Intriguing…

Who was that talking? Was it the man who had saved her?

No… no, it was different. More androgynous, harder to quite place the gender or age of the speaker. The voice was more… more like Cadence’s, really.

You shouldn’t have been there, you know.

Been where? The barrens?

A flash of the monster that had chased her, half-remembered in the haze she found herself in.

Yeah. She definitely shouldn’t have been there.

You’re lucky he showed up in time… well. Maybe you are. It’s hard to say with him these days. He’s not as reliable as he once was.

The man. The stranger. The brilliant warrior. Joking, laughing, shrugging off every blow even as he fought the ogre. He was… amazing. Like a storybook hero. Like… like…

An adventurer? Interesting. And you don't know how right you really are.

The adventurer hadn’t been like the one in the stories though. He had been plain, almost ragged, not charming and attractive.

Yes, well, road dirt isn’t everyone’s favorite make-up, now is it? But it just might be yours.

A memory more of sensation than sight. The smell of the night air around her, the crunch of dirt under her feet, the chorus of a thousand tiny sounds, making something greater than their sum.

Road dirt indeed. I’ve seen few as wanderborn as you.

Wandering blindly, seeing the sights. The endless jagged teeth of the Divide. The sparkling blue waves of the Vast. The reefs off Westerlen and the luminous caverns under Terast. The burgeoning industry of Correntry and the ancient splendor of Arsilet.

Cadence wanted to see it all.

An earnest plea if I’ve ever heard one. Very well… I suppose I can help push you along.

Good luck, Cadence.

#

Cadence awoke with a start, blinking against the stinging sunlight in her eyes.

Suddenly everything that had happened came rushing back to her, and she sat up in a panic, her heart racing a mile a minute as she wildly looked around.

She was sitting in a patch of sunlight, her back rested against a large boulder. Next to her was the man who had come to her rescue, calmly eyeing her while chewing on an apple. There was no sign of the darkened barrens or the oppressive, twisted trees or the monster that had chased her through the lightless stretch of woods.

“W-where is it?” Cadence asked, turning to the odd man.

He calmly took another bite, juices running down his chin and hand. His free hand waved absently at the fallen tree. “It’s gone now.”

Cadence furrowed her brows. Gone? Gone where?

Before she could press him for details, the man asked, “You were talking in your sleep. Any interesting dreams?”

Cadence arched a brow at the odd question. Had she dreamed about something?

She tried to remember, and it almost seemed like… but no. No dreams worth recalling, apparently. Just the disjointed confusion of passing out after hitting her head, same as when she fell out of the tree in Old Man Callahan’s yard trying to impress Brian.

“No,” she told the man. Then something occurred to her, and her eyes narrowed. “Is that my apple?”

The man stared at her mildly as he finished eating. His dark brown eyes (hadn’t they been yellow before? Or was it blue?) carried a level of amusement in them completely at odds with the innocent expression on his face. “I hope you don’t mind, but I found the apple while I was rifling through your pack for something to heal you with, and our big friend reminded me that a snack did, in fact, sound good.”

Cadence looked around more carefully for a moment before she found her pack, lying on the ground a few feet away, next to her hatchet and quiver of useless arrows. Her tools to defend herself. Not that they had done any good. “Wait…” She asked, turning back to the man. “Heal me?”

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The man frowned, and looked at the ground. The sheepish motion made him look very different from the commanding figure that had stared down the ogre without a moment’s hesitation. “Yes. I needed to finish it off before it got back up, but I didn’t think of how close you were. Some of the splinters from the tree tore you up a little bit.” He gestured a vague hand at Cadence, and she looked to find that he was right. Her pants and shirt had gained a few more significant tears, and even the side of her leather vest had been carved open to display the bare skin of her ribs.

Cadence frowned, looking herself over, but besides the cosmetic damage to her clothes. “The glintcaps?” she asked.

“Mmm.”

Cadence narrowed her eyes. She knew that there was no way the glintcaps could’ve fully healed all of the damage she had apparently taken.

Before she could ask any further questions about it though, the man pushed himself to his feet. The motion was oddly fluid, and Cadence blinked for a moment, thinking her eyes had played a trick on her. She heard that could happen to someone who took a blow to the head. But no, it was simply how he moved, a combination of economy of motion and superhuman coordination, the same traits she had observed during his fight.

Cadence asked the question she had been wondering since she first saw the man. “Who are you?”

“I’m Storyteller,” he said simply. Apparently feeling no further need to explain himself, he shaded his eyes and looked up at the sky. Already, the bright blue sky was fading to a brilliant orange as the sun made its way to the horizon. “You’re from… Felisen? That's the closest village, right?”

