Neophyte World Builder

SARA (NETHYS)

Nethys could tell Cayla was getting old. Her movements were slow and deliberate, as if any wrong step would cause her to topple over and break. Yet she was clearly high level and more fit than she let on. She was slow, but had no trouble preparing a pot of tea to pour.

It had struck her as odd at first that this world had tea, but Nethys supposed the idea of soaking aromatic leaves in hot water to give it flavor wasn’t that strange of an idea. She’d had a bitter version growing up, before she’d recovered her memories of being Sara. Then, when she’d moved to the city and found Genev, she’d been introduced to more variety. Her region of birth didn’t have an equivalent to coffee, so she’d become a tea drinker by necessity.

The tea Cayla served was milder than anything she’d had before, but it had a faint floral scent. She waited until the dragon-woman had poured for both and taken her seat before she lifted her cup. It was only polite.

“The references I found to you were pretty conflicting,” Nethys noted. “I guess if you’re trying to keep that you’re really a vaskan a secret, this would be necessary. Are you really from before the Age of Silence? Do you live here alone?”

Cayla smiled, but it was a distant smile without reaching her eyes. “I am. My story is long and complicated. To be brief… I took a dragon as a lover, and my life was too short to make use of it. I did a great favor to Crown and Akasha, and thus they granted me a vaskan body with a dragon Totem. This let me extend my life to be with my beloved, especially once I ascended to Elder Dragon.”

She lifted the teacup to her lips for a light sip, then sighed, “Valesfen finally passed a few decades ago… but even if the System considers me an Elder Dragon, my life is also nearing its end. I will rejoin him soon, wherever he may be.”

Nethys felt a twinge in her rear when the dragon said that. Her last two ability choices had offered the opportunity to grow a tail, and her body had been reminding her of that fact in certain moments like this one. It was an annoying distraction from a serious moment.

“You must have cared about him deeply,” she said, and immediately blushed. That sounded so… awkward and obvious. They’d been together over a thousand years by her estimation, so stating it like that was just simplifying something grand. She hurriedly added, “I’m sure he’s waiting for you as well.”

Cayla just shook her head. “Perhaps, but my fading life is not the reason you are here. Have you considered what you really want?”

The time that Cayla had spent making tea had given Nethys a chance to absorb what the dragon-woman had said. Unfortunately, it just made her grimace at the thought of making a choice. Forcing her to confront her feelings wasn’t as illuminating as it was in the storybooks.

“My last life, I never really did anything,” Nethys replied. “I grew up, I learned how to handle money, I spent my time counting the money of people who had far more than I did. Then I died to a random accident before I’d even had a chance to marry or have children. I kept telling myself I would travel and see the world after I found the right one, and then none of them were ever good enough, so I never went anywhere except to the big city nearby.”

The words were difficult in some ways, since the vaskan language didn’t have the right terms for some of the concepts. Cayla didn’t interrupt to clarify anything, just watching with a light sway of her own tail. The fur of the tail had rich silver and grey mingled within the white.

Nethys shook her thoughts from her head and continued, “Here, I’ve been much farther, even though travel is harder. I’m still younger than when I died, and I’ve made friends that I’d die for, and I think they’d do the same for me. I pulled them all together with the idea of crossing the barrier… and I have powers and skills nobody else does. Why wouldn’t I use that to do something nobody else had done?”

“Why indeed?” Cayla asked… and said nothing more about it. The elderly vaskan merely watched, eyes quiet and kind, showing no judgement. Nethys had the distinct feeling like she was visiting a therapist, not an ancient advisor.

“You ask an awful lot of questions for someone who is supposed to be some kind of fountain of knowledge,” Nethys grumbled back. “What do you think I should do?”

At last, the older woman let out a long sigh and set the cup down. “I think that question is a trap. Your heart is conflicted by your desires, and you are looking for someone else to answer for you. You came here and stated your plans as possibilities, not directly asking me to help you. You have a goal but you are not certain that is where your path should lead.”

Wincing, Nethys looked away. “Yeah, probably. Crown told me I should do something with myself. Akasha said I could do anything I wanted. I keep getting the feeling they want me to do something grand, but I’m just… someone who looks at numbers. Or I was, until I had to hunt for my life.”

She looked away, back toward the hallway and her friends. “So I put this group together, and I told them we’d cross… and I led them here, to find out a way we could. But I’m not sure I want to go to a place where we’re complete strangers, filled with elves and bird-people and whatever. In my old life, every time that happened in history it ended badly. But now I feel like if we don’t, I’ll be letting them down.”

