Despite the restless night, Eld woke just before dawn as he had nearly every day of his life. Not even his worst nightmares could overcome the habits forged by working in a bakery. Each day, for weeks, this moment had arrived: a flash of wakefulness, a moment where he didn’t remember all that had transpired, and a choice. The same choice every day: return to sleep or move forward. In defiance of yesterday’s despair, Eld chose to move. He reached for a walking staff that his hopeful mother had left near his bed. With it in hand and a great effort of will, he pushed himself to a standing position. Immediately, he felt the lack of balance and stumbled forward, crashing into his bedroom wall. He caught himself with the elbow on his amputated arm and used the sore limb to steady himself. After weeks of torpor, his body creaked like a strained sapling. Still, a few weeks without effort could not undo the years of patient training he and John had put in to forge their bodies. With great effort, Eld used the staff and the house’s walls to stumble to the stairs. From there, Eld put his back to the wall and, using it and the staff, let himself slide slowly down until he was sitting in front of the staircase. Getting to this point had already taken Eld longer than he’d hoped, and part of him despaired at the thought of his parents finding him halfway down the stairs as he heard them begin their morning routine in the room down the hallway.
Hurrying, Eld twisted his body so that his good leg sat on the second stair from the top, and he began to scoot forward. Sliding on his butt from stair to stair wasn’t a dignified way to travel, but after struggling to make it out of his own room, Eld knew the stairs were an obstacle he wasn’t yet ready to handle standing. Once at the bottom, Eld marshalled his remaining strength to shuffle into the kitchen. He followed the cabinets to the left, all the way around the kitchen, leaning on his left stump to help him balance, until he arrived at the rune he’d carved into the bakery ovens so many years ago. He placed his thumb into it and triggered his simple ability. With no effort, the flames sprang to life and smoke began to ascend through the chimney.
Martha and Harold entered the kitchen, shocked to see their son sitting in a chair near the oven, sweat beading on his forehead. Before they could speak, Eld said, “When the morning rush is over, can one of you help me move about town? I think there are some people I need to talk to.”
Eld’s mother looked at his father, then back at him, before nodding. Eld winced at her uncharacteristic meekness. She looked timid, as if she feared that speaking might make him rush back to his bed, never to leave again. It didn’t suit his force of a mother. After weeks of ignoring her ministrations and bullying, he was finally moving, and she didn’t seem sure about how to proceed. Eld hobbled out of the room and waited as they baked.
Eld sat at one of the chairs in the bakery’s dining room and watched as the people of his town streamed in. They stood in a line no more than five feet from where he waited; none spoke to him. A few spoke about him. “I heard he went to piss while on watch his first night out and got lost,” one gossipy townswoman with mousy brown hair whispered to another as they picked up a box of muffins.
“Nonsense. His mother, bless her poor heart, found him north of town. Makes more sense that he panicked or abandoned his team after a monster attack, and he overshot the town on his run home. It would be just like a fool child to twist up their limbs trying to run at night,” whispered another.
It surprised Eld to find that their words didn’t bother him. Some part of his pride was hit by the remarks, but as Eld absorbed them, he just couldn’t bring himself to care what they thought.
Hours later, after the mid-morning rush, Eld walked with his father down the cobbled streets of Yedda. His shortened arm wrapped around his father’s neck while Harold’s worn hands lifted and supported his son. His dad had never asked him what happened, and for a moment, as the two walked together, Eld considered telling him what John had done. He didn’t want his dad to think he’d raised a fool or a coward, but as he rolled the thought around in his head, he felt the manic eyes of John from that day staring down at him, unblinking. What would John really do if Eld told people what had happened? In the best-case scenario, everyone believed him, a judge was sent to call John back to Yedda, and he was brought before a magistrate to face justice. But then what would happen to Thelia, Micah, and Jesse? According to Thelia’s letter, John was the team’s core, securing them jobs and housing. He was their tank; if he were snatched from them, could they survive, or would they be forced to risk fighting a monster without John to protect them? Eld flinched, imagining that monstrous spider tearing through his friends like paper without anyone to tank the insect’s fury.
On the other hand, why would anyone believe him? Anything he said would be his word against John’s, and Eld wasn’t sure he trusted himself before a magistrate. If John was willing to hurt him so badly, what else was he capable of? It was a question that chilled Eld to the bone as he walked into the blacksmith’s shop. The familiar heat and sooty smell of the shop filled Eld with nostalgic joy as he recalled the afternoons working for Ebbin to earn the coin John had stolen from him. His dad stayed in the front of the shop as Eld hobbled through the service door to the forge.