“Yes,” Cadence replied, more curious than ever about where he had come from, if he wasn’t even sure of that. “I’m Cadence.”

“Are you feeling up to walking now? I suspect we won’t reach your village before nightfall, but the hunters there have no doubt noticed your absence by now and will be likely searching for you. “

The very idea of her mother’s anger had Cadence jumping to her feet. Of course, she immediately realized just how bad of an idea that was and braced herself for a wave of nausea. But… none came.

Whatever this “Storyteller” had done to heal her, it had worked even better than glintcaps. She squinted as she looked at the increasingly enigmatic man, but she found herself trusting him anyway.

“Yeah,” she finally responded. “I can walk. Let me grab my bag.”

#

The pair made good time, and before long, they were walking along the same paths through the vernal forest that Cadence had taken to get to the barrens. Only then did Cadence realize that she was following Storyteller rather than the other way around.

“Hey.” After nearly an hour walking in silence, her voice sounded loud in her own ears. Storyteller turned an inquisitive look over his shoulder in reply. “How do you know where you’re going? I’ve never seen you around here before.”

“It’s a gift,” he said simply, his steps never slowing.

Cadence narrowed her eyes at the curt answer. Fine. If that was how he wanted it, she could play the quiet game too.

Cadence continued following him in silence, her eyes taking in the woods as she walked. As beautiful as ever, the setting sun and the beautiful colors of twilight only made the forest more enchanting. She only paused once, as she recognized a familiar series of scuffs in the dirt and underbrush. Her little fight with the bramble-spawn seemed so… inconsequential after the monster of the barrens. The ogre, as Storyteller had called it. Whatever that meant.

She almost opened her mouth to ask, then remembered his last answer and forced herself to close it. Biting down on her questions felt unnatural, but she didn’t want to give the mysterious man the satisfaction of another half-answer.

As they walked, Cadence began to notice the looks Storyteller was giving her over his shoulder. It was weird–he seemed curious more than anything else. That curiosity grew over the miles into true puzzlement. Twilight was well on its way to full darkness when they reached the little brook where Cadence had taken lunch.

“How are you okay?” he finally asked bluntly.

Cadence pulled up short, and blinked in confusion at the question. “Uhm… what?”

“How are you okay?” he repeated, looking her over. His eyes had narrowed suspiciously. “We’ve come, what, eight miles? With a few to go? So you’ve walked probably close to twenty miles today, in addition to your sprint to get away from the ogre before I could get to you. And then, on top of all that, you were knocked out. Yet you’re keeping up with my pace.”

Cadence’s brows slowly knitted together, and she cast a look back up the trail. Had she really come that far? She was only pretty sure he was right on the distances, but he was definitely right that she had been fast walking this whole time to keep up with the taller man’s brisk pace–yet she wasn’t even winded. In fact, she felt as good as she had when she set out that morning. How was that possible?

A look of shocked realization crossed his face, and he asked in a careful, quiet voice, “Cadence… Which way is north?”

Cadence instantly pointed to her side. She even turned her body a little bit, to make sure her arm was pointed just right.

“How did you know that?” he asked in that same cautious tone.

Cadence opened her mouth to reply sarcastically. The sun was setting to her right, it wasn’t exactly hard to find north. But… she hadn’t even thought about the sun. She had just known, without even thinking about it. “I… I don’t know,” she finally answered.

Storyteller looked more closely at Cadence, and she suddenly realized his full attention was focused on her for the first time. Previously, he had seemed almost perpetually distracted, his eyes endlessly roaming about. Even when he had fought the ogre, he hadn’t seemed this intense. They didn’t seem very muddy or unremarkable anymore, either. They were a warm, comforting brown, like the drinking chocolate her mother would make once or twice a winter, after a long hunt.

“Cadence.” His voice was as soft as ever, but it seemed to make the air shiver in an odd way, as if trembling with some unseen tension. “Check your attributes.”

“What?”

“It’s easy. Just concentrate. Think about wanting to see your attributes.”

“I… I don’t know what you–oh.” Cadence trailed off as even considering the request caused words to simply appear, as if they were floating in the air in front of her.

Cadence of Felisen

Level: Pre-Novice

Gifts:

[Gift of the Wanderer]: +3 to stamina and awareness

Attributes:

Strength: 4

Resilience: 4

Stamina: 9 (6+3)

Coordination: 6

Speed: 5

Will: 5

Knowledge: 4

Focus: 4

Awareness: 9 (6+3)

Charm: 5

Somehow, Cadence had received her first gift. She opened her mouth, and of course, that was when she heard her mother’s voice, calling her name in the distance.