the themes varying in many ways: from a simple [Farmer] giving food to those in need, to a [Knight] charging, alone, an entire army, up to a [King] ordering an army of [Soldiers] into a fight, their bodies ravaged by wounds unimaginable, yet their faces smiling.
Memories, each and every single one of them.
Nero scoffed and motioned a passing [Acolyte] closer.
“Boy, go tell the [Memory Shapers] to fix this place up. Haven’t you noticed that it has reverted to its original state?”
The [Acolyte] looked at him with big eyes, visibly surprised and awed.
Nero looked into them. Too big. Too awed. Clearly, the House was trying to make him focus on anything other than his request.
He raised his hand and gave the boy a few gentle yet firm slaps on the cheek. The [Acolyte]’s eyes immediately focused.
“I’m sorry, Sir, what was that about?”
“The [Memory Shapers]. Call them. The entrance has reverted to its original form, not the one imposed by the College. Tell them to fix it.”
The boy looked around, as if just noticing the way the place looked. His eyes opened wide in surprise.
“I - It had felt right as it was. I hadn’t noticed. I’m sorry, I’ll immediately call the [Shapers].”
With that he bowed and ran to call upon someone that could fix the place up.
Nero sighed. The new generations weren’t nearly as attentive as his used to be. If it wasn’t for him right now who knew what the House could’ve done. The walls of its original form were too small to contain the amount of memories stashed in its insides. The paintings could’ve fallen to the ground, even been damaged, the memories inside freed. That could’ve been truly catastrophic.
He sighed, shaking his head as he walked towards the stairs and began climbing them, his knees very much disagreeing with the decision.
When he reached the top he sighed in relief.
Only to be greeted by a glare.
“Good morning, Sir Nero.”
The voice came from an old man with short white hair just like his own. His face was wrinkled, especially around the eyes and mouth, as if he had spent too much time smiling. Nero, though, had never seen the man smile once in his entire life, and he’d been raised in the College of Memoirs.
The old man was wearing a simple blue long-sleeved shirt and pants of the same color. At his feet sat a brown leather doctor’s bag, the color faded from age. Nero looked inside but, instead of seeing any form of medical equipment, he found himself looking into a veritable builder’s toolbox.
As expected, really: the House wasn’t a living being like Nero was. It was, indeed, just a house. And, as any other building, it required maintenance.
“Hello to you too, Elemental. How’s the House doing?”
Indeed, the man in front of Nero was not, as his appearance would make one assume, human. He was an Elemental. An Elemental of Memories, to be precise. Nero had never understood how that could possibly work: memories weren’t, after all, an element of nature.
Or rather, they were, seeing how this nameless elemental existed, but it seemed… wrong. Still, people more intelligent than him had tried to understand what the being in front of him was and how it could possibly exist, and had failed. Also, he was too old to care. The elemental existed, it helped the House and it didn’t interfere with what they did. That was all that mattered to him.
“Badly. She is suffering. At night I can hear her cry. The walls are caving in on themselves, the foundations creaking. The things in the attic keep trying to escape because you do not try to change yourselves, and the monsters locked in the basement are steadily increasing in number,” answered the elemental.
“...So, the usual,” said Nero, unperturbed. The elemental had been saying these things for thousands of years apparently. Initially it had caused quite the stir but, seeing how nothing had ever happened, they’d come to the conclusion that the guardian of the House was simply trying to find a way to make them all leave.
The elemental looked at him as if he’d just killed a kitten in cold blood, then sighed, going back to repairing a crack on the wall with pristine wood boards and nails. Nobody knew where he got the things he used to repair the House, but it was deemed inconsequential by the higher ups.
“Yes, the usual,” he sighed, the regular toc toc toc of his hammer starting anew. These days one could always find the elemental repairing something around the House.
Personally, Nero thought it was a sign that maybe something was indeed going wrong, but what could they do? Remove themselves from the House? Throw in the gutter thousands of years of work? No, they couldn’t. He was sure someone would find a way to solve the problem soon enough. If there was a problem to begin with.
“They’ve been looking for you in the Hunter’s Garrett,” finished the elemental, resuming his work.
Nero nodded a thank you and walked up another set of stairs nearby, these ones carved from marble instead of wood, like the ones in the entrance. As they should be.
Two minutes of walking down grand hallways filled with paintings later, he reached a simple set of double doors carved out of wood with decorations representing arachne being slain and burned to crisps.
Nero looked at them for only a moment before he pushed them open.
The inside of the room looked like a [General]’s war room, filled with charts of the world and every continent, some of them so old that they were actually from the Era of Hunts, when the arachne had first emerged into the world.
On the table a chart of the continent of Irevia was unfolded, with the most recent political borders drawn in various colors.