He waited there, watching the burly, dark-haired smith relentlessly reshaping a plow blade. Sparks caught in the man’s thick beard, singeing patches of it as he brought the hammer down over and over again. As he worked, Eld looked for the part of the man he often pretended wasn’t there. This time, he forced himself to look down at Ebbin’s leg, where a crafted prosthetic supported the blacksmith’s weight. Eld never asked about the limb; that would have been impolite. Most questions about the war were impolite, as was staring. Now, though unseen, Eld inspected the blacksmith’s craftsmanship as he worked the plow blade. Ebbin’s limb was cut off lower than Eld’s own, and how Eld hated himself for envying those few extra inches. He suppressed the thought and tried to simply admire the limb as he built up his courage to say what he needed to say to the sturdy man who had mentored him for so many years.
It was then that Ebbin turned to find his old helper leaning against the shop wall.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to come see me,” the fierce man said in his characteristically gravelly voice. He smiled at Eld, and his eyes were filled with nothing but kindness.
“You still got that talent for starting up the forge?” the smith asked, and Eld relaxed slightly at the banality of the question.
“I’ve still got it,” Eld replied. “I can do it way faster than before, actually, with my heart skill.”
The smith nodded along. “Good, good. Wouldn’t want to lose a day bringing the forge back to temp because I wanted to chat with an old assistant. The skill was [Rune Crafter], right? Sounds like an awfully handy skill if you can learn enough runes to make use of it. Your pa was down here inquiring about a mentorship for you after the news that you decided not to go adventuring.”
Eld nodded. “That does touch on what I wanted to talk to you about,” Eld started, but the smith held up a hand to stop him.
“Let’s sit you down first,” the man said knowingly. Ebbin led Eld behind the forge, into an overgrown courtyard filled with weeds, scraps of metal, and broken stone. Ebbin grabbed a heavy bench and dragged it into a sliver of shade where the two could sit away from the otherwise sweltering heat in the messy courtyard.
The old ex-soldier had a pained expression on his face as he jumped in before Eld could speak.
“I know it’s not fair, Eld, and much as I would like to, I can’t take you on as an apprentice. Tell me if I’m wrong, but rumor has it you took a non-crafting class already?” The smith looked at Eld hopefully, but when his claim wasn’t challenged, he continued. “Even if you take [Smith] and [Peasant] as your next two classes, you are going to be forever at a disadvantage because of the other class you took. I’ll say it again, I know it’s not fair, but whoever I take on as apprentice is going to be the [Smith] in this town fifty years from now, and I’m responsible for choosing someone that can be the best. Could that have been you? Absolutely, but a lot has happened in a month, and that’s just not true anymore.”
As the uncharacteristically flustered Ebbin rushed through his rehearsed rejection, Eld visibly deflated.
“Relax, Ebbin,” Eld told the thicker man. “I didn’t come to ask to be your apprentice.” He paused for a moment. “Well, that’s not the main thing I came to ask about anyway.”
Ebbin followed Eld’s downcast expression to his own missing leg, and a knowing look took over his face.
“Ah, right… It’s been almost twenty years, you know, since I lost the leg. I forget sometimes how difficult the first few years were.”
“Years, huh?” Eld asked, the hope leaving his already dejected voice.
“Years,” the smith affirmed. “I’d love to tell you it’s nothing and that you’ll adjust quickly, but I won’t lie to you. You’re in for a rough spell. To this day, when I dream, I have two legs to run and stand with. I still wake up some mornings and fall because I forgot to slip on my prosthetic.”
Eld nodded along, numb to the pronouncement. It was what he had feared.
The smith laughed. “Oh, don’t be so pig-headed.” He lifted up his leg and kicked Eld’s gently with the wooden foot. “Missing a few limbs makes life harder, not worse.” At the quizzical expression on Eld’s face, Ebbin continued. “Just ’cause you’re down a few components doesn’t mean things are over for you. Your friends Micah and Jesse are the kids of a bandit; you may not know this, but that means they aren’t citizens of the kingdom. Our laws don’t protect them from any crime committed against them, and without a citizen like you or Thelia vouching for them, they’d be denied entry into any city in the realm. Your friend Thelia is an orphan with no parents. She didn’t start life like you, with two parents to watch over and guide you. Do those disadvantages mean they are doomed to a worse life than anyone else?”
