Weeks passed, and with them came the end of spring. With each passing day, it seemed to Caden that the sun was warmer and the air more humid. The heartlands were temperate by nature, which was why they had become so thoroughly settled by farming communities and the like, but that didn’t make their roads any more pleasant to walk, day after day, in the heat of even early summer. Storyteller promised Caden that, at higher level, his stamina and resilience would make the heat irrelevant, allowing his body to replenish its resources as quickly as the summertime air could drain it, but that was a distant and empty comfort as the teen trudged along the roads at Storyteller’s side.
“Well,” Storyteller started one day as they walked, in a tone Caden recognized as his “lesson time” voice, “it seems like the hunters in this area are doing their duty.” It had been nearly a week since they encountered a minor monster for Caden to fight.
After the frequent fights that had broken up their travels, the absence of the little monsters had left Caden itching for more action. He had gotten to the point that lone dire vermin couldn’t give him much more than a few scratches before he put them down, and the teenager longed for a chance to test himself against a larger number of monsters, like the dire squirrels that had been his first challenge while traveling with Storyteller.
“Please tell me that doesn’t mean practice time?” Caden groaned. Weeks on the road had combined with the stifling heat to dampen his earlier enthusiasm, and while fighting monsters was still a much anticipated bit of excitement, bouts with Storyteller had lost their luster.
“Oh? Not feeling a spar?” Storyteller asked with a grin. “Very well then, we’ll just do lessons instead. Let’s start with… the Greater Triad.”
Caden groaned again. Storyteller was a big believer in memorization through repetition, and their lessons so far had focused heavily on the most common Archetypes, those whose abilities Caden would be copying most often. With that had come their discussion of the Triads, groups of three archetypes that were useful for conceptualizing the links between the gift-granting beings.
Caden blew out a breath and began reciting the three archetypes that Storyteller had long since drilled into his head. “The Greater Triad are the archetypes that grant the most common gifts in the Realm, as all three of them represent broad inclinations and can grant gifts at Novice level. Most Novices and Apprentices in the cities have at least one of their gifts, and the vast majority of battle-gifted have gifts from two of them.”
“Yes, yes, you memorized the big picture, I get it,” Storyteller tutted. “Go deeper. Tell me about their gifts.”
Caden rolled his eyes at the older adventurer’s tone. “Okay… the Warrior is the most martially-inclined archetype. He gives gifts relating to six different combat styles. The brawler for pure damage dealing, skirmisher for scouts and hit-and-run tactics, guardian for defensive types, archer for… archers… and, uhm…” Caden trailed off thoughtfully.
“You said six,” Storyteller reminded him. “I only counted four.”
Caden shot a half-hearted glare up at the tall man, thinking furiously.
“Vanguard!” he finally said triumphantly. “That’s the flexible one, with both offensive and defensive abilities. And… that dumb one for the nobles to waste their time with.”
“Caden…” Storyteller’s tone was warning.
He groaned. “I don’t remember, okay?”
“Fencer is the last one. Quick, precise attacks. And while it is favored by the nobility, I’d suggest not calling it a waste of time to anyone with the gift, if you wish to stay unperforated.”
“Yeah, yeah…” Caden muttered.
“See if you can recover, tell me about the Mage next.”
“I can’t even copy Mage abilities though!” Caden complained.
“Yes, but one day you’ll be able to, and you should probably be able to speak to them by then.”
“Okay… the Mage gives weird blessings that give access to spells instead of abilities. You still have to study and learn the spells, and they use a special magical resource, so I’m not able to do anything with them until I spend a while studying their magic too.”
“What’s the resource called?”
“I wanna say magical… well?”
“Mystical well.”
“I was close!”
“Sure. Go on, tell me about the gifts themselves.”
“Okay… there are five of them, for the five disciplines of magic. Artifice and alchemy are the least combat oriented ones, but they’re important to tradecraft. Then… there’s evocation, that’s battle magic. And animism is healing magic…” Caden trailed off. “I still don’t get the last one. It starts with an ‘s’ I think?”
“Sorcery,” Storyteller offered. “The magic of spirits.”
“I still don’t get what that means.”
“It’s… complicated,” he admitted. “For your needs, understand that they can summon and control spirits for a variety of purposes. Scouting, distractions, defenses, even limited attacks. But they’re immaterial–their ability to affect the physical world is limited.”
“Sure… sorcery…sorcery…” Caden repeated the word, trying to commit it to memory so that he wouldn’t get caught forgetting it again. “Then the Primal is easy. It gives control over certain elements. Fire, water, wind, earth, metal, frost, wood, and lightning are the most common elements.”