In the room with him were two other people: a smartly-dressed man wearing spectacles and sitting in a most relaxed manner in one of the seats, sipping from a cup of tea. The other was an actually ancient man, bald as a baby, his face wrinkled to the point one could barely see the actual features. If stories were to be believed, the Grand Master of the College was over one hundred and fifty years old, all thanks to a few blessings from the gods and a good set of Skills, plus a few Memories keeping his mind sharp. He was also a [Memoir Holder], just like Nero.
“Good evening, Grand Master, Assistant. How may I help you?” he bowed.
“Sit,” whispered the Grand Master, “We have terrible news.”
On the chart, the forest of Tusca was circles in red.
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[Investigator] Claron sighed as he looked at the shattered and burned ruins of the village of… he didn’t remember. And, at this point, there was no use in remembering at all: there was quite literally nothing left of the place but ashes.
“Ok, well, let’s do our job. Look for any sort of clues, maybe we’ll manage to understand what kind of raiders did this. And be fast about it: we’re on the College’s payroll, they like things not to take too much time.”
The group of people with him nodded silently and began to work earnestly. Not many words were exchanged between the various [Investigators]: they’d been working their jobs for a long time and seen their good share of people thrown into the wolf’s jaws. Sometimes literally.
“[Detect Steps],” he whispered the Skill under his breath.
Immediately the ground in front of him lit up in greens and reds and blues. This was one of his most powerful Skills, a capstone he’d gotten for reaching Level 30. It had helped him immensely in all his investigation ever since then: one could discover a lot of things just by looking at how an enemy had moved.
This time, though, he wasn’t so lucky: the ground was filled with steps from people running around in what he imagined was fear and desperation. Even then though, that wasn’t the problem for him, because the Skill made the footsteps of the people he considered enemies glow bright red. Which, at the moment, was completely absent. No matter where he looked, there was nothing but greens and blues, for women and men respectively.
But no red. As if the villagers had decided to up and kill each other and burn everything down.
Which made no sense.
Claron sighed. This was going to be a long job. At least he hoped he would Level from it.
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“What’s the meaning of this?” asked Nero as he stared down at the map.
It was a rhetorical question. He already knew, or had a good hunch, about what the problem was. Because they had called him in this room out of all the possible ones in the House.
“Why, isn’t it obvious?” asked the Assistant.
Nero hated the man. He would be Grand Master’s successor once this one croaked (which wouldn’t be anytime soon if nothing went wrong) and, as such, acted high and mighty all the time. He felt like he was better than each and every person in this building. The problem? He was right. He was better. One couldn’t become Assistant without exceptional to say the least.
That didn’t mean Nero had to like him.
“Another arachne nest was found?” he phrased it like a question, hoping against all hope that the Assistant would laugh in his face, tell him he was stupid, and then throw around some bullshit about a band of brigands who’d been getting up to too much trouble.
That would’ve been easier on his body and mind. He was way too old to participate in this eternal genocide.
Especially after the last one decades ago. He could still hear those damned spiders’ screams as they were burned alive, just as he could never forget the screams of utter horror and pain as the soldiers who’d come with him were massacred.
The Assistant made a finger gun his way: “Hole in one!”
Nero sighed as he slumped in his chair, suddenly very tired.
“No,” he said, his voice firm.
Silence fell on the room as the Assistant’s smile froze on his face.
“What?” he asked, his voice tense.
“You want me to go there and help hunt them down. I won’t do it. Not again.”
“But you’re one of the last [Memoir Holders], and the youngest at that. You’re clearly the most logical choice,” rebuked the young man, as if he’d expected the conversation to go this way and prepared the speech.
“I do not care about my or my peers’ ages. They haven’t fought arachne before. Send any of them,” he didn’t even miss a beat.
The Assistant nodded, seemingly agreeing, before he lifted his damned backside from that chair, placing his cup of tea near the circle on the map. He then walked right into Nero’s face: “You know better than anyone that they wouldn’t last more than a minute battling those monsters. You, on the other hand… you know how to lead a battle, Nero the Battlesmith. Am I right?”
Nero, again, froze as he heard his old title coming from the Assistant’s mouth.
He hadn’t always been a member of the College of Memoirs. Once upon a time, he had been a great [General] in a rising kingdom’s army. He had been feared a loved, one of the greatest minds of his time, an asset beyond compare. A week wouldn’t pass without someone sending [Assassins] in an attempt to kill him.
Then he’d found out that tactics worked only so much when over a dozen kingdoms allied to end you.
He’d kept them at bay, naturally, to help his kingdom survive, prepare for what was to come.
He had failed.
Then, as he’d laid bleeding on the battlefield, they’d found him: the College. They’d proposed to save his life in exchange for him joining their ranks.
At the age of forty he’d become a [Memoir Holder], the highest rank in the College short of being the Grand Master or the Assistant.