“No…” Eld replied shakily, having never really considered the distance between himself and his friends.
“No’s right,” Ebbin affirmed. “They’ve had to work harder to become the people they are today. In many ways, their lives will always be harder, but that doesn’t mean worse. The people with the worst lives I know are the ones who got stuck in the same pitiable state you are in right now. If you dwell on the unfairness of what happened, you are pouring all the seconds of your life into that. It stops you from working toward something better.”
“That’s the conclusion I’m coming to,” Eld sighed, “but I just… I don’t know how to get out of it, Ebbin. I sit in my room, and when I think about it… about what my life is versus what it should have been, I get so… so…”
“Angry?” Ebbin completed.
“Yes! I’m furious, and the only thing I can do is stare at the ceiling and try not to think about it. That keeps the feeling from overflowing, but it doesn’t feel any better.”
Ebbin nodded along. “It won’t. Pushing the feeling aside won’t help, and sadly, letting yourself be angry won’t help either.”
“What will?” Eld asked desperately.
“Moving forward,” Ebbin said confidently. “You can’t change the past. You can’t reclaim a lost future. All you can do is move forward and forge yourself into someone who isn’t as angry anymore.”
“What does that even mean?” Eld asked.
“What have I told you about how I lost my limb?” Ebbin asked, and Eld shook his head.
“I didn’t have my [Smith] class when the war started. I was just a [Peasant] when old Lord Raithshield called up the banners; overnight, all our [Peasant] classes changed to [Militia] classes, from some [Noble] skill he had. My [Adroit] skill became [Weapon Mastery: Clubs], my [Strong] skill became [Warrior’s Strength], et cetera. It made me feel like the cock of the walk. Ten days into the war, I was filled with vim and vigor and a fantasy in my head of becoming a [War Hero] by saving a bawdy farmer’s daughter from rapacious invaders out to steal her innocence. Ten days in, Eld, and a battle happens, where I find myself an ant under the foot of giants. When high-level knights and soldiers fight, people like me and you are just fodder whose only goal is to slow them down or stop their soldiers from slowing down our own elites. I don’t even remember how it happened. One moment, I was in a scrum of soldiers pressing down against an enemy force, and the next, I’m lying on the ground, buried in the bodies of my friends, my leg so cleanly severed that I noticed the sensation of bleeding before I felt the pain. I’m lucky I made it off the battlefield at all. Our side lost that fight, and as the enemy swept deeper into our lands, I was bypassed and left to rot in that field. Do you know what saved me?”
Eld shook his head, enraptured by the tale.
“A day after the battle, as I was fighting the weight of piled-up bodies that crushed me, I heard a woman’s voice. She was strolling along the battlefield, chatting with her friend as if the corpses of her countrymen were beneath her notice. I called out to her, my attempt at a yell barely a squeaking whisper through my parched throat. She heard me, though, and she and her sisters dug me out of that tomb of bodies and helped me back to their daddy’s farm, where they doted on me and nursed me back to health. The farmer’s eldest came to me one day as I wallowed in a pool of self-pity and told me she wasn’t going to feed me anymore unless I was helpful. And boy, let me tell you, that pissed me off something mighty fierce. I’d just lost my leg defending her on the field of battle; as far as I was concerned, I didn’t owe anybody anything else as long as I lived. She and I fought like weasels, sniping at each other for days, until one day, just to shut her up, I told her to find me a damn job around the farm a legless man could do and leave me alone. Well, let me tell you, that was the wrong thing to say. I thought I had her stumped on that one. Didn’t rightly think there was such a job for a man to do without a leg, but her sisters had been gathering up broken armor from the battlefields around the area and were selling them back to the kingdom as scrap, but this farmer’s daughter had greater ambitions. She sat me down at a workbench with her and forced me to help her repair the armor so we could sell it to the kingdom at ten times what she was getting for scrap.”
“They made you do all that with a missing leg?” Eld questioned.
