— Keira —

With a curse, made silent by the lack of air in her lungs, Keir forced her cramped fingers to release the empty box. Almost as if that small movement was a trigger releasing a spring, Keir blurred into motion.

By the time the empty box hit the stone floor with a hollow clatter, Keir had retrieved her sword from where it had been leaning against the bookshelf. She held it ready, looking around at the surrounding shelves with a new found suspicion. Clearly the tests in that place were not limited solely to those tied to the plaques nor were the other tests any less deadly than any foe she might come across.

With no sign of any threat ready to take advantage of her forced inattention she turned her attention to her own condition.

Physically, in so far as her state within her soulscape was physical at all, she was largely unharmed. Her fingers and forearms were a bit sore from the force she’d clung to the box. Of slightly more concern, the cravings on the box had embedded themselves into the fingers and palms of her hand. Those markings were, however, fading at a fairly normal rate so she didn’t pay them much mind.

Satisfied that there was nothing to address there she turned her attention inward and shuddered involuntarily. Within and throughout some intangible part of her she couldn’t immediately identify; she found all the damage she didn’t display physically.

Almost immediately she felt a connected series of dull aches like cramped or crushed muscle that outlined a lattice of cracks and fissures. Worse, perhaps, was the intense feeling of foreignness and wrongness within those cracks.

The only way she could put the feelings into a way she could try to explain it to another person was that it felt like her psyche was shattered and pierced roughly back together with coarse sand and tainted oil filling the cracks.

After some moments of dwelling on the intangible wounds and what filled them she turned to her mental training to put it out of mind for the time being. While unlike her physical health there was clearly a problem, there was no more she could do about it at that moment.

It was mostly buried by events that followed it but she was certain she’d felt a system notification as the whole ordeal began and thought it might have ended with another notification.

There was some slight discomfort, like poking a bruise, as she opened her notifications with a thought.

Village Leader Quest available: Trial of the Shattered Mechanist (Expand for Details)

Trial of the Shattered Mechanist: Accepted

Village Leader Quest completed: Trial of the Shattered Mechanist (Expand for Details)

Village Leader Quest available: Reclaim the Legacy of the Shattered Mechanist (Expand for Details)

With each notification she read Keir was more surprised. As she’d already found a document that offered a system quest she was only somewhat surprised that it had offered a quest rather than merely a challenge. Much more surprising was the fact the quest had either automatically been accepted or the effects of the box had forced her to accept it.

From both her experience and tutoring system quests were always entirely optional challenges presented by the system or items and being linked to it. She had never heard of a quest being accepted without input from the recipient. Even in the exceptionally rare instances where the conditions to complete the quest were completed before receiving it, it was still required to be actively accepted.

While it wasn’t as unheard of as the fact the quest was accepted at all, the fact it was apparently completed was also quite a surprise to her. She’d survived but with the strange ethereal ache in her mind from being ripped apart and inexpertly patching the pieces back together it was hard to fully accept that as a success.

Potentially, the answers to those questions were readily at hand but Keir was a bit wary of examining the quest further. In the end her decision to open the details was the result of a simple fact. Quest rewards were given when they were earned, not when the quest completion details were opened. As a result, whatever was going to happen, already had.

Trial of the Shattered Mechanist: Within a shard of an echo of The Library of the Veil you have stumbled onto the last works penned by the Shattered Mechanist. To look upon such a thing is to accept the challenge therein. Survive this glimpse into the knowledge that shattered the first and last Machine Born Litch. (Rewards Earned: You were Shattered but in bringing yourself back together with shards of the knowledge that Shattered you, you have gained a measure of protection from such knowledge moving forward. A glimpse does not earn one mastery but it does earn knowledge. You have glimpsed the working of the great machine and earned the blueprint for creating a “Crypt of the Mechanist”.)

Seeing that she had gained some protection from ancient and madness inducing knowledge caused an only slightly grim smile to cross her face. With the pain so fresh in her mind, quite literally, she wanted to say that it would go unused. Unfortunately she knew herself well enough to say that if she found another mysterious box in the library, or indeed her soulscape as a whole, she would probably open it again.

Rarely did her curiosity lose out against common sense or self preservation. She had a more genuine smile when she remembered the fact her mother still affectionately called Keir her curious little kitten and her favorite older sister often said that if Keir burned one finger on the heater she was just as likely to poke it with another to see if the first was fluke.

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For a moment thoughts of the complications that might follow from her note home, but she pushed them aside and focused instead on the happy memories. Somehow those pleasant thoughts were a bit of a salve on the aching cracks.

For a few moments she let herself dwell on thoughts of home before her curiosity got the better of her and she focused on the structural blueprint she’d earned.

Crypt of the Mechanist: Tier Four Blueprint (...)

As a leader of a tier two village, Keir couldn’t see the finer details of the structure and as she was neither an architect nor a relevant artisan she also couldn’t see the material requirements.

With nothing else to see about the quest she’d finished Keir was about to move on to deciding if she wanted to explore more or return her focus to the physical world, when she remembered she had neglected to examine the second quest offered to her.