Then they’d sent him to fight a nest of arachne. It had broken him in ways he couldn’t put into words even now. And this man, this little shit still wet behind the ears, was trying to order him around, even going so far as to dredge up his past?
The cold feeling in his stomach turned into cold rage as he looked at the Assistant with murder in his eyes… and punched him.
[Power Punch].
The man either wasn’t expecting this or let it happen. Nero didn’t care. His Skill empowered punch made contact with the man’s stomach with a lot more strength than his fist should’ve been able to muster, sending him flying back into his chair, which then flipped over.
“You have no right to tell me what to do, Assistant. And never again call me that way: that man died on that battlefield. Learn some respect,” he didn’t raise his voice, or himself for the matter, to tell him this, instead letting the hatred drip into his tone.
He got no answer in return.
Then, finally, the Grand Master spoke: “You will fight, Nero, for that has been the will of the gods from well before you were born. You will go in that forest and exterminate that plague. Then, when you come back, you will be allowed to retire.”
The Grand Master’s voice was small and soft, papery even. Yet he was able to make himself heard clearly. Probably a Skill of his.
“I understand Grand Master, but -”
“No buts, Nero. I know it is hard, but you are the only one who can do it. We will provide you with the best Memories.”
“Such as?” he asked, resigned. The Grand Master had spoken. And the prospect to finally retire was appealing, considering that [Memoir Holders] were not supposed to ever retire.
“Obviously, we will provide the Hunters’ Memory, the gods’ gift to fight the arachne. And the protections against silence and sound, mixed with enhancers.”
Nero nodded: “May I request to use [Memory: My Armies Fought On, Unkillable].”
Immediately the Grand Master shook his head as the Assistant finally untangled himself from his armchair.
“Absolutely not,” he shouted, “We’ve only had trouble from anyone using it. We will not allow its use.”
Nero sighed. That would’ve made everything much simpler but, apparently, the Skill had a strange effect on anyone who used it, forcing them to fight to create an empire. The College presumed it had been corrupted, but they wouldn’t allow anyone, not even the most expert [Memory Shapers], close to the Memory, so if there was a way to fix it they would never find it.
“Go. You will be given the required Memories. And you may ask for a few more. Leave.”
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Three days of searching, and they’d found nothing. Absolutely nothing! Just a few charred corpses here and there missing body parts, his Skills telling him that they’d all been cut using blades.
He had come to the conclusion, at this point, that some kind of high Level [Bandit] had appeared in the region and done this. A problem to be sure, but not a really big one. Or rather, not a big problem for him.
“Well boys, a few more hours and then we’re leaving. I’ve had enough of this dust and ash. Who’s ready for a bath, good food, and a bed?”
Cheers erupted all around him.
And were cut short by someone shouting: “Boss, I found something. You won’t like it.”
Claron sighed, rubbing his forehead. Then shook his head. Whatever! It didn’t matter. His job was only to find out what or who had caused this complete massacre so out of the blue. He wouldn’t be the one who had to deal with it.
He walked towards where the voice had come from, behind a burned down house. There was a small door to a basement there, which had apparently been buried under the rubble of the whole house above. One of his men had managed to find it, probably with a Skill, and free the way to get inside.
He walked in, his worker pointing down, and what he saw made his blood freeze, his heart skipping a beat.
For down there, amid the rubble from the caved in floor, was a body in relatively good conditions. Which, to him, meant it hadn’t been touched by the flames. Most of it was too damaged to make it even possible to recognize who had been the corpse, but that mattered not, because he had a Skill just for that.
“[Restore Body].”
The body under the rubble, for the first time since he’d tried to use the Skill on anyone in the village, began to reassemble itself, skin growing back to cover bone and muscle, face going back to its original shape, arms all reattaching to their sockets.
In the end, the body was exactly as it had been the moment the man had died.
And then he saw what had scared his worker, what he hadn’t noticed until then: the man’s neck had been bitten, veins taking on a distinctly purple color and spreading towards the rest of the body.
Also, he was naked from the waist down.
“Well, fuck me gently with a sword, then fuck me sideways with a pike.
“Apparently, it’s arachne breeding season.”
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Nero walked towards the exit of the House, new Memories stored inside his mind.
The entrance hall was already back to the form the College deemed necessary: a grand marble hall with large walls that let the paintings holding these lesser, older, memories stand apart from each other, lots of space between each of them. One never knew how a Memory could react with another.
As he opened the door, he saw the Elemental walk down a corridor, holding his doctor’s bag.
For a moment he thought he could hear him whisper: “Just a while longer, my dear. You won’t be suffering like this for much longer.”
Nero cocked an eyebrow in confusion, then shrugged.
As he left the House, he could distinctly feel it sigh in relief.