“Oh yes, that awful woman made me toil away hammering metal for hours until we figured out how to actually repair some of the pieces. I hated every second of the effort, but you know what I got at the end of the week? I earned my [Smith] class from those days sitting with her in that sweaty barn, working my ass off. I didn’t see it at the time, but looking back on it now, it’s funny realizing that instead of saving a farmer’s bawdy daughter, it was the farmer’s bawdy daughter who saved me. And I do mean save. I was too mad at her about being made to work to see it at the time, but the work transformed me; she transformed me into something more than what I’d been before. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. I became a new man after that summer, and when the war ended, I married that farmer’s daughter. We moved here, and I set up shop as a farrier making horseshoes.”
“The farmer’s awful eldest daughter was Maria?” Eld laughed incredulously as Ebbin laughed along with him.
“I mean, she hasn’t really changed, has she, boy?” Ebbin barked back. “Still a slave driver.”
Eld smiled and, in doing so, realized it was his first smile since the night in the Yedda woods. Before the betrayal and the falling shade of Emorin.
That thought caused the smile to fade slightly, but still, he felt he understood what Ebbin had been saying.
He and Ebbin talked a bit longer, and in a fit of generosity, Ebbin offered to make prosthetic limbs for him. Eld tried to offer his services in exchange for the limbs, but Ebbin just laughed and said he’d make more than the cost back in free baked goods from Eld’s parents over the next decade. Feeling like he was in a good mood for the first time since his escape from the Yedda woods, Eld hooked his arm around his father, and they began to walk toward the second meeting Eld wanted to have. In the temple of Ieleiane was another man he hoped could help him. Priest Kyn, Thelia’s surrogate father, and the man whose power had helped bring him back from Breckitt’s final journey.
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Eld didn’t look forward to the conversation with his old tutor. As a priest of the Goddess of Light and Knowledge, Priest Kyn was responsible for instructing all who came to his temple seeking knowledge. Most parents made their kids attend classes at the temple for a few years until they were old enough to help in the fields. Many of the orphans directly under the guidance of Priest Kyn studied a few years longer until they were picked up by the town’s various tradesmen for apprenticeships. Only he and Thelia had continued their studies at the temple for so long. As Eld stumbled through town with his father in the day’s fading light, Eld recalled the joy on old Kyn’s face as he unwrapped a fresh set of tomes on mathematics and natural science. The school had never had any students in Yedda progress far enough in their education to justify the books, so when Thelia and Eld had learned all the school had for them, it had been Kyn’s great honor to order the new books for them from Ieleiane’s central temple.
Eld shuddered as he recalled how difficult some of the new problem sets in the book had been. He never loved learning like Thelia, but with her help and Priest Kyn’s patience, he had learned nearly as much as she had about the world.
“You sure you’re ready for this one?” his dad asked, looking up at the darkening sky. “I should really get you home before the sun sets. It could be tricky walking back like this, and I don’t want to drop you.”
Eld froze briefly before speaking. “If you’re worried about continuing, Dad, we can come back tomorrow, but don’t do it for my sake. I’m moving well enough right now, but I haven’t found a reason to keep getting out of bed just yet, and I don’t know if I’ll have the same resolve tomorrow.” He rasped the words out at the end of his sentence, and the two continued walking in silence until they reached the temple of Ieleiane. Like all of her temples, it was a pragmatic building, squat and wide, built from grey blocks taller than a man. The front of the temple's facade was marred by brown water streaks caused by water overflowing leaf-clogged gutters, which the temple never had the resources to clean out. The temple was a building of efficient purpose, and Eld was thankful for that as his dad helped him up the steps to the small front door next to the chapel. Priest Kyn’s sitting room was just inside.
“Ahh, it is good to see you, Pupil Baker. Have you come to explain to me how it is you came to be so damaged in the Yedda woods last month?” The question was sharp and caught Eld off guard almost as much as the hawk-eyed stare the priest caught him with as he hobbled into the sparse room with its cushionless furniture.
“I have not come to talk about the cause of my injuries,” Eld replied stiffly.
“Maybe you have not had the proper amount of time to recover from them, then, my boy. Please leave and return when you are rested enough to regale me with the tale.” Kyn returned to the paper on the desk that held his attention and pointedly ignored Eld standing in the doorway.
The man’s coldness hit Eld like a stone to the stomach and left him uncertain of how to respond. For a minute, he tried to push down the fear he felt toward John and tried to force out an explanation, but again Eld was conflicted about the attack. He wasn’t ready to talk about it, not yet, and not because Priest Kyn wanted to know. Instead, Eld shuffled to a nearby bench and sat down.