“Good!” Storyteller praised his charge.
“I’ve got one question though.” Storyteller nodded, and Caden continued, “Why do some archetypes, like the Elder or the Greater Triad, grant gifts at Novice, but others wait till Initiate?” Caden’s steps slowed as he spoke, and he found himself staring between two trees, studying a slanting ray of sunlight that passed between their branches. This was a question that had plagued him since he received his first gift, and still, he hadn’t managed to come up with a decent answer.
Storyteller paused as well, looking thoughtful. “I suspect you’ll find that to be quite the question. Scholars have pondered the vagaries of the archetypes since before the Realm was founded, and there’s still much we don’t understand about them.”
Cadence narrowed his eyes and turned to Storyteller. “So you don’t know?”
“Not definitively, no.”
“Okay… well why do you think, then?” Storyteller pursed his lips, and Caden could see him waffling, seeking a non-committal answer. The teen sighed in exasperation. “C’mon Teller, just give me an answer!”
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Storyteller considered the younger adventurer, and blew out a breath. “Very well… Personally, I’ve always believed that the archetypes simply make the decision themselves. There’s plenty of reason to believe they’re sentient, after all, so why not? Take the Arbiter, the archetype of law. If it went around investing in every random Novice trying for their first gifts, it would diffuse its influence. Part of the reason the inquisitors of the Arbiter are feared is that they are so few, and uniformly skilled. They had to make it to Initiate to prove their ability before the Arbiter would take them. But the Warrior, or the Mage, or even the Elder, they’re more defined by how broad their interests are. Anyone who pursues martial techniques could be seen as an adherent of the Warrior, so it grants its gifts to many more people.”
“But… Well, what about the Adventurer then?”
Storyteller made a soft sound of understanding. “I see. You’re thinking of your gift of the wanderer?”
“I mean, of course I am!” Caden said. “I have a gift no one is supposed to have until Initiate, and I’m not even halfway through Novice. Yeah, I’m thinking about that!”
Storyteller nodded. “Well then, if we follow the same logic, I’d say that the Adventurer is limiting its blessings to those who prove that they want to follow its lifestyle. It's easy to want to explore when you’re a teenager who has never seen the wider world. If you still hold the same desires after whatever you had to do to get to Initiate, then the Adventurer knows you’re serious.”
Caden frowned. “That’s not a real answer though! I’m just a teenager who’s never seen the wider world, how does the Adventurer know I genuinely want this path?”
“An excellent question,” Storyteller replied in a strained voice, “and one I’m no more able to answer now than I was the first night after you received that gift. Perhaps the Adventurer saw the desire in your soul, and after your encounter in the barrens, it simply saw fit to take the opportunity to bestow its gift.”
“A gift I didn’t even accept,” Caden grumbled. “A gift that doesn’t help me at all in combat. What’s the point?”
Storyteller blew out a sigh, and his irritation was plain to see. “Enough, Caden. I’ve seen much in my life, but still, I have no idea why this happened to you. No explanation and no answers. So if you are frustrated, perhaps you should start your journey with finding an answer to that question.”
Without waiting for a response, the man turned back to the path and began briskly walking again. Caden blinked in surprise at the uncharacteristically brusque tone of the man’s words, then he hurried to catch up to him, still pondering what they had discussed, and why it would frustrate the experienced adventurer.
#
The next morning, the rising sun woke Caden early, and he found himself frowning at some wordless discomfort. The copse had proven more difficult going than they anticipated, and as they had many times before, Caden and Storyteller had ended up spending the night under the low-hanging boughs of a pine tree.
Absently, Caden reached up to comb out his hair with his fingers. In the weeks they had traveled, his sky blue locks had grown long and shaggy, and if not bound in some way, his hair would fly in his face constantly. He looked down at the supple leather of his vest, shucked off the night before. It was illuminated by a narrow, dim ray of the early morning sun. Caden nodded and decided that he knew what was wrong.
By the time Storyteller woke up, Cadence’s hair was bound back into a pair of tails framing her face. A little fiddling tied the leather vest slightly tighter around her ribs, and she left the top of it unbuttoned, showing the skin of her collarbone and revealing a simple leather necklace, bound tight around her throat with a knot around a small piece of bright metal. The effect was subtle, and Storyteller had to study her face for a moment before he asked, “Decided to be Cadence again?”
Cadence cocked her mouth in a little smile, and shrugged, the motion subtly different from the day before. “I haven’t spent so long feeling like a boy in a while, but I decided I was feeling… sunny, today.”
