Neophyte World Builder

REESE

My parents had been thrilled that I’d finally gotten a new class… but the reaction to Sena had been mixed. My father, always a gruff and distant man, had just wished me luck without saying much else. Mother had always been more supportive, yet with Sena she had eyed her suspiciously.

My new companion had taken it gracefully. She’d spun a quick story about how she had searched for these rare candidates who evolved late, and that they had unique skills that required exotic actions and magics to fully mature. Her awareness of both the existence of my dreams and their limitations had convinced my mother Sena knew what she was doing.

By morning the next day, we were on the road… and I had my first lesson.

“Is what you told my parents true? You’ve been searching for me for that long?” I asked as I rubbed my calves. I’d kept myself in excellent shape, but a nearly full day of hiking on the dirt road had made my legs ache. I’d done plenty of walking and hiking, but the gait and sustained pace in the early winter chill just wasn’t something I’d had a chance to prepare for.

“No,” Sena replied bluntly. “I lied, and I will lie a lot… even to you. When you can figure out what I’m lying about and glimpse the truth, maybe that’s when we can be honest.” She knelt down at the end and gently brushed fingers over my calves, causing a tingling warmth to flow through and up the limbs. “I will tell you what you need to know, but I will be honest now that you will not always hear the whole truth. Keep that in mind as we travel.”

I wiggled my toes as I thought about what she had just said. Sena was strange… I already knew that. Not just in her attitude, but in her appearance as well. Her tapered ears and slender body structure spoke of elfin origins, but the elves of Icefall Vale, the nearest community, looked far different in their details. Their skin was pale where Sena’s was gently colored, and their hair was always silver or blonde instead of brown.

Then there were the eyes. I’d kept thinking something was off, but in that moment… that was when I saw the first real sign that the elf healing my fatigue was not an elf. It was only an instant, but when she looked up at me, her pupils were narrow vertical slits. One blink and they were back to normal, but that was enough for me to realize my savior was not who she pretended to be.

“Where are we going?” I asked for the third time.

This time, Sena answered properly. “For now, we will go just a little farther to make camp somewhere less exposed. I would prefer you not die early again,” she answered. “I have an ally in Befront, where we’ll pick up more travel funds and some proper equipment for you. Then we need to eventually make our way to a port—probably Thorn Bay—and across the ocean to Stallorn. From there… well, if you’re ready, we’ll be going even farther.”

I considered myself well-educated for being from a rural town, so I knew Befront. That was a somewhat close city, though not one I’d ever been to personally. Thorn Bay was a famous trade hub, so I knew the name if not the exact location, but all I knew was it was large and ruled by bovans. I’d never met a bovan, so I assumed it was very far away. I’d never heard of Stallorn.

“I see,” I replied quietly as I rose to my feet. I started walking at a more brisk pace, but Sena caught my shoulder, urging me to slow down. I gave her an odd look.

“Don’t press yourself,” she explained. “My spell made your pains fade, but it did nothing to actually heal your fatigue and strain. You can’t rely on it.”

She released my shoulder and resumed walking at a slow, steady pace at my side. “I know you probably don’t understand some of the things I’m saying. It’s going to be a very long journey, but if I know you at all, I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s going to be interesting taking care of a youth again… I hope I’m not too out of practice.”

Here I saw my chance to try to learn more. I pulled my cloak tighter about my body and looked aside at my companion, who was handling the early winter chill much better than I was. She had a cloak as well, but her light jerkin and pants were more visible, since she left the cloak open and the hood down. This wasn’t too strange… high-level wanderers often had various charms or class abilities to resist basic weather. I had no idea what level she was, though.

“You uh… were you taking care of the one that died? The one you mentioned?” I wasn’t sure how much to press on that, but if she’d somehow gotten another person like me killed at a young age, it would be good to know.

Sena merely smiled back at me before answering. “No, I was waiting for him to be old enough. I raised a daughter once, and she turned out well, I think.” She let that sink in for a few moments before she added further, “Yes, I am much older than I look, though I am still young for an elf in this land.”

I shrugged. “Elves do live a long time.” I wasn’t sure how long, but more than a human lifetime I was sure. She could be old enough to be my grandmother, for all I knew. I was glad the weirdness of the situation had managed to flush away my normal teenage desires for a while, because I had a feeling my awkward and bumbling flirting with this woman wouldn’t have ended well.

Then again…

“You uh, aren’t an elf though, are you?” I asked, remembering what she’d said about seeing through the lies. I must have guessed correctly, because her smile widened.