When Kyn looked up to snap at him, Eld held up a hand. “It was a long walk to see you. Just give me a moment to rest before I head back to bed. I won’t bother you if you don’t want to talk.”
The priest tried to burn a hole through him with his eyes before he huffed and, to Eld’s surprise, began talking. “Fine, fine, keep your blasted secret, but next time you show up to town bloodied and dying, don’t make me wait to receive Thelia’s letter to know she’s okay.”
Eld flinched and apologized. “I’m really sorry for that, Kyn. I should have told you immediately that she was okay. I wasn’t thinking clearly after what happened. I’m still not.”
Some of the anger softened from the wrinkles in his face as Kyn responded. “What’s been happening?”
“I’m having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning and falling asleep at night.”
“Not an uncommon response to what you’ve been through. Can you tell me more without stepping on your secret tragedy?” Kyn asked with only a bit of venom in his tone.
“Well, at night I used to fall asleep imagining what it would be like to be an adventurer. I used to imagine myself fighting the Cyclops of Pinnafore or exploring the untamed dungeons of Bred, but now, when I lie in bed, I just think about what I’ve lost. I can’t not think about it, and believe me, I try.” Eld held up his severed limbs to indicate what he couldn’t stop thinking about as Kyn nodded along.
“Is it the limbs you long for, or the fantasy of yourself as a hero?” Kyn asked.
The words struck Eld like an arrow.
“I’m sorry,” Kyn mumbled quickly. “I’ve always been told my tongue was too sharp for kind words. It wasn’t my intention to harm.”
“It’s fine,” croaked Eld as he tried to keep control of his breathing. “This morning I would have told you it was the limbs, but you’re right. I miss the life I can’t have without them.”
Kyn nodded again and waited in silence until Eld continued.
“I’m just so angry about it, and I can’t stop being angry. Then when I finally fall asleep, it’s only for a few hours until I wake up the next day exhausted from being so angry.”
“Do you recall the writings of the Abbess Gwendole in her book Foundations of Right and Wrong?”
Eld shook his head, confused slightly by Kyn bringing up a book he hadn’t read for years. Kyn stood up and walked over to a bookshelf, where he pulled down a copy of the text.
“She was a brilliant thinker, and she had something insightful to say on the subject.
“The town has grown since my youth. Gone are the days when the townsfolk of Yore can leave their doors unlocked, trusting the protection of their hard-earned wealth to the honor of their neighbors. Never has such a truth been clearer than it is today. Travelers have been using the trade road more frequently, and in summer, our little mountain town has come to host a few travelers each year seeking out the beauty of our valleys and waterfalls. Last night, one of the travelers broke into Goodwife Tremmel’s home and stole her family’s quilts. It is not a great loss as these things go; all in town have more than enough to share when winter comes. I find the greater sadness in the ringing of the smithy’s hammers as he makes a new set of commissioned locks.”
“She goes on to explain that every home in town wastes not only their coin to buy locks that are never used, but now each member of the town wastes a few seconds each day locking and unlocking doors. It is the subtle, tragic loss of time that is the greater crime than the theft. The theft leaves a scar, and every time you pick at it, you give a little bit more to the moment you were robbed.”
“I see what you mean,” Eld replied dejectedly. “I just don’t see what I can do about it. I don’t want to lose any more time, but I can’t think about what to fill it with, and every time I leave an empty moment, the thoughts pour back in, filling the space I tried to protect for something good.”
“I wish I could tell you I have an answer for you,” Kyn said sadly. “I rely on books for almost all my wisdom. This is the great tragedy of the scholar’s life; my most tragic moments happened on the pages of dusty tomes. Even now, the words of Ieleiane herself call to me as you explain your dilemma. I don’t know if you will find them helpful, but here they are:
“If you know what you want and how to do it, then do it. No matter how hard you think it is, it will always be harder to watch your life pass by, wishing you had just worked harder. If you know what you want but not how to do it, practice, make mistakes, and figure it out. And if you don’t know what you want, then learn more.””
Kyn closed the book and looked back to Eld. His face fell when he saw the words had not triggered a revelation for his student.
“Well, anyway, I see your problem, Eld, and though you have already learned all that this small school has to teach you, I hope you know that should you wish it, there is likely a place for you in Ieleiane’s church.”