Storyteller snorted. “Sunny… they still tell that story out in your village?”
“The Maiden of the Sun and the Gentleman Moon?” Cadence asked dryly. “Yes Storyteller, we know that one.”
Storyteller hummed thoughtfully, and they started walking again.
#
It wasn’t even midmorning when they emerged from the thick copse they had entered the day before, into landscape Cadence found disconcertingly familiar.
They had found their way to a rough dirt road, unpaved and carved with a pair of ruts by uncountable wagons over years of travel. The fields around them had been settled and cultivated, turned into acres of well-maintained farmlands, the warm sun overhead beating down on an assortment of grains, vegetables, and even what looked like a small orchard of fruit trees. The woodlands surrounding the farms were more sparse then Felisen’s, more a series of dense stands of trees like the one the pair had come through than a single forest, but still, the village they were approaching was familiar enough to give Cadence a pang of homesickness.
“We’re approaching Kellister,” Storyteller said. “Known for their role in the lumber and reagent trades.”
[Gift of the Wanderer] experienced gained
Experience: 19%
“Like Felisen,” Cadence said.
“Very similar, yes.” Storyteller’s voice grew troubled as he added, “In more ways than one, apparently.”
Cadence looked up at the older man’s tone, surprised, and Storyteller gestured with his chin towards the horizon. Ahead, the road cut through another little stand of trees, clearly heavily harvested, but sufficient to block their view of the village.
The trees weren’t tall enough to conceal the pillars of smoke drifting into the sky from beyond them, though.
“An attack?” Cadence asked, worried.
“So it would seem.” Storyteller’s voice was concerned as he instructed her, “I’m going ahead. Try to keep up, but don’t use your Surge.”
That said, he lengthened his stride, not quite running, but using the full length of his legs. Cadence had to all but jog to keep up with the taller man, but after a brief glance, Storyteller kept moving without slowing down. They passed quickly through the farmland outside of the village, and Cadence noted that the fields were empty. On a day like this, there should’ve been half a dozen people out in each of the fields, tending to the crops. There was every chance the village was actively under attack even as they approached.
The pair quickly entered the brief stand of trees that straddled the road, and as soon as the foliage protected them from casual observation, Storyteller seemed to… change. His stride and bearing was suddenly rigid and formal, his eyes both piercing blue and intensely narrowed. He made a sharp gesture with one hand, and Cadence only recognized it as the motion of drawing a sword as he seemed to pull his blade out of thin air.
It was as keen and beautiful and deadly as she remembered, nearly as long as she was tall, and studded with a trio of polished, fist-sized blue gems. As they approached the late morning sunlight on the farside of the grove, Cadence noted the sun shining off of Storyteller’s cloak, which had at some point turned from plain tan canvas to a bright gray silk that flashed like silver when the light hit it right.
“My name is Sir Toren Cifel.”
Cadence blinked in surprise. She had spent so long thinking of the man she traveled with as simply “Storyteller” that she had stopped thinking about what his real name must be. “Really?”
Storyteller shot her a sharp look over his shoulder without breaking stride. “For the sake of this village, yes. Sir Toren Cifel of the Argent Order. You’re my squire. Understand?”
Cadence’s eyes widened, then narrowed as she got his implication. He wasn’t revealing anything to her, he was giving what their story would be when they reached the village. “Toren Cifel, Argent Order, squire. Got it.”
Without a word, Storyteller reached into one of his numerous small packs and pulled out a small vial. The liquid inside was an odd mix of orange and purple, swirling separately instead of mixing together. She recognized it as a restoration potion, one which would restore both her stamina and focus if needed. She caught it when it was tossed to her and slipped it into her vest.
Cadence didn’t need instruction. He hadn’t given her a potion, and she had never asked for one, after any of her previous fights with minor monsters along the road. The only other time he had offered her one was back on the Beltley farm, when she had overexerted herself in her first true fight with a monster. If he was giving her one now, he expected the coming fight to be at least as bad as that one, and they both knew that there was only one ability Cadence could copy from Teller that merited the potion.
[Gift of Lightning] reflected
[Lightning Bolt] - Active, Elemental, Attack - Shoot a single bolt of lightning at a target. Attack is brief, but destructive, and will pass through most obstacles. Major quintessence cost (converted to major stamina and focus cost).
Cadence frowned back at Storyteller, and felt the power of his most potent ability settle into her soul.
Finally, they emerged into the dazzling light on the farside of the copse–and were greeted by the smell of burning buildings and the sound of screams.