Reclaim the Legacy of the Shattered Mechanist: Like the gears and springs of his destroyed creations the legacy of the Shattered Mechanist has been spread throughout the Veil and the remains of his long forgotten homeland. Seek and rebuild the lost legacy of the first and final Machine Born Litch. Rewards varied based on degree and method of completion.

Unlike the box and depending on how one thinks of it, the quest it offered, there was none of the sense of immediacy in the quest prompt. Clearly a prompt decision was not necessary so Keir let the notification fade from her mind for the time being. She was not ready to deal with that if she didn’t have to. Instead she made her way back to the temple entrance.

She didn’t know how much time the trial had taken, but she decided she would rather spend the remaining time until she met with Marsaili for a drink, resting.

— Blessed Death Root Alraune —

A few long minutes after the completion of her partially successful mana infusion test the impatient alraune finished the last portions of her new body; namely six fingernails, two molars, her left eyelids, and the sensory connections to her eyes.

With her body complete and the last of her awareness removed from her now entirely inert seed she was ready to interact with the world. Well, physically ready anyway. Suddenly intense nervousness kept her eyes firmly shut.

Was she really ready to face the world? Did she build her form correctly? What if she wasn’t ready? By taking the goddess’s mana she’d shaved at least a century off of her germination. Did she need that time to prepare and not just gather mana?

Those and a dozen more worries of all sorts rushed through her before they were burned, or at least brushed, away by an intense surge of annoyance with herself. She had her reasons to germinate as fast as she could and they hadn’t changed.

She would check on her guardian. She wouldn’t let fear take that or her chance to see who she could become and how she would change.

In a surge of motion borne in no small part of that flash of frustration she opened her eyes. Then she closed them again even faster. Apparently her brand new eyes and sensory tendrils connecting them to her core were not prepared to be directly exposed to bright light.

Perhaps she should have been upset that after all that worrying and overcoming it for a moment her first view above the ground was blindingly bright pain that made a sort of watery sap flow out of her eyes. Instead she found herself laughing loudly with an intense mix of relief and excitement. Not even a full second after opening her eyes and she was already learning things.

As she was thinking she was startled by a voice nearby saying “Be gentle on yourself, little seedling. It is well into dusk but new eyes are incredibly light sensitive, especially one’s first pair.

The sore eyed alraune had never actually heard that voice, but she was somehow certain it had come from her guardian. For a moment she was overcome by a flood of emotions, joy and excitement chief among them, and almost jumped or tried the happy steps her guardian used to do so often. Fortunately she hadn’t retracted the roots, literally rooting her to the ground. With the way opening her eyes had gone, she suspected trying to do either blind would end with her on the ground.

Instead she cracked open her eyes just a bit, trying to acclimate them to the apparently dim blinding light and said “Please wait until I can see you. Are you well? I was so worried when the snakes came and you were stuck in your tree for so long. And before that you were hurt protecting me weren’t you?”

From what seemed like right next to where the voice of her guardian had come from, the excited and concerned alraune heard a laugh and quickly following that her guardian let out a faint sigh and said “Oh, not you too. I am well, and, I should add, supposed to worry about you. Not the other way around.”

The slightly confused alraune’s eyes still burned but she was starting to be able to make out blurry shapes among the bright light as a slightly deeper voice that she assumed belonged to the one who’d laughed said “You are not well, You are exhausted and severely mana depleted. You need to take a proper break and I suspect your charge would agree.”

With a surge of worry the alraune opened her eyes wide before quickly returning to a squint as the pain and runny sap flow flared again. With the flash of pain fading she said “Of course I agree. If you are tired or low on mana you need to rest.”

As her guardian explained in great detail that she didn’t have the time to rest and the pair of them didn’t need to worry so much, the unconvinced alraune’s eyes finally adapted. Well that or it simply got dark enough as the sun went down. Either way she was finally able to properly look at her guardian and the dryad who had saved them both.

It was immediately clear why her guardian had difficulty moving around after being wounded and the reason the plants had spoken of her light agile steps replaced with a heavy clumsy gait.

Seeing the amount of her guardian that was replaced with metal she was torn between guilt and sadness that her guardian had been injured so severely in her defense and gratitude and relief that with the aid of the other dryad she had found a way to compensate for those wounds.

After a moment the armored dryad bumped her guardian with an elbow and gestured towards the staring alraune. Under her breath the warrior dryad said “Go on. Greet your ward.”

The alraune couldn’t conceal her smile even if she wanted to. Not only was the faint purple blush that colored her guardian's cheeks adorable, the alraune was incredibly excited. She would not only learn the name of her guardian, she would also receive her own name.

The alraune’s smile only grew wider as her guardian cleared her throat, clearly trying to restore some solemnity to the moment and in a voice even the newly bloomed alraune could tell was well rehearsed, she said “My name is Cara. It is my pleasure to at long last welcome you into the world, Laoise. I can’t wait to see who you will become.”