“Really?” Eld asked. “I’m afraid a healer with no arm and a useless class isn’t exactly appealing.”
Kyn looked back with a strange look, as if there was something he wanted to say but wasn’t sure if he should.
“Just say it,” Eld requested.
“You would be surprised how appealing you are to the church, actually. You’ve already completed five levels of Ieleiane’s teachings. If you are able to make it through the last two, you would meet the qualifications for the [Scholar] class.”
“I don’t see how that makes me appealing. I still have one of my three class slots filled up with the Survivor class; it would be useless to the church,” Eld argued.
“True enough, but the Church of Knowledge values what you know more than what your skills can do. And besides, there is another reason that you are appealing to the church.”
“What do you mean?” Eld asked.
“As personal power increases, so does the necessity of politics,” Kyn said, quoting yet another of Ieleiane’s teachings. “The kingdom has strict limits on the number of acolytes, scholars, and support staff that churches are allowed to recruit from among the peasants.”
“Okay…” Eld replied, still not understanding.
“Why might such a limitation be imposed on the churches?” Kyn asked.
“To limit their power?” Eld replied, uncertain.
“Yes, partly, but there is another reason… You see, lords in Dria all share something in common: an epic-level class called [Noble].”
“I thought epic-level classes were almost impossible to reliably create,” Eld interrupted.
“Impossible is relative, Eld. Nearly every great kingdom rests its strength in the ability to abuse a powerful class. In Dria, that class is [Noble], and it is offered to the legitimate heirs of any demesne in the kingdom. The noble class is unique in that it functions similarly to bloodline classes like [Elf] and [Dwarf], since it can be passed from parent to child as the only prerequisite. What makes it strong, though, is that as a component of the class, each [Noble] must care for and guide the [Peasant] classes in their demesne. In return for the [Noble]’s protection, [Peasant]s pay taxes and provide a portion of their experience gained each day toward leveling their classes to the [Noble] in charge. This is also true for stats, where the [Noble] of a mighty house can pull on the collective strength of the [Peasant]s and become nearly invincible in even the longest battles. Does that give you a clue to understand why the kingdom might care if we are diverting young men and women to the path of the scholar?”
“They get less powerful with fewer [Peasant]s, so they don’t want you stealing the ones most likely to level?”
“You’re getting it quickly,” Kyn nodded approvingly. “So why does that make you of particular desirability?”
Eld winced slightly as he realized what Kyn was getting at. “Because the [Peasant] class levels up from physical labor.” The words came flatly from Eld. “Since my body can no longer do manual labor, the [Noble]s don’t care if I join the church.”
Kyn nodded sadly. “Whatever it was you went through, I see a maturity in you, Eld, that didn’t exist a few months ago. This tragedy has aged you and put you at the start of a long path we call maturity. You deserve to know the hard truth of the world, and it’s even more extreme than you might think. The church has a firm limit on the number of adherents we can recruit each year; people with your condition flatly don’t count toward the limit, meaning you are a free recruit to a system starved of the labor the church needs to grow Ieleiane’s mission of learning and healing. Ieleiane doesn’t just need healers; her halls need [Scholar]s and [Teacher]s as well.”
Eld and Kyn talked more about the specifics of the church and what being a part of it meant for Eld and his life.
“I’ve got to think on that,” Eld replied uncertainly as he struggled to pull himself up. Kyn popped to his side and helped him as he spoke.
“Please take your time considering. I know learning wasn’t exactly a fun experience for you, like it was for Thelia. If you don’t think you’ll be happy in life copying ancient records or grading problem sets, it may not be the best path for you,” Kyn replied as he helped Eld out to his father in the next room.
As the pair trudged home carefully through the darkness, Eld shared some of what Kyn had said to him and some of his own thoughts with his father.
“Which one are you?” his dad asked surreptitiously.
“Huh?” Eld asked.
“Which category are you in? Do you know what you want and how to get it? Do you not know what you want? Where are you on the priest’s list?”
“I think I’m in the ‘don’t-know-what-I-want’ group,” Eld sighed. “I mean, I do know what I want. I still haven’t stopped wanting it. I just… can never have it.”
His father nodded with understanding. “So you need to learn, then? That’s what the goddess would tell you to do?”
Eld rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Dad, but that’s also Ieleiane’s answer to nearly every problem.” The pair chuckled together, and Eld again caught himself not feeling angry, robbed, and miserable.