“I am not,” she confirmed. “You don’t need to worry about what I am. I find the local elves to be a little boring, really… but it would be a lot more suspicious if a human this age walked into town and made such demands. The exotic appearance helps… so long as it isn’t too exotic. Another lesson. Enjoy these while they last, tomorrow we’ll be pausing our walk for some weapons training.”

The startling statement made me stumble, but I caught myself before planting face-first in the frosty dirt. “Weapons training? But this is a spellcasting class and I’ve already learned how to fight. I sparred with the guards plenty of times! Until I get a fighting class I’m not sure I can get any better.”

“Nonsense,” Sena laughed. “The System helps, it doesn’t dictate. I am sure I know plenty of tricks that your local guards don’t know. I’m a little rusty, but in my youth I was decent with a blade. Mostly for show, but the rank and file soldiers wouldn’t want to test me.”

I may have been a country kid compared to Sena, but I wasn’t totally naive. “What do you get from helping me, anyway? This isn’t some uh… cult thing, is it?”

“That’s something you probably should have asked before we left,” the elfin woman replied with a chuckle. “What do I get out of it? That’s… a complicated answer. I suppose I get to see entirely new people and worlds in a way I never could before. A truth… just not all of it.”

She gave me a twist of a half-smile.

“It will only be a cult if that’s what you make it, Reese.”

The next morning started my training… after I woke up with jumbled memories of that night’s dream. I’d thought my dreams had been informative before, but now things were much different… and weirder. It was just as hard to remember them, but what I could remember was clearer and stranger than before. Jumbled fragments of a short, squat, pointy-eared creature that reminded me of the stories of goblins I’d heard, but this one was well spoken.

He’d been answering questions I was asking, in the dream. Things like whether or not Sena could be trusted, and some details about the gods that I still couldn’t grasp. Something about how they had different faces to deal with different realms, and that I would travel between realms. It made no sense to me, but after several nights I was able to remember more each morning. Maybe it would make sense later.

In the meantime, Sena immediately trounced me every time we sparred, and she showed me a new stance and had me practice some different motions than what the guardsmen had done. Her manner of instruction was much more methodical than the one I’d been taught before. It was also pretty strange, but I’d already figured out that Sena wasn’t a local.

At least after a few days my legs stopped screaming at me when I walked on the road all day.

I’d never been this far outside of my hometown, so when Befront came into view, I was suitably impressed… even if I’d had a glimpse of it in my dreams earlier this year. I could never know what was distorted by the dreams, since they tended to communicate concepts more than facts. So the walls in the dream looked larger, but the size of the real thing was still impressive!

“I know I’ve asked you why we’re going there before,” I said as we approached the gates. “I’m going to ask again, but I think I know why you didn’t answer me. You were waiting for me to notice that you don’t have any need to go out on an adventure. You obviously don’t need money, and you’ve said you have no intention for me to join an organization unless I felt I needed to. So you must have some reason for going to the other continent aside from wealth or belief.”

Sena flashed another smile at me, and I noticed I hadn’t seen her eyes change or the other oddities in her face in a long time. Her teeth were less pointed, and her cheeks less pronounced. I wondered if it was from better practice, or if she’d let those little signs slip intentionally just so I’d notice.

“You’re right,” she answered. “I have no need for money, and while I’m sure the gods of this universe are fine people, I don’t worship any of them. This is about you, and I’m here to help you on your journey. I’m not going to guide you past a point… but you need to understand what you can do, and what you can be, before I let you find your own path.”

I looked toward the city. One of the many merchant carts that had passed us on our journey—Sena had refused to accept a ride—was just ahead, waiting at the gate. I could see the crowds were going to be much thicker and stranger than anything in my hometown, and I felt a slight flutter of nervous excitement in my stomach.

“But why this path exactly?” I asked, pushing just a little more. “I’ve never been to any of the other cities either. Aside from some of the elves in the vale, I’ve never met any elf like you, or a dwarf or bovan or goblin or anything. I could learn so much just nearby, where I know the language. Why go all the way to Stallorn?”

Sena’s hand rose to wave at the air, as if brushing away my concerns. “All of that is boring. Elves and dwarves here are so mundane. Too safe. You need to meet a real elf, or one of the clockwork, or something else like that. And to do that, we need to get far away. Stallorn is the closest port for what we need.”

She smiled at me, a little more warmly. “It’s right on the edge of the world.”