“Obligation is a type of motivation,” Cayla allowed with a smile. “But are they following you because they share your dream, or are they following you because you have a dream they can share?”

Nethys frowned and grumbled, “Can you stop with the questions right back to me? I get it, you can’t tell me what to do because I have to make the choice, but I’m too dumb to understand my options. I also feel like maybe Akasha wanted me to do more?”

Cayla picked up her tea and smiled. “I doubt that, but who am I to know the whims of the System? Once I became an Elder Dragon, I no longer even have a System of my own. If they wanted you to do something in particular, I’m sure they would have told me this and asked me to give you a quest. They did not, despite telling me you would arrive soon.”

Typical, Nethys grumbled internally. Literally chosen by the gods and have zero direction.

Aloud, she sighed, “I was afraid of that. I don’t… really want to go to Upside. It’s the most obvious thing I can do to leave my mark on this world, but the more I think about it the more I realize I’m not the type who wants to break through to an unknown land with an unknown people. I like exploring, but knowing there’s a place I can go back to is what makes it enjoyable for me.”

“Then don’t go to Upside,” Cayla laughed, her dry voice somehow warm. “You created a new class, and from what I have heard you reshaped an entire city’s economy. Every person in this world leaves a legacy, and yours is stronger than most. I have done many favors for Akasha, but in the end she only ever asked me to be myself. Even when I worked for them directly, they gave me the choice.”

Nethys stared into her teacup, swirling the dregs about. “I worked for someone before, just to live. Here I’m becoming something I don’t think is me, because I want to please someone else. Could I just travel? Do I have to fight for my life everywhere I go?”

Her spine tingled when she said that. The excitement of discovery, the thrill and terror of battle… it made her feel something inside. It wasn’t a bad feeling, how her heart pounded afterward, how she looked back in pride at what she did.

But is that what I want for my entire life?

She set the empty cup down and laid her head backward, thumping it into the cushioned back of the chair.

“I had someone offer to let me stay and just build a life,” Nethys said with a heavy sigh. “Are you saying that maybe I should have just taken that and never bothered with this? Kept my fastan Totem and just enjoyed life?”

“I never said that,” Cayla chuckled quietly. “Would you have appreciated it if you had taken it? Life isn’t a series of right and wrong answers, you know. If you had stayed, would you have wondered if you should have moved on for the rest of your life?”

Nethys lowered her head into her hands with a loud groan, “You’re infuriating. I keep second-guessing what I should do and what I should have done.”

Cayla didn’t respond, she just took her seat once more and let out a quiet, satisfied sigh. The aged dragon-woman was in no hurry to interrupt her guest’s thinking, merely watching with that silent gaze. Her tail curled and flicked lazily.

“Do you at least know what they want me to do?” Nethys finally complained. “If some god is going to drop me into a strange world and hint at great deeds, it would be nice if they’d give me an idea of where to go!”

Cayla poured herself another cup of tea before answering, “They want you to make a decision. You know, I don’t have a lot of time I can spend awake any more… but this conversation is very relaxing. So much better than the usual questions I get.”

A quiet groan slipped out from Nethys at the dragon-woman’s answer… or non-answer, really. She turned her eyes to the ceiling and rubbed her cheeks. The dragon had been no help at all.

“I’ve had my hand nearly crippled, put my life at risk hunting monsters that I’d never have looked at before, and fought my way through bandits and weird magical terrain trying to get here,” she muttered. “I’ve enjoyed parts of it, but I don’t think this is my calling. I don’t think I just want to stay in one place either, though.”

The sound of a teacup being set down tugged Nethys out of her thoughts, so she could see Cayla smiling at her. The ancient woman murmured, “Oh, it does sound like you’ve made a decision, doesn’t it?”

Nethys repressed the urge to punch the old woman, instead taking a breath. “Yeah. I’m going to go do my own thing. You can tell Crown and Akasha I’m not going to dance to their tune. I’m going to find my way back, maybe stop by to see an old friend… probably even tell her what I am. If that means I get struck down by the gods, then I guess that’s what happens.”

Cayla stood up once more as Nethys rose to her feet, but she made no move toward the younger woman. Instead, she nodded slightly, “All right. That was always allowed. Please be safe on your journey. I suppose your friends have gathered their questions by now. How boring. Are you sure you do not have any questions of your own before you walk away?”

“I’ll be fine,” came the reply with a grunt. “Thanks for the tea, I guess. I uh… hope you and Val… Vales… your husband end up together again.” She turned to step toward the exit… then paused as a notification appeared.