That night, as Eld stared up at the ceiling and felt the anger begin to press in, he pushed it from him and tried to imagine what life as a scholar might look like in Ieleiane’s church. It didn’t excite him. Next, he pictured himself working at the bakery with his parents. That was an even less appealing thought.
Why? Why is that so unappealing? Eld questioned the emotion. Many people his age would jump at the chance to apprentice with a [Baker], much less inherit a profitable shop. The answer came to him easily when he searched for it.
Because the shop is already built. If I took over for my parents, my life would be easy. I wake up at dawn, bake, sell, and by midday I’m free to do whatever I want… Except I don’t want that. I want to build something on my own. I want to grab a piece of the world for myself and shape it with my own two hands. I don’t want to be a [Baker] because I don’t want an easy life. I want my life to change something.
As the revelation hit, Eld recontextualized his desire to be a hero; he wanted to be a hero to change a piece of the world, to make it better. It didn’t solve Eld’s conundrum about what to do. His life still didn’t hold meaning or purpose, but as he lay there in bed, Eld could see the outline of a future he might actually be excited about. As he considered something beyond staying in bed, he felt a twist in his heart and realized he was leveling up in his class. A ball of anxiety he hadn’t realized he had been gripping slipped away, and Eld realized what the level meant. The gods didn’t grant levels for no reason. The level was a reward. A reward, he realized, for deciding to get out of bed and change his own life. It was in that moment, as the level crystallized within him, that Eld understood how much danger he had really been in after wallowing in his own bed for so many weeks.
———
[Level 3 Acquired – Survivor]
[Attribute Adjustments Applied]
Mind: Memory +0 | Acuity +0 | Mana +0
Body: Fortitude +2 | Power +2 | Agility +0
Soul: Creativity +0 | Presence +0 | Will +4
[Survivor Skills Available]
[Will of the Broken] – Replace a portion of your body mass with a will construct for short periods of time.
[Beneath Notice] – An aura of unnoticeability covers the user.
[Under My Protection] – Effects that impact you also impact others nearby.
As Eld jolted to full wakefulness and read the available options, unlike his first skill, where he could really only choose the option that kept him alive a little longer, this skill had options. [Beneath Notice] was at the clear bottom of his rankings. It seemed to Eld to be a [Beggar] or [Rogue] skill, and while Eld didn’t know with certainty what path his future would take, he really couldn’t imagine himself as a [Thief] or [Beggar]. Maybe applications as a spy? He briefly considered but then dismissed the thought. The next option wasn’t something Eld would normally have considered. [Under My Protection] was, on its surface, a defensive skill wherein the user could buff themselves, then share the buffs with others around them. On a closer examination of his innate understanding of the skill, however, Eld believed he could use the power in any setting. If he got a [Scholar] ability to read faster, he could use it in one of Ieleiane’s monasteries to make an entire cohort of [Scholar]s read faster. It seemed like a powerful ability that would enable him to work well on almost any team. It was worth considering based on potential alone.
Finally, Eld considered the other ability, [Will of the Broken]. The ability seemed to hold the promise of allowing him to walk again someday. While that might seem an easy choice to someone lacking the innate knowledge the gods provided to help understand skills, the ability came with downsides. From his understanding, the skill would give him at best a few minutes of use at a time and would require leveling up in the [Survivor] class before it was usable. Eld was torn. The aura skill would give Eld an edge that most people didn’t have. It would make him useful in almost all the work he did as part of a team. It was a direct upgrade to his current state, one that didn’t care about his lost limbs. On the other hand, [Will of the Broken] was a skill dedicated to decreasing the impact of his handicap. It didn’t remove the problem of day-to-day mobility, where every job required hours of being on one’s feet, not minutes. Nor did it ignore the penalty of the hobbled status like [Under My Protection], rendering the toll he paid to survive the spider moot. Still, it was an opportunity, and if he leveled enough, it meant one day he might be able to run again. As Eld imagined himself running another lap around Yedda, wind blowing his curly black hair behind him, he selected the skill.
[Survivor Skill Acquired – Will of the Broken]
With the instinctual knowledge that was always granted with new skills, Eld flexed the power, and a ghostly green limb sprang out from his stump elbow. He could hold it for only a few seconds before the limb flickered out of existence, but for a moment, it was there before him, and for the first time since he pulled himself from that dark forest, Eld had real hope.
